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I have Bind the Monster. I really don't see a use for it. Is it useful, and how?
It's an Aura Enchantment for {U} with
Enchant creature
When Bind the Monster enters the battlefield, tap enchanted creature. It deals damage to you equal to its power.
Enchanted creature doesn't untap during its controller's untap step.
Bind the Monster is the newest card from a decent list that both taps the creature when you play it, and keeps it tapped. Most of these that do only that cost 3 or 4 mana, the ones that cost only 1 have significant downsides to them:
And then we have the new 1 cost, Bind the Monster, which also has the creature do damage to you when you use it. It does that damage only once however, then it can't attack, it is also not combat damage - so effects like Fynn, the Fangbearer giving poison counters, or Master of Cruelties setting your life to 1 point won't happen. The creature being kept tapped means it won't be able to attack or block, or use any effects that require it to tap, so no more using Elvish Archdruid to generate a ton of mana in an elf deck.
Most of the time it's easy enough to remove a creature instead. Most kill spells cost 2 or 3 mana like Poison the Cup, most spells that exile cost 3 or 4 - neither of these are things that blue tends to do, kill spells tend to be black, exile spells tend to be white. Blue usually deals with creatures three ways:
There's a few bad habits and ways of thinking that tend to take players a while to get out of, I suffered from these myself when I started:
One point you might have missed is that Bind the Monster can target any creature in play. So at least one use for it is to enchant an opponent's creature, which forces it to become tapped and get stuck like that, meaning that:
All three of these are very good reasons to want an opponent's creature to be tapped.
There may also be occasions where you want one of your own creatures tapped or where you want to take damage for some reason, but those will be very combo-specific.
What you have there is an aura that can make a lot of creatures almost useless.
Whatever creature you enchant it to will become tapped, and won't untap like normal at the start of its controllers turn. So it basically stays untapped, unless some other card untaps it. A tapped creature cannot attack. It cannot block. It cannot activate abilities with the tap symbol.
The fact that you're dealt some damage is balanced by it only costing a single mana (compare to e.g. Claustrophobia). That does mean you'd be more inclined to use it on a small creature with an important tap ability or a low-powered blocker than on a large creature that wants to attack you.
The creature isn't gone, so there are ways to get use out of a Bound monster. For instance, abilities that don't have tapping as cost are still present and can be used, the Binding can be destroyed bringing the creature back into full use, or the creature could be sacrificed if its controller is asked to sacrifice a creature. Also, if the creature's controller can find any other way of untapping it, then it can be used entirely as normal until it is tapped again.
Bind the Monster is useful because it can shut down(*) an opponent's creature.
First, note that while some auras (like Setessan Training) can only enchant creatures you control, auras that simply say "enchant creature" can be played on creatures controlled by any player. Clearly some (like Arcane Flight) make more sense to play on your own creatures, and others (like Withercrown) make more sense to play on your opponent's.
When you play Bind the Monster on an opponent's creature, you take a single shot of damage, but then that creature gets (and stays) tapped as long as the aura is on it. Tapped creatures can't attack or block, and can't play any activated abilities that require tapping (like the abilities on Axgard Cavalry or Frost Augur).
So for the cost of 1 blue mana (and the downside of taking some damage) you've effectively neutralized(*) one of your opponent's creatures.
(*) Caveats:
Can it shut down all possible abilities on all possible creatures? No, many creatures have other abilities besides attacking (or tapping). If you play this on Toski, Bearer of Secrets, it won't be able to attack, but Toski's ability still lets your opponent draw cards when other creatures deal combat damage to you. If you play this on Koma, Cosmos Serpent, then Koma can't attack, but you're still likely to lose to all the 3/3 serpent tokens Koma keeps making.
Will the damage hurt? Of course! But so does taking attack damage! So only play this on creatures you can't block or handle in other ways.
Are there better ways to destroy/remove/neutralize creatures? Probably! Depends on what format you're playing, and what other cards (and colors) you have available. But if you're playing blue in a Kaldheim-only draft or sealed deck, then this is a very playable card!
Can your opponent remove the enchantment? Maybe they can, but hopefully they missed a turn of attacks. Or perhaps you just needed to sideline that one pesky blocker so you could attack for the win!
Other caveats apply: Only useful when playing blue. Not useful against decks without creatures. You can't play this card on creatures with hexproof or protection from blue. This card is better in limited (draft and sealed) than in constructed play. There are other ways to untap tapped creatures. Playing this card on creatures with built-in untap abilities like Battered Golem won't do anything useful. Definitely don't play this on your own Serra Avatar or Soul of Eternity.
