[Deck] Solitaire (Enchantress)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by guelahpapyrus

Thanks for the report, Spatula. A few questions:

What's your feeling on Blood Moon? What would you have brought Sacred Ground in against? I'd also be curious on your thoughts regarding the Pridemage. I didn't find him that helpful in my testing. What did you think of him?

---

Blood Moon - It's good at what it does but I'm honestly not sure what you'd bring it in against, at least in the current metagame.

Sacred Ground - There was a lot of Aggro Loam and some White Stax, and it's also for Emrakul.

Pridemage hasn't been particularly impressive so far but I'm going to give him a little more time to change my mind.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForlornEgoist

Thanks for posting up the report. Couple of questions:

Why 4 Carpet of Flowers? Why run them at all? You really have no outlets to abuse the mana directly, and the war-of-attrition so to speak comes from resolving an Enchantress. Yeah, I can see situations where you have 1-3 in hand but only mana for 1 and a Carpet might let you play them either 1 extra or all at once thus denying the opponent the chance to draw into another counter but the card seems to provincial in uses to warrant 4 slots. Honestly I'd rather see you run City of Solitude.

---

A turn 1 Carpet of Flowers is pretty devastating. With 10 Enchantress, 3 Chokes, Sterling Groves Replenishes and Sigil game 2, I don't really need to worry about attrition as much, especially since most decks are either running mana dependent counters like Spell Pierce, Daze, or Flusterstorm, or else they have a limited ability to counter spells in one turn; even by turn 4 most decks running Counterspell won't have the ability to cast two in one turn due to Wastelands or Factories or off color basics.

Especially with the Delver decks, their strategy is to play a threat and then slow you down with cheap counters; Carpet of Flowers does a number on that strategy. It's also great against Team America.

City of Solitude has long since disappeared from my sideboard. Choke is just much, much better.

Quote:

---

In similar thought, based on the fact you seemed to be expecting blue (and that you have GSZ) why wouldn't you want to be running Vexing Shusher?

---

I did originally until I realized I was never going to GSZ for him; if I'm resolving GSZ in the first place, why not just get an Argothian and start drawing cards? And if I'm not going to GSZ for him, I'm hoping to randomly draw into him. So why wouldn't I just run more GSZs in that spot?

Quote:

---

@ Nevermore: Admitingly I aquired a playset as I assumed I might need them at some point, I must know against what decks would you side this in that had threats you couldn't answer with either A)generic enchantress protection, or B) Runed Halo?

---

Burning Wish
Pernicious Deed
Armageddon
High Tide
Pact of the Titan
Cabal Therapy
Doomsday
Painter's Servant
Lion's Eye Diamond

etc. depending on random match-ups.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kring

Question for me: How has exploration fared in your deck?

---

It's a very strong aggressive card; it's almost always comes out against blue, but in all but the most blue dominated meta-games I would not go below 2.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges

Blood Moon - It's good at what it does but I'm honestly not sure what you'd bring it in against, at least in the current metagame.

Sacred Ground - There was a lot of Aggro Loam and some White Stax, and it's also for Emrakul.

Pridemage hasn't been particularly impressive so far but I'm going to give him a little more time to change my mind.

---

I generally bring Blood Moon in against Team America or any other decks that will bring in Pernicious Deed. I've been doing 2x Blood Moon for those decks as of late.

Also, Carpet of Flowers is boss. Good call.

My meta has been inundated with Hymn to Tourachs, Cabal Therapies, and the like. I've started running Eternal Witness as a 1 of in the sideboard against these decks. I've had good results, especially when my Argothians get Surgical Extracted and GSZ is dead. Thought I'd share.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by guelahpapyrus

My meta has been inundated with Hymn to Tourachs, Cabal Therapies, and the like. I've started running Eternal Witness as a 1 of in the sideboard against these decks. I've had good results, especially when my Argothians get Surgical Extracted and GSZ is dead. Thought I'd share.

---

Why Witness? Maybe you would try run a full set of white Leylines...actually my current list have 2 MD and 2 SB. IMO is enough against black decks

Well, do not forget that we run a couple of replenish. Beside leyline you could try holistic wisdom as well.

Cheers GC

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Just me

Hi all,

Enchtress used to have a (small) weakness in that you could deck yourself, especially when the wincoditions are all hiding in the bottom five or so.

Now, with the new rules for mandatory triggers becoming 'may', does that mean we may forget to draw cards of the Enchantress-effects?

Link to article on CFB from Eric Levine HERE.

---

I honestly don't think the new rulings on "must," to "may," in regards to triggers will ultimately affect our deck that greatly.

When you consider that nearly all Enchantress' run 4 Sterling Grove, 2-3 Enlightened Tutor, and 1-2 Replenish, with exception for the mirror MU we rarely ever encounter that situation where we have a wincon in the bottom 5 cards that we have no means of getting it without decking ourselves. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that it happens so incredibly rarely I never even counted it as a concern pre-rule change.

Secondly, I think the greater application for the new rulings is that we'll no longer have game losses due to drawing more cards than triggers. When I was just starting to pick up Enchantress (roughly 5 years ago) I consistently stacked up game losses because in my haste to draw through the deck I would get overzealous and draw extra cards. Even after all this time there are still ocassion where I have to slow my train of though down and make sure I don't overstep my bounds (I've resorted to saying aloud "Enchantress trigger 1, trigger 2, etc.). Especially for newer or less experienced Enchantress players this will definitely be a boon when playing the deck.

@ guelahpapyrus:

If decks which abuse Hymn/SE/Therapy/Edict/etc. are an issue in your meta, 4 MD Solitary Confinement, 4 SB Leyline of Sanctity, 1-2 MD Replenish, and maybe even 2-3 SB Runed Halo/Nevermore should be more than efficient to solve any issues you have with targeted cards, and all these cards have broader application against hate for us than Witness.

Forlorn Egoist

I would much rather run 4x Carpet of Flowers than Leylines.

The issue with Eternal Witness as well as Holistic Wisdom is that it has negative synergy with Ground Seal. Nevermore and Runed Halo have the issue of costing double white. I try to stay away from that if I can.

I've pulled Eternal Witness out of my sideboard when I realized the silliness of having it in a deck with Ground Seal. I never got both on the field at once, but that was purely luck. If I weren't running Ground Seal, I would still run Eternal Witness because having a third Replenish or a fourth Sterling Grove is excellent. Plus, I would rather use a GSZ to tutor for answers than wasting a Sterling Grove (if I were running Holistic Wisdom) that could find me an additional enchantress or a solitary, both of which are better answers than Holistic Wisdom in a discard heavy MU.

In regards to milling yourself: You're doing something wrong if you end up milling yourself. I've finished a number of games with less than 20 cards in my deck, some where I only have 5-10 cards. There's so much tutoring possible with this deck. There's no reason to ever deck yourself.

The linked article is not accurate. You cannot intentionally miss the triggers (that will still be cheating when the guide is updated). Your opponent just doesn't have to tell you if you do miss them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by guelahpapyrus

My meta has been inundated with Hymn to Tourachs, Cabal Therapies, and the like. I've started running Eternal Witness as a 1 of in the sideboard against these decks. I've had good results, especially when my Argothians get Surgical Extracted and GSZ is dead. Thought I'd share.

---

Do you also have a Yavimaya to tutor for?

Is Spreading Algae worth running in your meta? Or Compost? Also, just having Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library resolve is usually enough against discard heavy decks, unless they also have a lot of immediate pressure and you don't have Grass.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges

Do you also have a Yavimaya to tutor for?

Is Spreading Algae worth running in your meta? Or Compost? Also, just having Mirri's Guile or Sylvan Library resolve is usually enough against discard heavy decks, unless they also have a lot of immediate pressure and you don't have Grass.

---

I run 1x Guile in my MD and it's a big help when it gets out. Compost is a really good idea.

I was running Yavimaya for a bit but I never found myself wanting to use her as a win condition over Sigil + War. It didn't really matter the match up, boarding in Sigil was just better.

What I don't get is why people aren't playing Suppression Field more. It totally wrecks fetchlands and honestly, Enchantress doesn't really need to run fetchlands as any land that produces W (or possibly R for Words of War) would suffice. We also have Utopia Sprawl and running a couple plains isn't the worse thing in the world.

Suppression Field also wrecks Planeswalkers, Wasteland, SFM, KotR, Qasali Pridemage, all equipments (especially Jitte), man lands, lavamancer, level up like Coralhelm, Pernicious Deed, Aether Vial and a butt-load of other artifacts. So basically what common tier 1 decks doesn't it affect really? Storm and Reanimator mostly which we need sideboard answers to anyway. Not to mention a lot of people are running Ground Seal maindeck anyway.

It does hamper Sterling Grove a bit, but it seems that Enlightened tutor has taken over that role anyway.

Sterling Grove is still standard, as shroud is a fairly important component of the lock. Enlightened Tutor has not replaced it. If you're running Mirri's Guile, you're probably running some number of fetchlands, which obviously conflicts. Suppression Field also constrains Words of War. Ultimately, you can build this deck to make Suppression Field largely one-sided, but you have to weigh its value against what you're giving up. In my experience, Suppression Field doesn't do a lot unless you have it Turn 1 on the play when all their lands in hand are fetches, and this deck isn't likely to do that often. All Suppression Field is doing is slowing the game down slightly. I could only see running it if everyone was running a million fetches along with Sensei's Divining Top and other activations integral to their game plan. Man lands get hosed by Elephant Grass. Lavamancer is hella slow. Jitte is basically irrelevant unless it's on something with double strike. Suppression Field slows down Pernicious Deed by maybe a turn (which is probably the best argument for using it). Swords to Plowshares is a pretty great card against most decks in the format, but we don't run that. Just because a card is live against lots of decks doesn't mean Enchantress wants it.

@ aznepyon7:

I'm not denying the strengths of Suppression Field (Heck, I used to maindeck a playset several years ago; even had them foiled out) but it honestly doesn't add that much strength to our deck in the long run; its rather redundant.

Firstly, lets look at the fetchlands argument. I'm sure many of us (especially those Enchantress players who're on a budget and can't afford them) that this deck can function perfectly well without fetchlands and duals. However, just because a deck can function without such cards doesn't mean it should handicap itself with a less-than-fully-efficient manabase. I know there is always a huge debate in regards to the statistics of deck thinning in regards to fetchlands. Considering the shear amount of drawing our deck has the deck thinning is actually relevant. As far as duals go, yes we can use a Utopia Sprawl for R, however wouldn't you rather pick a color that can be used to cast 1 of the other 39 cards (excluding WoW and lands) in our deck? Having access to R via a dual land means that if we're in a poor board position I can immediately use that Sprawl to aid in my mana acceleration. To be honest, having Savannah is color fixing I've rarely regretted. Yea, they can Wasteland them. I gues that means I get to keep my Serra's Sanctum, then.
Sure, it can slow down their tempo greatly if you drop it early enough, but as it stands our deck is semi-combo anyway. Considering this, if my deck becomes even slightly faster by enabling my fetchlands, I'll make the sacrifice of my opponent having access to their fetchlands.

Lets look at the other examples you listed:

KotR/SFM/Coralhelm/Lavamancer: Elephant Grass/Solitary Confinement/Moat essentially answer all these creatures. Yeah, KotR can still tutor up for Wasteland/Karakas, but in majority of situtations this is a moot action against us.

Qasali/Deed: Shroud via Sterling Grove answers the Qasali (as well as Kgrip/Ray of Revelation/etc.), and a Karmic Justice on the field is usually more than enough to make an opponent unwilling to use their enchantment hate. Sure, you can nuke all my enchantments as long as you don't mind I nuke your entire board position (lands included) with the existing possibility that I might draw my Replenish and make your action a one-way reset.

Artifacts: Albeit Aether Vial is a relevant threat when used by Death & Taxes (I hate this MU so much... D:) but I honestly couldn't care less if an opponent tutors up any equipment. You should have some type of artifact hate in your SB of which Null Rod or Stony Silence are more than apt hate (and unlike SField these examples of hate actually completely negate combo decks as they shut off artifact lands/moxes/led/Charbelcher/Grindstone/etc.).

Planeswalkers: The only planeswalker that has ever been any sort of annoyance to me is Jace 2.0. Albeit I will grant you how a SField might meagerly help if the opponent opts for an immediate/early Jace 2.0 but the fact remains is that he is one of the most solid cards to use against us and decks which use him typically rely on him as 1 of their 2 wincons. They're honestly not going to care about paying 2 if it means we'll inevitably lose to him. If Jace 2.0 is that common in your meta Nevermore or Runed Halo are answers (in addition to Solitary Confinement) for Jace 2.0.

I'm not saying that SField is a horrible card or that it can't be used effectively by our deck, however I'm just pointing out that in comparision to the average MD cards/SB options for our deck, its effect and the cards it can hurt are essentially redundant.

Forlorn Egoist

Took first at a 12 man tonight(4-0, 8-2). One loss was from keeping an absolutely horrible 6 cause I didn't want to go to 5(I am bad at magic). Had a particularly tense 3rd game against a RDW/burn deck, where he got me to 2 before I dropped a confinement. Runed halo naming grim lavamancer definitely saved me, as well as a story circle boarded in(the metagame around here includes lots of burn, few really have the money to build legacy decks so they play it since it's cheap). Should I be including leyline of sanctity in the board for these situations? Seems redundant if I'm running 3 solitary, but it is awful having to bite my nails trying to get enough enchantress effects into play to make confinement work.

I do not have windswept heaths(I threw all my trade fodder at the argothians, sanctums, duals etc) yet, what would you say is the best replacement? Right now I run sunpetal groves which are awful awful I know but my only choice ATM. I have considered brushland, or RVerge Thicket, am i just fooling myself?

Also I have an awful habit of taking first and pulling jank while second place pulls foil snapcasters,opals, lilianas etc :( Thinking about punting a match next time to avoid this :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by scrubbysniff

Took first at a 12 man tonight(4-0, 8-2). One loss was from keeping an absolutely horrible 6 cause I didn't want to go to 5(I am bad at magic). Had a particularly tense 3rd game against a RDW/burn deck, where he got me to 2 before I dropped a confinement. Runed halo naming grim lavamancer definitely saved me, as well as a story circle boarded in(the metagame around here includes lots of burn, few really have the money to build legacy decks so they play it since it's cheap). Should I be including leyline of sanctity in the board for these situations? Seems redundant if I'm running 3 solitary, but it is awful having to bite my nails trying to get enough enchantress effects into play to make confinement work.

I do not have windswept heaths(I threw all my trade fodder at the argothians, sanctums, duals etc) yet, what would you say is the best replacement? Right now I run sunpetal groves which are awful awful I know but my only choice ATM. I have considered brushland, or RVerge Thicket, am i just fooling myself?

Also I have an awful habit of taking first and pulling jank while second place pulls foil snapcasters,opals, lilianas etc :( Thinking about punting a match next time to avoid this :P

---

@ Leyline of Sanctity is in no way redundant for our decks purposes. The reason (as it should be obvious) is it gives you shroud without any drawback what-so-ever. This essentially means it can keep you from losing to most combo until they find an answer, discard, sac effects like Edict, and so on while at the same time not damaging your potential board position early game (which Solitary does assuming you have 0-1 Enchantress effects). I would advise having 3-4 in SB.

If burn is a serious concern, Aegis of Honor may be a more viable selection. Won't stop Lavamancer, but they only way the will be able to get cards into the GY if they're heavy burn is by casting their burn spells meaning you're still coming out ahead damage-wise.

As far as fetches, if you don't have Windswepts running Mesa/Misty/Verdant will definitely help, however pending you don't actually have fetches of any kind then the Sunpetal's would probably be your best substitute for color fixing. In fact, I may even go so far as to say don't bother running any type of dual land (with exception to the originals) because the whole point of running fetches/duals is for deck thinning, color fixing, and in a pinch enchanting with Sprawl. Our deck has next to 0 double-colors (GG/WW) in it, and we curve out pretty nicely at around 2 so once you get that initial forest + plains you're set for the rest of the game, and running 4/4 Growth/Sprawl helps with fixing and acceleration as well. Its your call as to what you think most important. Since you said your meta is budget-concious you most likely won't get punished as much for running nonbasics.

I would just suggest not running the painland/thicket as they will be less-than-helpful.

Forlorn Egoist

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForlornEgoist

@ Leyline of Sanctity is in no way redundant for our decks purposes. The reason (as it should be obvious) is it gives you shroud without any drawback what-so-ever. This essentially means it can keep you from losing to most combo until they find an answer, discard, sac effects like Edict, and so on while at the same time not damaging your potential board position early game (which Solitary does assuming you have 0-1 Enchantress effects). I would advise having 3-4 in SB.

If burn is a serious concern, Aegis of Honor may be a more viable selection. Won't stop Lavamancer, but they only way the will be able to get cards into the GY if they're heavy burn is by casting their burn spells meaning you're still coming out ahead damage-wise.

As far as fetches, if you don't have Windswepts running Mesa/Misty/Verdant will definitely help, however pending you don't actually have fetches of any kind then the Sunpetal's would probably be your best substitute for color fixing. In fact, I may even go so far as to say don't bother running any type of dual land (with exception to the originals) because the whole point of running fetches/duals is for deck thinning, color fixing, and in a pinch enchanting with Sprawl. Our deck has next to 0 double-colors (GG/WW) in it, and we curve out pretty nicely at around 2 so once you get that initial forest + plains you're set for the rest of the game, and running 4/4 Growth/Sprawl helps with fixing and acceleration as well. Its your call as to what you think most important. Since you said your meta is budget-concious you most likely won't get punished as much for running nonbasics.

I would just suggest not running the painland/thicket as they will be less-than-helpful.

Forlorn Egoist

---

Yeah, I run 3 in the board. A lot of your post was just confirming what my initial thoughts were, so thanks validating me lol. The sunpetals will probably stay. Guess mentioning a burn-heavy meta and Brushland in the same post was sort of silly. A second question: What is more important, running fetches, or playing Moat maindeck?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by scrubbysniff

Yeah, I run 3 in the board. A lot of your post was just confirming what my initial thoughts were, so thanks validating me lol. The sunpetals will probably stay. Guess mentioning a burn-heavy meta and Brushland in the same post was sort of silly. A second question: What is more important, running fetches, or playing Moat maindeck?

---

Moat, hands down.

Albeit, I advocate often how relevant the deck thinning is for our deck due to the insane amount of drawing, that having been said because our deck runs 8 mana accelerants (Growth/Sprawl) and because we do have access to all that drawing, we can easily survive without fetches. Fetches just make our deck run smoother, and I personally have enjoyed running Plateau/Taiga + 8 fetches (4 Windswept/2 Arid/2 Wooded) to assure that I not only maximize land drops but also always have access to Red when I need it considering I do opt to run Blood Moon.

That having been said, although fetches will make your deck much stronger in the long run by comparision to the utility of a Moat there is no contest between which will ultimately strengthen your deck. I know, its a $200+ card which is never fun to invest in (I'm still trying to get mine) but the fact of the matter is that its one of the strongest defenses against creatures. Period. Unlike other cards we have access to (Grass/Confinement) it doesn't require any extra investment, isn't a one-hit wonder (Halo/Nevermore), sits above CounterTop (not really played in the current meta but I still always like to note it as a possibility). Honestly you'll notice a definite change in the success of more aggro decks if you run this + 6-8 tutors.

The main thing I would have to ask, however, is just how dedicated are you to Enchantress? If this is a deck you have fun playing, invest much if not most of your time gold fishing, playing at tourneys, and theorycrafting then by all means save up and get the golden ace that is Moat. If you don't consider this one of your main or absolute favorite decks, then don't. There is no denying Moat's strength, however one also needs to look at practical investment. The fact remains Moat has a a very limited number of decks it can actually function in without as either just a 1-of or without altering the decks skeleton. $200+ for a card that can really only be practically used in several other decks (eg. Landstill/White Stax/Thopter Founder deck[forgot name]) then I would rather see you invest money in fetches which have a much broader application as to the decks in which they can be used.

Forlorn Egoist

@ scrubbysniff: Aegis of Honor is fine, but I like Circle of Protection: Red a little better, as it stops their creatures, too. This deck produces a lot of mana quickly, and Burn doesn't have many answers to enchantments. Leyline of Sanctity usually buys you several turns to set up Confinement lock. Since Burn is big in your meta, you could run Aegis or CoP: Red alongside it if you felt the need.

I'm going to come down on the other side of the Moat debate and tell you to spend your $200 on something else, like fetchlands, for starters. Most decks can beat a Moat, whether by removal, counterspells, burn, flying creatures, Jace or comboing you, so it's not such a house. You can play it and it helps in some situations, but it's by no means essential to the deck. I've paid for this deck numerous times over with tournament winnings, and I've never felt Moat solved any of the deck's problems. (Also, I owned a Moat.)