[Deck] U/G Enchantress

[Purple Blood]

Curious if anyone has tried Brainfreeze or Tendrils as a wincon. Pretty easy to generate infinite storm with Cloud of Faeries.

[kombatkiwi]

Curious if anyone has tried Brainfreeze or Tendrils as a wincon. Pretty easy to generate infinite storm with Cloud of Faeries.

Sure, but why use a slot on a card that's totally dead except when you have already assembled the combo? (i.e. in what situation is it an improvement over living wish / mindbreak trap?)

[Purple Blood]

Sure, but why use a slot on a card that's totally dead except when you have already assembled the combo? (i.e. in what situation is it an improvement over living wish / mindbreak trap?)

My thought was you can win the same turn you go off. But maybe that doesn't matter. I had 95% of the cards for this list so I'm just waiting on a couple things till I jam some games. Looks like a fun play.

[16km]

I wound up going 3-2 in a League with this list. Almost 4-1, but I punted hard in game 3 by playing out my hand too quick.



I beat Elves. Leyline of Anticipation really helped with that. Being able to keep Elephant Grass, Sterling Grove, or some other key piece in hand was nice. You can put it in after their Main Phase before combat.

The games I lost were to Grixis Delver. They either Dazed/Spell Pierced my key pieces and Surgicaled it, or they Thoughtseized and Surgicaled it. I also lost to new Miracles. I didn't bring in the Sterling Groves, and Disenchant + Snap Caster and Unexpectedly Absent are pretty good when enchantments don't have Shroud.

I'm going to try tweaking the list more. UG Enchantress seems better against faster combo decks and Leovold at the moment. If you have Cloud of Faeries, Words of Wind, and I think ~2 or 3 enchantments, you can clear their board then go off.

With all the blue decks out there, you can also hard cast Emrakul with minimal effort and without the combo. I was thinking of upping the count to 2, but I'm thinking that might be a bad idea. Brain Freeze might also be good?

[kombatkiwi]

Interesting list. It seems like a bold metagame call to play 3 Carpets and 2 Seal main but I guess (at least with respect to the Carpets) this is legacy and everybody plays blue decks.
I don't really understand what the blue Leylines are for. You say that it helped against Elves by being able to deploy lockpieces mid-combat (presumably to dodge Reclamation sage) but your opponent can just use Sage to destroy the Leyline; if you respond by playing e.g Elephant Grass then it is possible for them to just return the Sage with Symbiote and play it again.

Weakness against extraction is a problem I had not considered much for this deck; I have been interested in trying sideboard Natural Order to deal with some problem matchups (e.g. Burn) and this could be an okay strategy to have a different angle of attack that gets around extraction.

I agree that Emrakul certainly becomes more appealing when you are playing Serra's Sanctum; perhaps a copy of Fierce Empath could be considered instead of a 2nd Emrakul because it enables the option of finding Emrakul with Green Sun's Zenith.

What is your opinion on only 2 Elephant Grass? In the past people have generally tried to play 4 copies of this card (although others have questioned that mindset).

[16km]

I don't really understand what the blue Leylines are for. You say that it helped against Elves by being able to deploy lockpieces mid-combat (presumably to dodge Reclamation sage) but your opponent can just use Sage to destroy the Leyline; if you respond by playing e.g Elephant Grass then it is possible for them to just return the Sage with Symbiote and play it again.

The Leylines are definitely gimicky. Having Leyline and them prioritizing Rec Saging it means they might not have the Wirewood. Being on the draw and deciding to play Elephant Grass on their turn in response to a combo or a Utopia Sprawl/other 1-drop their turn is nice and slows them down a little. Other than Elves (and sometimes Leovold decks), I do wind up siding them out.

I'll need a bit more testing to see if they earn a spot in the 75.

I agree that Emrakul certainly becomes more appealing when you are playing Serra's Sanctum; perhaps a copy of Fierce Empath could be considered instead of a 2nd Emrakul because it enables the option of finding Emrakul with Green Sun's Zenith.

I think I like this idea. I'll try it sometime.

What is your opinion on only 2 Elephant Grass? In the past people have generally tried to play 4 copies of this card (although others have questioned that mindset).

I want to increase the number of Elephant Grasses. I'll probably remove the Leyline's since they're rarely relevant.

The top decks at the moment though are combo, Jace kills, or slow beat down. I have found my card choices do lower the advantage we normally have over Grixis Delver and Lands/Turbo Depths (but I'm not running into that as much).

I might remove the Leylines, and potentially add the 3rd main Elephant Grass and somethings?

[kombatkiwi]

// 60 Maindeck
// 2 Artifact
2 Cloudstone Curio

// 16 Creature
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Cloud of Faeries
1 Eternal Witness
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Eidolon of Blossoms
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
4 Arbor Elf

// 19 Enchantment
4 Enchantress's Presence
4 Seal of Removal
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
1 Words of Wind
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Sylvan Library

// 19 Land
8 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Tropical Island
3 Windswept Heath

// 4 Sorcery
4 Green Sun's Zenith

// 15 Sideboard
// 5 Creature
SB: 1 Reclamation Sage
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 1 Empyrial Archangel
SB: 1 Progenitus
SB: 1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed

// 3 Enchantment
SB: 2 Carpet of Flowers

// 4 Instant
SB: 4 Swan Song

// 4 Sorcery
SB: 4 Natural Order

This is the build I have been testing. Compared to the previous version I tried, I basically just cut 4 Elephant Grass for 4 Arbor Elf. Arbor Elf + Wild/Sprawl is excellent acceleration. Unlike other versions of Enchantress you don't open yourself up to too much additional vulnerability by adding creatures because your combo relies on Cloud of Faeries anyway. It's also somewhat good against Rishadan Port

As I previously suggested I like Cloudstone Curio for going infinite with much fewer requirements than WoW (2 Cloud of Faeries + 1 Enchant Land or 1 Cloud of Faeries + 1 Arbor Elf + 2 Enchant Land etc etc). Once you have infinite mana you can loop enchantments with Curio to draw your deck with Enchantresses, or if you have no enchantments in hand or no Enchantress effects in play you can GSZ for Eidolon and then loop it with Curio to draw your whole deck. You bounce all your opponent's permanent with a Venser-Curio loop and pass the turn; if your opponent tries to play anything then you just Venser it back to their hand. You can also then Seal of Removal the Venser back to your hand if you need multiple Venser in one turn for some reason, and you still have WoW to return Venser every turn and not deck out while you just beat down with 1/1 creatures.

I am using Natural Order as a transformational sideboard plan, which seems pretty good against some problem matchups, but I haven't had the opportunity to test this much.

One problem that Arbor Elf has is that it doesn't do anything in the 'combo' turn if you draw it, so I thought of adding 1 copy of Concordant Crossroads, but maybe this is too greedy.

Another thing is that I don't know if Venser is that good in a normal gamestate; there are many other cards that win immediately with infinite mana and drawing your deck so perhaps this should just be Walking Ballista or Spike Weaver or something else instead.

[Fjaulnir]

I playtested the MTGO Blue Candelabra deck in paper yesterday (the Candles obviously proxied) and it was pretty good.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16751&d=303595&f=LE


Only played against New Miracles (around 20 games; around 2/3 preboard) but won roughly around 50% of games. The opponent is our national Legacy champ so it was not because I was playing against a noob :P.
He was very impressed by the deck's power + consistency as well.

Of course that's just 1 matchup and decks with more discard and not just counters (like maybe Czech Pile, with even Leovold) could be a rougher game.

Some first remarks:
-the manabase felt a bit tricky - I had to mulligan a LOT due to 0- or 1-landers (or having 2 Sancti only).
-the games I did not need to mulligan under 6 had maybe even a 65+% winrate? Did not make notes so it's just an estimate.
-Candelabra is BROKEN!!! Ever hardcast Emrakul off 3 lands? ;-) I was very impressed with this card in the shell, and drawing multiples was usually not that bad either.
If they ever reprint this effect as an enchantment (they won't) enchantress would be close to tier 1. Guess Earthcraft would do something similar but is less broken (doesn't add 4-5 mana on average) and needs more buildaround.
I think I might try out a few in GW Enchantress as well.

[16km]

I playtested the MTGO Blue Candelabra deck in paper yesterday (the Candles obviously proxied) and it was pretty good.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16751&d=303595&f=LE

-Candelabra is BROKEN!!! Ever hardcast Emrakul off 3 lands? ;-) I was very impressed with this card in the shell, and drawing multiples was usually not that bad either.
If they ever reprint this effect as an enchantment (they won't) enchantress would be close to tier 1. Guess Earthcraft would do something similar but is less broken (doesn't add 4-5 mana on average) and needs more buildaround.
I think I might try out a few in GW Enchantress as well.

I saw that list, and I want to try the Candelabras. I'm getting some Candelabra's online to test.

Did you find the Candelabra's let you play 4 colors without much problem?

[Fjaulnir]

That's not so much the Candelabras as it is the 4 abundant growth I think :-) although untapping your Abundant land again ofcourse increases your color options later in the turn.

Just had some practice rooms games and went 3-1 (beat infect/show n tell/mono-r storm; lost to Grixis delver) so I think I might take it into a league next week.

Abundant Growth + Wow + Candelabra (and 1 Enchantress) is nice too, you only need 1 Enchantress to go infinite there as opposed to Grass/Sprawl which need 2

[Fjaulnir]

Interesting vid on the deck:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNEKJF7-3mo

[Alexeezay]

Pretty cool. Looking forward to see more content by him.

[kombatkiwi]

"Somebody told me about Cast Out, I really want to test that, I haven't tested it yet, Cast out looks pretty good though, I'd be down.

...although it removes my ability to play Hearthstone"

lmao

I think a really important thing that the video shows is that legacy opponents don't typically have many permanents, so it's possible to easily win with Words of Wind by bouncing all the the opponent's permanents even if you aren't technically going infinite (especially with Serra's Sanctum for extra mana and Abundant Growth to return with Words).

Certainly I think this is better than the Cloud of Faeries version. Looks like Enchantress is another deck that I am probably never going to play for needing some stupidly expensive LG/AQ card.

[Fjaulnir]

Pretty cool. Looking forward to see more content by him.

I recorded 2 leagues with the deck as well, I'll post them here tomorrow when everything finished uploading. First one went afwul, second went good but not great. May want to try and switch my extra/20th land for a Karakas or something

Certainly I think this is better than the Cloud of Faeries version. Looks like Enchantress is another deck that I am probably never going to play for needing some stupidly expensive LG/AQ card.

Yeah that's really sad (about Legacy in general, but about cool janky decks like Pox and Enchantress especially). I think it works well on 3 Candles from my last League (didn't miss not being able to draw my 4th at any point) and may even consider going down to 2 for some more testing as I am convinced that works too in most matchups; but then that's still a dodgy €6-700 investment that's not really reasonable to make for most people.

[16km]

Certainly I think this is better than the Cloud of Faeries version. Looks like Enchantress is another deck that I am probably never going to play for needing some stupidly expensive LG/AQ card.

Yeah that's really sad (about Legacy in general, but about cool janky decks like Pox and Enchantress especially). I think it works well on 3 Candles from my last League (didn't miss not being able to draw my 4th at any point) and may even consider going down to 2 for some more testing as I am convinced that works too in most matchups; but then that's still a dodgy €6-700 investment that's not really reasonable to make for most people.

I've been playtesting online with both the faeries and the candles.

The Candles do allow for more explosive turns earlier, but you can still play the deck with the Cloud of Faeries version.

One of the issues I ran into was when you really needed an Elephant Grass, but didn't draw into one yet. Drawing a Cloud of Faeries allows you to chump block.

The Candles have less mana constraint. Serra's Sanctum leaves you with a bunch of left over.

[Fjaulnir]

First league (got rekt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uodKK5QciYg
Second one (did fine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imyhlUeF-9c

[Fjaulnir]

Recorded 2 more with the deck, went really good today. Upped the land count to 21 and went down to 2 Candelabras.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCZ4...ature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp_D...ature=youtu.be

The first one of these I could probably have 5-0ed if I hadn't brainfarted so badly. The line I'm trying to make is actually correct, and the 3 mana is right in front of my eyes. But somehow my brain suddenly decides I'm stuck on 2 mana instead of 3, so I don't cast my O Ring and my opponent gets a lot of value out of their Sylvan Library (+1 card and +infinite card quality, while I lose -1 turn)

Other than keeping beating myself up over it, as making 5-0 and getting published would have been so sweet, I am pretty satisfied with making some prizes there.

[Dr_D]

Thanks for recording your leagues, Fjaulnir. They were a great watch.

[Alexeezay]

Yea, great content! Looking for more by MinusCelsius as well. The deck might actually be affordable with only 2 Candelabras :D

[slayjay]

Yeah great videos fjaulnir! Because I am ill at the moment I had the time to watch them all.
Working too again in this deck (one of my faves from old extended).
Still unsure about the right number of candelabras. I am on three at the moment (sorry fjaulnir for buying one of the cheaper on MKM )

Might bring it to a paper tournament next week if some cards arrives in time.

Tested against 12 post eldrazi on saturday. This was a true nightmare. Chalice, Trinisphere and All is Dust is just too much to beat. And against Czech Pile....Leovold...the one Karakas and some O-Rings seems not enough for this one. Shuts down the hole engine...if we only could find / draw the Karakas better