Reflected Veil

Hello everyone! My name is elmikkino, and today, I’ll be walking you through the deck that got both Splashcat and I 5-0 performances in League: Reflected Veil. It’s a rather complicated deck with tons of “microsynergies,” as Splashcat referred to them, and a fair amount of card choices that just do not make much sense at first glance. As such, I thought I would write a deck tech to introduce more players to the deck and explain what I find to be integral pieces to it and what may be potentially places to iterate and improve upon. Without further ado, here is my latest list for it:

I will begin with the main point of the deck: this is a UB combo-midrange deck. The combo, which you do execute in most games you win, is casting Thin the Veil while you have 6 types in graveyard to find Reflected Moment, which gets exiled and then is cast for free from exile. This turns on Reflected Moment’s clause to be a Time Stretch, which allows you to take two extra turns for only 4 mana. From there, you want to find some way to cast additional Reflected Moments to win you the game before your opponent gets to untap, though it’s not the worst thing in the world generally if you do have to pass back to them. Aiding in the “killing them” plan is the copy of Herald of Wisdom (thanks, InsertName!), which you generally want to be your actual tutor target off your first Thin the Veil, as it will flashback your Thin and then allow you to find Reflected Moment as normal, allowing you a 5/5 flier to potentially win the game with.

This deck is also playing Tabia in its sideboard, which partly causes all the weird numbers and types in it. Tabia is not necessary to the plan, which is evident in how the only ways to cast him are the Shifting lands and the Dawson’s Loots, but he’s useful enough to be worth it when you draw a 5-lander or multiple of the same legend. The deck does not have to be a Tabia deck, and removing Tabia may open the deck up to potential new avenues, but Tabia also keeps the pilot from loading up too much on one type and lowering the consistency of the main combo, which is the main game plan, after all.

I will now go through the cards in the deck one by one and explain the rationale behind each. I will also include the number of each type there are in the deck, in case people want to adjust the deck to their liking but also want to keep Tabia; remember that 8 of something is the max.

Artifacts (7, including Brine Fleet Bay (in lands))

4 Dawson’s Loot: One of the things this deck needs is many different types to enable Thin the Veil for 6 (and Tabia). Dawson’s Loot both mills cards to allow you to incidentally get more types in your graveyard and sacrifices itself so artifact is always covered. It drawing a card means it always at least cycles for 1 mana, so it’s rarely a bad draw, plus it can sac itself to help cast Tabia and the blue spells, making the mana requirements of the deck a lot easier. Playing 4 is essential for the consistency of the combo.

2 Titanic Fossil: This card is a value engine that also helps enable the combo, as it both mills and freecasts cards for you. It is a great alternate wincon that helps you potentially find Unforget to tutor for Thin the Veil, as well, and then later win the game once you do start comboing. I have been happy with 2, but I could see going up to 3 or down to 1 or less depending on the meta, since it does nothing until you invest 5 mana into it and is much worse versus graveyard hate.

Creatures (8)

4 Profane Emissary: Together with Polyp Pools, this is a 4/4 lifelink that also gives you an additional land when necessary. It is a stock part of any black midrange deck, and is part of what makes that broader macro-archetype good in the first place. It also helps shore up the durdly nature of the rest of the deck, making it so aggro still has a potent threat to deal with in game 1. I would be hesitant to trim these, but there are certain metas where they are worse, such as control and combo-heavy ones.

2 Inishtu, Desert Healer: Another stock generically good creature. The card-filtering on this definitely ups the consistency a lot, and this deck also flips him fairly easily. He can also be a wincon once you get into combo mode. I would not cut any of these, since it is just a very good card, and running 1 or 2 more could also be an option, especially if you’re willing to sacrifice Tabia.

1 Paleontologist: This was a speculative 2-of when I first included it in the deck, and could honestly be a 0-of as well, but I’m happy to leave it as-is for now. Its primary role is to just be drawn naturally to get Titanic Fossil and Polyp Pools (a Skeleton) into the graveyard, both to enable Thin the Veil and to have a wincon for after you start going off. It also is notably a creature you don’t mind dying, unlike the rest of the ones you generally naturally cast, which makes it so you can more easily get this type into the graveyard. It’s stuck around so far because I do appreciate its role, but I could see a world where we do not need the extra combo consistency and the body itself is unnecessary.

1 Herald of Wisdom: The main point of this is to be part of the combo, as mentioned above, though it can theoretically be a handy control creature, as well. Remember not to grab this off Thin the Veil if you have a flipped Bal out, as you would be unable to recast the Thin the Veil, and you don’t particularly need the body to win if you have Bal, anyways. I would not play more than the 1, since it isn’t strictly necessary for the combo kill and we do not want to run more 6 drops than necessary.

Enchantments (7)

4 Dark Bargain: A generically good draw spell that also happens to get a fairly difficult type into our graveyard. It also helps enable our sideboard Villainy plan, as it is a cheap black noncreature spell we’re always happy to cast. This greatly improves our consistency–even in a metagame full of aggro, I would not cut any copies.

3 Bal’s Descent: While this card has been suspect in other builds, it is in fact one of the strongest cards in this deck. One of its strengths is that it just does so much–it gets many types into the graveyard via sacrificing, discarding, and milling, all while eroding our opponent’s game plan, potentially significantly. Also, due to our Shifting manabase, we often have 5 Swamps on turn 5 or 6 at the latest, allowing us to flip into Bal the turn it comes down. Once Bal is flipped, we generally can win the game in short order, as it allows us to recast any Thin the Veils or Unforgets we milled. It also turns any Dawson’s Loots, Darklands Charms, or Titanic Fossils into insane draw spells, since milling is essentially drawing cards as long as the indestructible Bal lives. I have so far never lost a game after flipping a Bal. I would not cut any copies, though I would not add a 4th, either, since it is 4 mana and legendary, after all.

Instants (4)

2 Unforget: Unforget is our tutor of choice for Thin the Veil. Being instant-speed makes up for it tutoring to the top of your library, and the drain effect is also nice, as it allows you to survive versus fast aggro decks to allow you to get up to Thin. It being 3 mana is also important, as it means it can be flashed back by Titanic Fossil. Instants are already one of our least represented categories, so I would not cut any copies, but I also would not add any more, as drawing multiples can get clunky.

1 Darklands Charm: This is a new addition–it simply is a piece of card selection that is also an instant. The other modes are very minor unless Profane Emissary is specifically very good in the matchup and you just topdecked Polyp Pools, or something. If you want to cut it, feel free, though going up to 2 could be fine, too.

1 Zadyk Resourcefulness: For some reason, this is one of the most controversial cards in the entire deck. People read it and just think it’s bad, though it’s never seemed that way for me. It does many minor things:

• Shuffle Reflected Moment in if you accidentally milled one off of a Dawson’s Loot and you had to swap out the other with Tabia and/or drew it

• Make a blocker to stem the tide against aggro

• Sacrifice a permanent like Polyp Pools to get an extra type in your graveyard

• Be an instant, also for type purposes

• Draw a card (good)

• Randomly be graveyard hate

All of these things combined make for a card that is good enough to keep on, at least as insurance against rare cases. As these cases are rare, though, you only really need 1. If you do want to swap this and/or the previous card, Reveal Eternities may just be better, but it does mean you will be opened up to those rare cases again, not to mention that it messes with one of the current sideboard plans. I should also note that I do not generally find that I lack a permanent I’m fine with sacrificing to Resourcefulness–Dawson’s Loot, for example, is useless most of the time after its cast, and sometimes a creature or walker you have is going to die anyways. You also do not really need more than 4 or 5 lands most of the time, so sacrificing an extra one is not strongly detrimental.

Planeswalkers (5)

2 Kalemn Weller: Our only hard removal spell in the deck. It being a planeswalker is useful mostly for its type–the discard mode can sometimes come up, but moreso if you want to discard cards to fulfill type requirements, though that does also make it harder to get Kalemn in the yard in the first place if you still need a planeswalker. I often sideboard out a copy, and Splashcat shaved down to 1 copy in their League list–this is probably one of the most flexible slots, though it is also fairly meta-dependent, as there are times where you will want something that can kill a large creature.

3 Karaja Hetegex: Karaja is legitimately amazing–proof that it is simply a card that had not found a home prior to this list. It essentially does everything–drawing cards, removing small creatures, and getting herself into the graveyard easily if necessary. It is also the only way we have of taking care of pesky artifacts and enchantments if we did not bring in Tabia. It is very rare that we actually want to use the discard mode on her, though–she simply is just very good and it is usually worth it to just play her, since she will usually put herself into the yard eventually, anyways. I only ever used the mode once, and it was at sorcery speed so I could kill a creature while playing around countermagic. I would not add or remove any of these–it is perfect as a 3-of.

Sorceries (7)

4 Thin the Veil: Our centerpiece card. It is almost always the most important card in the deck, and our game plan largely revolves around finding and casting it. Due to this, it is often correct to hold your copy/ies of Thin the Veil until you have 6 types in graveyard in order to execute the combo-kill; I would only deviate from this if we needed a sorcery in the graveyard to get to 6 types, or if we we were going to die otherwise. The combo kill also involves casting multiple copies of these via Unforgets, Bal, and Arisen Tyrant flashing back Unforgets–definitely do not cut any.

2 Reflected Moment: An obviously necessary inclusion, as it is the other half of our combo. We are playing 2 rather than 1 so it is less likely that we accidentally draw or mill all our copies and are unable to win. We are able to cast it, however, so drawing it at least means we take an extra turn and it shuffles back in. It has never been relevant for me, but also remember that if your Thin the Veils are exiled to Seal the Tomb or something, you can find Reflected Moment off of Unforget and reveal it for prophecy to actually hardcast it for 8 mana. If this card is ever nerfed to exile itself rather than shuffling back in, however confusing that would be, this deck is probably dead in the water. You could probably go down to 1 and it would be fine, but I think it’s better to stick to 2 and be able to board 1 out if necessary.

1 Violent Collapse: This is entirely a hedge against our current aggro-dominated meta. It is an emergency Thin the Veil target, and it definitely does not have to be here. In a different meta, I would cut it.

Lands (23, including 1 artifact land and 2 tribal lands)

4 Shifting Morass + 4 Shifting Cascade: Unlike other decks that use these lands, the point is generally not to make all different land tokens to enable Wanderlust, but instead to make all the same token so you can have great mana that still enables Bal with them all being Swamps. If you ever have to discard one, Cascade is worse, as Morass can also make a BW dual to cast Tabia that does not sacrifice your Bal fealty. I would not cut any of these, but I also would not add any more, since we do not want to make anything other than Swamp Islands 90% of the time and the other Shifting lands don’t make those, plus we have so many self-sacrificing lands that this type requirement is the easiest of them all.

5 Swamp: Basics are good. One could theoretically play less in order to run Forgotten Pit and/or Cradle of Corruption, but we usually would combo before activating the latter, and the former is widely considered to be the worst of the animus cycle. Swapping these with more things to fetch them with, or maybe even a Murmuring Falls, or also probably not necessary and would mostly just cost life.

2 Polyp Pools: We want at least one of these to be our Profane Emissary target, and our mana is good enough that we can afford to run the second. Running the second also safeguards us against milling one, as well as opens up the line of saccing one to Zadyk Resourcefulness while controlling Profane Emissary, and then immediately using the draw to find another Pools to replace it. You also sometimes just naturally draw one and Profane Emissary and don’t have to worry about it ever being a 2/2, or you draw Paleontologist and Emissary and you can both put one in the yard and find one for your creature. I would probably play more if we weren’t already playing other potentially colorless lands.

1 Brine Fleet Bay: This is mostly just to help enable Thin the Veil, with it potentially attacking and blocking being secondary–we don’t actually have any 3-power creatures, so this is less of a power boost than it is in some decks. It could legitimately be a 3rd Polyp Pools, or potentially a Zhelid, Planar Academy (the colorless archive enchantment land). It could also be a Swamp of some sort–regardless, its inclusion is far from necessary and may even be straight-up wrong, but I do like how it can block well, as well as close out games if we can’t find multiple Thins.

1 Flooded Morass: We have enough nonbasics that we do not want to play more than 1 of these as a tutor target, not to mention that our only UU spells are 6 mana and we never want to have to hardcast them. This is not a Murmuring Falls because the deck generally can afford to take a turn off if necessary, and the lifeloss adds up with Dark Bargain.

1 Corpsebed: There are enough widely-played cards in the format that this is good against–namely Unearth and Cane Dancer–that this is worth the inclusion. Random graveyard hate against weird decks is also always welcome. I wouldn’t play more or less than 1.

The 5 Shockfetches: Playing this many shockfetches make it so 14/23 of our lands produce blue, which is more than enough with the small number of blue cards we have, as well as the fact that we also have Dawson’s Loot if necessary. The weird mix of them is what I often do, as we aren’t actually running any Islands, and it makes us less susceptible to getting gotcha’d by Mirrorgate.

Sideboarding

This deck is fairly good all-around, and thus does not have to play a large amount of hate cards in order to make sure it wins problematic matchups. Accordingly, most of the sideboard is still tentative, and the plans I do have might be incorrect. I will also go through these more in terms of what the plan is more than anything else:

4 Negate + 2 Neutralize: This deck is weakest to spell-based decks such as Tropic Thunder and Storm variants. These are in the sideboard to potentially shore up those matchups, though if and when another truly broken deck in this vein shows up, I do not think we will be favored against it. Neutralize also stops Crazy Train, which is another potentially scary matchup, but it does not do anything against enchantments, so if Will of the Fickle Lord decks become popular again, we may wish to swap out this counterspell to something more catch-all.

Against combo decks, Paleontologist, Violent Collapse, Kalemn Weller, Darklands Charm, Zadyk Resourcefulness, and potentially even some number of Dawson’s Loots or Profane Emissaries are too durdly and do not interact well enough with their primary game plan. I would board out some number of these and add in all the counterspells. I also would not worry about keeping Tabia available for the most part, but cutting the 2 instants mentioned and 4 other cards would still let you play Tabia, so it might not be a big ask.

4 Villainy, 2 Wave of Decay, 1 The Afterlife Takes Its Due: This package constitutes our B-plan against one specific scary style of deck: aggro that brings in graveyard hate. Our traditional plan against aggro is to stall until we combo, but if we can’t combo, then they can usually overcome our stall with our maindeck configured the way it is. Accordingly, we can bring in this package to make it so we beat these decks post-sideboard. We are just naturally a good Villainy deck, as 23/37 of our spells trigger the enchantment.

We can actually further improve this ratio with sideboarding–Dawson’s Loot, 1 Reflected Moment, the Titanic Fossils, Herald of Wisdom, and Paelontologist are all durdly and exist mostly to enable our combo gameplan, and are also all spells that would not trigger Villainy; if our combo is not going to usually work, then we can safely board them out. This does mean we probably will not be able to swap in Tabia, so if you do still want him, I suggest just putting him into the main in these matchups. We do not side out the last Reflected Moment, however, as we can theoretically still cast it, not to mention that MSEM’s graveyard hate is nowhere near canon Modern’s, so we do sometimes still want to go for the combo kill rather than just dealing with things via Villainy. Remember also that, because of this, we do not need to board in this plan versus non-aggro decks with graveyard hate–if we can afford to durdle, it is better to just play like a midrange deck and force them to care about what we have on board, and only go for the combo once their hate is exhausted.

1 Sealed Mausoleum: This is only here because we don’t really need any more slots for the two previously mentioned problem matchups, and I thought it might be a good silver bullet versus some hypothetical scary reanimator deck. It does still allow us to check for types with Thin the Veil, as well as cast cards with Bal, so only Titanic Fossil’s return ability is impacted by it. This could however really be any hate piece against whatever is scariest at the moment, so include it or not at your own discretion.

1 Tabia of the Lionheart: As previously mentioned, this is far from the most important card in the list. If you decide to make the maindeck not applicable with Tabia, you get a free sideboard slot! However, Tabia does fulfill an important role in that he removes artifacts and enchantments, which our deck generally has a problem doing–if you are up against a deck that runs a lot of these and cannot easily remove Tabia, prioritize swapping him in higher than you normally would.

And that covers everything! Now that you’ve read this, I hope that you feel confident about building your own version of Reflected Veil and taking it through a GP or league run. In my opinion, it feels like a powerful, well-rounded, yet fair deck that is up to snuff with the other decks that are competing at MSEM’s tier 1. It sometimes feels even better in real games than it does in goldfishing, since your cards get countered, destroyed, or discarded, leading to more types in your graveyard and more potential free wins! Feel free to DM me with any questions about the deck, and I’ll see y’all on the server!

– elmikkino