[Deck] Solitaire (Enchantress)

[Thetaiwanai]

Necessary, no. Easier and requiring of less thinking/planning yes. If your opponent uses a Wasteland on a Taiga I'd normally be jumping for joy because that makes for one less wasteland to hit a Sera's Sanctum.

I like that way of thinking :D

[Meister_Kai]

I'm just going to go out on a limb and assume that some of the people here don't actually play Enchantress in tournaments, but just with friends around the so called "dinning room table".

Lets look at a game vs whateverThreshold

You bounce everything with words of wind, proceed to do nothing else, have every other relevant card in your deck countered by FOW, and finally end round one with ten minutes to go on the count clock. your opponent then does 3-5 damage to you, wins round 2 and/or ties game 3 or wins it. I played the blue splash for awhile and this is what happens.

This is the reason no one plays 1 copy of Squee in their MD or SB. The "not lose by being decked behind confinement" gameplan is not relevant to a tournament scene. You have to actually cause damage to an opponent or beat him some other way in the time given.

Right now this thread's theme seems to be "look at my sub-optimal list and give me advice, but don't tell me to change anything or give reasons for said changes because its just about what you like to play! kthxbai". There really isn't anything going for Enchantress at the moment, and I think unless people really want to consider TESTING the blue splash or whatever in a tournament this thread should just keep quiet.

Also Luminarch whatever is horrible, seriously guys.

[waSP]

I've been playing with the blue splash since Words of Wind was printed in tournaments. It runs very similarly to (albeit more resiliently than) the G/W/r version. I win around 65% of my matches probably (adjusted for relative playskill/deck choice).

Winning with Words of Wind is very simple to do. You demonstrate the ability to do the same thing every turn (bounce 3 permanents with Sylvan/Words and replay said permanents). Your opponent gets to draw his deck and there's nothing else for you to do, really.

The blue build is a serious alternative to the G/W/r build and should be given some consideration by commenters. Currently, the reaction to posts with blue is "You're not playing my optimalized G/W/r list. Do that instead." That's not advancing the technology of this deck or allowing for innovation. We all know about the G/W/r lists and it seems it's mostly agreed how those should be built. There's isn't a huge debate amongst the experienced players about those builds.

Ask questions you think are answered by the G/W/r build and not the G/W/u build. "How do you deal with X card like G/W/r does with X answer."

[Sevryn]

Winning with Words of Wind is very simple to do. You demonstrate the ability to do the same thing every turn (bounce 3 permanents with Sylvan/Words and replay said permanents). Your opponent gets to draw his deck and there's nothing else for you to do, really.

The blue build is a serious alternative to the G/W/r build and should be given some consideration by commenters. Currently, the reaction to posts with blue is "You're not playing my optimalized G/W/r list. Do that instead." That's not advancing the technology of this deck or allowing for innovation. We all know about the G/W/r lists and it seems it's mostly agreed how those should be built. There's isn't a huge debate amongst the experienced players about those builds.

Ask questions you think are answered by the G/W/r build and not the G/W/u build. "How do you deal with X card like G/W/r does with X answer."

Well, WoWind and WoWar serve two different functions. wind is a control element that can prevent the opponent from doing anything the rest of the game. war is a win condition. the argument that WoWind is a win condition seems flawed because in a timed situation your opponent will not draw their whole deck. it's nice though, and I think WoWind takes the most advantage of exploration; I'd only consider running exploration if I was already making the blue splash.

The blue splash is interesting to me... you get some cool stuff like energy field, pendrell mists, compulsion. I don't know how much it really offers tho; WoWind is the main reason to make the blue splash, and I get the feeling that it is somewhat unnecessary to bounce their board once you have confinement down. With confinement down, you need to actually win, and WoWind does not do this in a timely fashion (and no, we don't have time to play 40 more turns).

[waSP]

I believe that the criticism that WoWind is too slow in a tournament situation is incorrect. I use WoWind as my primary (sometimes only) kill condition and I never have a problem with opponents not being able to get through their entire deck in time. The deck goes to time when people are not accustomed to playing against it (but those are usually games you're winning in any case).

Your opponent will be drawing a card, playing a land, discarding a card every turn. When they do this about 10 times, they concede. Call a judge if you think your opponent is stalling.

Are there other criticisms of WoWind?

You can just as easily take a turn once their board is bounced to grab Sigil and finish them off with angel tokens.

[ho_master]

I've played the Words of Wind version since I started playing the deck way back when, and I've still liked it. In a competitive format, it's not too hard to establish the board lock, play/pop a sterling grove to find the win con (or just play a bounced utopia sprawl/exploration and not activate words to draw into your tutor/wincon), then play it and extend the GG. I mean each version seems equally as good to me in that they "kill" at the same pace (wind through board lockout, war through straight up kill), but wind only takes a couple minutes more to get your actual kill card out if they don't concede immediately (which, in my opinion, occurs around 50-60% of the time), and you ensure they really aren't going to do anything sneaky because their board is completely wiped.

Yeah you could start saying "oh but they'll just counter the win con", but surely that's why you're running replenish/city of solitude, right? And at that point, if they have draw into 3-4 more counters in the 3-4 extra turns you'll take finding the Sigil or Sacred Mesa wtih replenish/city of solitude backup, then you know what, maybe their luck-sackness deserves the win.

[Vorus]

Alright. I'll bite.

The blue splash is an interesting idea and god knows enough people talk about it so I hopped on Deckcheck to see what the idiomatic blue enchantress list looks like and found three lists with Tropical Islands and no Words of Wind between them.... In fact the last time Words of Wind actually placed in a tournament was apparently 2005.

This is not bad. Perhaps we're just missing something obvious; wouldn't be the last time we've done that in this format. So what blue enchantments are playable. My cursory look though MWS is as follows.

Words of Wind (Wincon I guess / utility)
Chill
In the Eye of Chaos
Back to Basics
Attunement
Parallax Tide
Pendrell Mists
Energy Field (Puts power in opponent's hands but not in a good way like Standstill, but it keeps getting thrown around)
Mana Maze (Solidarity take that!)

Coming from the perspective of the current accepted lists the only cards I would possibly be interested in are Chill, Back to Basics, In the Eye of Chaos and maybe Attunement (but that might be danger of cool things talking). Do these cards help the deck? Perhaps. I know I would have liked to see an In the Eye of Chaos last time I played against combo but does that justify weakening the manabase? I don't know.

So now we can either grind out a list or two and perhaps do some testing or we can let the topic die again and get on with arguing about other things (the black splash perhaps? or maybe acceleration?).

[Jeff Kruchkow]

I feel like everything Meister Kai said went in one ear and out the other.
Seriously have you ever taken this to a tourney? Heres what gonna happen, you opponent will refuse to scoop and draw the game out to a tie since you can only force them to play so fast. That or they scoop with like, 5 mins left and beat you fast next game. Words of wind simply fail to actually end a game, it just makes your opponent choose when they want to lose, and giving them the choice is a horrible.

[Sevryn]

I think WoWind is cool, but it's not a win-con. it's more similar to solitary confinement than to WoWar; both set up a game-state where nothing the opponent does has any real effect. This is awesome, however, I wouldn't say that solitary confinement is my win-condition. I certainly win a lot more when I get to play it, but it doesn't do 20 damage or mill 50 or anything like that. It often will effectively win a game, but this is not the same as actually winning it.

Something the blue splash might have going for it: is there any way to have enough blue density to run force of will?

[Nate]

I think WoWind is cool, but it's not a win-con. it's more similar to solitary confinement than to WoWar; both set up a game-state where nothing the opponent does has any real effect. This is awesome, however, I wouldn't say that solitary confinement is my win-condition. I certainly win a lot more when I get to play it, but it doesn't do 20 damage or mill 50 or anything like that. It often will effectively win a game, but this is not the same as actually winning it.

Something the blue splash might have going for it: is there any way to have enough blue density to run force of will?

Wouldn't the Force of Will slot just be better as Replenish? Plus, using FoW will remove your enchantments from the game, therefore having bad synergy with Replenish.

[Otter]

Force is never going to happen. It's dangerous to run it with fewer than 20 blue cards and between 20 lands, 4x each of Presence, Argothian, Grove, Sprawl, Grass, and 2-3x Confinement, Replenish: there simply isn't room. If you want to counter stuff, In the Eye of Chaos is where you should be looking. Hell, I'd even screw around with Declaration of Naught before I'd play Force in here and that card is downright awful.

[Thetaiwanai]

What do u think about the card Burgeoning, as a fifth exploration maybe?

I know it's not great, but it might help...

[jhhdk]

If you are splashing blue for WoWind, Cloud Faeries may be worth considdering. Utopia sprawl's and wild growth's might make it worthwhile.

[ClearSkies]

Chrome Mox is a good acceleration through. It seemed to be more useful than Exploration through.
The problem with Exploration I had was that I don't seem to get enough lands in my hand for Exploration to matter.

[HPB_Eggo]

Energy Field seems like it might be worth playing, although the only match where a turn two Confinement would be necessary is combo, and Energy Field generally won't help there. I could see it being a great side card against aggro, though.

[waSP]

@Sevryn/Jeff Kruchkow:
I've played Enchantress at a lot of tournaments. WoWind does mill 50. Just demonstrate your loop once and have your opponent take 50 turns. If your opponent is being a d-bag call the judge.

I've top 8'd a 30+ person tournament with the blue version, but that shop (and the players in it) don't post lists to deckcheck, so it never showed up.

I've also top 4'd a lot of 16ish person tournaments with it.

It's just that this isn't the build that people who go on the internet to find the legacy build for Enchantress use. I had a rough time at PT: Chicago against little blue men.

Cloud of Faeries is excellent if you build a Wish version, but maybe a little subpar in a Wishless version. I'm currently running it along with Eladamri's Call (Enchantresses 9-10) because it does cycle and in matchups where time matters, it makes the loop for going infinite much shorter (you would need to run Mox Diamond or Talisman of Unity otherwise).

Is anyone running Trace of Abundance as Sanctum protection?

Here is approximately what I'm currently running (I think the accel numbers are off--also the mana base needs to be possibly tweaked to accommodate the new fetch):

61 total

5 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Serra's Sanctum
2 Tropical Island
2 Savannah
2 Chrome Mox

3 Wild Growth
2 Utopia Sprawl
2 Trace of Abundance
2 Exploration

4 Enchantress's Presence
4 Argothian Enchantress
2 Eladamri's Call

3 Solitary Confinement
3 Energy Field
2 Wheel of Sun and Moon
2 Elephant Grass

2 Oblivion Ring
2 Seal of Primordium

3 Words of Wind
3 Sylvan Library

2 Replenish
1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
1 Cloud of Faeries

Sideboard
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Sterling Grove
2 Wheel of Sun and Moon
2 Elephant Grass
1 Solitary Confinement
1 Energy Field
1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
1 Win condition filler

Mini-tourney report here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...postcount=1129

[Bigface]

Testing my blue-splashed version. It's working very well.

// Lands
3 [B] Tundra
4 [U] Savannah
2 [US] Serra's Sanctum
3 [A] Tropical Island
3 [ST] Plains (4)
3 [US] Forest (3)
1 [ON] Island (2)

// Creatures
4 [US] Argothian Enchantress

// Spells
1 [LG] Moat
4 [ALA] Oblivion Ring
2 [CFX] Sigil of the Empty Throne
3 [IN] Fertile Ground
4 [ON] Enchantress's Presence
3 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
3 [IN] Sterling Grove
2 [UD] Replenish
2 [VI] Elephant Grass
2 [JU] Solitary Confinement
4 [DIS] Utopia Sprawl
2 [SH] Sacred Ground
2 [LG] In the Eye of Chaos
2 [ZEN] Archmage Ascension
1 [ON] Words of Wilding

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [LG] In the Eye of Chaos
SB: 2 [SHM] Runed Halo
SB: 2 [OD] Karmic Justice
SB: 3 [IN] Mana Maze
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 2 [WL] Aura of Silence

Zendikar gave us a bomb for late game. Archmage Ascension.

By playing 8x Enchantress effects, you'll find yourself drawing at least 2 cards each turn many, many times. By playing this card, you gain the possibility, during mid-late game (against Control/Stax decks), to get whater you need whenever you need it.
Obviously, it's a really bad topdeck. Still, in addiction to Enchantress engine it becomes very strong, and a gamewinner once it activates. It still takes 6 turns, but if you're stalling a game with Solitary Confinment/need to find an O.Ring ASAP/have to topdeck to survive the next turn, then you'll love this card.

EDIT: About Trace of Abundance: if you're playing without red and can't find white mana, it's a dead card. Still, I was thinking about playing it instead of Fertile Ground. Waste protection is fine too.

[ssw]

Your opponent will be drawing a card, playing a land, discarding a card every turn. When they do this about 10 times, they concede. Call a judge if you think your opponent is stalling.

I do not buy this argument. Against 43 land / Aggro Loam, a *very possible* line of play is (Fetch for Taiga -> Mox Diamond pitch a land -> Burning Wish -> Reverent Silence). You're not going to have the Replenish every time. Why are you bothering with "kinda locking them out maybe" when you could have won by now?

I also do not get the arguments for Serra's Sanctum and the various statements about fetching it with Wish / protecting it in various ways. At least the way I play the deck, it's a nice bonus if you can find it while you are going off as it speeds you up, but it's horrible in the early game, and in addition, you will pretty much get one tap out of it if your opponent is playing wastelands. One of the reasons why I feel like the deck is good is that non-basic hate and creature hate is almost completely ineffective, and you're just opening yourself up to it if your gameplan is protecting a Sanctum.

[waSP]

Depending on how quickly they Reverent Silence away your enchantments. What you end up with is a board of you with some number of lands and a hand full of gas. Them with a Mox Diamond. The bigger fear is that you can't bounce their creatures in time and you're just stalling with a Confinement and they Reverent Silence and swing for lethal. I think Chalice is one of our better weapons against Loam.

There's nothing wrong with playing Sanctum if you're playing duals. You're going to be somewhat susceptible to Wastelands anyway. You could possibly run an all basics version (in fact, I could send you an interesting decklist along those lines), but it may not be as consistent or fast.

[Nidd]

Against reverent Silence, you should smack down a Karmic Justice and start laughing when they wrath their whole board.

Seriously, why would you ever play a GWb list, when you could just run something like good old GW with WoWar? What does the U-splash actually offer other than a crappy wincondition in the form of WoWind?
Sure, better ways to fight combo... Getting a RoL online T2 is also pretty much gg for combo. Even more when backed by a T3 Sterling Grove.

I just think that WoWar finishes the game, while WoWind enables them to find an outlet. You either make them burn through their whole deck and are lucky because they got no hate or they find a card like Cataclysm or Reverent Silence and then it's you who needs to find a Replenish. And hope that they don't counter it.