Over the last few weeks, Chris Andersen has been putting up good results in the SCG circuit with a "new" version of Enchantress that drops a lot of the prison elements of the G/W Enchantress decks (Solitare) and focuses instead on using Words of Wind and the multiple draw triggers from having multiple Enchantress effects in play to return the opponent's entire board to his or her hand while also generating mana and/or board presence with Cloud of Faeries. From there, winning is academic, as your opponent will never have another permanent on the board and you're free to kill him however you see fit. If you're confused as to exactly how that works (there's a lot of variation when it comes to exactly what cards you need) you can watch Chris take down Maverick in a match at SCG Indianapolis. And here is one of his most recent lists, for reference:
U/G Enchantress (Chris Andersen, Top 16 SCG St. Louis)
Lands:
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
1 Dryad Arbor
7 Forest
2 Island
Creatures:
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 Eternal Witness
Spells:
4 Wild Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Seal of Removal
4 Elephant Grass
4 Enchantress's Presence
2 Words of Wind
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Living Wish
SB:
3 Force of Will
2 Chill
2 Seal of Primordium
1 Krosan Grip
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Verduran Enchantress
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Dueling Ground
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Gaddock Teeg
Here, Chris' most common route to victory once he's established the lock is to Living Wish for Emrakul, which certainly gets the job done. While Chris has done a lot to make the deck public, he's not the inventor. For the younger players, UG Enchantress was a fairly popular choice in old Extended, right around the time of Onslaught. Some of the cards were different, but the plan was exactly the same. Here's a list from Gabriel Nassif's run at the Masters that year. The earliest example of UG Enchantress in modern Legacy comes from Andrew Cuneo (Gainsay on MTGO), who has been playing this version of Enchantress for quite a while, most recently to a 5th place finish in the Legacy MOCS. Posting a list here would be fairly redundant, so I'll merely talk about some of the differences. Andrew's list plays with a Chrome Mox over a Dryad Arbor, and he uses a Mindbreak Trap instead of Living Wish. The sideboard is built with the MTGO metagame in mind, but some of the hits include more Mindbreak Traps (fast combo is rampant online, with Force of Will costing 3-4 times as much as any dual land) and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which is particularly cute with Words of Wind. Andrew's plan is to simply beat the opponent to death with 1/1s and 2/1s with Mindbreak Trap backup every turn, rather than add any cards that don't directly contribute to setting up or executing the combo, which results in a deck that's almost completely fizzle-proof. As I said earlier though, the actual kill condition is academic, as having your entire board bounced back to your hand every single turn is sufficiently disheartening to earn you a concession.
I don't personally have enough experience with the deck to talk about things like matchups, so I'll leave that the Chrandersen and others. But basically, this is a turn 3-4 combo deck that plays some of the strongest enchantments ever printed. You get a lot of utility out of Green Sun's Zenith, which acts as backup Argothian Enchantresss, as well as letting you tutor for Eternal Witness and sideboard bullets, and in Chris' list, also serving as a 1-mana accelerant by getting Dryad Arbor. Elephant Grass is a strong way to buy time against aggro decks in general (and is particularly brutal against Dredge decks) and which can also buy you time against a deck like Belcher that might try to cast a large Empty the Warrens. You have a lot of game against control decks with perhaps the strongest draw engine of any deck in the format, and Eternal Witness to recur any cards that might get countered. Carpet of Flowers is an extremely powerful spell against any deck with Islands, as it will pretty much completely nullify Daze and Spell Pierce. Seal of Removal pulls double duty in buying you time against creature decks and in acting as Eternal Witness #3-6, as well as giving you a cheap way to replay Cloud of Faeries. The biggest weakness is combo, as with other versions of Enchantress, but in theory you have so much sideboard space that you can do pretty much anything you want.
I'll leave it to others with more experience to talk in depth about those experiences, and am particularly curious about how you've lost in the past and/or what matchups are overly difficult. Theory only gets you so far! In particular, it would be great to hear from Chrandersen or anyone else who's been playing this deck competitively.
Last edited by benthetenor; 11-14-2012 at 01:08 PM.
Seal of Removal is also good against show and tell'd Emrakul's from opponents.
edit: And I don't want to be mean but I think Maverick is exactly the deck you want to face when playing UG Enchantress :)
So that movie isn't that interesting. Like even Canonist can be stopped with Seal of Removal, or Seal of Prim if the Maverick player would have it in his board.
What I am curious about are Tempo and Combo match-ups. My guess is we really want Elephant Grass for Tempo, and a quick win vs combo.
This is the next deck that I'm building. I'll be playtesting it quite a bit. Until my next order gets it, it'll be proxied and going against main represented decks in the meta, along side decks I think will be a tough matchup for it.
I wonder how sideboarding Force of Will works when you have 10 md blue cards. Unless the guy is planning to pitch Force on Force, I think it's a complete waste of SB space, since you are never going to make it with a grand total of 13 (!) blue cards. General consensus is around 16 to 18. And anyway I would never go below 18.
Also, no Brainstorm?
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Brainstorm is pretty much completely unnecessary since you have the extreme redundancy of playing with 12 or 13 virtual Enchantresses, and once you get a few of those down, every card you play will draw you 2-4 cards, making Brainstorm pretty poor. The only times it would be even remotely useful would be in the early game, but you can't afford to spend mana doing nothing, when you'd rather be casting accelerants or Enchantresses.
I personally agree with you on Force of Will, and in my own list I've just got a full set of Mindbreak Traps between sideboard and main since fast combo is probably your worst matchup and Mindbreak Trap is a pretty easy add. It's also what Cuneo was running with, and I don't see a huge reason to diverge from that. Maybe Chrandersen can give us his thoughts as to why he chose to go that route.
I agree that Maverick is a pretty easy matchup, that was just a video that had a full match, so I figured that would be the best one for anyone who was confused on the mechanics of the deck. I've seen the deck dismantle RUG too, since they're pretty uniquely setup to be completely bogged down with an Elephant Grass in play, and most of their counterspells don't even exist anymore if you can get a Carpet of Flowers down.
OK, but the thing is that you play 20 lands and on average you'll see 2 lands per opening hand. Of course if the deck doesn't miss landrops in the first 3 turns, if nobody counters your stuff, if nobody is playing discard, if you always see a GSZ/ Enchantress/ Presence by turn 3, if nobody tries to attack your manabase through Stifle / Wasteland, Brainstorm is poor. In every other case (which will occur 95% of the times, because you are not goldfishing and those things described above WILL happen very often), Brainstorm helps you in every possible scenario.
Yeah Trap makes more sense even though is not really the best choice versus Show and Tell. Flusterstorm?
Are you into Jazz? Have a look at the Lp's I have for sale on Discogs!
Congrats!
Here's my latest list, with Estrid's Invocation and no GSZ.
Enchantment (32)
3x Abundant Growth
2x Detention Sphere
4x Elephant Grass
4x Enchantress's Presence
3x Estrid's Invocation
2x Ground Seal
4x Seal of Removal
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Wild Growth
2x Words of Wind
Land (19)
8x Forest
1x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Savannah
2x Tropical Island
1x Verdant Catacombs
2x Windswept Heath
Creature (9)
4x Argothian Enchantress
4x Cloud of Faeries
1x Fae of Wishes
Sideboard (15)
1x Back to Basics
1x Citadel Siege
1x City of Solitude
3x Force of Will
1x Garruk, Primal Hunter
1x In the Eye of Chaos
1x Nissa, Vital Force
2x Seal of Primordium
2x Tormod's Crypt
2x Veil of Summer
Plays a bit different, but seems resilient for now. Any thoughts?
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I can’t figure out how to post pictures from my mobile so here’s the list-
Argothian Enchantress 4
Cloud of Faeries 4
Eternal Witness 2
Gaddock Teeg 1
Knight of Autumn 1
Green Sun’s Zenith 4
Enchantress’s Presence 4
Words of Wind 2
Carpet of Flowers 2
Seal of Removal 4
Elephant’s Grass 4
Utopia Sprawl 4
Wild Growth 4
Bayou 1
Tropical Island 2
Dryad Arbor 1
Lotus Petal 1
Forest 5
Island 2
Windswept Heath 1
Misty Rainforest 3
Verdant Catacombs 4
Side
Seal of Primordium 1
Force of Vigor 2
Leyline of Sanctity 3
Dread of Night 1
Doomwake Giant 2
Surgical Extraction 2
Nihil Spellbomb 1
Parallax Nexus 3
Should have had a Savannah and a 4th Misty obviously. New mulligan rule is very good for the gsz dryad arbor interaction. Missed having Emrakul for ease of finish because it’s hard for people to understand they’re dead and I have infinite life with 1/1s, 2/1s, and 2/2s. Gaddock Teeg is absolutely correct. Only used 5 of my sideboard cards all day. Force is a really good upgrade for us as an out to chalice and a quick Karn lock.
How have the carpet of flowers been? It's been a while since I have played them.
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Carpet was solid. RUG delver cringes because it invalidates their dazes and possible spell pierces although my opponent this weekend was on spell snare.
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