Effect Veiler vs Fiendish Chain

Ok here's the thing. At this moment in time, I am loving both of these cards. They both serve different means to an end in my experience. One of them can surprise your opponent, but the other has a long lasting effect that can slow your opponent down.

The great thing about Veiler is the surprise factor. Your opponent will almost always play into it. Even now that priority has gone on ignition effects, you can now use Veiler on Rescue Rabbit and Mystic Piper, making it a really good card to play at 3 right now, to have that upper hand against Dino Rabbits when they win the Die roll.

Another great thing is that it opens your extra deck to synchros. Some synchros are still fantastic and what has driven them out was how easy it is to Xyz summon compared to Synchro Summoning. Stardust regularly needed 3 monsters to summon, which can potentially be a -2 if your opponent has a Warning set. While Utopia can be summoned easily with any 2 level 4s making it much more viable and allows old archetypes to become playable again. But with Veiler, that choice to summon the lower level Synchros is still there no matter what. I always have Armory arm and Catastor in my Extra Deck and I prefer to take out other xyz monsters before them. They even pave the way to xyz later on.
It is also a very satisfying feeling when you negate a monster with an effect that discards. Veilering a Summoner Monk when it's discarded a Spell card usually means game from there, which is why the card is not played. It's actually so powerful that it renders many decent cards unplayable. That sounds bad, but the card itself brings a lot of skill and knowing when to drop it is crucial, especially on turn one, where this card shines the most.

It's also the reason as to why Black Luster Soldier is splashable. If you're running 3 Tour Guides, Sangan, and 3 Effect Veilers, then you can run BLS without much trouble. In a normal situation, you Veiler their plays on your turn, and you make Leviathan Dragon and detach on yours, allowing you to go for BLS right then and there. If they only have a monster with 500 attack (Say, a Tour guide under Forbidden lance?) then that's game (2500 + 3000 + 2500).

I also don't see it getting banned or limited any time soon either. It's completely reliant on your opponent playing a deck that gets hit hard by it. If the meta was overrun with Dark World and Heroes, then the card would not be played. If Gishki was all over the place, then Veiler would still not really be worth it. The decks of the Meta are punched so hard in the face by Veiler, that running any less than 2 is just digging yourself a grave, especially when they roll high and you don't. It will always be like this until a deck that functions from the hand or grave becomes meta.

Fiendish Chain however, takes a different perspective on the meta. It's not made it's mark as much as Veiler, and It has it's strengths that Veiler does not possess. It also has it's weaknesses which explains why it's had a downfall in play recently. Fortunately with the Battle Pack, the card is available to everyone at a cheap price so you can choose to play it without worrying that it's an investment and you're being forced to use it to try and get your money's worth.

Ok, so fundamentally, the card is slower than Veiler. It is a trap card, which means you have to wait. However, it's continuous which is one of the biggest differences. It means you can lock down an opponent's card and it's stuck there like a sitting duck. They can't even attack with it, so it does a lot more against big beaters with powerful effects like Utopia, BLS, Leviathan Dragon and Grapha to a lesser extent.

You can use it against some of the meta card right now. Laggia is currently playing a HUGE part in the meta right now. It's got control, power and it's incredibly easy to summon in the deck(s) it's played in. Using Veiler on it is pretty stupid unless you have a follow up like Mirror Force. But with Fiendish Chain, you can force Laggia's materials off it since they will want to attack with it and still use it's effect. It's also usable against Dolkka, which shows it's prowess over Veiler completely in that situation.

That being said, It still has it's annoying little things that really brings the card down. While it's fantastic against Inzektors, it cannot stop Rabbit, which is by far the better deck right now. Rabbit's effect resolves on the field, but Chain needs the monster to be targeted while it's effect is resolving. Since Rabbit is no longer on the field, the targeting cannot be happening, which means the effect can resolve. It's really annoying how that works, but there's a lot of sense in it and knowing that ruling affects this card's versatility tremendously and is one of the reasons why the battle has shifted into Veiler's direction.

It also stops the use of Gorz. If you're opponent is packing 3 MST then this card won't stay on the field for very long. But if the target for this card is used for an Xyz summon or Synchro summon, returned to the hand, banished, returned to the deck, tributed etc. then this card is now sitting on the field meaninglessly. With that, your opponent has absolutely no reason not to explode in a flurry of big beaters and go for the full 8000, since you can't possibly Gorz and save your ass. The only good thing about a leftover Chain is that it makes Starlight Road live without having to commit 2 cards in your hand.

So while they both have their niches, they both have areas where they overlap and causes duelists to ponder their usefulness. As of right now, I'm actually running 3 veilers and 2 chains in the same deck. It means I always have an answer for my opponent's monsters, but sometimes the hand can get saturated with both cards, when really I was hoping to draw removal rather than negation.

But at the end of the day, It's about which card does a better job, and I fully believe that Effect Veiler has earned it's place in the hall of fame for it's outstanding versatility and how it lets you follow up with a comeback on your next turn. And it lets you play Gorz, which everyone should be running. Seriously, dropping gorz and making a Stardust dragon with the Token and Veiler is so broken.

Anyway, until next time, TheTCGLover out!