What about Raking Canopy? Bonus points for being anti-Entreat.
Finally got to actually take this deck for a spin. I haven't played enough games for any real input but at a glance the deck just feels faster than the helm build I was on before. Ground Seal is surprisingly good, came out just in time to save me from a Deathrite Shaman in one game and in a wonderful corner-case turned off Life from the Loam while allowing Emrakul to shuffle back.
Living Wish is going to take some getting used to, as will not leaning so hard on Solitary Confinement. One game where I needed Reclamation Sage for Chalice but wanted to set up more in case he just replaced it straight away. +2 cmc to whatever you want is a bit steep.
tl;dr the deck is sweet! Can't wait to play it more.
Gonna be toying around with this list
Maindeck
1x Dryad Arbor always unsure about this guy, but ramping early seems even more critical than in other builds
2x Deathrite Shaman
3x Argothian Enchantress
1x Eidolon of Blossoms very solid as a 1-of. Color me impressed.
2x Doomwake Giant
3x Green Sun's Zenith was at 4, took out 1 to add the 0 mana tree up there
4x Living Wish
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Wild Growth
4x Abundant Growth I feel like I never actually want to play this on turn 1, instead trying to immediately follow up the first enchantress with it. But if you need the draw you need the draw.
4x Elephant Grass a man who needs no introduction
3x Gaea's Touch This card is amazing and I have no idea why I wasn't running it before. It can act as a ritual if you're going off, or a mana rock if you're not quite ready. Bonus: You can pop it to play another one and keep drawing cards.
4x Enchantress's Presence
1x Cast Out preference for Cycling and Flash
1x Savanna
1x Overgrown Tomb is more crucial than but I'm poor
3x Serra's Sanctum been thinking about this. I almost want to go down 1 but I'm scared of running only 2 in the main. Even with it effectively adding colorless the card is amazing.
4x Windswept Heath added one to make DRS slightly more consistent
11x Forest Gaea's Touch stronk
Wishes
1x Argothian Enchantress
1x Aegis of the Gods
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Faerie macabre Game 1 we can Wish for this guy as a deterrent and GSZ for DRS. Unsure if that's enough, but it's better than the current game 1 plan for Reanimator (have them draw a bad hand while I get exactly what I need).
1x Doomwake Giant
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1x Serra's Sanctum Notably weaker, only worth grabbing if you have 3+ enchantments on board.
1x Karakas
Sideboard Proper
1x Gaddock Teeg Yup. 2 Teegs. Post board I like the idea of bringing one in as a GSZ target, but I'm not sure if a wish is needed with Aegis already in there.
2x Faerie Macabre I'm going to win a Reanimator match if it kills me. Game 2 I bring at least 2 in. I think. This may be terrible but I want to try it. Non-interactive nature (and the fact that I actually own multiples) makes me favor it over Surgical Extraction
1x Choke
2x Solitary Confinement
13 ways to ramp on turn 1, 15 enchantresses (8 physical) and 6 threats (2 physical). Hopefully that gets us there.
Tried this out today in a few matches online. I like the way it plays, and the Living Wish tech is better than I thought. Have you considered moving Doomwake Giant to only the board, and running Dark Confidant in the GSZ slots? It may not be good, but I have tried many BG Enchantress versions and I liked that it could function kinda like an Enchantress.
If no Bob, would you consider a Cadaverous Bloom for the oops I win moment?
As always excellent work Spatula. Thanks.
I appreciate other people giving the time and consideration to this build.
Watersaw:
I reached the same general conclusion re: mana and have also been thinking about additional ways to accelerate turn 1, and I'm very curious how your testing with DRS will turn out. I like him both by himself and with GSZ obviously, but I'm also very attached to my Ground Seals so it would be hard for me to make that move.
The plan I'm currently testing is +1 Dryad Arbor, with 2 Explorations and 3 lands as Wish targets (Karakas, Sanctum and either Bojuka Bog or Wasteland). Wasteland is there primarily because I like it against Rishadan Port.
Speaking of Bog, do you lose much by replacing 1x Faerie Macabre in the SB with it? The versatility in the Wishboard would be nice, although no Explorations probably make it less appealing.
And yeah double Teeg seems solid, but there's not much Storm around here so haven't felt the need to try it.
Also man do I feel you on the Overgrown Tomb pain.
So in conclusion what I'm trying right now is similar, with 13 turn 1 accelerants + slightly improved ability to get mana out of Living Wish when need be, with 18 threats.
Freggle:
Honestly if I was to take out Doomwake it'd be for Solitary Confinement, as I do that with the SB right now very often. Against all the decks that Confidant is good against, Doomwake is also very good against. Of course he costs more, but he also is an enchantment and doesn't cost life, and the deck, like other versions of Enchantress I've played, often wins with less than 5 life.
I remember back in the day Jesse Hatfield ran a version that functioned off Cadaverous Bloom, and of course if you get that and two Enchantresses out the game is basically over. The difficult part if that it fits oddly into the deck - it's not a threat and it's not acceleration, nor is it an answer, and you really can't cast it until either your threats have been dealt with or you're going off, which means in the best cases it accelerates you 1-2 turns. So in a way the closest slot currently to that is Gaea's Touch, but Touch comes down a lot quicker and also can be really useful versus mana denial strategies. On the other hand, Bloom just sort of wins. Could work in a slightly more aggressive build.
I'll give it some testing, thanks for the suggestion.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
So it turns out that Deathrite Shaman is a lot worse when it's the only thing in your deck that eats bolt. In the games I've gotten in to stick it either blocks something or dies immediately to some random piece of removal. I didn't actually hate that, but it had the unfortunate side effect of giving random stuff like Fatal Push and Searing Blood (oh god the pain) text. The drain and gain abilities don't really matter either, they're most likely being fed by Doomwake Giant but it doesn't even matter because most of the time wiping the board gets a concession. I'm glad I tried it, but it really didn't DO anything in the current version.
Speaking of loss of life, I expected the burn matchup to be worse but not THAT worse. I'm pretty sure that we can't actually beat them game 1 without Solitary Confinement in the main. I was slitting my wrists while Wishing into Eidolon of the Great Revel and Pyrostatic Pillar triggers. Aegis of the Gods does actual nothing against them. Could try Glacial chasm I guess. Or casually ramp into Magnificent 7 himself Elderscale Wurm.
Good to know re: DRS. So I guess that primarily leaves Dryad Arbor and Exploration/Gaea's Touch as additional acceleration options.
I'm currently testing 3x Exploration and 2x Touch with more Living Wishable lands (Sanctum, Karakas, Bojuka Bog and Wasteland), along with 1x Courser of Kruphix, which multiple people had suggested, and I've finally gotten around to testing. I rather like her - not a bad blocker, the lifegain is nice, and the constant scrying is really useful, especially with Exploration.
I tend to agree re: burn. I haven't played against it in a while, I don't know if Courser is enough to make a difference. Re: Wishboard, Glacial Chasm seems like the first choice, but do you think Children of Korlis would have made any difference in the games you played? I'm curious about that one because it also has applications versus Storm decks.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
I get the feeling that Children of Korlis won't actually do much. I can test more, but I think it's just too low-impact to Wish for in this matchup.
Going into detail, between Goblin Guide, Monastery Swiftspear, Eidolon, and like 16 copies of Lighting Bolt Burn has a very consistent 4 turn clock that doesn't really care about Doomwake. Grass can slow certain hands but it's largely ineffective. By the time I was able to Wish and cast my life total had already taken a substantial hit, especially miserable when there was an Eidolon out. That's a 4 life penalty to get CoK online, and if that's the line you need then you better pray to whatever god you believe in that they're not sandbagging Fireblast. Regardless, most of their business spells can just waste creatures so you hit the exact same problem as Aegis of the Gods; you spend all these resources to stop exactly one spell. In my experience the only cards worth tutoring for kill them immediately. I wouldn't even recommend Kor Firewalker at that point.
I'm wondering if there are any Wish targets that speed us up. LW>meet The Black Man runs us 7 mana, 8 if we want to Growth immediately after (we probably do). I'll make another post if i see anything that catches my eye.
EDIT: On second thought, Glacial Chasm is not good enough for Burn. We need to attack to win, and that means giving them a chance to fire off whatever they've spent the last few turns drawing into.
Have you guys tested Leyline of Sanctity?
High score..what does that mean? Did I break the game?
Hi Spatula,
we talked a bit in Brussels last month. I'm now looking a bit more at this Living Wish version, and since I'm about to sell my Tabernacle now's the time for me to wonder whether or not that would be a valuable Wish target if budget is not a problem.
I remember Joe Lossett talking about how Wishing for Tabernacle came up very often in UG Enchantress when he played it - would you say that you've been in situations with this deck as well where you'd have liked a turn 2-3 Tabernacle off Wish? (I guess Doomwake makes this slightly less necessary, but would still be interested in hearing your opinion & experience on whether it would add anything or not)
Tabernacle isn't something I've thought about too actively since it's well outside my current budget, but it seems like it would be situationally strong. I honestly couldn't say whether it would make the cut, mostly because the decks it's strongest against also run Wasteland, and very often won't have other targets, so it's likely one will be handy. Even then, making them tap out is useful with Elephant Grass, but all in all it's hard to tell in practice how powerful it would be.
----
re: the Burn question: the last couple tourneys i've run 3 slots in some combination of Doomwake/Confinement, along with 1x Sterling Grove. Even running just one Confinement MD seems like it would make Chasm a better Wish target, since you can dig aggressively for the Confinement to replace the Chasm when you're ready to win via Emrakul.
The only other thought I have left is Living Wish for Faith Healer?
Leyline of Sanctity would be fine in the board, but I'd play Confinement first, and I'm not sure how many slots this is really worth.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
Ran some exercises to test what difference, if any, Dryad Arbor makes.
The following list:
3x Argothians
4x Presence
4x Wish
3x GSZ
1x Eidolon of Blossoms
1x Courser of Kruphix
2x Doomwake Giant
1x Sterling Grove
4x Wild Growth
4x Utopia Sprawl
2x Gaea's Touch
1x Exploration
4x Abundant Growth
4x Elephant Grass
1x Ixalan's Binding
1x Solitary Confinement
3x fetch
2x Sanctum
1x Savannah
1x Bayou
1x Karakas
11-12x Forest
0-1x Dryad Arbor
I ran about 100 games between the two versions, only changing the 12th forest for an Arbor.
My goal was to see the rate at which I got a turn 2 Enchantress online. My assumptions were that the opponents plays didn't matter, so this of course says nothing about fighting through disruption, or indeed, of having the Dryad Arbor survive when it did come online. I also was assuming that I would use any amount of cards if it would get me to a turn 2 Enchantress, meaning aggressively playing Touch/Exploration/Abundant Growth. Lastly, I counted a turn 2 Courser of Kruphix as a success, but made note when that was my best option.
Without Dryad Arbor:
Fail Rate: .287
Turn 2 Courser: 3
With Dryad Arbor:
Fail Rate: .266
Turn 2 Courser: 4
A minor improvement, but still probably worth it for the one slot. There were six hands that got to turn 2 Enchantress explicitly because of GSZ->Dryad Arbor, and 2 that failed explicitly because Dryad Arbor was not a basic forest. Dryad Arbor also forced 2 mulligans versus if it had been a basic forest, though I found that my ability to get to t2 Enchantresses through mulligans was greater than I may have thought.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
Using probabilities the list posted above would be roughly 4% better with Arbor than without. However, in layman's terms that is 4 in 100 games or would affect 1 in 25 or every 8 matches or so if all your matches went to 3 games. it also makes the deck 5% less basic. 55% basic to 60% basic. My surmission is it makes the deck worse overall in actual games than good as it openes you up to more common disruption than help you.
Chances of 2 basics in 9 w Arbor: 52.54%
Chances of 2 basics in 9 w/o Arbor: 58.02%
That's a ~5.5% difference. That (I think) would make the deck worse vs. the current meta than better, as you only improve the deck 4% of T2 Enchantresses.
Thanks for the breakdown Freggle. Yeah I have very mixed feelings about the card - while it's super nice to turn GSZ into both an Enchantress AND accel, running cards that suck in your opening hand is a bummer, and that's already mostly true of Sanctum, and Karakas also impedes on the same space. In a vacuum of course you could simply drop Karakas for Arbor and keep your basic count the same, but my meta runs enough Leovolds, Thalias, Emrakuls and Dark Depths that I'd prefer the bounce.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
What about adding in Living Plane. Works really well with Doomwake Giant and would destroy all their lands. Would also make all new lands have summoning sickness when played.
Have you considered Mirri's Guile? Whenever I brew with Enchantresses its always a 1-2 of.
I've been testing Mirri's Guile as a 1x. This build has fewer shuffled effects due to the high basic forest count, so I'm not sure I'd want more than one. I'm testing it over Sylvan Library because a) I'm not running any Words effects, and b)part of the reason it's there is to increase the hit rate on a turn 2 Enchantress, and it can help get me a turn 2 Argothian/other effect in combination with Exploration.
I tested last night against U/B Landstill, and while it's not the most common deck in the format, it did provide some useful experience with Courser of Kruphix. While it's true that she turned on Fatal Push, she often was able to get at least one land off the top before doing so. Additional creatures to protect Argothian vs Edict effects turned out to be relevant, as of course he would often have shuffled away targeted removal with Brainstorm. The life gain was not really relevant in this match-up.
All in all still liking her a lot as a 1x to supplement the Enchantresses. Slight dis-synergy in that she, like Guile, really wants shuffle effects, but I'm still running Gaea's Touch - which, by the way, due to the really random oracle text, doesn't work with her. Man I wish they'd fix the card to not be an activated ability.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
Spent Friday night getting rocked by combo decks. Some quick notes and observations
Had a few odd situations where I wanted to be able to wish for a black source. Trying a Cabal Pit in the sideboard
Incidentally, I played against Death & Taxes. Turns out that Doomwake Giant isn't always just gg. Having to care about combat threw me off a bit, probably could have won faster if I played better.
Running a mainboard Gaddock Teeg because I have had enough of these jerks casting Past in Flames. Wishboard slot has become Kambal, Consul of Allocation. Sadly I still lost the matches they were relevant. vs. High Tide he had enough countermagic in game 1 and 3, while game 2 I resolved Emrakul before either of them. vs. Storm I managed a game 1 sucker punch with Teeg, game 2 I got him out again only for my opponent to cast Abrupt Decay into Tendrils, and game 3 I died on turn 2 (Kambal was resolving if i untapped)
12post is miserable. Might just want to wish for Emrakul to turn off Show and Tell and hope you get there first. Or run Magus of the Moon if it's relevant in enough matches.
I'm also going to try giving DRS another shot, I'm wondering if I was a bit hasty in taking him out.
Okay so unless I'm doing something wrong Deathrite is actively terrible. The ramp is okay at best, lifegain irrelevant, and drain barely matters. Goodbye forever.
Trying 2 Confinement main and one side. Will be finally be giving Glacial Chasm a spin as well, see if it's worth anything.
One thing I've been pondering is Qasali Pridemage vs. Reclamation Sage. Do we want proactive hate or reactive? And once we figure that out, where do we leave them? 1-1 split or just a single copy? I want to say main but I'm not 100% sure. GSZ is one mana cheaper and lets you blindside people by grabbing Jesus cat instead of a girl. Wish on the other hand reveals nothing about the target until you resolve it and prevents awkward situations where you have to discard it.
Moving Sanctum #4 to the main. Wishing for it has been a little awkward for me as I usually want something out of the board too. moving it so I have an extra slot.
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