I found a few old games played by Chris Andersen with the deck. They give a good understanding of the mechanics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTieAra_y24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1dW8iLy9LA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXRxTBqXKmU
Nice! I linked to those at the start of this thread but at some point the links died, so happy to see that they're back again.
I think the thing I learned most from Chris' play is patience, and that the main goal is to push the game as late as possible where you have inevitability. Thanks for posting these!
Thanks a lot for these!
I always held off building UG (am a GW / junk Ench player mostly) because I didn't have time & brain power to try work my way through how the deck works, but seeing it in action it seems really something I'd love to try.
Bonus is it'll only cost me like $15-20 to build since I own almost everything already from other decks.
Best of luck to you sir. This deck plays a lot less like a prison deck and more like a combo deck. You'll notice the playstyle is very different from regular enchantress. I suggest you try a lean version of the deck with the least amount of spicy cards. Chris Andersen's list from '12 is arguably still the best you can find.Originally Posted by Fjaulnir
Cannot wait to hear from your testing.
I played the deck back in 2013 and still remember the epics of it. It was the final of the Belgian Legacycup and I sit down for the first round. My opponent sits down, we greet and commence playing. You'll never guess what happens. We were both playing UG-enchantress. The laughs and cheers we had the whole game long, it was amazing! We ended up drawing that first round ofcourse :)
Haha that's just great, seems more fun than GW Ench vs GW :)
Here is the list I will be taking to SCG Worcester this next weekend. Wish me luck!
Lands (19):
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
7 Forest
1 Savannah
1 Island
Creatures (10):
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Cloud of Faeries
1 Renegade Rallier
1 Eternal Witness
Spells (31):
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
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
SB:
3 Parallax Nexus
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Crop Rotation
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Doomwake Giant
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Eidolon of Blossoms
I'd really like to fit an Emrakul in the Sideboard to simplify some of my games which can go long. What should I take out?
What are the Parallax Nexuses for? Also Kitchen finks seems kinda sketchy. I think if you are scared of burn you can play Chill.
You should probably read the thread before you post comments. He talked about Parallax Nexus literally 8 posts before yours.
Cool. I'll have to test it some myself. Have you played this deck much lately Ben? I seen you playing miracles at Columbia a month or so ago. I put it back together the other night and forgot how fun it was.
I'd also like to add that I've been impressed by exploration x1 and carpet x1 split. What are everyone's thoughts on exploration? Are 19 lands to fee for others to feel comfortable playing it and triggering it reliably?
Exploration is a weird one. On paper it looks good but it rarely is in practice. First of all, for it to be good, you want to drop the Mox (or petal) in favour of more lands. However, in a meta where turn one Chalice is ever present and where Reanimator is rampant, that fast mana can allow you to keep your head above water.
Exploration obviously needs spare lands to be good and hands that have many lands often are short on enchantresses/enchantments and don't allow you to capitalize.
I have tried it and let it go. I feel like this deck needs to reduce the quantity of cards and effects that depend on variance. When you can get enchantresses going, you win most of the time. Everything must allow that to happen. This is where the Nexi come in. Against storm, burn and such decks, it gives us a whole 2-3 extra turns to combo off and take the game. Think about it, you get to take 3 cards for 3 turns, of 4 cards for 2 turns.
The finks is good in game 1 against burn as a wish target to get infinite life and take the game when otherwise they could bolt me out of the game. (Maybe Emrakul could take its place here). In games 2 and 3, it gives me a good way to stabilize where Chill was simply too narrow and relied on luck (can't be GSZed).
I don't know if this covers your questions.
Thanks for your input!
Yeah, I ended up going that direction. I think the last time I played Enchantress in a competitive event was GP Columbus last June. I only get to play two or three tournaments a year, so I just got tired of grinding the small edges, which are really important in this deck. It is super fun, just really disheartening to ever lose a fair matchup when you are already soft to combo, which happened enough times over four or five large tournaments that I decided to move on. I do think, if you are going to play Enchantress, that this is far and away the build to play, just because it is the most elegant and most consistent way to build the deck, and your mana and gameplan are all much more consistent than a more traditional build. I think if the meta shifted dramatically and killed combo dead, this deck would be in a terrific place, it's just difficult to justify when you are probably losing the unfair matchups. But honestly we might be pretty close to that world now, with all of the fair decks trying to go long with Leovold and True-Name Nemesis and Liliana instead of Nimble Mongoose and Stifle. Maybe it's time for Deep Analysis to make a return...
I do really like the idea of Parallax Nexus, turboninja. Taking four cards for two turns on turn two seems great. Even taking two cards would sometimes be enough to buy you time to establish the rest of your deck. And, of course, once a Words of Wind is down, you can bounce the Nexus, replay it and take five cards every turn for the rest of the game. I do think, if it were me, I'd probably just drop white at that point, since most of what white was for was the combo matchups in Gaddock Teeg. Which is still a great card, I'd just want to keep my mana as consistent and rock solid as possible, since that is one of the strengths of the deck. I'd maybe even start considering things like Dread of Night or Engineered Plague or some other spicy black cards if I were playing black anyway, I just think you could probably cover the same ground with Sultai colors as you would with Bant colors, and it would keep you to just a few non-basics. I might even be happy with 3-4 Duress instead of Parallax Nexus since it would allow you to interact turn one and can later be rebought infinitely with Eternal Witness, but I do feel like Parallax Nexus probably does about the same job. I tend to agree on Exploration. I think if you're going to go that route, you need to play 2-3 more lands and at least 2 Exploration, and when I tested it, it wasn't much better than just playing Carpet of Flowers or Chrome Mox (or both).
But I defer to your experience, because you're the one putting in the reps now. Has Renegade Rallier been a better card than Eternal Witness, or is it just different?
P.S. - Good luck in Worcester!
Teeg could be replaced by Leovold probably. And I'd switch back to two Witnesses instead of the Rallier. I'll think about it.
The Rallier has been great. Its extra power is often relevant, and it can ramp me when my hand is full of gas. Otherwise, I got to play a seal of primordium through a Chalice on two with the Rallier (by getting it back). That's pretty cool.
That's definitely pretty cool, and I thought it would probably be an upgrade to Witness. But that's also something that GSZ for Reclamation Sage could do most of the time, or Krosan Grip. Not game one, clearly, but probably most of the time you have to beat a Chalice will be post-board, Eldrazi aside. And Leovold seems like a pretty good replacement that doesn't hurt your ability to keep casting GSZ, which was always an issue I had with Gaddock Teeg. I was always put in a situation where the "right" play was to GSZ for Teeg on turn 2 against Sneak and Show or Storm, but then I never drew enough enchantresses to get things going and I just died when they killed or bounced him, while also making Mindbreak Trap terrible, whereas Leovold disrupts their ability to dig, and also plays extremely well with Mindbreak Trap. I think that's what I'd do, just because every game (and there weren't many) that I lost to bad mana made me want to flip the table, because it just should never happen with all of the basics. The Savannah (now Bayou) was always the worst land in the deck (Dryad Arbor aside), and the thought of having more than one makes me shudder.
But like I said above, go with what you're comfortable with. You've tested way more than I have in the current metagame.
this has to be good for the enchantress archetype.
thoughts?
It seems rubbish (in this version of enchantress especially)
1) It's a 3 mana enchantment, which is expensive and therefore isn't ideal when comboing off
2) Your deck has no instants in it so you can't abuse the 'once each turn' mechanic
3) Presence is the only card in your deck that costs more than 2 mana
In this deck therefore it is basically just [Overgrowth], and is in fact even worse than that, because it doesn't interact with Cloud of Faeries
For tomorrow, I'll keep the Teeg and Rallier. The unwanted dual land rarely comes up. The petal doesn't hurt my chances to fix my mana too.
As I've been looking through the meta, I have this feeling that we'll see plenty of Miracles and Food Chain and that got me into thinking that maybe Stony Silence could be pretty good (against Ballista (Food Chain), Top, Engineered Explosives, Vial, Equipment, LED, etc.) It has some splash hate against a variety of decks, notably Storm and D&T.
Food for thought.
TurboNinja that parallax nexus tech is really sweet, but it has me thinking. Couldn't we just cut living wish and play 1-2 nexus maindeck because no deck can really come back from the nexus lock with words of wind right?
Is anyone still playing UG Enchantress? I'm moving back to the US soon so will get to play magic again and was quite interested in playing some enchantresses!
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