How do you guys approach the Enchantress matchup? I've been getting raped online lately.
Sideboard Presence of the Master and Crypt for Replenish?(shrug)Originally Posted by Arsenal
Other than that, you just have to sort of accept that Enchantress is not a matchup you want to see. They run a ton of stuff that makes your head explode, Karmic Justice being the worst.
Good. I though it was just me. I boarded in Seals, Sphere of Law, and Suppression Fields, but still got raped. Opponent drawing 8 cards per turn = GGPO.
Suppression Field is useless, and so is Sphere of Law (if they get to the point of killing you with WoW, they will HAVE the removal).
There are two cards which really matter here: Oblivion Ring and Armageddon. The former gets rid of the seriously problematic stuff like Karmic Justice, and can eat Enchantress' Presence to slow them down. The latter is the one and only thing that can win you the game, preferably in multiples. No Armageddon = no win, basically.
Early Chalices, Wastelands and Trinispheres to shut off or slow down their acceleration are also helpful, but nowhere near in the same league.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
ManaBase Discussion:
My Current:
4x flagstones
4x City of Traitors
4x Ancient Tomb
6x Plains
3x Wasteland
1x Horizon Canopy
3x Mishra's Factory
1x Tabernacle
Other Options I've heard discussed:
Blue: Artifact recursion
-2 plains
-1 taber
for:
2x tundra
1x Academy Ruins
This seems interesting, I like the idea of this against control, but is it consistant enough? There's no way to fetch the ruins, what would come out and would it be worth it?
Nomad Stadium:
Recurring life gain, I don't like the pinging, but it could be good?
Less than 4x of Either city of traitors or flagstones....why?
Tabernacle....judgement call; I like it, I own 1, I've gone down to 3 Magi (magus's?) maindeck and added a 2nd angel because I've still got 4 tabernacle effects.
Horizon Canopy; I was a little skeptical, but it really is awsome. Drawing cards is not something this deck does, but this card can find you more gas.
What are everyones thoughts on the manabase; what absolutely stays and what are options? What are your thoughts on the minimal blue splash?
If you splash blue the thought would be to use Cephalid Coliseum instead of H. Canopy. Works as a quasi-LftL with Crucible and Academy Ruins, Extirpate and other graveyard hate notwithstanding.
Also, I think 4x Factory is a necessity vs. Thresh b/c it can sit there and block 'Geese and Goyf all day long. It'll get you into mid and late game, giving you the upper hand, and eventually the win via a wastelock and/or geddon+Taber effect.
Also, Intuition is your fetch-all. If you don't like a green splash for LftL (which isn't necessary in any way) you can go for a Petrified Field, so that you can intuition into Ruins, Field and Crux. Seems reliable enough...Also, you don't need as many Wastes with Intuition, and you can also probably knock down/out Flagstones for reg. Fetches. maybe go 3x Fetches 3x Tundra. 4x Plains, 2x Island. -Canopy +Coliseum, -Waste +Petrified Field.
If you want you could drop a plains for a Stadium, but LG isn't that important...
With a splash, your matchup vs. Moon effects becomes strictly more relevent and much more dangerous. O-Rings and/or bounce would be a huge necessity.
Storm has become a much bigger problem with the addition of Serenity, has anyone seen this yet? Serenity needs answered before your next upkeep. This requires instant-speed answers. If storm is big where you play, I'd look into something. Disenchant, something. Chalicing @ 2 may be the most important play against storm as of now. Not that it's a good matchup without them playing Serenity, but...
Just a couple of comments...
@ Blue Splash - The idea gets cycled through over and over again. I say the same thing over and over again. It's a neat idea, but look at the list of bad match-ups and ask - does it improve any of them? (I don't think the match-up vs Blood Moon is necessarily 'more' relevant, it just makes it 'worse' and it really depends which deck with Blood Moon you're referring to) The answer to my question, though, is no it won't improve any bad match-ups, unforntunately (I have tested it - not every iteration, of course, but in general).
What I found was that (1) Academy Ruins takes time. On it's own, if you play a 1-of, it is largely random when you see it and when you don't. A 2-of and you see it seldom when you want it. As a 3-of, you see it, but over half the time - you never want to use it and I always wished it was any other land (Plains, Factory, Wasteland, etc.). When you do use it, it is basically a weak Enlightened Tutor for U2. I say weak because you can only search artifacts in your graveyard, but you still trade a draw for whatever card you 'need' back. This made it extremely slow since if the artifact (no enchantment recursion) was in your graveyard already, you either discarded it or they already removed it - the long way of saying its sllllooooowwww.
(2) Intuition is great if there is a 'silver bullet' that if you have it in a particular match-up - you win. Trinisphere vs Belcher is a good example (It's very difficult for them to overcome an early Trinisphere). List the number of maindeck silver bullets against the decks you are likely to see in a tournament... I'll wait. You'll see that 'most' of the Stax elements are 'good' against most of the meta, but very few 'win' the game outright.
If we look at the case where you don't have Academy Ruins in play, and you cast Intuition, I found... (a) You strengthen good match-ups against anyone not playing counters. Most are not auto-win(scoop), but you will put yourself in better position. (b) Depending on the game-state, non-counter-based bad match-ups become a little better. You can usually get a game win against Loam and Deadguy with a Chalice at 2. This becomes much more relevant post board. (c) Any decent player with counters will 4-for-1 you trading Intuition + all three cards to your graveyard for 1 counter. You might catch them off guard once, but they will adapt.
(3) Academy Ruins + Intuition could've been time spent trying to win the game. Probably not the description most expected, but here's the nuts and bolts of it... If you play Ruins as a 1- or 2-of, you won't find enough to be relevant, so you have to go get it with Intuition #1. This is similar to playing a card that says, "Search your library for Crucible, Ruins, and 1 other card. Put the Crucible and Ruins in play and the other card in your graveyard. Target opponent gets 2 extra turns." You don't have to play it like that, but then, why are you playing it?
Now you play the normal Stax game, until you draw into Intuition #2, which for the most part does rock, if you need it at that point. Largely, I found that by the time Intuition #2 showed up at the party, you were either going after a win condition (to speed up the damage if the opponent wouldn't concede), or you were getting the last piece necessary to get you back into the game or complete a lock. I typically found the former, because I would typically have conceded the other games because of the low percentage of times it happens (mostly either randomly against already good match-ups where I would be favored post-board or against poor pilots of poor-to-bad match-ups where they just didn't understand how to finish me).
The bottom line is...
The Blue Splash is a waste of time in White Stax. Blue Stax is a different deck with entirely different pros/cons.
I have to admit, I haven't tested Coliseum with it. But my gut tells me it falls into the same category. I can't really think of a time when you're going to activate it and your not into the mid- or late-game where you should either be already dominant or you've already lost. Petrified Field is good with Intuition, but that's about where it ends.
Serenity isn't as big a problem as it seems. You shouldn't be over-extending yourself anyways. There are a lot of answers to it, if it becomes a popular option. You can play Karmic Justice, Seal of Cleansing, Aura of Silence, True Believer, Glowrider, or Windborn Muse, etc. etc. etc. A card like this becomes popular because Stax players get lazy against such good match-ups and play sloppy. I haven't seen it become an issue yet, but find it hard to believe they would spend a lot of sideboard space on a rare match-up.
Fred Bear...
My eyes popped out of their sockets when I saw this sick tech in the top eight thread..
2nd - Abraham Ureņa - Armageddon Stax
Maindeck:
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
3 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Mishra's Factory
7 Plains
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Wasteland
2 Exalted Angel
4 Magus of the Tabernacle
4 Armageddon
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Mox Diamond
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
Sideboard:
1 Peacekeeper
2 Defense Grid
3 Powder Keg
3 Rule of Law
3 Seal of Cleansing
3 Suppression Field
This card seems amazing against everything that wants to win through the attack phase. It certainly stomps on Ichorids nuts as well as Dragon Stompy. It can hold off as many goyfs as you need it too and Chalice protects it from Swords.
Now playing real formats.
You're joking, I was thinking of that card last week. I was going through random cards on Magic Cards Info and though "That could be good in white Stax. Well, sideboard at least."
But, yeah, it's a decent card to side in after they take out creature removal. If you can keep it out and pay for it without using Tomb, you should be able to stall until you can solidify your lock. It's like Moat, except it can come down a turn quicker and it cost more then 100 times less.
I need more tin foil hats.
He's a 1/1 that uses your white mana every turn. I'd rather have Magus formore.
Dragon Stompy has 4 sulfur elemental and 4 slogger to nuke this guy so I don't think this little guy will help for that, I'd also rather have an extra magus.
Peacekeeper has been replaced by Ghostly Prison afaik. Besides; if you'd rather have a creature than an enchantment I'd go for Windborn Muse; flying, 2 toughness, 1 mana more, but no upkeep, which would be hard to pay if you also have a magus on table: that meansfor the peacekeeper =
Is Aura of Silence up for consideration against enchantress? Or is the double white too much to handle?
Last edited by Skeggi; 04-08-2008 at 02:05 PM. Reason: Needed to fix the :1::w: things :)
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably delicious.
Team ADHD-To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does will end up smelling.
I like Aura of Silence in the side. I use it if I expect lots of enchantress, affinity, or even the mirror. The only question I have is how often do you really expect to see enchantress or affinity or the mirror? Is it often enough to really want to use sideboard space for it - or more common difficult match-ups? This is an actual question, I see enchantress quite a bit online, but not in massive numbers elsewhere.
Peacekeeper is an interesting idea, but I agree with much of what has been said. A 1/1 that sucks up mana and is only really good against a small number of decks. Why bother?
Fred Bear...
I actually prefer O. Ring over Aura of Silence in the Enchantress matchup. Karmic Justice makes destroy effects far less appealing to me, especially when you NEED permanents around to feed to your Smokestack. Also, the 1WW can be a pain sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. 2W for O.Ring makes it's more friendly when you're in a manapinch.
It's the taxing effect of Aura of Silence that makes it so good against Enchantress. I would play it in addition to Oblivion Ring, though, not instead of...
If you see a lot of Enchantress, I recommend using O-Rings, Aura of Silence AND Pithing Needle after SB. Needle/O-Ring WoW. O-Ring Enchantresses that you can, and get your lock down QUICK. If you can get Stax and Crux down by turn 2/3, you should do ok game 1.
The #1 target with O.Ring is usually Karmic Justice; that single card effectively negates your entire deck.
Uh, guys, I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but why do you care about Enchantress even a little? Like, I'm (kind of a big deal) one of the first people to say that Enchantress rozz0rz. But even I would say that more than like four people play the deck.
Seriously.
I mean, MWS doesn't count. Use it to test, maybe, but don't count anything that isn't in the DTB forum for results. You might run into like 100 mono-shadow agro decks, but that doesn't mean that you'll actually run into one at a tournament. The same is unfortunately true of Enchantress.
Additionally, go with Aura of Silence. Ob Ring is useless after turn three or four or five. A competent player (read: anyone with enough gumption to go out and buy a moat) will see it coming and go for Sterling Grove.
Also, unless you're running Hanna's Vigalince or whatever then a single pithing needle on Words of War won't accomplish much. You're better off going for Supression Feilds.
Edit: Sacred Ground is pretty good too, I hear.
The E.P.I.C. Syndicate: I mean, if they play a lullaby for babies they should at least play the Monster Mash when somebody dies.
@lonelybaritone - That was exactly my point in the post prior to the one you quoted... There are a lot more match-ups that a White Stax player is more likely to see in a big tournament that require sideboard space, i.e. Landstill & Survival. The only reason I have tested this more is because I've thought a lot about building Enchantress (I'm just a big fan of board control).
Fred Bear...
Greetings! Long time lurker first time poster here:
I've been messing around with 'geddon stax for a couple of weeks now to great satisfaction, though I noticed several matchups in testing that came out as 50/50 in my results. I have my maindeck pretty well established, but I am still attempting to nail down a relevant sideboard. The meta in my area is fairly unknown at this time, because tournaments are rather infrequent (though I and a couple of others are trying our best to fix that!) In any event what follows is my current deck list. I would appreciate comments on sideboard options for a wideopen meta (probably consisting of lots of control and aggro decks, very few combo decks except a roguish Aluren build and rarely solidarity).
Land
6 Plains
4 Flagstones
4 Wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Mishra's Factory
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Creatures
3 Exalted Angel
3 Magus of the Tabernacle
Artifacts
4 Mox Diamond
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of the Void
Enchantments
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Moat
Spells
4 Armageddon
Sideboard
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Suppression Field
4 Oblivion Ring
3 Aura of Silence
my sideboard was 3 crypt, 2 suppression 4 o-ring, 3 aura of sil. and 3 def. grid. But I changed it to this because I wasn't sure if I really needed def. grids and wanted more sup. fields.
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