Correction from a (former, now in pause) high tide player: leyline is absolutely horrible against the deck.Originally Posted by Scott
Of course, it might be worth packing as a 4-of in the sideboard against discard and other storm combos (namely, black based), but trust me, it doesn't do anything against high tide.
Put that into play t0, even in multiple copies, and look at them happily smile to your unconscious mulligan.
During a High Tide combo process, there's only one spell that actually targets "you", and it is the very last one (namely, blue sun's zenith).
Leyline doesn't stop us either from setupping our combo like we normally would, or comboing off like we normally would, or drawing our own deck like we normally would. At the point where a High Tide player has his whole deck in hand and has access to infinite/nearly infinite mana, 3 cunning wishes, 3-4 bounce spells in his sideboard (Wipe Away, Snap, and most importantly here: Capsize and Echoing Truth) you can really have as much as 4 leylines and 1 grove into play, it wont really matter much.
My best advice on stopping high tide would be packing more discard if you're playing black, or Rule of Law. Yes, the latter also slows you down, but if you get that + grove online, you are really near to make them scoop, because you force them to have 2 bounce spells in the same hand that needs to start comboing (unlike Leyline, that, i repeat, allows high tide to setup normally).
If you get rule of law into play, you can slowly try to add things like Stony Silence and Rest in Peace. I guess if those three are together on the battlefield, it is impossible to go for the Blue Sun Zenith's plan (even if one of the 3 gets bounced), which is the only one viable since you are stopping Brain Freeze by running Emrakul already.
Edit: Spirit of the labyrinth, also.
HooJo gratz on the win.
Enchantress does of fine job of beating High Tide with the suite of the following cards: Stony Silence, Rest in Peace, Gaddock Teeg w/Green Sun's Zenith, Solitary Confinement, & yes Leyline of Sanctity ...but it's by far not the heaviest hitter.
Your not a lock to win, but at worst it's 50/50.
If you find room for Choke all the better, but it needs a suite of support as well. If it's just 1 copy expect it to be countered or bounced.
Great insight there, and it's much appreciated, as the mechanics of High Tide might as well be witchcraft to me. Yeah, Leyline for High Tide is mostly supplemental and collateral damage. It did win me one of the few games I've played against it with Enchantress though. Getting a Leyline with double Grove is nothing to have as a Plan A and it wasn't that, but I got a Leyline with a Nevermore on Cunning Wish out, which brought the scoop.
I'm sure Leyline against High Tide is less effective in other builds, but I have 4 Groves, 3 Nevermores, 3 E. Tutors and 4 RiPs (somewhat unrelated) main deck. High Tide's a bit slower than some other combo decks so, at least in those few games, I could assemble the pieces. You make a good point, though, that it's not a game-winning haymaker.
Thank you both for answering, I was just randomly reading through the forums and I come across this, so I wanted to point out because during my 2-years long experience piloting the deck, i've never lost a single match to white Leyline.
@Freggle: I know enchantress does fine against high tide, I was just pointing out that Leyline is actually a non-issue for the deck (if it's played correctly). Trust me, it may seem that it is an additional piece of lock (even though a light one), but it's not at all. You don't win the high tide matchup by denying him its winning condition, but by harassing its combo process or harassing the deck during its setup turns.
@Scott: To further prove my points (and to enlighten you a bit about the matchup) I will add some insight to the cards Freggle and you named as relevants in the matchup.
Emrakul: High Tide mostly wins by Blue Sun Zenith. However, some High Tide lists pack Ravenous Trap in the sideboard (I do, at least). Knowing that you often only run 1 Emrakul, it is not unthinkable that someone could still C.Wish -> Brain Freeze, mill Emrakul, and respond to Emrakul trigger by C.Wish -> Ravenous Trap if the Blue Sun Zenith route was impossible to execute.
Verdict: Almost irrelevant.
Leyline: As it has been stated before, Leyline + Double Sterling Grove wins it right off the bat. Otherwise it is a non-issue since it doesn't harass the combo process in any relevant way.
Leyline+Nevermore on "C.Wish" can win it too G1 (if you play leyline md), but if it's game 2-3, expect some bounce spells to be sided in since any High Tide player knows Enchantress is a really permanent-heavy deck: this means they can still find a bounce spell mid-combo w/o cunning wish. Leyline + Nevermore + Sterling is also really soft, because they can bounce Sterling eot, proceed comboing, and with Time Spiral the bounce spell would get reshuffled, ready to be used on Nevermore.
Verdict: Almost irrelevant.
Solitary Confinement: See Leyline of the Void.
Verdict: Almost irrelevant.
Rest in Peace: Since its pretty good Against ANT (stopping the Past in Flame route tout-court and severely damaging the impact of Cabal Ritual) you could be tricked into assuming it's good against High Tide too. In fact, being able to use every single spell only once is not that much of a bother. They can still get their islands to provide 5 mana per tap, which is enough to Blue Sun Zenith via Candelabras+Turnabout. Despite this, if you get RiP online, you will exile some of their cantrips, making their post-spiral hands statistically worse. If i were an enchantress player, I wouldn't try betting on this side to beat high tide though. As someone stated on the previous page, High Tide can easily win through this.
Verdict: I guess overall is okay-ish
Stony Silence: It denies candelabra of tawnos and SdT (the latter being really really really more important than the former, trust me). I guess that makes the card decent, but exactly as for leyline and emrakul, high tide can win easily through this by just comboing without using the cards you are denying them, as they are not that important. Also consider that candelabras are being sideout really often.
Verdict: Okay
Gaddock Teeg: Now THAT is scary. This old-aged kithkin denies three very important cards: Turnabout, Time Spiral and Blue Sun's Zenith.
He denies Blue Sun Zenith better than leyline does (also preventing the High Tide player to Blue Sun Zenithing his/herself) but that's not the main point. As far as Turnabout and Time Spiral are concerned though, it is really really unlikely that a High Tide can combo without casting Time Spiral at least once. This is an important difference when compared to the previous 5 cards: gaddock has to be bounced in order to start the combo.
Verdict: Relevant
Choke: It doesn't stop the combo itself (they let three islands untapped -> high tide-> turnabout->time spiral->win), but if you get this online during their setup, it can mean that you get 3+ time walks due to the incredible effect. Absolutely a pain and a must counter-bounce.
Verdict: Relevant
Rule of Law: Exactly as Choke, it slows the combo setup. However, it also makes the combo impossible unless bounced.
Verdict: Relevant
Spirit of the Labyrinth: Makes comboing, setupping, and simply digging for a bounce absolutely impossible. This card alone stops 70% of the deck and has to be answered.
Verdict: Relevant
Overall: If you want to win the match by using any of the cards that I judged less than "relevant", you'd better have a combination of 2-3 of them (+possibly Sterling Grove) into the battlefield and be aware that High Tide deck doesn't need to answer to them in any way and can win with them on the battlefield (or, speaking about leyline, they can get in a position where bouncing leyline is a piece of cake). If you desperately need to beat high tide, though, I would focus on getting one of the last four cards on the play as they either win your game spot-on, or slow the deck in such a painful way that you have time to find other lock.
That being said, High Tide matchup is kinda rare, so the issue of what are the best cards to face it is not so relevant.
From now i'll simply pass you the ball and return to high tide-goldfishing, since i stopped playing it in tournament due to massive headaches :D
totally speculating here but this deck seems like its about to hit its prime. delve strategies get hosed by RIP which i can only imagine is main in the lists.
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Post and preboard Team America absolutely murders this deck. Abrupt, Golgari Charm... BUG strategies in general really hurt this deck. RIP helps vs Goyf and turns off DRS but it's not going to give you inevitability when they have 3/2 flyers coming in and they are destroying your Confinements. This is especially true since people have moved away from the traditional Grove plan.
This might be because I still run Grove, but there are several (we've had as many as 4) strong TA/BUG Delver players in my local meta, and I'm about even with them after playing the matchup for several months. I'm way more afraid of Golgari Charm than I am of Decay, but that's another issue. I think BUG Delver isn't much harder than RUG Delver unless they're on the currently-rare plan of running Thoughtseize over Hymn. We have lots of answers to their discard, we have auto-win cards like Blood Moon, and significant disruption in the form of MD Rest in Peace. If you want to beat BUG Delver, Grove, Moon, and Rest in Peace make it even to slightly unfavorable, and I don't think of any of those as matchup specific hate since they're good against so many decks. If you're that concerned about TA, then you can also run some number of Leyline of Sanctity main to fight Liliana and (other) discard. Shardless is a pretty favorable matchup because they're basically just a goldfish game 1 if they're on the Lejay build that doesn't have MD discard, and even if they're on a more standard build you'll draw out of any discard trouble before they kill you. When I lose to Shardless, it's almost always because they went Land, Deathrite into having Liliana and attacking with a 4/5 or 5/6 Goyf on turn 3, and sometimes that happens. But a lot of the time you have a better draw engine, can hide things you need from discard with Miri's Guile, and they can't effectively race you because their draw put (or at least started) them on the midrange/planeswalkers plan rather than the beatdown plan.
I think the main issue with any GBx deck (sans Shardless) is we need to play at least one turn slower than we're used to. They have a million and 10 ways to remove our permanents if they ever gain priority so being able to trigger enchantresses is that much more important. Of course, they also have discard, but unless you keep an iffy hand or they open with some nonsense like t1 Thoughtseize t2 Hymn to Tourach you should be fine. They take a while to actually kill us so you don't have to slam Elephant Grass right away. Plus, maindeck Rest in Peace is a beating.
To be fair, the Enchantress matchup isn't all that common either.
I actually have 2ish sideboard slots left and have been going back and forth between Stony Silence and Spirit of the Labyrinth. They're both pretty good against any combo deck, so it really comes down to if you're fine hosing yourself a bit in exchange for a more powerful threat (debatable) and a clock. And if you really REALLY want to make affinity/Tezzeret/Mud players cry. Then again we've had no problem running Humility in the past so who knows?
Stony silence is a card I've considered in the past, depending on what I expect the meta of an event to be like. But I don't think I could bring myself to play Spirit of the Labyrinth. I have sat down at the table across from spirit with enchantress, and it is almost enough to make me scoop. In fact, if I was playing enchantress, and I played a spirit of the Labyrinth of my own, I would scoop to myself.
Yeah, I'm not really that afraid of Shardless TBH, Team America is much worse. I kinda feel like the place I want to be in this matchup is having Groves, but I'm not sure how productive it is elsewhere. Can you tell my how you feel they perform in other matchups and how/if you feel they are dead? I'd definitely like to test them again. I do think Leyline's nice but you can't really treat it as a hand keep condition in this particular matchup since there are so many other moving parts in this deck. Again, there's a great disparity in the speed of Team America vs Shardless. Sphere would be kinda nice against BG decks in general I think, I haven't any experience with the card but I'm willing to try it.
Stony is just the nuts as a board card.
Leyline certainly isn't a catch-all answer to discard, but it does have its uses. Spiritual Focus is, as always, an answer to discard as if that's an issue. Elephant Grass is actually a real beating against all Delver strategies because they're so land light. You probably know this, but it's mostly a matter of getting time to stabilize with Confinement lock + Grove. As for Grove, it's almost never dead. At worst it tutors for a win condition or lock piece, and at best double Grove + Confinement is a hard lock. Most of the time it cycles while protecting your enchantments.
This is true, but playing a turn slower has never bothered me. BUG Delver really struggles against Sigil tokens and Words of War forces them to have Decay before you untap and wipe their board. If we have the time to set up, we win, which is what I think you're getting at.
LOL! As Bertrand Hustle said Stony Silence is very good in these MU's and does nothing to us (we board out helm.) It is absurdly powerful in other MU's as well.
@Spiritual Focus - Although it is true that it is not conditional to targeted vs. non-targeted discard it is conditional to discard. I would argue however, that the hand control function of BUG is not the issue we have vs. the deck. It is the board control. We beat hand control through redundancy alone.
@ BUG - In general when I design a strategy against a particular troublesome deck I look to define the problem, and then begin to search for cards that work well against that strategy as well as improve others. In this case I would personally defined the issue as the decks ability to control the board. The problem cards are Toxic Deluge, Abrupt Decay,Golgari Charm & Lilliana of the Veil.
As WG Enchantress we really do not have an explicit answer to this. Leyline of Sanctity can stop Lilliana, but vs. Charm and Toxic we are sitting ducks. Since Leyline is already valuable in other MU’s it should be strongly considered for this board strategy.
So I will start with + 4 Leyline of Sanctity
To fill out the rest we will focus on redundancy which will help sustain a board presence and fight through discard equally. The whole deck is contingent on resolving and sustaining an Enchantress effect, so more enchantress effects makes sense.
+1 Eidolon of Blossoms This will up the Enchantress effects to 14.
If I felt like I had board room I would test an additional win Sigil of the Empty Throne. This would help close the game faster, and fight through Lilliana.
In order to make room for these 5 cards I would likely make the following shaves:
-1 Banishing Light
-1Solitary Confinment
-1 Rest in Peace
-1 Elephant Grass
Okay, so after looking at the deck I don’t feel like cutting 5 is wise as a turn 2 Suppression Field can bottle-up any deck (especially this one.) So I’m down to 3 Leyline of Sanctity
+ 3 Leyline of Sanctity
+1 Eidolon of Blossoms
So my total 60 post board would be:
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Enchantress’s Pressence
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
2 Eidolon of Blossoms
3 Suppression Field
2 Elephant Grass
2 Solitary Confinement
1 Emrakul
1 Helm of Obedience
4 Wild Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
3 Mirri’s Guile
2 Rest in Peace
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Karakas
4 Serra’s Sanctum
4 Windswept Heath
1 Plains
11 Forest
…I’d test that for a bit, and see what happens, and make adjustments from there.
Have you considered Replenish over the second Eidolon?
My SB approach to BUG has been to rely on 3 RIPS to keep goyfs small and hamstring tombstalker and DRS. Do you think I should bring in replenish alongside the RIPs to combat decays and golgari charms? Or is it meant to be a replacement?
As an aside, I took a look at the OP for enchantress when I was brainstorming, and it is hopelessly out of date. Enchantress hasn't changed much since 2007 when the primer was written, but all the other decks sure have. It would be nice if someone with lots of experience with the deck who is a decent writer would give us an update.
I don't mind running Replenish alongside RiP. I only run a single Replenish right now, but there's an argument for 2. If you're running GWb, there's also an argument for a Leyline of the Void/Rest in Peace mix to protect your Replenish strategy.
I think the biggest limitation on writing a primer is that there really isn't a consensus build of the deck at this point. There's a core, and there was a discussion of what exactly the core was a few months (maybe almost a year at this point) ago...and beyond 4 Argothian, 4 Presence, 8 Growth+Sprawl, and some number of GSZ, there wasn't a whole lot of consensus. A lot of people in this thread have gone back to straight GW, but I still prefer GWr or GWb for cards like Blood Moon, Words of War, The Abyss, Engineered Plague, Words of Waste, and Duress/Thoughtseize. I'm far from sold that the utility of the splashes is outweighed by going straight GW.As an aside, I took a look at the OP for enchantress when I was brainstorming, and it is hopelessly out of date. Enchantress hasn't changed much since 2007 when the primer was written, but all the other decks sure have. It would be nice if someone with lots of experience with the deck who is a decent writer would give us an update.
I have considered it, but in all reality I haven't tested anything to the extent in which I used to test. ...just haven't been playing that much MTG. For me it really is a RIP vs. Replenish question. ...and I lean on RIP as it is more "proactive" and less "reactive."
To rephrase this are you saying you are unsure as to which is more "correct?"
BTM10 and I bounced the idea of a new primer around a few months back that never really got off the ground. I'm willing to help, or write it I just cannot promise a quick turn around. as BTM10 alluded to the primer would need to be split into different camps.
I nominate freggle to write the new primer! All in favor say aye.
But seriously, I think you have been playing w/ enchantress long enough to write a solid primer for the community.
Yes. By adding 1 Taiga or 1 Bayou I've been able to significantly shore up several matches (different for each color, for sure) and I haven't noticed a drop in consistency or had trouble with Wasteland cutting me off from colors. If the reason for going to straight GW is consistency/stability, I don't see the benefit. To use the Blood Moon as an example, you just win by resolving it against BUG Delver if they don't have Decay/Charm in hand and BG available if you can set up Confinement or kill them before their board kills you, which usually isn't hard when they have exactly 4 Counterspells to fight back with and no library manipulation to find them.
I'm willing to help, but I'm moving in about a little more than a month, so I probably won't get much written at all before the end of November. You probably have more community buy-in as an authority than I do, so it's best for you to lead the project.BTM10 and I bounced the idea of a new primer around a few months back that never really got off the ground. I'm willing to help, or write it I just cannot promise a quick turn around. as BTM10 alluded to the primer would need to be split into different camps.
Frankly I'm both flattered and overwhelmed. I got home from work today and typed out this outline that I think would make sense to flesh out. I'm sure I'm missing something, but i'll post it below. My focus since the spoiling of RTR has been WR Helm-chant-rest and I feel I can only really speak to that with some authority. If others would like to help please PM me because if we are going to do this I would like to do it right and enlist others that may up-to-date be authorities on other variants. Again this may take a bit, but I would prefer it to be correct than fast. ...who know we all may learn something in the process.
PS I fired up MODO for the first time in a long time the other day and stumbled around the beta wide client in an effort to ramp into steaming again. It's still on my radar, but may be a ways away yet.
Outline:
Enchantress
-One Line Definition
--Combo / Control / Prison
--Core cards
History through Magic
-Highlight Enchantress development in a Magic Card set timeline
Variants & Splashes
-- GWb
--GW Helm
--GWr
--UG
Heyday & Popularity
Card Choices
-Variance
-Statistical Analysis
--Variance to Meta-analysis
-Beating Strategies not decks, nor opponents & being well rounded to run tables
Playing Enchantress
-Philosophy: Combo, Control, Aggro
-Relativity of Magic: beating your opponent
-Combo or Control [Aggressor / Defender]
Order of operations & Enchantress Maximization
-Utopia Sprawl vs. Wild Growth
-Fetch or not to fetch
Important Game Rules
-Activated abilities vs Triggered abilities
-Replacement Effects
...
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