The Eldrazi's flavorful inspiration draws
heavily from the milieu of H.P. Lovecraft and
Robert Chambers, and the first card of the list
this week is a pretty good demonstration of the
idea of a permeable veil between our world and
the spheres beyond. Just as Chambers' King in
Yellow was able to subvert and influence our
world and drive people insane through the
fictional medium of the eponymous play, the
Dimensional Infiltrator is able to slip through
the cracks of our world and flash itself into
play without warning, traumatize your opponent's
library, and disappear back to its native
echelon of reality. Being a cheap, flying
beatstick is the final piece of the puzzle that
will rend your opponent's sanity and strategy
asunder as traditional removal spells can't
grasp its true form... because it's back in your
hand. Also it's inside you now.
Dimensional Infiltrator is an Eldrazi version of
Fleeting Image, a card that used to see a lot of
budget play in blue control decks and, later,
Illusion tribal. While its ability to avoid
removal spells is imperfect - lands are usually
the minority of cards in any given deck - it
makes up for it by filling a needed role in its
own block. There are not a huge number of ways
in recent sets to fuel Eldrazi Processors
without combat, and I could see it being used
just for that; the fact that it's a 2/1 flying
creature makes it a sort of universal plan B as
well.
Well, the body's good and all. Flying and Flash
for 2 with a worthless keyword (Yeah, i'm still
bitching about devoid.) with an attached 2 cost
ability with an option to bounce if you exile a
land. Flavorwise, it's great. It's weird for the
sake of weird. but it's too expensive for mill,
and really, too expensive to kinda chump block
into bouncing your creature back for a no-hit by
the opponent. I suppose in EDH when you're
trying to disrupt scry...? yeah okay, let's go
with that.
