I think rest in peace is good but it makes replenish bad like real bad , and replenish is just too powerful to exclude from the list. the reason cannonist was in was because i left my maverick deck @home on accident and it had my gadock teeg and karakas in it which was my original plan i didnt discover this until 4 minutes before we had to sit in our decklist collection seats so i scrambled dropped the lignify and teeg from the list i had added the tutors and cage and cannonist. It was not by design.
In my personal opinion moat is officialy obsolete in this deck. never one time did i wish it was moat. the fact that it keeps flyers from attacking you as well is pure gold landing it on 3rd -4th turn the will more than likely have to pay 4-5+mana per attacking creature which unless it is the elf matchup is not happening
If you are actually getting value out of your replenishes against dredge and reanimator, the game has gone on too long and you are probably already winning. We need help to get us to ANY late game at all against both of those decks. Those were the only matches that I care to bring grave hate in for anyway, so I dont mind boarding them out. Shutting down snapcaster is far too cute to be truly useful.
I still worry about maverick getting through with huge knights though in those early turns. But then again I have not had the time to test sphere yet, and I always used raking canopy (post board) to deal with flyers. I appeciate the value of taxing, but Ive also seen it be innefective at very critical junctions (from many years of playing mono white stax), and that worries me, especially with creatures being Mr. McLargehuge now. Sometimes all they have to do is swing with 1 creature to force us to block with argothian or simply kill us.
I was @ scg cincinati this weekend and went 5-3 with w/g splash r enchantress my first round loss came from chris's blue green enchantress e witness + seal of primordium and seal of removal was too much for me the look on both of faces when we realized first round enchantress mirror just happened was pricless lol anywho heres my list, matchups
I chose to run 2 karmic just in my 75 because if figured BUG and Junk would be rampant because of the new abrupt decay card.
I wanted to put one of the e tutors main but couldnt decide what to drop so said screw it and dropped lignify from the board really wish i wouldnt have lol
Round 1 vs U/G enchantress
Game one with get our engines online super quick but then he gets an infinite seal of pimordium e witness bounce loop going destroys my board
Game 2 I lock him out of the game w/ aura of silence, karmic justic, and o ringing his presence
Game 3 He destroys everything i cast with seal of primodium witness bounce shenanigans
in 2 e tutor 1 aura of silence 1 o ring 1 karmic justice 1 replenish Out: 1 choke 1 sphere of safety 1 wheel of sun and moon 3 solitary confinement
Round 2 vs 5 color ad nauseum (my friend i drove 120 miles with )
Game 1 he goes off first turn
Game 2 i mull to four to get less than 4 land and cards playable before turn 3
In 2 e tutor 1 ethersworn cannonist 4 leyline of sanctity OUt: 1 sphere of safety 1 choke 1 wheel of sun and moon 1 karmic justice 2 replenish 1 exploration
Round 3 vs junk
Game one he is forced to blow deed for 3 cause i locked him out and i have karmic justice in play it leaves him with 0 permanents i have replenish in hand lol
Game 2 he gets illiana online i get an engine going start locking him out of the game again land karmic justice and he starts losing permanents every turn which is bad for him cause he needs to pay 7 mana to atck cause of sphere of safety lol cause he has no choice but to kill my lock peices then i get double karmic justice he scoops
In 1 replenish 1 Karmic justice 1 oblivion ring OUt: 1choke 1 wheel of sun and moon 1 elephant grass
Round 4 vs reanimator
Game 1 my opening hand was disgusting vs anyone else it would have been game over it was 3 land 1exploration 2 wild growth 1 argothian enchantress 1 enchantress presence I play land try to exploration he floats a black dazes it entombs iona reanimates it naming green and i almost cry thought i was playing lands 3 turns to td oring and it never happens
Game 2 he allows my engine to get online but he has second turn iona naming white this time I was 1 lousy mana short of killing iona with words of war cause of a daze on my last turn
In 1 city of solitude 1 choke 1 grafdiggers cage 2 e tutor Out: 1 karmic justice 1 sphere of safety 2 o ring 1 replenish
Round 5 vs rug delver
Game 1 he counters a couple things gets me to 1 i lock him out with choke , solitary
Game 2 he flips delver and i never resolve a single spell cause of stifleing fetches wasting the non basics i was drawing and daze+ spell peirce
Game 3 exact same hand as game one of reanimator engine online turn 2 he cant outrace my absurd card advantage and by the time he starts seeing counterspells and his grips its far too late
In : 1 blood moon 1 city of solitude 1 choke Out : 1 wheel of sun and moon 1 karmic justice 1 solitary confinement
my lunch break is over ill post rounds 6-8 if you guys want later
Any particular reason why you arent playing rest in peace? Its pretty much the best gravehate we have, and unlike cage actually gives us value even when dredge kills it, or reanimator bounces it. Also I dont like canonist in your list. Against storm it will just slow us down to a crawl as well, and we dont want to be in that position.
What were your thoughts on sphere vs moat? Or did you play moat before?
In regards to questions about surgical extraction, you just have to play around it if you fear that the oppenent boarded them in for you. That means not chaining solitary confinement if you can help it, being careful about discarding win cons and relying on replenish, and not being as aggressive with you groves by chaining them. Its annoying, but not impossible. And what with rest in peace being reprinted im probably taking out my ground seals (sad about that, but rest is everything we needed), so I wouldnt count on seal to solve the problem. Not to mention that we have a lot of better cards to board in for the decks packing surgicals anyway, so you shouldn't have a ton of free room in the first place.
The key against counterbalance is sneaking a single engine piece under their lock. Once that happens, we should be doing fine. Replenish can come down later to get that stuff back. Not to mention that they still dont have a great time dealing with 3 drops, so presence isnt too hard to get down (or GSZ at 3, which remember you cant cast for something awkward for them to counter) or if need be if we get a city down, its pretty much game over.
And we shouldnt add helm. If it gets countered, we have just wasted time, cards, and turns getting something very win more. Not to mention it being 100% dead early game. And emrakul/sigarda arent worth it enough to run or play living wish for imo.
Gotta love Enchantress - I won the local Legacy tourney last week (and followed that with 4th at the Ravnica Prerelease, so not a bad week for Magic!). The only particularly memorable games were in the final round - my opponent playing Goblin/burn (RDW...whatever you want to call it) got me game one, he was just too fast, but games two and three (having boarded in Leylines to nullify his burn package) I was able to win out.
I play the version with the wincons of Emrakul/Words of War/Luminarch Ascension. I'd been playing Sigil of the Empty Throne, but decided to try Luminarch and so far I'm liking that more - cheaper, can win even without the Solitary lock being active, and Serra's Sanctum can make a ton of Angels EOT for the kill.
Always willing to listen to advice on the deck -I run Moat because my dad had one and let me have it, thanks pop. Humility in the sideboard strictly (so far) for the Eldrazi ramp decks in the local Meta. Annihilator wrecks Enchantress, I've found.
So far the only odd addition I've made is tucking in a Dryad Arbor - yes, it gives them a removal target if they really want to, but being instantly fetchable with most of my fetch-lands seems to be solid. Sometimes you just need a single blocker and you don't want to throw Enchantress herself under the bus, so this gives me an option. Didn't turn out to be relevant in last week's games, but I still think it's reasonable as a one-of.
Thoughts? Any other tricksy one-of's? Unusual win-cons to try?
I'm not sold on GSZ in the deck, but I suppose I could tuck a couple in...I just don't want to dilute the enchantment ratio too much at this point.
Edit: I only have one Replenish (sad, I know), but I have a Second Sunrise in the board in case someone is playing enchantment destruction. I know it's subpar comparatively, but it's not a horrible alternative if anyone's having trouble getting Replenishs. Just a thought.
Always glad to have another enchantress player!
Couple things though. First, Emrakul is a bad card. It has zero synergy with the rest of our deck (if you count not decking yourself as synergy, you need more practice), and does nothing that our other win cons dont do, and is a terrible topdeck and blank card until we are winning.
My problem with luminarch is that you cannot do some of the same things you could do with sigil. For example, I often times will play out a sigil and 2 enchantments on the same turn. Boom, 2 angels. You cant even begin to make dude until at least 4 turns later with luminarch. Ive also had situations where I just ramp out a sigil and kill them super quick. Not to mention that it can serve to stall the game if need be by making dudes that trade with everything but emrakul or knight. You arent going to play luminarch early anyway because it will do nothing if they are attacking, and as such cost does not matter. And generally you have better things to do early game than play something like that.
Dryad arbor is bad for a number of reasons. First, its wastelandable, which is huge. There is a reason that we only play 5 non-basic lands that produce mana, and its to blank their mana denial. And you should always assume your sanctum will die after 1 use, so allow them to rot in your hand unless you need them or can really capitalize on them. Any added turns you get are just gravy. Second, if you draw it naturally and have to play it as a land, you just got timewalked. Not good at all. Not to mention because you are searching up basics (I hope), they have wasteland waiting. Third, you part prison deck. Use your life total as a resource. If you must block a dude because you will die, its okay to block with an argothian. But immediately after that if you cant kick it into gear and start controlling the situation, something went terribly wrong (kept a bad hand, they went quicker than expect, you drew terribly) and youve probably already lost. So dont use arbor as a "what if" for that. Too costly as a one of. Lastly, the fact that it gives their removal a target that may be relevant is nothing to be taken lightly. By only running shroudy creatures (if they are killing angels, we'll win soon enough), we gain virtual card advantage because we are blanking all their removal. That means either dead cards in hand (may as well count as mulliganing) or dead draws, which is just as good. Arbor gives them a use for it (which if you are using it to block wont work because they've had removal rotting in hand).
You absolutely MUST try GSZ. I was once skeptical too, and I put them in for an SCG open and placed 10th, which was 5 spots better than the last SCG open I attended without GSZ (I was also playing emrakul, and I dropped it). I attribute that to playing GSZ and not running emrakul, the deck was far more consistent. It is absolutely pivotal that you get an engine piece out, and thats what GSZ is, an engine piece. For the same cost as a presence.
Its okay to run a few non-enchantments. Mine are 20 lands, 4 argothians, 2 replenish, 1 E tutor (probably coming out soon, but is hard to let go of), and 2 GSZ. Thats it. That leaves over 50% of your deck as enchantments. Thats perfectly fine and normal. I took out an E tutor and a land for my 2 GSZs and havent looked back since.
I am a huge fan of choke as a one of. It is colossal against blue and a must counter. Especially against thresh in conjunction with elephant grass. GG. Against other decks its merely a silver bullet that isnt relevant and must be boarded out (just like city of solitude). I feel that its upside far outweighs its downside. Some play blood moon, but I got kinda screwed a couple of times with it. There are certain situations where whatever enchantment you top deck MUST be cast for you to continue the game, and it would be blood moon. These games were heavy mulligans that mainly drew into duals/sanctum for lands (naturally), and it made the games extremely difficult to win. Its great, but choke does a lot of what blood moon does against many of the same decks, all without hurting you.
Some people play the blue version with rest in peace (used to be wheel of sun and moon) and energy field. I absolutely despise this version and dont believe it offers us a better deck, but Ive ranted about this enough, so I digress.
Replenish, believe it or not, is primarily for blue opponents more so than for enchantment hate. They tend to run out of counters when you shove relevance down their throat turn after turn, and this is usual the nail in the coffin for them. The only deck that really plays hate is maverick, and you can easily dodge their pridemages or just bait them out. When they sac their mages, they arent putting pressure on you, which is what you want. And in the early game when they are doing so, you cant cast sunrise without timewalking yourself, which is just bad. Late game it usually becomes irrelevant if you are using groves effectively. Not to mention that sunrise will usually only bring back 1 enchantment, unless you LGS is packing enchantment sweepers (btw, dont be surprised if this happens to you. There is a reason why I dont play enchantress often at a local legacy event with my 15ish budddies) or pernicious deed in the case of Nic fit, and karmic justice is even better because sunrise will bring back deed anyway.
1. Emrakul is, "win more," and not needed.
2. 2 Enlightened Tutor might be too much in some builds. Same with 2 Runed Halo, maybe 1 main and 1 sideboard.
3. Teferi's Moat -> Sphere of Safety
4. You need a Replenish main, and 1-2 board.
5. Grafdigger's Cage/Tormod's Crypt would serve you better as an enchantment, Wheel of Sun and Moon or Rest in Peace
6. You don't need Wrath of God (definitely). Or Karma either, unless you KNOW your meta is all Urborg/Pox/Loam shenanigans and you wanna score some free wins.
/agree.
Also, your 2 leylines in the board NEED to be 4. Its important to have one in the opening hand for the critical matchups like combo, dredge, and even discard heavy decks.
Also 1 o ring should be in the board. I always had an issue when i played 2 mainboard. Try out a mainboard choke. I guarantee you wont be disappointed.
I personally hate Humility and only ever board it in against reanimator and sneak and show. I cannot stand how it turns off our argothians (which we now run 6 of with GSZ), and makes our throne win con terrible. I just always played moat in conjunction with raking canopy or halo naming insectile abberation. But then again Im a fan of canopy for its ability to kill vendilion, angel tokens, spirit tokens (not as often of an occurence anymore, but still), and mr delver. I just don't have quite the hard on for Humility that everyone else seems to have. Don't get me wrong, it feels amazing when we start playing dutch stax with humilit/moat online, but the cost for that is too high in my opinion. I can't justify the disynergy with our engine except in the worst matchups when we absolutely need it to even give us a shot of winning. Especially when the rest of our deck is already designed to stop creatures not named emrakul/what have you from attacking us.
I'm going to test out the sphere, I'm thinking it will probably end up replacing moat because of the fact that it is a catch all, but I always liked moat for the fact that it outright stopped attacking, not just taxed. Which can be important if all they really need to do is attack with a couple of dudes.
On the issue of the double white from moat, I cant really ever recall having an issue with casting it. Maybe its just how I call the colors with sprawl or that I fetch up at least one plains most of the time too. And I've never really gotten screwed on not having enough green by doing that.
If it turns out that sphere is strictly better than moat, than I will replace it in a heartbeat. There is no sense in getting sentimental about wanting to play a $300 card when there is a better option out there. I'm not 100% convinced that this is the case yet, but I can certainly see it as being so. Maybe I'm just not bummed though because I can always take the proxy for moat out of my cube and put my real one in it. I didn't think it was crazy buying one, but I couldn't justify being two (what am I trying to build, Dutch Stax?).
The reason you want to play out your ramp turn 1 is that that you opponent cant daze your argothian the next turn. Sure that daze will hit guile, but Id take that over our draw engine getting countered. Not to mention that drawing the card on turn 2 is a huge jumpstart for us. I can wait a turn to start filtering my draws to make up for a potentially blank card with another draw on that turn turn anyways.
Dont get me wrong, Ive kept hands without ramp, just turn 1 guile into turn 2 enchantress. But if you have the opportunity, you should always play guile turn 2 and ramp on turn 1 if you have an argothian in hand.
And you should always play ramp turn 1 if your engine is gsz or presence, because getting an engine piece down turn 2 is the most important thing for us. Period.
I would never dream of taking mirri's guile out for bloom. Guile makes our draws relevant, keeps a tentative solitary alive (and allows us to decide if we need to keep the solitary up or not), and is a huge card against blue decks and tempo decks. Shoving relevance down blue's throat until they cant stop it is something you cant neglect, or even making sure you arent drawing dead versus a counter heavy hand. Turn 1 ramp, turn 2 argothian, guile is the best start this deck has. I dont think Ive ever lost a game when thats happened. Ever. Filtering our draws is the definition of offering consistency. Bloom is cute, but very unnecessary. Not to mention that guile finds us enchantments to draw cards off of anyway.
I wouldnt trade all that for a card that early game at best time walks us to get a few turns of ramp, and late game offers a recurrable draw engine (when we really dont need it).
So guile does great things in every stage of the game, and will function primarily the same as bloom late game (when needing enchantments). And if there arent any enchantments on the top? Crack a fetch, they are great for that. If you dont need to crack the fetch, then sit on it. No harm in that.
The situations where Id absolutely need a bloom are the ones in which youve probably lost already, which is most likely against combo, and this doesnt do anything to help that out. And if you are dying to an aggro deck that quickly and only had 1 enchantress effect out you either kept a bad hand or had to mulligan to 5.
And if you have more than 1 enchantress effect out, you probably dont need a recurring draw engine because you are drawing tons of enchantments. If needing that recurrable draw was the thing this deck needed, it wouldnt really exist in the first place. This is why we usually only play like 7 nonenchantment, nonland cards, so that most of our draws will fuel our engine.
This doesnt fulfill any true need and/or improve upon anything, so all in all, a very mediocre card for our deck.
The problem with bloom is that it doesnt really do anything aside from being a reusable draw spell. Thats fine and all, but really not necessary. I have a hard enough time finding room for actual cards that I dont really see bloom as good enough to make room for.
And if you are playing solitary with only 1 enchantress effect out, you are in one of 3 positions; losing very quickly and have to stabilize, playing against combo and have to throw it our asap, or you are playing it far too early. The first shouldnt be a problem very often, seeing as we play grass, moat, halo, etc, and you may have needed to mulligan. There really isnt a whole lot to do about the second option, and bloom isnt great anyway because they will probably bounce confinement to your hand and kill you on the spot. And if the 3rd is true, remember that we are part prison deck, so use your life total as a resource. I see far too many beginning enchantress players get skittish at 10ish life and panic. Learn to assess damage, and calculate how long you can put off playing confinement. Even getting an additional turn to set up is HUGE and can/usually does make the difference between winning and losing.
I no longer play 2 city of solitudes simply because choke is very aggressive against the blue decks and a must counter as well. Just like someone said, choke vs tempo thresh pretty much spells game over, especially in conjunction with elephant grass. I also really never found myself boarding in the second city very often, so I cut it back to 1 in the main.
I was recently asking myself this question :
Why isn't there more top 8/16 of our deck in the SCG or other tournaments?
I mean, it's been a while since we saw Ench perf well, isn't it ?
Any explanations?
Ive top top 16ed twice, narrowly missing top 8 both times, buts its because of certain decks in the meta. Traditionally we pretty much auto-lose to combo, which is harsh. We have at least a solid matchup against most everything else. Essentially we pray on both the fair decks and the decks that are designed to beat the unfair decks. Put enchantress in a room of canadian thresh and maverick, and barring horrid mulligans, you will pretty much walk to top 8 if you know what you are doing. Mulliganning can be a little frustrating too, we are a combo/prison deck, and as such you must aggressively mulligan. I think in both those tourneys I may have kept 2 7 card hands each. Granted we are pretty consistent, but there are times when you arent, and its usually those times that its REALLY bad.
@crimhead talking about wheel of sun and mooning yourself to keep from decking out, you should never need to worry about that. Not trying to call you out or anything, but if you're decking out a lot, or worried about doing so, you should playtest a little bit more. Because that shouldnt be happening at all. I dont ever consider that one of the uses for the card.
@stormfront believe me, if someone is playing moat in their deck, they arent just running 2 savannahs because of budget problems. I have been mocked by my friends for buying a $300 sideboard card (because the first tourney I played with my moat was plagued by the esper deck with intuition+lingering souls main, needless to say, moat was boarded out).
Rest in peace is the best piece of grave hate we could have hoped to ask for. Think of this; if you are alive long enough to be able to use replenish against reanimator or dredge, youve probably won the game already. Ive been a huge fan of wheel, but if you dont have it in the opener against dredge its almost pointless. Ground seal is still nice versus reanimator because many lists have forgone playing exhume, so it is usually a hard counter versus them, and of course it replaces itself. The fact that rest in peace nerfs whats already in the grave is nutso versus dredge too.
IMO, zero reason to play wheel anymore. "Late game" (aka turn 3 or so versus those combo decks) relevance stuck on a hoser effect is everything wheel wanted to be.
I wish that the ghostly prison for enchantress was at least 1 mana less though.
This is the list i've been running. The sideboard changes often but i think i'm going to go with this at the moment. The main deck list i've liked though for quite some time. Show and tell is a pain to deal with and i have issues with most combo decks (hive mind, TES, etc...) Overall a super fun deck to play if you know what you're doing!
Personally Id take crop rotation and emrakul out of the mainboard, I really cant stand those cards. They are pretty much the epitome of win more, its not critical to get sanctum out and whenever I play it I always assume it will die that turn. Is it awesome? Of course, but not so important that we have to devote a slot in the deck that has no other synergy and causes us to lose a land if countered. And emrakul is sooooo awkward in 95% of situations when you arent winning (Ive only had one time where I was dead but drew him and won with a sanctum out). Every other situations he has zero synergy with the deck (if you are decking yourself, practice more because that should never happen) because he is not an enchantment (very relevant as we have to keep the number of non enchantment cards to a minimum), and is a GOD AWFUL topdeck or is a blank card in the opener. And if you are winning? He does pretty much everything any other win con would have done for you. Id play 2 Green sun's zenith instead, that card is absolutely nuts and I dont foresee myself ever returning to not playing it. Im also not a fan of mainboard humility because of how it shuts off our argothians, but that is a personal preference/meta thing.
In the sb Id take out rule of law, the city of solitude, seal of cleansing and replenish. The first is far too slow against storm combo which is the only matchup youd bring it in against. Have you ever played against canonist? It hurts you almost just as bad and slows you down to a crawl. I have long since stopped playing 2 cities in my 75 because I prefered playing chokes. Play seal of primordium instead of cleansing because it is green, which is our primary color. And Ive never really felt the need for more replenish. I still like a lignify in the board against Iona and other scary creatures, a second choke, Im still a fan of Raking canopy for Thresh and miracle top. Possibly a second O ring if you like, aura of silence, nevermore if you like it (I stopped playing it personally), more wheels (dredge has gotten rather scary anymore). So its up to you.
Just 2 cents from a guy who almost exclusively plays enchantress. Hope that helps.
You dont need 2 sigils, 2 o rings, or the 2 e tutors. You DEFINITELY must play 2 green sun's zeniths, no exceptions. The card is simply amazing and counts as engine pieces 9-10 which is crucial. You simply dont need 3 win cons really and unless you have a good starting set up an early sigil gets extremely clunky. The only deck that youd really want more than 1 o ring for is the miracle matchup to hit jace, and other than that it simply 1 for 1s against the aggro decks, and in that case halo is strictly better because it can stop other copis as well. E tutor is card disadvantage, which is something we really cannot afford. Having said that there are certain matchups where if we dont draw into our silver bullet we just outright lose. I have gone down to 1 copy, but to be honest i am seriously considering cutting it altogether. And you definitely need the 3 confinement, its absolutely crucial, especially against some of our worse matchups.
I also am not a huge fan of the mainboard lignify and nevermore. I have since taken nevermore out of my 75 because i only really brought it in against combo, and even then had better cards. But if you wanna give it a shot then go for it. If you fear reanimator, play ground seal instead. Not only does it naturally replace itself, but many reanimator lists have taken out exhume, so it is now a hard answer for them.
Make your plateau a taiga, green is faaar more important than white, even with your increased number of white cards. And you dont need a basic mountain at all. Red only casts WoW, and does it once. If you need that red and your dual got killed, then you can play a sprawl naming red, but it doesnt necessitate a basic.
Blood moon is pretty brutal against lands, but be sure to sideboard it because things got a little awkward for me once or twice when i used to mainboard it. Those were the situations where you have to cast WHATEVER enchantment you draw off the top...and itd be blood moon. And things would get exceedinly difficult. Also remember, if they are playing old school lands they are probably playing riftstone protal, which will make their lands naya and allow them to EE for 3. Ive seen a lot of current lists go back to portal anyway so they dont die to blood moon, so just be aware of it.
I also never go below 4 for leylines, but you are a little cramped for room. I think 3 chokes is a little overkill too. Dont get me wrong, im one of the strongest proponents for mainboard choke that you'll ever talk to, and i love the card, but 3 is a little much. Keep in mind that we tend to have inevitability against slower blue decks. Either an early engine piece or city that got under countermagic, or a late game replenish is all we need to seal the deal. So its not all that critical to play 3 to ram them down their throats until one gets through. Im sure they were more for merfolk than anything else, but unless they have allowed a grass to resolve those multiples of choke wont help a whole lot, and they are a pretty fast deck. So id probably cut a choke for the blood moon, 2 is more than enough. Usually by the time you cast the second one, they have exhausted most of their counterspells and you are in business.
Magus of the moat just dies to removal, and blanking your opponents' removal is one of enchantress's greatest strengths. Quite a few people actually dont play moat, and i played the deck for a couple of years without one, so its not a terrible thing that you wont be playing it. And as far as duals go, thats not a huge deal either. There is a reason why we only play 3, and thats because usually we dont get color screwed, not to mention that it allows us to deftly avoid wasteland.
So when you can, pick up the duals, but for right now dont worry about it much.
wow, i might actually build this then, its fairly cheap to build without moats and duals, right?
If i were you id proxy up the deck and play it a bit to see if you like it before jumping in. Much like bleu cheese it is an acquired taste. This is a prison/combo deck and as such a lot of people aren't fond of playing those types of decks. So if youve never played a deck like this its gonna be a bit of a shock.
@deadpool id be that guy sir. I feel if you dont run into a lot of combo its a good deck across the board. And the tempo decks are a joke for us, VERY positive matchup. Most of their counterspells are taxing and after turn 3 they really cant do much aside from force. Not to mention that elephant grass+choke stops them cold. And im a huge proponent for mainboard choke.
If you are actually getting value out of your replenishes against dredge and reanimator, the game has gone on too long and you are probably already winning. We need help to get us to ANY late game at all against both of those decks. Those were the only matches that I care to bring grave hate in for anyway, so I dont mind boarding them out. Shutting down snapcaster is far too cute to be truly useful.
I still worry about maverick getting through with huge knights though in those early turns. But then again I have not had the time to test sphere yet, and I always used raking canopy (post board) to deal with flyers. I appeciate the value of taxing, but Ive also seen it be innefective at very critical junctions (from many years of playing mono white stax), and that worries me, especially with creatures being Mr. McLargehuge now. Sometimes all they have to do is swing with 1 creature to force us to block with argothian or simply kill us.
Any particular reason why you arent playing rest in peace? Its pretty much the best gravehate we have, and unlike cage actually gives us value even when dredge kills it, or reanimator bounces it. Also I dont like canonist in your list. Against storm it will just slow us down to a crawl as well, and we dont want to be in that position.
What were your thoughts on sphere vs moat? Or did you play moat before?
In regards to questions about surgical extraction, you just have to play around it if you fear that the oppenent boarded them in for you. That means not chaining solitary confinement if you can help it, being careful about discarding win cons and relying on replenish, and not being as aggressive with you groves by chaining them. Its annoying, but not impossible. And what with rest in peace being reprinted im probably taking out my ground seals (sad about that, but rest is everything we needed), so I wouldnt count on seal to solve the problem. Not to mention that we have a lot of better cards to board in for the decks packing surgicals anyway, so you shouldn't have a ton of free room in the first place.
The key against counterbalance is sneaking a single engine piece under their lock. Once that happens, we should be doing fine. Replenish can come down later to get that stuff back. Not to mention that they still dont have a great time dealing with 3 drops, so presence isnt too hard to get down (or GSZ at 3, which remember you cant cast for something awkward for them to counter) or if need be if we get a city down, its pretty much game over.
And we shouldnt add helm. If it gets countered, we have just wasted time, cards, and turns getting something very win more. Not to mention it being 100% dead early game. And emrakul/sigarda arent worth it enough to run or play living wish for imo.
Always glad to have another enchantress player!
Couple things though. First, Emrakul is a bad card. It has zero synergy with the rest of our deck (if you count not decking yourself as synergy, you need more practice), and does nothing that our other win cons dont do, and is a terrible topdeck and blank card until we are winning.
My problem with luminarch is that you cannot do some of the same things you could do with sigil. For example, I often times will play out a sigil and 2 enchantments on the same turn. Boom, 2 angels. You cant even begin to make dude until at least 4 turns later with luminarch. Ive also had situations where I just ramp out a sigil and kill them super quick. Not to mention that it can serve to stall the game if need be by making dudes that trade with everything but emrakul or knight. You arent going to play luminarch early anyway because it will do nothing if they are attacking, and as such cost does not matter. And generally you have better things to do early game than play something like that.
Dryad arbor is bad for a number of reasons. First, its wastelandable, which is huge. There is a reason that we only play 5 non-basic lands that produce mana, and its to blank their mana denial. And you should always assume your sanctum will die after 1 use, so allow them to rot in your hand unless you need them or can really capitalize on them. Any added turns you get are just gravy. Second, if you draw it naturally and have to play it as a land, you just got timewalked. Not good at all. Not to mention because you are searching up basics (I hope), they have wasteland waiting. Third, you part prison deck. Use your life total as a resource. If you must block a dude because you will die, its okay to block with an argothian. But immediately after that if you cant kick it into gear and start controlling the situation, something went terribly wrong (kept a bad hand, they went quicker than expect, you drew terribly) and youve probably already lost. So dont use arbor as a "what if" for that. Too costly as a one of. Lastly, the fact that it gives their removal a target that may be relevant is nothing to be taken lightly. By only running shroudy creatures (if they are killing angels, we'll win soon enough), we gain virtual card advantage because we are blanking all their removal. That means either dead cards in hand (may as well count as mulliganing) or dead draws, which is just as good. Arbor gives them a use for it (which if you are using it to block wont work because they've had removal rotting in hand).
You absolutely MUST try GSZ. I was once skeptical too, and I put them in for an SCG open and placed 10th, which was 5 spots better than the last SCG open I attended without GSZ (I was also playing emrakul, and I dropped it). I attribute that to playing GSZ and not running emrakul, the deck was far more consistent. It is absolutely pivotal that you get an engine piece out, and thats what GSZ is, an engine piece. For the same cost as a presence.
Its okay to run a few non-enchantments. Mine are 20 lands, 4 argothians, 2 replenish, 1 E tutor (probably coming out soon, but is hard to let go of), and 2 GSZ. Thats it. That leaves over 50% of your deck as enchantments. Thats perfectly fine and normal. I took out an E tutor and a land for my 2 GSZs and havent looked back since.
I am a huge fan of choke as a one of. It is colossal against blue and a must counter. Especially against thresh in conjunction with elephant grass. GG. Against other decks its merely a silver bullet that isnt relevant and must be boarded out (just like city of solitude). I feel that its upside far outweighs its downside. Some play blood moon, but I got kinda screwed a couple of times with it. There are certain situations where whatever enchantment you top deck MUST be cast for you to continue the game, and it would be blood moon. These games were heavy mulligans that mainly drew into duals/sanctum for lands (naturally), and it made the games extremely difficult to win. Its great, but choke does a lot of what blood moon does against many of the same decks, all without hurting you.
Some people play the blue version with rest in peace (used to be wheel of sun and moon) and energy field. I absolutely despise this version and dont believe it offers us a better deck, but Ive ranted about this enough, so I digress.
Replenish, believe it or not, is primarily for blue opponents more so than for enchantment hate. They tend to run out of counters when you shove relevance down their throat turn after turn, and this is usual the nail in the coffin for them. The only deck that really plays hate is maverick, and you can easily dodge their pridemages or just bait them out. When they sac their mages, they arent putting pressure on you, which is what you want. And in the early game when they are doing so, you cant cast sunrise without timewalking yourself, which is just bad. Late game it usually becomes irrelevant if you are using groves effectively. Not to mention that sunrise will usually only bring back 1 enchantment, unless you LGS is packing enchantment sweepers (btw, dont be surprised if this happens to you. There is a reason why I dont play enchantress often at a local legacy event with my 15ish budddies) or pernicious deed in the case of Nic fit, and karmic justice is even better because sunrise will bring back deed anyway.
Anyways, hope that helps.
/agree.
Also, your 2 leylines in the board NEED to be 4. Its important to have one in the opening hand for the critical matchups like combo, dredge, and even discard heavy decks.
Also 1 o ring should be in the board. I always had an issue when i played 2 mainboard. Try out a mainboard choke. I guarantee you wont be disappointed.
I'm going to test out the sphere, I'm thinking it will probably end up replacing moat because of the fact that it is a catch all, but I always liked moat for the fact that it outright stopped attacking, not just taxed. Which can be important if all they really need to do is attack with a couple of dudes.
On the issue of the double white from moat, I cant really ever recall having an issue with casting it. Maybe its just how I call the colors with sprawl or that I fetch up at least one plains most of the time too. And I've never really gotten screwed on not having enough green by doing that.
If it turns out that sphere is strictly better than moat, than I will replace it in a heartbeat. There is no sense in getting sentimental about wanting to play a $300 card when there is a better option out there. I'm not 100% convinced that this is the case yet, but I can certainly see it as being so. Maybe I'm just not bummed though because I can always take the proxy for moat out of my cube and put my real one in it. I didn't think it was crazy buying one, but I couldn't justify being two (what am I trying to build, Dutch Stax?).
Dont get me wrong, Ive kept hands without ramp, just turn 1 guile into turn 2 enchantress. But if you have the opportunity, you should always play guile turn 2 and ramp on turn 1 if you have an argothian in hand.
And you should always play ramp turn 1 if your engine is gsz or presence, because getting an engine piece down turn 2 is the most important thing for us. Period.
I wouldnt trade all that for a card that early game at best time walks us to get a few turns of ramp, and late game offers a recurrable draw engine (when we really dont need it).
So guile does great things in every stage of the game, and will function primarily the same as bloom late game (when needing enchantments). And if there arent any enchantments on the top? Crack a fetch, they are great for that. If you dont need to crack the fetch, then sit on it. No harm in that.
The situations where Id absolutely need a bloom are the ones in which youve probably lost already, which is most likely against combo, and this doesnt do anything to help that out. And if you are dying to an aggro deck that quickly and only had 1 enchantress effect out you either kept a bad hand or had to mulligan to 5.
And if you have more than 1 enchantress effect out, you probably dont need a recurring draw engine because you are drawing tons of enchantments. If needing that recurrable draw was the thing this deck needed, it wouldnt really exist in the first place. This is why we usually only play like 7 nonenchantment, nonland cards, so that most of our draws will fuel our engine.
This doesnt fulfill any true need and/or improve upon anything, so all in all, a very mediocre card for our deck.
And if you are playing solitary with only 1 enchantress effect out, you are in one of 3 positions; losing very quickly and have to stabilize, playing against combo and have to throw it our asap, or you are playing it far too early. The first shouldnt be a problem very often, seeing as we play grass, moat, halo, etc, and you may have needed to mulligan. There really isnt a whole lot to do about the second option, and bloom isnt great anyway because they will probably bounce confinement to your hand and kill you on the spot. And if the 3rd is true, remember that we are part prison deck, so use your life total as a resource. I see far too many beginning enchantress players get skittish at 10ish life and panic. Learn to assess damage, and calculate how long you can put off playing confinement. Even getting an additional turn to set up is HUGE and can/usually does make the difference between winning and losing.
I no longer play 2 city of solitudes simply because choke is very aggressive against the blue decks and a must counter as well. Just like someone said, choke vs tempo thresh pretty much spells game over, especially in conjunction with elephant grass. I also really never found myself boarding in the second city very often, so I cut it back to 1 in the main.
Ive top top 16ed twice, narrowly missing top 8 both times, buts its because of certain decks in the meta. Traditionally we pretty much auto-lose to combo, which is harsh. We have at least a solid matchup against most everything else. Essentially we pray on both the fair decks and the decks that are designed to beat the unfair decks. Put enchantress in a room of canadian thresh and maverick, and barring horrid mulligans, you will pretty much walk to top 8 if you know what you are doing. Mulliganning can be a little frustrating too, we are a combo/prison deck, and as such you must aggressively mulligan. I think in both those tourneys I may have kept 2 7 card hands each. Granted we are pretty consistent, but there are times when you arent, and its usually those times that its REALLY bad.
@crimhead talking about wheel of sun and mooning yourself to keep from decking out, you should never need to worry about that. Not trying to call you out or anything, but if you're decking out a lot, or worried about doing so, you should playtest a little bit more. Because that shouldnt be happening at all. I dont ever consider that one of the uses for the card.
@stormfront believe me, if someone is playing moat in their deck, they arent just running 2 savannahs because of budget problems. I have been mocked by my friends for buying a $300 sideboard card (because the first tourney I played with my moat was plagued by the esper deck with intuition+lingering souls main, needless to say, moat was boarded out).
IMO, zero reason to play wheel anymore. "Late game" (aka turn 3 or so versus those combo decks) relevance stuck on a hoser effect is everything wheel wanted to be.
I wish that the ghostly prison for enchantress was at least 1 mana less though.
Personally Id take crop rotation and emrakul out of the mainboard, I really cant stand those cards. They are pretty much the epitome of win more, its not critical to get sanctum out and whenever I play it I always assume it will die that turn. Is it awesome? Of course, but not so important that we have to devote a slot in the deck that has no other synergy and causes us to lose a land if countered. And emrakul is sooooo awkward in 95% of situations when you arent winning (Ive only had one time where I was dead but drew him and won with a sanctum out). Every other situations he has zero synergy with the deck (if you are decking yourself, practice more because that should never happen) because he is not an enchantment (very relevant as we have to keep the number of non enchantment cards to a minimum), and is a GOD AWFUL topdeck or is a blank card in the opener. And if you are winning? He does pretty much everything any other win con would have done for you. Id play 2 Green sun's zenith instead, that card is absolutely nuts and I dont foresee myself ever returning to not playing it. Im also not a fan of mainboard humility because of how it shuts off our argothians, but that is a personal preference/meta thing.
In the sb Id take out rule of law, the city of solitude, seal of cleansing and replenish. The first is far too slow against storm combo which is the only matchup youd bring it in against. Have you ever played against canonist? It hurts you almost just as bad and slows you down to a crawl. I have long since stopped playing 2 cities in my 75 because I prefered playing chokes. Play seal of primordium instead of cleansing because it is green, which is our primary color. And Ive never really felt the need for more replenish. I still like a lignify in the board against Iona and other scary creatures, a second choke, Im still a fan of Raking canopy for Thresh and miracle top. Possibly a second O ring if you like, aura of silence, nevermore if you like it (I stopped playing it personally), more wheels (dredge has gotten rather scary anymore). So its up to you.
Just 2 cents from a guy who almost exclusively plays enchantress. Hope that helps.
I also am not a huge fan of the mainboard lignify and nevermore. I have since taken nevermore out of my 75 because i only really brought it in against combo, and even then had better cards. But if you wanna give it a shot then go for it. If you fear reanimator, play ground seal instead. Not only does it naturally replace itself, but many reanimator lists have taken out exhume, so it is now a hard answer for them.
Make your plateau a taiga, green is faaar more important than white, even with your increased number of white cards. And you dont need a basic mountain at all. Red only casts WoW, and does it once. If you need that red and your dual got killed, then you can play a sprawl naming red, but it doesnt necessitate a basic.
Blood moon is pretty brutal against lands, but be sure to sideboard it because things got a little awkward for me once or twice when i used to mainboard it. Those were the situations where you have to cast WHATEVER enchantment you draw off the top...and itd be blood moon. And things would get exceedinly difficult. Also remember, if they are playing old school lands they are probably playing riftstone protal, which will make their lands naya and allow them to EE for 3. Ive seen a lot of current lists go back to portal anyway so they dont die to blood moon, so just be aware of it.
I also never go below 4 for leylines, but you are a little cramped for room. I think 3 chokes is a little overkill too. Dont get me wrong, im one of the strongest proponents for mainboard choke that you'll ever talk to, and i love the card, but 3 is a little much. Keep in mind that we tend to have inevitability against slower blue decks. Either an early engine piece or city that got under countermagic, or a late game replenish is all we need to seal the deal. So its not all that critical to play 3 to ram them down their throats until one gets through. Im sure they were more for merfolk than anything else, but unless they have allowed a grass to resolve those multiples of choke wont help a whole lot, and they are a pretty fast deck. So id probably cut a choke for the blood moon, 2 is more than enough. Usually by the time you cast the second one, they have exhausted most of their counterspells and you are in business.
So when you can, pick up the duals, but for right now dont worry about it much.
If i were you id proxy up the deck and play it a bit to see if you like it before jumping in. Much like bleu cheese it is an acquired taste. This is a prison/combo deck and as such a lot of people aren't fond of playing those types of decks. So if youve never played a deck like this its gonna be a bit of a shock.