Enhanced Surveillance MTG Card

Enhanced Surveillance - Guilds of Ravnica (GRN)

Guilds of Ravnica (GRN)
2018-10-05 - Number 40

Enhanced Surveillance - Murders at Karlov Manor Commander (MKC)

Murders at Karlov Manor Commander (MKC)
2024-02-09 - Number 102

Card sets	Released in 2 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost	2
Rarity	Uncommon
Type	Enchantment

Key Takeaways

Enhanced Surveillance bolsters surveil, optimizing upcoming draws and smoothing out gameplay.
Strategically works with instant speed surveil effects, offering adaptability during matches.
While versatile in surveil decks, its specific mana cost and higher mana investment can be cons.

Text of card

You may look at an additional two cards each time you surveil. Exile Enhanced Surveillance: Shuffle your graveyard into your library.

"Who are the agents of the Dimir? No one and everyone." —Lazav

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Enhanced Surveillance offers a strategic edge in your gameplay by augmenting the number of cards you surveil, allowing you to sift through your deck more efficiently. This can be a significant boon in both setting up your upcoming draws and ensuring you have the best tools at your disposal for upcoming turns.

Resource Acceleration: Though not directly providing mana, Enhanced Surveillance accelerates your resource utilization by optimizing your draws and paving the way for smoother plays. With improved card quality through surveil, you’re more likely to hit your land drops and find the spells you need to control the game tempo.

Instant Speed: While Enhanced Surveillance itself isn’t cast at instant speed, it amplifies cards with the surveil ability that you can cast at instant speed. This synergy greatly enhances your flexibility, allowing you to adapt to the board state and the flux of the match while maintaining unpredictability in your strategy.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Enhanced Surveillance lacks an inherent discard mechanism, which could be a drawback in strategies focusing on surveil synergy and graveyard utilization.

Specific Mana Cost: Requiring both blue mana and colorless mana, it mandates a specific deck structure, which could pose a challenge if your mana base isn’t optimized for such requirements.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With an investment of two blue mana and an additional colorless, its cost can be considered steep for the effect it provides, especially when pitted against other enchantments or instants that offer immediate board impact or card advantage.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Enhanced Surveillance fits smoothly into various control and surveil-centric decks, offering a consistent way to sculpt your draws and manage your library throughout the game.

Combo Potential: The card excels in conjunction with mechanics that benefit from surveilling, such as boosting creatures with “undergrowth” or enhancing spells with “jump-start,” allowing for intricate and powerful interactions.

Meta-Relevance: In a game environment heavy with graveyard strategies or where ensuring the right draws is critical for maintaining an edge, Enhanced Surveillance provides a strategic advantage by optimizing the quality of your draws and keeping your strategies resilient against disruption.

How to Beat Enhanced Surveillance

Enhanced Surveillance is a utility card that offers players a way to manipulate their deck by scrying more whenever they scry. It also comes with an additional ability that allows the shuffling of your graveyard into your library, something that can be quite potent in the right circumstances. However, there are strategies to effectively negate its advantages.

To disrupt Enhanced Surveillance, consider employing graveyard hate tactics like using Tormod’s Crypt to exile a graveyard immediately, which counters the shuffle ability of Enhanced Surveillance. Alternatively, effects that prevent players from searching libraries can also be effective. Ashiok, Dream Render is a planeswalker that can serve both roles—exiling graveyards and halting searches.

If you’re facing a deck that synergizes heavily with scrying, it’s critical to target the tools that enable it. Enchantment removal spells like Naturalize or Mortify can directly take out Enhanced Surveillance. Reducing your opponent’s ability to scry will diminish the card’s value in their strategy, making it less of a threat as the game progresses.

Cards like Enhanced Surveillance

Enhanced Surveillance carves its niche in the pantheon of deck manipulation strategies within Magic: The Gathering. This enchantment allows players to surveil with increased depth, offering a remarkable similarity to other scry-enabling cards like Thassa’s Oracle. While both have the element of peering into the future of one’s deck, Enhanced Surveillance stands unique in its ability to manipulate a greater number of cards.

Another card worth mentioning is Search for Azcanta. Like Enhanced Surveillance, it provides an avenue for selective deck filtering. However, the key difference lies in Search for Azcanta’s ability to transform into a land with the potential to dig out non-creature, non-land cards. In contrast, Enhanced Surveillance focuses solely on enhancing the surveillance mechanic and reshuffling the graveyard into the library, a feature not shared by Search for Azcanta.

Moreover, Enhanced Surveillance exhibits a kinship to Psychic Spiral, in that both can shuffle the graveyard back into the library, but Enhanced Surveillance offers ongoing deck manipulation while Psychic Spiral serves a one-time, high-impact return. Both have their place depending on the tempo and strategy of the game.

These comparisons highlight how Enhanced Surveillance provides a consistent advantage for those looking to tailor their draws and maintain graveyard control, an aspect that resonates well with players favoring information as a resource.

Cards similar to Enhanced Surveillance by color, type and mana cost

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Enhanced Surveillance MTG card by a specific set like Guilds of Ravnica and Murders at Karlov Manor Commander, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Enhanced Surveillance and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Enhanced Surveillance Magic the Gathering card was released in 2 different sets between 2018-10-05 and 2024-02-09. Illustrated by Grzegorz Rutkowski.

#	Released	Name	Code	Symbol	Number	Frame	Layout	Border	Artist
1	2018-10-05	Guilds of Ravnica	GRN		40	2015	Normal	Black	Grzegorz Rutkowski
2	2024-02-09	Murders at Karlov Manor Commander	MKC		102	2015	Normal	Black	Grzegorz Rutkowski

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Enhanced Surveillance has restrictions

Format	Legality
Historicbrawl	Legal
Commander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Vintage	Legal
Duel	Legal
Explorer	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Timeless	Legal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Enhanced Surveillance card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

Date	Text
2018-10-05	Enhanced Surveillance’s last ability can be activated only while it’s on the battlefield.
2018-10-05	If you control a second Enhanced Surveillance, their effects both apply and you may look at an additional four cards. If you control a third, may look at an additional six cards, and so on.
2018-10-05	The additional cards you look at due to Enhanced Surveillance’s ability are part of what you surveil. You may put those cards into your graveyard or back on top in any order along with the others.