[Deck] U/G Enchantress

[Dihensoeur]

My last list:

Lands:

1 Island
1 Serra's Sanctum
2 Tropical Island
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
7 Forest

Kills:

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Words of Wind
1 Tendrils of Agony

Accelerating:

4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Enchantress's Presence
1 Abundant Growth
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
4 Gaea's Touch
3 Cloudstone Curio

Control/others:

1 Eternal Witness
1 City of Solitude
1 Sylvan Library
4 Elephant Grass
4 Seal of Removal

Sideboard in building...

What's new?
- Gaea's Touch: This card is very powerful in this deck. It make UG Enchantress more explosive! It's a "free" enchantment (because you can sac it to have ) and allow to put an extra land. You can easily have 15mana around turn5.
- Tendrils of Agony: It's very easy to cast it with 7-8spells (don't need more because opponents have mostly 16-18hp) with CloudStone. The mana is simple with the moving of utopia and abundant growth.
- Sylvan Library: To have more cards in hand (by sac some hp) to start combo more quickly.

From a friend in a tournament (2nd on around 20 players) with a similar deck (with 2 words of wind and 2 cloudstone) :
- He found Cloudstone better than Words of wind (1/8 round won with Words and 7/8 rounds won with CloudStone+Tendrils), so he will cut a word for an additional cloudstone.
- He found Gaea's Touch very useful (before tournament, he tested it with one slot and he discovered its power, so he added more Gaea's touch for tournament).

I suggest you to try Gaea's touch.

Regards,
Dihensoeur

[Guest2511]

Dihensoeur, How do you feel Tendrils compares to Brain Freeze?

Also, my tests with Cloudstone Curio have been very positive. However, I found Emrakul to be useless in most builds. When are the rest of you using him/When is he most useful?

[Dihensoeur]

Dihensoeur, How do you feel Tendrils compares to Brain Freeze?

To kill with Brain Freeze, you need to cast around 20spells (and your opponent can have Emrakul). With Tendrils, only 7-8 spells is enough (Fetchs from opponent...).

Also, my tests with Cloudstone Curio have been very positive.

:) with Curio, we can draw lot of cards without Argothian/Presence (with Abundant Growth).

However, I found Emrakul to be useless in most builds. When are the rest of you using him/When is he most useful?

Why Emrakul is useless? You don't need to cast many spells in a turn to cast it.
By example, a simple Serra's Sanctum with a faeries is enough.
Emrakul is an alternative kill. What do you suggest instead of it?

[Guest2511]

To kill with Brain Freeze, you need to cast around 20spells (and your opponent can have Emrakul). With Tendrils, only 7-8 spells is enough (Fetchs from opponent...).


:) with Curio, we can draw lot of cards without Argothian/Presence (with Abundant Growth).


Why Emrakul is useless? You don't need to cast many spells in a turn to cast it.
By example, a simple Serra's Sanctum with a faeries is enough.
Emrakul is an alternative kill. What do you suggest instead of it?

When using Curio, most of kills happened through generating infinite mana, drawing the whole deck and using Brain Freeze, that's why I'm not exactly sure about Tendrils/Emrakul. However, I wasn't trying it with Sanctum (and I was using Living Wish) and did not test Tendrils yet. I'll test more.

Also, when I have two Gaea's Touch in play, can I play three forests in a turn or only two?

[Dihensoeur]

When using Curio, most of kills happened through generating infinite mana, drawing the whole deck and using Brain Freeze

Don't need to have infinite mana (but lot of manas) to kill with Tendrils.

Also, when I have two Gaea's Touch in play, can I play three forests in a turn or only two?

One Gaea's Touch allows an extra forest, so 2 Gaea's Touch allow 2 extra forests.
You can play one Gaea, then play an extra forest, return Gaea in hand, then play Gaea again, and so, play another extra forest .

[GoldenCid]

What's new?
- Gaea's Touch: This card is very powerful in this deck. It make UG Enchantress more explosive! It's a "free" enchantment (because you can sac it to have ) and allow to put an extra land. You can easily have 15mana around turn5.
- Tendrils of Agony: It's very easy to cast it with 7-8spells (don't need more because opponents have mostly 16-18hp) with CloudStone. The mana is simple with the moving of utopia and abundant growth.
- Sylvan Library: To have more cards in hand (by sac some hp) to start combo more quickly.

I think that Cadaverous Bloom sounds good for adding BB consitently. Moreover i thik that there's a version of the deck that has a BG mana base if you like.


GC.

[LurkingMatt]

My last list:

Lands:

1 Island
1 Serra's Sanctum
2 Tropical Island
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
7 Forest

Kills:

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Words of Wind
1 Tendrils of Agony

Accelerating:

4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Enchantress's Presence
1 Abundant Growth
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
4 Gaea's Touch
3 Cloudstone Curio

Control/others:

1 Eternal Witness
1 City of Solitude
1 Sylvan Library
4 Elephant Grass
4 Seal of Removal

Sideboard in building...

What's new?
- Gaea's Touch: This card is very powerful in this deck. It make UG Enchantress more explosive! It's a "free" enchantment (because you can sac it to have ) and allow to put an extra land. You can easily have 15mana around turn5.
- Tendrils of Agony: It's very easy to cast it with 7-8spells (don't need more because opponents have mostly 16-18hp) with CloudStone. The mana is simple with the moving of utopia and abundant growth.
- Sylvan Library: To have more cards in hand (by sac some hp) to start combo more quickly.

From a friend in a tournament (2nd on around 20 players) with a similar deck (with 2 words of wind and 2 cloudstone) :
- He found Cloudstone better than Words of wind (1/8 round won with Words and 7/8 rounds won with CloudStone+Tendrils), so he will cut a word for an additional cloudstone.
- He found Gaea's Touch very useful (before tournament, he tested it with one slot and he discovered its power, so he added more Gaea's touch for tournament).

I suggest you to try Gaea's touch.

Regards,
Dihensoeur

Sorry for my late reply. Life is a bitch ('nuf said).

Regarding testing/ tournament:
Nice to see that you kept your word and tested curio and also got a
friend to run it.

Do you have more information about the tournament (Match Ups
and summaries maybe) from either you or your friend or both?
After all this should have been four maybe five rounds of swiss so
you should have some data for us.

Which place did you make(just to keep records)?

Interesting list to see.
You are aware of the fact that any storm deck including Belcher
is a no go with that decklist?
Yes, you do have Grass but you have to draw into it or have
which is a 1 in 15 chance assuming we do not calculate in the
need for an enchantress effect and at least one land (better
two or an accelerant).
Also that doesn't account for other WinCons.
Blue.dec seems to be a problem too?
One City doesn't really solve the problem, especially if you
cannot protect it.

I like that Library though.

Still some interesting tech to be seen.

Regarding Cloudstone Curio:

Seems to work as well as intended.
Also you incorporated the Abundant Growth which together
played out nicely - especially considering that you now don't
need the graveyard like the Eternal Witness +
Seal of Removal engine.

It is more mana intense then the Eternal Witness and
Snap engine but works nicely and with the rest of the
deck and draws you cards.

Still you should consider running Words of Wind as a
two of (maybe cutting Emrakul?).
First of all it simply makes you immune to attrition of you lib while
Emmy makes use of the graveyard - again.
Second it alleviates the board state - bouncing everything the other
player has to his hand - which curio does not.
Thrid it adds more value to cards like Exploration or Gaea's Touch.
Once I have a bit of more data from that tourney I will consider testing
[cards]Cloudstone Curio[cards] myself in paper, I guess.

Until then, Cockatrice will have to suffice for Curio.

Regarding Gaea's Touch:

I already run/ ran it in :gw: Enchantress since I was short on Exploration.
While it is not self-replacing, it allows you to
- drop more lands (ANY lands) into play at T1(!)
- doesn't really slow you down mid combo
- is a jucy bounce target

Now which one is "better"? I really do not know.
Both have their uses and I can see both being
played in the same slot although Touch should
theoretically be better in a "less non-basic" build
unless the changed the Oracle wording and I am
not aware of that.

Regarding Abundant Growth + Tendrils of Agony:

Nice idea as a finisher.
While that Growth is also a cantrip it fixes your mana
if needed and makes secondary win cons like Tendrils
or Grapeshot feasible.

The simple question you should ask is: Do you need it?
If you rely on Curio I guess "Yes" is the answer.
When you can simply change the board state within
one turn from "all set" to "non existant" it is "No".

Synopsis:

You have incorporated a few nice ideas in your maindeck.

While I like to disagree with a few choices you made
(especially cutting more then two Green Sun's Zenith,
it is feasible and suited to your play style it seems.

Since deck slots are really tight in this list I would
suggest moving one of the comboes to the sideboard.

Reasoning:
You can simply board into the other one in g2 if you
won g1 or "use the better one" if you lost g1.

I can't say more unless you are set on your sideboard staples
and meta calls.

I would strongly suggest adding four Flusterstorms
as staple when you intend to deploy that list.

Also if you play on the continent, you should consider
two Compost as staples since at least in
Germany Jund and the BG shell are running rampant.

I will try Gaea's Touch as a MD slot for testing
by doing the "Exploration-Split" (3 Growth, 3 Sprawls,
2 Explorations) and seeing what it will bring.

Also I would suggest the following changing in your next iteration:
MD:
- 1 Wild Growth, +1 Abundant Growth
- 1 Utopia Sprawl, +1 Words of Wind
- 2 Gaea's Touch, + 2 Green Sun's Zeniths (can be any utility though)
- 1 Emrakul, The AEons Torn, +1 Seal of Primordium
- 1 Cloudstone Curio, +1 Mindbreak Traps (can be any utility though)
(thus you can play "only" those 4 Flusterstorm vs Storm in your SB and you have a fighting chance G1 vs Storm/ Belcher)

Also I would strongly consider the Sanctum.
Since there is no use of the excessive mana it can produce, wouldn't be Savannah be more suitable?

Regards,
Matt

[LurkingMatt]

When using Curio, most of kills happened through generating infinite mana, drawing the whole deck and using Brain Freeze, that's why I'm not exactly sure about Tendrils/Emrakul. However, I wasn't trying it with Sanctum (and I was using Living Wish) and did not test Tendrils yet. I'll test more.

Also, when I have two Gaea's Touch in play, can I play three forests in a turn or only two?

Like it was said, you can drop three BASIC Forests.

Also, if you bounce it afterwards and cast it again you can deploy Forest #4, Forest #5...
you get the picture...

That's why Exploration is always consider in MD and often boarded out
in G2, G3 to make space for specific answers.

Regards,
Matt

[benthetenor]

What does your list do better than a more standard list? You add in 5 cards that are narrow (in the sense that they only do something if you're already winning) and aren't even Enchantments, at the cost of 4 Enchantresses and one of the cards that is vital to the deck, Words of Wind. It looks like you severely weaken yourself against anyone who has any number of counterspells, and you've added in cards that don't even cycle themselves when they're bad. Gaea's Touch is a strong card, but Exploration effects are strongest on turn 1, which means even if you're replacing it, you're not getting as much value as if you just kept in in play from the first turn. Playing Serra's Sanctum makes you lean unnecessarily on a card that is vulnerable to Wasteland and that is an auto-mulligan if it's the only land in your opening 7, and what's more, your deck is already designed to generate an absurd amount of mana without exposing yourself to any of those drawbacks.

I'm really just curious as to why you think your deck is better than the established deck.

[waytowinatwar]

So I recently fell in love with this deck, and I was thinking that maybe I should report my progress with it here biweekly or so, because I plan to take it, biweekly or so, to a local legacy tournament.

I'm not sure how good it is yet. I play it well I think, but far from perfectly. There are still sequencing issues that I'm not sure about (e.g. the balance between how much resources/time should be spent in order to make sure that enchantress effects can power through soft counters versus how much should be kept until after an enchantress effect has landed).

Deck:
4 Argothian Enchantress
2 Carpet of Flowers
4 Cloud of Faeries
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Elephant Grass
4 Enchantress's Presence
2 Eternal Witness
7 Forest
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Island
1 Living Wish
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Savannah
1 Seal of Primordium
4 Seal of Removal
2 Tropical Island
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
3 Windswept Heath
2 Words of Wisdom
Sideboard:
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Krosan Grip
4 Mindbreak Trap
3 Mystic Remora
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Verduran Enchantress


Anyway so I played in a GPT today; 17 players most of which are very well-versed in Legacy.

Round 1 against Maverick (very skilled pilot) 2- 0

Game 1

He manages to be aggressive and disruptive via 2 noble hierarchs, thalia and a knight even though he stumbles on land, but I land enchantress effects t2 and t3 (I believe) and even though my stuff cost extra I eventually won without too much problems

Game 2

He destroys my first two enchantress effects (grip + pridemage), but I had more. Lands a revoker on words of wind which I ignore until he scoops because I have so much mana, and so many cards that I can do whatever I want


Brief Analysis: This was easy, boarded out two carpet of flowers for krosan and harmonic

Round 2 versus Jund (less skilled pilot) 1-1-1

Game 1

I don't remember that much, he didn't draw lilliana. He had a confidant and deathrite which I ignored

Game 2

He draws lilliana and kills two argothians with it, sets engineered plague on druids to kill a third. His confidants nearly kills him, but he manages to kill me at one life. I have a sneaking suspicion that I misplayed somewhere but don't remember.

Game 3

He kills some stuff with explosives on 2. We didn't have time to finish but we were both nearly empty when we ran out of time so I'm thinking that he would have got me.

Brief Analysis: This is very tough. BLack is very tough, discard, plague, decay, lilliana. I boarded in 3 remora for two carpets and a seal of primordium, thinking that the remoras would offset his discard, permanent destruction. Didn't draw them though. I'm thinking that you really need something more dramtaic though, like replenish or some other big effect to take advantage of them not having counters. Suggestions?

Round 3 Esper (skilled pilot) 1-2

Game 1

Wins easy, he tries to kill me with a batterskull but we both know that that is not going to work.

Game 2

Thoughtseize into Stoneforge into sword of feast and famine into seal of removal into stoneforge into equip into harmonic sliver into jace into enchantress into fateseal into no enchantments into a library of 5 lands (jace's ultimate)


Game 3 he amasses an army of utility creatures (clique, snapcaster, mystic) I draw enchantresses but not enough enchantments to go off. Close though.

BA: Boarded into remoras and harmonic and teeg (cut grass I think). drew remoras but they were underwhelming. NOt sure how to feel about this matchup, about even I think, game 1 is pretty easy.

Round 4 RUG (skilled pilot) 2-1

Game 1

Win easy, don't remember the details. None of his cards are very relevant. A pair of tarmogoyfs try to kill me I ignore them, maybe bounce one

Game 2

Very close, starts to go off but am a mana or two short of doing something that stops his mongeese. Also, rough tumble along the way.


Game 3

t1 delver which flips t2. I slowplay enchantresses to get around soft counters It pays off. He boards in red elemental blasts which are annoying but ultimately irrelevant

BA: Fairly easy matchup, your ramp makes their counters mostly irrelevant. board in a carpet and 2 remora against two witness (clunky ) and seal of primordium


Round 5 Food Chain 0-2 (ok pilot)

two mulligans to six draw quite poorly (not enough enchantress effects) manages to get a lot of mana one game though (two carpets) living wish for emrakul can cast it next turn but he kills me exactly before then.

Ba: shouldn't be too rough


General Analysis:

I hate dryad arbour and will replace it with chrome mox. Reasons for hate: he sucks up (preboard) redundant removal and wastelands which would otherwise be dead. Drawing it is really bad, does nothing midcombo, tricks you to keep loose hands (where you need to gsz into it). It looks really nice that gsz becomes ramp, but you're almost never in a situation where you want to do that.

Most things that kill argothians are sorcery speed, roughtumble, perish, plague, lilliana, explosives. This makes me think that you should play argothans fairly cautiosly and try to get a few triggers off them before passing the turn. Also it is sometimes right to play cloud of faeries for no increase in mana just to have something that sucks up an edict (such as lilliana). Anyway must go to bed, this is rough but it was this or nothing.

[benthetenor]

I like a lot of the points you have to make, and I agree for the most part with your assessment of the matchups. I'm really, really pulling for Maverick to make a comeback so we can have another matchup that is strictly a bye, but I think that the format is still in a place where this deck can be good. I'm planning on going to SCG KC in a few weeks, and if my metagame analysis is correct, I expect it to be relatively full of fair decks, which is why I'm probably going to play this deck.

I agree 100% on the Dryad Arbor, in both the sentiment and in the reasons as to why you've found it to be bad. I've been testing with 3 Chrome Mox in place of a few lands/Dryad Arbor, and it's been great. It allows for a turn 1 Enchantress (or Compost post-board against discard) which is huge, and generally just speeds things up by a full turn. It's in place of lands so it does nothing to hurt the enchantment balance, and it's awesome to draw mid-combo turn, unlike a land. The card disadvantage is insanely easily overcome with this deck, making it pretty much perfect. Once again, it's a card that Cuneo played that I'd largely dismissed at the time, but testing has borne it out to be awesome.

It's cool that you got a nice evenly distributed set of matchups, and I think you did pretty well. Esperblade (and any U/x control deck) is generally a good matchup, but I do find that you need something to get you over the top post-board. I have had 2 Deep Analysis in my sideboard for a long time and it's singlehandedly won me many, many games against that deck, as well as being a solid addition to UW Miracles and a decent card against something like Jund or Pox. If they try to counter or make you discard it you still gain tons of card advantage, so while it's not flashy, I think it's the perfect card to gain some slight CA which will help you take over the matchup.

For Jund, Replenish isn't a bad idea. They will absolutely have Wastelands which means that you're likely going to have to use a Utopia Sprawl on white, but that's not really a big deal at all. It's also not going to get your Argothian Enchantresses back, which kind of sucks, but it will give you lots of CA on it's own so it might not be that bad. I think if Jund (or discard in general) is something you fear, you could always go with Leyline of Sanctity which would blank like 12 cards that they'd have and can't be Abrupt Decay-ed. It would clearly be a lot better in a G/W Enchantress deck or just one playing with Serra's Sanctum so that you could reasonably cast it, but it's a card that does a massive amount of work in that matchup for us, so if you fear it, there's a good answer. Theoretically it should be a pretty even matchup since they should have lots of problems with Elephant Grass and Seal of Removal is a good way to mess up their mana curve by hitting a turn 1 Deathrite Shaman or a Dark Confidant, at which point you should be able to out-card them. I'd bring in more Disenchant effects if you expect Engineered Plague, which is a fair card for them. Compost can also do a lot of work, and Deep Analysis can be good though the life loss might be a liability in some games, so it's not at it's best in this matchup. Pithing Needle (if you play it) can also deal with Liliana, which is the one card that gives them any amount of inevitability. I have also considered dropping down a Cloud of Faeries in this matchup just to eat removal and/or a Liliana activation, and I think that's a fine play. You're going to beat them eventually, assuming you can keep Liliana away, so it's just about surviving until you can stick a few card advantage cards, then taking over the game from there.

[waytowinatwar]

I like a lot of the points you have to make, and I agree for the most part with your assessment of the matchups. I'm really, really pulling for Maverick to make a comeback so we can have another matchup that is strictly a bye, but I think that the format is still in a place where this deck can be good. I'm planning on going to SCG KC in a few weeks, and if my metagame analysis is correct, I expect it to be relatively full of fair decks, which is why I'm probably going to play this deck.

I agree 100% on the Dryad Arbor, in both the sentiment and in the reasons as to why you've found it to be bad. I've been testing with 3 Chrome Mox in place of a few lands/Dryad Arbor, and it's been great. It allows for a turn 1 Enchantress (or Compost post-board against discard) which is huge, and generally just speeds things up by a full turn. It's in place of lands so it does nothing to hurt the enchantment balance, and it's awesome to draw mid-combo turn, unlike a land. The card disadvantage is insanely easily overcome with this deck, making it pretty much perfect. Once again, it's a card that Cuneo played that I'd largely dismissed at the time, but testing has borne it out to be awesome.

It's cool that you got a nice evenly distributed set of matchups, and I think you did pretty well. Esperblade (and any U/x control deck) is generally a good matchup, but I do find that you need something to get you over the top post-board. I have had 2 Deep Analysis in my sideboard for a long time and it's singlehandedly won me many, many games against that deck, as well as being a solid addition to UW Miracles and a decent card against something like Jund or Pox. If they try to counter or make you discard it you still gain tons of card advantage, so while it's not flashy, I think it's the perfect card to gain some slight CA which will help you take over the matchup.

For Jund, Replenish isn't a bad idea. They will absolutely have Wastelands which means that you're likely going to have to use a Utopia Sprawl on white, but that's not really a big deal at all. It's also not going to get your Argothian Enchantresses back, which kind of sucks, but it will give you lots of CA on it's own so it might not be that bad. I think if Jund (or discard in general) is something you fear, you could always go with Leyline of Sanctity which would blank like 12 cards that they'd have and can't be Abrupt Decay-ed. It would clearly be a lot better in a G/W Enchantress deck or just one playing with Serra's Sanctum so that you could reasonably cast it, but it's a card that does a massive amount of work in that matchup for us, so if you fear it, there's a good answer. Theoretically it should be a pretty even matchup since they should have lots of problems with Elephant Grass and Seal of Removal is a good way to mess up their mana curve by hitting a turn 1 Deathrite Shaman or a Dark Confidant, at which point you should be able to out-card them. I'd bring in more Disenchant effects if you expect Engineered Plague, which is a fair card for them. Compost can also do a lot of work, and Deep Analysis can be good though the life loss might be a liability in some games, so it's not at it's best in this matchup. Pithing Needle (if you play it) can also deal with Liliana, which is the one card that gives them any amount of inevitability. I have also considered dropping down a Cloud of Faeries in this matchup just to eat removal and/or a Liliana activation, and I think that's a fine play. You're going to beat them eventually, assuming you can keep Liliana away, so it's just about surviving until you can stick a few card advantage cards, then taking over the game from there.

Thank you for your comments, I agree with everything more or less. Also before I forget, Thank you for a very good opening post, and for your careful discussion throughout. I think that this has ensured the civil tone in the thread and I wouldn't be posting here if it hadn't been for you.

Deep Analysis is exactly what I want to be doing against Esper.

I'm afraid of playing too many moxes, since even if they replace lands and thereby do not change the original enchantment to other cards proportion you are very likely to imprint enchantments on them and thereby miss triggers, they are also poor topdecks when you are not going off (worse than lands, including dryad arbour). T1 argothian is no joke though. I'll probably try two and cut a tropical and the arbour for them.

Leyline has a number of nice features. Against jund, as you say, it blanks lilliana, and discard, it's an enchantment, it cannot be destroyed by abrupt decay. Dodging discard is pretty huge because it means that you can safely slow roll enchantress effects until you can play them and get a few triggers before passing the turn. It's very hard to cast though, even if you have a sprawl and can set it to white (But I think that this actually hampers your ability to go off somewhat, normally I try to have at most two blue sources among the two lands I dedicate to growths/sprawls, If i have an island, this means that all growths and sprawls are placed on a single forest and all sprawls except one are set to green) you need to fetch your savannah in a matchup where you really don't want to do this. They are also bad in multiples against jund because either they are redundant, or they can remove them via maelstom pulse. You can of course slowroll but this is also pretty bad (i.e it might enable them to destroy the one in play and then use some/all their backed up discard before passing the turn, you might have missed enchantress triggers, and savannah is most likely dead by now.

Not sure about what the upshot is here. Leyline is also nice against ANT, and ok against dredge and savannah is safe against both. The reasons against leyline in the ant matchup are somewhat complicated. I am inclined to use remora+mindbreak trap against ANT, and if you were to substitute a few traps for leylines then drawing them when they are going off and you are drawing cards off remora is actually a blank whereas trap wouldn't have been.

Best at this point I think to go over exact sideboarding plans since sideboarding is a balancing act. I thought for a few hours about these below before the tournament and might as well post them. For convenience, here is my sideboard again.

1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Gaddock Teeg X
1 Harmonic Sliver X
1 Krosan Grip X
4 Mindbreak Trap
3 Mystic Remora (2 deep analysis)
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Verduran Enchantress

An X means that I feel that the card is non-negotiable. Cards in parantheses are changes I'm currently inclined to make (partly due to comments in this thread).

Surgical and the traps are especially nice since they are turned on immediately after being returned with witness without any mana investment, also, you can mostly develop your board while holding them. I don't really like sb carpet that much, they can be played around somewhat (and all good players do) and I feel that I board them against MU that are pretty good anyway. I'm not sure how to think about leyline yet, replacing carpet with singleton might actually be the way to go (you do want to maximize the prob of getting it in your opening hand, but you seldom want more than one and there might not be enough room for it, just replacing traps with leylines makes things quite easy for the ANT player = just find your chain of vapour at some point during comboing).

ANT
-
1 seal of prim
4 grass
3 seal of removal
+
1 teeg
3 remora
4 traps

DREDGE
-
2 carpet
1 seal of prim
1 living wish

+
1 teeg
2 surgical
1 mystic remora

MIRACLES
-
4 grass
1 wish
2 seal of removal

+
teeg
grip
sliver
3 remora
carpet

JUND
-
2 carpet
seal of prim

+
3 remora -- one of these should have been a sliver for engineered plague

RUG
-
seal of prim
2 witness

+
carpet
2 remora

BUG
-
seal of prim
living wish
2 witness

+
carpet
3 remora

BURN
-
2 carpet
2 witness

+
harmonic -- against pillar/vortex
3 remora

GOBLINS
-
2 carpet
+
grip -- better than carpet
sliver

Elves
-
2 carpet
2 witness
+
4 trap

SNEAK AND SHOW
-
living wish
2 eternal witness
2 elephant grass

+
emrakul
sliver
krosan
teeg
carpet

MAVERICK
-
2 carpets

+
sliver
grip

[benthetenor]

My current SB looks like this:

2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Compost
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Krosan Grip
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Deep Analysis
1 Pithing Needle

With 1 Mindbreak Trap in the main, in place of your 1 Living Wish.

As I've said throughout, I'm not a huge fan of Living Wish, mostly because it doesn't give you anything you need and it makes you waste at least 3 extra slots in your 75 that you wouldn't otherwise need. The only plus I can find to it is that it's good against a Surgical Extraction, but that's a pretty minor point as people bringing in Surgical Extraction against us isn't a great plan for them, even if it works sometimes. But that would be an argument for keeping one in the sideboard if that's something you fear. I do like Surgical Extraction for us, as it's something you can cantrip into (with either Mystic Remora or Compost) and still cast on their turn, which is a weakness of Tormod's Crypt. Crypt is a little better against Dredge and Reanimator, whereas SE is an actual card that you can bring in against almost any combo deck if you need the slots. I'll chalk that one up to preference, though I was strongly considering going to 1 Tormod's Crypt and 1 Surgical Extraction a few days ago, instead deciding that I wanted that slot to be as high-impact as possible, rather than flexible. It should be noted that against a storm combo deck Compost can act like Mystic Remora to draw you into Mindbreak Traps, only without the need for an upkeep cost. I do like Mystic Remora, I just found it to be lacking in Legacy where every single deck doesn't begin with 1 Black Lotus, 1 Mox Sapphire, 1 Mox Jet....

Kitchen Finks is a strong card to bring in against any deck with Lightning Bolts, and will cause all sorts of havoc against Jund which will buy you the time you need to beat them. And Pithing Needle is a hedge against stuff like Pernicious Deed and Engineered Explosives, both of which will wreck us if you're not prepared for it. That is the one slot that I'm least happy with, though it has so many applications that I've been very happy with it every game that I've drawn it.

It should be noted that my SB plan is definitely weaker than yours against combo, but the plan is to not play this deck in a field where combo is prevalent because the natural strength of this deck is absolutely not competing in a combo-centric metagame. I'd rather use the SB to shore up every other matchup, to ensure that I maintain my edge games two and three in all of the fair matchups, and then play the deck against a field that is mostly tapping Tropical Islands for Noble Hierarchs and Counterspells as I think that gives you the best chance to win with it. I do think that your sideboard will give you a better chance against combo decks, but that's just naturally a soft matchup that no amount of sideboarding is going to turn positive. I do think that having Mindbreak Trap + Tormod's Crypt/Elephant Grass gives you a lot of game against the fastest combo decks in the format and the ones that might try to go Empty the Warrens, and Elephant Grass + Seal of Removal from the main-deck gives you a pretty good game against Show and Tell variants, particularly if they're playing Omniscience, as that gives your Seal of Primordium a chance to be relevant.

[waytowinatwar]

Played in a small tournament (6 ppl), came in second with 2-1.

Changed the deck slightly, mostly in line with benthetenor's suggestions. I cut living wish and thus made room for 3 more sideboard cards (since mind break trap moved maindeck): compost, kitchen finks, and another remora.


4 Argothian Enchantress
2 Carpet of Flowers
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 chrome mox
4 Elephant Grass
4 Enchantress's Presence
2 Eternal Witness
7 Forest
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Island
1 Mindbreak trap
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Savannah
1 Seal of Primordium
4 Seal of Removal
1 Tropical Island
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
3 Windswept Heath
2 Words of Wisdom
Sideboard:
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 compost
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Krosan Grip
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Mystic Remora
2 Surgical Extraction
1. kitchen finks
2 deep analysis

Round 1 against death and taxes (skilled pilot) 2-1

This is like maverick but with rishadan port. G1 was easy, lost g2 to port into vial into thalia on the play. Won g3 through mangara vial canonist and revoker. God it's a powerful deck.
Port , flicker wisp and mangar messes with your enchanted lands so one has to play this more carefully than usual.

Round 2 against RUGb cascade (skilled pilot) 0-2
Didn't draw enough enchantress effects. He forces the first 3 g1! Sideboards sliver, carpet ,remora against witness, removal, Trap should have sided carpet + 2 analysis. Remora is shit against non-ant. Loses g2 to not drawing enough enchantress effects, had to play sliver to destroy a carpet in order to chump. embarrassing.

Round 3 zombardment (poor pilot). 2-0
Elephant grass.

General: love chrome mox. Don't like Mindbreak trap main. Kitchen finks instead? Does the same thing when comboing basically, but more relevant before that? Hate remora. But I did notice that it works well with words of wind before comboing since you can respond to your opponent trying to destroy something by bouncing it via the remora trigger and the wow replacement.

[benthetenor]

Just tested a few games (sideboarded and otherwise) mostly against Jund and found it to be on the poor side of even (maybe 40/60 or so), which means to me if you expect Jund, and I certainly don't not expect it, then we need a better sideboard plan. What I found in my testing, with the sideboard that I just posted, was that the games would go very, very long, and you would lose to cards like Liliana and their SB cards like Chains of Mephistopheles and Engineered Plague. What I'm going to test from here on out is the nuclear answer of Leyline of Sanctity. This is mostly because I found Compost to be largely ineffective, mostly because it was the first thing to get hit with Duress/Thoughtseize and so never actually hit the board, which was kind of what I was finding when it was just a 1-of (only then the problem was just that I was never able to draw it). Kitchen Finks did exactly what I wanted it to do, gumming up the board and gaining some amounts of life, but there's also the fact that if I have Leyline of Sanctity in my sideboard, that should just about do it for the Burn and U/R Delver matchups, making Kitchen Finks largely redundant. But the theory here is that if they can't hit us with their discard and/or kill our Enchantresses with Liliana, we don't really need to stall the game or worry about much because we're just more powerful when 10-14 cards in their deck are now effectively dead.

In this matchup, especially if you expect Chains, board in as much Enchantment hate as you can find. Chains is really, really bad for us and we can't go off or even get set up to go off with it in play. I went up to 2 Seal of Primordium and a Harmonic Sliver, and probably should have brought in the Krosan Grip, too. Point being, I think that this is a matchup that we will continue to see, even if it will be attenuated by the high presence of combo in the metagame, so it's not one that can just be ignored. I'm also considering adding in a Ground Seal instead of the second Tormod's Crypt for two reasons: 1) against Dredge, Ground Seal + Elephant Grass is a complete lock, so it's just as effective as Tormod's Crypt in that matchup, and 2) Ground Seal seriously affects everyone's favorite 1-drop, Deathrite Shaman, as well as hitting cards like Snapcaster Mage and enemy Surgical Extractions and still being a solid card against any deck with a reanimation theme. The fact that it cycles all on it's own is just great, and it lets me bring it in just to combat Deathrite Shaman pretty guilt-free. Not that the Shaman is a big deal against us, but even just cutting them off from using their Birds of Paradise will subtly hinder their ability to fight us.

So, to recap, my experimental sideboard from this point is:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Deep Analysis
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Krosan Grip
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Carpet of Flowers
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Ground Seal/Wheel of Sun and Moon/Compost/Tormod's Crypt/Pithing Needle/flex spot

[waytowinatwar]

So I played another small tournament. 6 ppl, four rounds. Same exact 75. Went 3-1 and got tied for first place. Most rounds I had time to play multiple extra sideboard games.

R1 Warewolf Stompy (dragon Stompy with the red warewolves) 2-1 (5-1)
R2 Jund 0-2 (0-6)
R3 Monoblack 2-0(6-0)
R4 Death and Taxes 2-0

Nothing much to report. Stompy is not too bad. Chalice for 1 hurts but you still get your triggers and can dig for answers. Elephant grass is very good against monoblack.

Jund is a miserable, miserable matchup. His list was close to (http://www.starcitygames.com/article...For-SCGDC.html)

I agree that something needs to be done here and maybe 4 leylines is the way to go. I still have my reservations (expressed above) but will try it out. Present boarding is clearly not working. I don't think we need to worry about chains of m though. Jund players in general will not have them. They might have plagues though so krosan and or sliver are still needed.

What is the board plan though -trap -2 carpet - 4 seal of removal for leylines, ground seal and krosan and sliver? Might work.

Some general comments. Maindeck trap sucks. Precombo it does nothing against anything other than careless Ant players. I think kitchen finks is a good replacement. I can hardly imagine a matchup where infinite life is worse than one hard counter per turn. The former might actually be preferable against ant. And finks does a lot pre combo.

I don't like ground seal. I like that it shuts off shamans for no card investment but 1) I don't think this in itself warrants a sb slot, 2) they are not that great against dredge, like a surgical you have to play on dread return, and if they board rays which they want against grass anyway all bets are off, 3) they don't shut off shallow grave and surgical on grisel is probably stronger 4) we don't care that much about shamen, esp not with leylines.

The extra prim seal in board is probably not needed. Between gsz into sliver and seal of removal and witness to replay seal/sliver/krosan we have a lot already.

The sb carpet is underwhelming as well. They are not amazing in multiples. They have their moments though so ill hang on to it for now. It's currently the first thing that will be cut though.

Here is what I suggest:

4 Argothian Enchantress
2 Carpet of Flowers
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 Chrome mox
4 Elephant Grass
4 Enchantress's Presence
2 Eternal Witness
7 Forest
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Island
1 Kitchen Finks
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Savannah
1 Seal of Primordium
4 Seal of Removal
1 Tropical Island
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Wild Growth
3 Windswept Heath
2 Words of Wisdom

Sideboard:
1 Carpet of Flowers
2 Deep analysis
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Krosan Grip
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Surgical Extraction

[benthetenor]

Those are all good points. I think you're right about Kitchen Finks doing more than Mindbreak Trap, except that there are some corner cases where I'd personally prefer a Mindbreak Trap. One is against control, where you can get into a situation where they think the right play is to just counter all of your Words of Wind and you've got too many Enchantress effects, making you deck yourself by having to cast Words of Wind too many times. That's never actually happened, to be fair, though it's not impossible. A single Mindbreak Trap would let you draw out counterspells by recurring it multiple times without drawing cards, which is pretty strong. But it is absolutely true that more often than not you'd rather it were a Kitchen Finks than a Mindbreak Trap. The one-of in the maindeck is very random game one, and the primary reason to be playing it is to win game 1 against Burn, which Kitchen Finks does better. In most cases infinite life is just better, though there will be a small percentage of game 1's, like against Belcher and Elves, where you're really going to kick yourself for having a Kitchen Finks, but then it does let you pre-board against Jund and Burn and Goblins and RUG and any number of other aggro matchups.

I'd say it's probably close enough to chalk it up to preference, though I will be testing the Finks main to see if I like it any better.

[waytowinatwar]

New tournament: 20 people 2-1-1, tied for 7th place.

Same 75 except for changing harmonic into a quasali pridemage. Cat is clearly better than sliver in almost every way; cheaper to cast and gsz, better body, have better control over if and when something should be destroyed (you can play him and have him around to respond to a mother of runes activation for instance). It is in principle possible to needle/revoker cat but not sliver, but this is a negligible drawback since needle/revoker have more pressing targets in seal of removal and words of wind.


Round 1 against UR delver (ok pilot) 1- 1 - 1

Game 1

Mull to five since I can't find lands. He beats me down with delver and shoots me with lavamancer. I land a prescence, and through tricky use of carpet (draw mana main phase 1, bounce, shift main phase, more mana) I get enough mana to bounce all his stuff. Will go infinite next turn. At one life though. Passes. He drops a goblin guide. KIlls me.

Game 2

Easy, don't remember anything.

Game 3

Bounces everything on the third round after time, I'm at infinite life. Only have creatures whose power sums to 11 though. He's at sixteen. Draw.

Would have been nice if I had an instant win in the deck or just an emrakul. Someone suggested Braingeyser. That's not too bad. One could replace one sb deep analysis for this and pre combo it will work like a slightly weaker deep analysis (against esper for instance). I realize that deep analysis targets, and that you could in theory win with that instead. You'd have to have infinite mana or so and use witness to get it back to recast it. However, letting your opponent draw two cards at the time makes their force of wills, mindbreak traps, and surgicals (which they will draw at some point if they have them) relevant. So braingeyser is better from this perspective. Double blue is not great, but the alternative is stroke of genius and its one mana extra and I think that is too much (even though instant speed is worth something).


Round 2 against UR delver with stifles, dreadnought and vision charm (to save dreadnaught from abrupt decay)(good pilot) 2-0

Pretty fast games, quite an easy matchup. A very strong play from my opponent happened in g2 where he vision charms me during my upkeep to turn my forests into mountains. This kills three utopia sprawls and almost shuts me off green. I have a carpet though which gives me green (not as much as usual though since his tropicals are now mountains) which gives me wildgrowths for my islands, which my faeries untap, and maybe I bounce my carpet and replay it and bounce some other stuff as well but I can't remember since I have so many cards and so much mana and I do whatever I like and god I love this deck.


Round 3 Maverick. 1-2! (good pilot)

Win game 1 through thalia and revoker (naming seal of removal). Takes awhile though and for irrelevant social reasons I'm feeling a bit stressed.

Game 2 I only have one land in hand (forest), and I keep anyway. I'm on the draw but I know that this is wrong. I get two chances to draw any land to not lag behind and I have argothian and seal of removal (and two cloud of faeries) but I definitely should not do this. Because if I miss I will certainly die. Low probability of catastrophic event= don't do it. But I keep the hand and miss my second landdrop. I hit land t3, but at this point my opponent already has thalia and canonist in play and probably more and they are not fucking around.

Game 3 I almost stabilize, even though he has thalia, canonist, mother, some disruptive bird creature, and revoker. We go to time. He kills me on t5 through an intricate sequence of plays involving multiple mother activations to gain unblockabiliity, some exalted triggers, and paying four mana to get through the elephant grass.

I lost to the loose keep g2 but I also missed bouncing an early mom from him g3 which would have bought me time and maybe made a difference. I sometime think about replacing krosan with seal of primordium in the sb. But its really good against mothers so I should definitely keep it. Thalia is a pain but manageble. Canonist is unbearable.


Round 4 Goblins 2-0 (good pilot)

Very easy, almost nothing he does is relevant. He doesn't draw his ports, and no sideboard cards g2 (not sure if he had anything relevant though).

All in all, I'm pretty happy with my performance. Feel for the first time like I could have 4-0ed the event (if things only had been slightly different).

Benthetenor: Are you going to SCG KC? Would be nice to get a tournament report from that.

[benthetenor]

I'll definitely be at SCG KC and almost certainly playing this deck. I'll try to make a report, though I'm not sure how detailed it will be.

I'm a little shocked that you lost any number of games to Maverick, since in my experience that's one of the absolute best decks to play against, but I can see how you did and I guess it happens. I wonder if you might be pressing a bit too much, since on paper those are all fairly positive matchups (maybe not UR Delver, but the point is that they're all fair decks). But again, stuff happens. The fact that you went to time in half of your matchups also suggests that you might need to focus a little on operations, or watch your opponents for slow play (or both).

A general rule of thumb for me is to not keep hands without any accelerants, simply because the speed differences between games where you start out with a Wild Growth and the ones where you don't go from turn 4-5 out to turn 6-7, which is only good against the slowest decks in the format. I'd even (loosely) keep a hand without any enchantresses if I have multiple accelerants, since the odds of drawing an enchantress of some kind in the first few draws are very, very good. But if I have one weakness in my game (and I certainly have many), it's mulliganing decisions. Sometimes I'm too aggressive, sometimes I'm not aggressive enough, and at least once per tournament (sometimes per match) I'll have a hand that my friends will say was an awful keep. But I think if you mull to a good hand, you can very, very quickly overcome card disadvantage that comes from mulliganing, and as redundant as this deck is, it's hard to mulligan to oblivion. But sorry, the point of this paragraph was your mulligan decision against Maverick. If you didn't have at least 3 mana sources (from a mix of lands and Wild Growth effects), I would have insta-shipped it.

Pridemage is interesting. Not sure I would call it strictly better, since Harmonic Sliver can be bounced with your Seal of Removals to machine-gun down a lot of artifacts/enchantments in the mirror match or against a MUD deck. You can kind of do that with Eternal Witness and Qasali Pridemage, but it takes way more mana. As for the cost difference, I'm not sure how many times you're going to GSZ for 2 then pass with a Pridemage on the board since that opens you up to getting blown out by a removal spell. Seems more likely that you'll always GSZ when you have the extra mana up so that that doesn't happen, at which point the differences between the two cards just come down to the body size, which is more or less irrelevant. The fact that Harmonic Sliver can't be Pithing Needled is also not something to take lightly, as there do exist some decks that will have a full playset of Pithing Needle and will be looking for extra targets. That's definitely a small point, but you'd hate to be staring down a board with Pithing Needles on Seal of Primordium, Qasali Pridemage and Words of Wind and be drawing to your one-of Krosan Grip, when you could just as easily be playing Harmonic Sliver and increase your number of outs five-fold. Still, for all of that, the two creatures are pretty close and I think if you like Pridemage, you should run with it.

[waytowinatwar]

I forgot to mention that we're playing 40 minute rounds. So that's part of the explanation of the draws. I should be able to speed up though. But i'm not sure I'm going to be fast enough so that I will never need a braingeyser or something like it that to win straight away. It's too bad spike feeder is so much worse than finks because otherwise it could also double as instant win (as long as one of your faeries/witnesses/sliver/teeg doesn't have summoning sickness).

Regarding speed though, there are a lot of things (I feel) that I need to work out beforehand in order to do it correctly on the spot. For instance, I realized last night, after careful calculation that if you have x lands, two enchant land (one of which must be a wildgrowth if you have one or more islands), one enchantress effect and a words of wind then you can bounce x permanents and draw a card even if you have nothing else. This is a common enough situation and a superpowerful thing to do (which actually costs you 2x) especially since yo can do it (barring disruption) every turn from now on. And yet I couldn't figure out on the spot how to do it during the tournament. Do you have any examples like this?

Interesting points about mulligans. I guess g2 and g3 are highly opponent dependent (compare ant/dredge with esper with goblins). G1 without information is tricky (i guess it should really be a function of expected meta and opponent relative heuristics). I tend to focus more on making sure I have enchantress effects than acceleration (it is a wonderful thing about the deck that it typically has both!). In fact I think my rule of thumb has been mulling hands with out enchantress effects since the games I loose (or so I have thought) are the ones where I just do nothing. But it is true that both the ones I didn't win involved not being fast enough to go off. One thing about acceleration though is that if you have enchantresses you draw accelerants which start to matter more or less immediately so drawing your first accelerant on t4 is likely to give you a faster game than drawing your first enchantress on t4. It is tricky though and I need more data/think more about it. I've started taking photos of my opening hands as a basis for generalization.

Good points about the interaction between seal of removal and sliver. Although this situation doesn't turn up that much in practice (since you often need to use seals on opponents creatures, and neither MUD nor the mirror are DTB) having the possibility is a powerful thing. No dtb plays four needles so I don't think this is an issue, also since cat is sb your opponents more often than not don't know about cat before she strikes. Also cat is much better at killing jaces (on her own or via exalted trigger on a witness for instance)

Good luck in SCG KC! Make us proud! Or at this point (considering the activity in the thread) me.