Sphere is great when you are winning. It's pretty horrible when they just need to push one equipped guy through for lethal, same with Elephant Grass - which has the awful upkeep cost.Originally Posted by btm10
Dihensoeur, it's unreasonable to add non-enchantments to your deck. Even if it improves combo mu, at what cost? Do you really plan to play Duress instead of WG on trun1 against unknown opponent? What if you need to chain draws and become stopped by IoK?
I'd play Runed Halo and Leyline of Sanctity before discard. Yes, both of them do very little against Emrakul, but preboard they're pretty gg for any storm, unless they find a way how to sneak the goblin horde around your taxing effect.
I want to make enchantress competitive. You have no other solution to have chance VS combo.deck G1 (but you can prove me that I'm wrong). But if you prefer playing Enchantress as a casual deck ok you can easily play 100% enchantments cards.
No, my plan isn't to play always discard turn1. You don't play cards without meditate. And all combo.deck doesn't kill T1 so you can generally play your enchant land T1 and start discard T2 depending of your opponent. But if my opponent start and play a forest + elve or a underground sea, yes I play discard T1 because next turn Enchantress will die. Tell me what do you do T1/T2 G1 to avoid to die vs all combo.deck? If you can't that means your enchantress build can't be competitive. But if you have a solution, please tell me!
I don't need to draws infinite cards to win. You just need to have what you want to manage the board and win by a way (and I have 3 differents ways).
Discard can allow you to safely put your card. What do you do when opponent counter/destroy your win con/Argo/presence ? What do you do if you can't chain draws because all Argo/Presence are managed ?
Runed Halo and Leyline of Sanctity are totally inefficient vs all combo.deck. They could annoy only ANT (but a good ANT player can always win), but it's all. Elves/Show.deck are totally no-affected.
Is Gwr Enchantress still viable? Or is it eschewed for straight Gw?
''The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.'' Lord Eddard Stark - A Game of Thrones
-Adsum
-ChrisMeister on MTGO
The fact that you're singling out Elves and Show and Tell decks as the combo matches you're trying to beat with 9-12 Duress effects strongly indicates that you haven't got enough reps in with any Enchantress variant to be making these huge design changes. While Omnitell is awful, Sneak is actually tractable, as combo matches go. Elves is Enchantress's best combo matchup already (not counting Solidarity and other super slow decks). These matchups are still unfavorable, but our way of making Enchantress competitive should be to find the right balance of tools rather than install the engine in a weak Junk aggro shell.
I'm really on the fence about it. Freggle has had success with GW, but I miss a lot of things from the different splashes when I run without them. I'm not sure which splash is best at this point, but they do add things.
Cumulative upkeep 1 is hardly 'awful'. The taxing effect of Grass is huge in tempo matchups, where it forces them to either burn their Abrupt Decays on Grass (if they have them) or play the game at your pace. Daze under Grass is a huge problem for them so you also get an extra layer of protection for your stuff. The switch away from Most in favor of Sphere was slow, but the switch happened for a reason. Sphere is great as a standalone lock against creatures, including those that Most can't stop. You don't have to be winning to have 3 enchantments+Sphere out, and that is plenty to tax an opponent off of his/her attack step.
@Freggle - I'vr been on and off with Rotation in various roles for a while now and I'm not sure that I like it enough. I'll have to test it with 4 Sanctum, though.
It's not "you haven't got enough reps" but "Enchantress haven't got enough reps".
How much you estimated Elves matchup ? 30/70? I'm interesting by your answer.
Could you give me some arguments instead of insult my suggestion. I never insult you or your build so please don't do that. I explained why I find all Enchantress builds in this topic not competitive. If you're not agree, defend yourself with arguments please.
I thought this topic was to discuss about Enchantress build in the goal to make it competitive, by proposing ideas where anyone can show his opinion with arguments, by sharing his personal experience...
But maybe I'm wrong. In this case, I have no place here. So I leave you and sorry for the inconvenience of my posts.
Regards,
Dihensoeur
I keep reading that Enchantress has "no pre-board solution" to Combo decks... it's not true at all.
Never played Living Wish for example?
I've been playing straight GW Enchantress for months, using 3 Living Wish both to find solution to combo (Gaddock, Canonist, Karakas) and my second win condition besides Throne (Emrakul), and it works pretty well. I also play the 3rd Sanctum and the 4th Argothian in the sideboard, so Living wish can grab an "engine" too, not only combo answers and win conditions. It's never a dead card if you build the Wishboard correctly.
With 3 GSZ and 3 Living wish, I never feel the necessity to splash another color.
- Karakas is pretty strong against both Reanimator and Sneak & Show, and with a turn 1 Sprawl / Growth it can come down on our second turn (Living Wish --> take Karakas --> play Karakas --> have fun).
- ANT sometimes is slow enough to let us Living wish --> take Canonist / Gaddock --> play Canonist / Gaddock on our 3rd turn
- TES is faster but it usually goes for the Warrens plan, in which case we just play Elephant grass and we have plenty of time to find any other solution (Confinement / Sphere). If it has to go for Tendrils, it's usually slower and we can follow the same road described for ANT
Post-board it becomes easier because with 3 (or 4) GSZ Canonist and Gaddock can come down faster, which means that on our second turn we should find the right solution to our combo opponent.
It's not that Combo suddenly becomes favorable, but surely it's not an autolose. Not even pre-board if you play Living wish.
Really: why on earth we should play discard and splash other not-synergistic colors to fight combo (and still being weak to it), when we already have an amazing and green tool in Living wish?
Last edited by anakyn; 02-05-2014 at 05:20 AM.
I realize English isn't your first language, so I'll point out that here, "reps" means how many times you've played the deck. From what you've posted so far, it's clear that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Enchantress works.
It's highly splash and build dependent. If you're on straight GW and have 3-4 Grass + 2-3 Confinement +1 Sphere, I'd put it somewhere like 30/70 or even 35/65. This is the one case where Moat would be an improvement on Sphere, but I don't think one deck is enough to warrant the change. If you're on GWb and have 3-4 Engineered Plagues in your 75 you should be something like 35/65 preboard and 40/60 postboard. If Elves were the most prevalent combo deck, Enchantress would be very competitive option.How much you estimated Elves matchup ? 30/70? I'm interesting by your answer.
This is an open forum for discussion. But when you come to a discussion on a very well-established archetype and propose radical changes while suggesting that no one else is trying to make the deck competitive, you should be prepared for skepticism and at least some hostility. It also helps to have at least some testing to back your changes up. Even granting the rest of your list, the fact that you opted to move Thoughtseize to the board in favor of Duress/IoK main suggests that you haven't tested the deck yet, especially given your reasoning for it (if you're paying 2 life to remove a creature like Stoneforge Mystic or Delver, you're pretty happy; if Lightning Bolt had "any opponent may pay 2 life to counter this spell" tacked on to its rules text, it would be worse than Blazing Salvo).Could you give me some arguments instead of insult my suggestion. I never insult you or your build so please don't do that. I explained why I find all Enchantress builds in this topic not competitive. If you're not agree, defend yourself with arguments please.
I thought this topic was to discuss about Enchantress build in the goal to make it competitive, by proposing ideas where anyone can show his opinion with arguments, by sharing his personal experience...
But maybe I'm wrong. In this case, I have no place here. So I leave you and sorry for the inconvenience of my posts.
Regards,
Dihensoeur
The creature package doesn't seem to make sense. What does Nylea do with your 0/1 and 2/2? Pump the 2/2 when you could be using that mana to play enchantments? Isn't Primal Rage strictly better at giving things trample? Sure, she's a 6/6 for 4, but Sigil is harder to remove and will make considerably more than 6 power for things you'd be doing anyway. Why only 1 GSZ? I may not run it in my builds, but if you're going that route, you should really be running at least 2, and probably 3-4 so you know you'll hit it. For that matter, why aren't you running any other tutor effects? Do you find that your permanents are being constantly destroyed without Grove? Why Tendrils with only 1 MD Bayou? If you look at most of the black-splash lists that have been posted, they don't run spells that need BB, which makes sprawl much better at mana fixing.
I agree on the combo point and think Wish is actually an interesting idea. I like it better than GSZ because it doesn't take the MD space while still giving virtual copies and more redundancy. Are you running a complete 15 card wishboard, or are there some 'normal' SB cards that you're running as well?
Just half my sideboard (6 cards right now, since I cut Eternal Witness some weeks ago) is dedicated to the Wish package, the other half has narrow spells/answers I would never cut, like Stony silence, Ground seal and Choke.
Recently I decided to play 4 Leyline in the board (thanks to a discussion I had with Freggle on Salvation) because I found out Jund to be one of my worst matchups, thus forcing me to play only singles copies of any other sideboard card.
Unlike recent trends, I'm not playing the RIP/Helm combo, mainly because I prefer the Wish route and above all because I value Replenish to be too strong against so many decks.
I will post my list soon; I'm particularly interested in some feedback because from my (local) testing it has proved pretty strong against most of the field :)
im also interested in your list :D
I've actually got 2 more questions about your list. First, how do you like Emrakul? I've tested him and found it fairly difficult to get to 15 consistently enough to win with him that I feel like Sigil is better. I'd also like to know what your graveyard hate looks like. I'm running Helm/Rest in Peace alongside Argivian Find in what used to be the Replenish slots, but I still occasionally miss Replenish.
In regards to Emrakul, the issue I've always taken with him is his "win more," status. By the time Enchantress has the ability to ramp up to 15 mana you can reliably win anyway you so choose beyond the atypical choices of Words of War and Sigil of the Empty Throne. If your meta is prevalent with S&T/SA or Grindstone-based strategies, he is a justifiable main, beyond that hes rather lackluster.
As far as Wish lists are concerned, as someone once sported quite fervently I do believe it really boils down to your playstyle and preference. GSZ gives us some MD tempo without compromising our SB. To me GSZ is first and foremost merely intended as Enchantress's 9-10 with a Vexing Shusher in the SB. The benefit of Wish is, for obvious reasons, the utility it grants. At the time I was using it I did something to the effect of:
MD
-3 Argothian Enchantress
-3 Living Wish
SB
-1 Vexing Shusher
-1 Argothian Enchantress
-1 Harmonic Sliver
-1 Serra's Sanctuary
-1 Karakas
Combo tech (Can't particularly remember what I opted for here).
Running Wish does slow tempo slightly as it gives your opponent a turn to answer your utility not to mention it can disrupt you draws, however it does give you a reasonable array of answers which your generic hate can't answer.
Forlorn Egoist
Last edited by ForlornEgoist; 02-06-2014 at 06:59 PM.
How to play Belcher:
Step 1) Draw 7 cards.
Step 2) Throw said 7 cards onto the table while making a "BLAH!" sound.
Step 3) Hold up hands quizically and ask: "Do I win?"
Decks
Enchantress
Dragon Stompy
Rock
UG Madness/Thresh (Pauper)
ForlornEgoist, I'm not disagreeing with your comments on Emrakul as I too held the same sentiment in the past. However, I am wondering if these comments are driven partially by conditions that predate Rest in Peace and the new Legend Rule.
No matter how you cut it 15 mana is a lot of mana, but I do feel that you get every bit of 15 mana out of Emrakul. Emrakul does not get the nod in RIP enchantress over Sigil because of preference it does because it fits a certain type of points the deck needed.
There is a big disconnect between RIP enchantress and GWr Enchantress because GWr has access to Replenish. That means if your 2 to 3 win conditions get countered or destroyed you can just bring them back on the battlefield and win via Replenish. A key feature to those builds.
RIP Enchantress does not share this luxury. The proper play of RIP helm is to land RIP first then resolve Helm so that your opponent does nto get the opportunity to react to your helm activation before it is on the stack. This means however that if it is countered it is exiled. Therefore RIP enchantress does not have the virtual 5-6 wins that GWr has it only has the true 3 (2 Helm, ! other)
The deck ran Sigil for months, but timely counters / discard was a real issue. So in looking for a win condition we were looking for the following:
-It won via the attack (this is to combat player shroud a common way people fight helm)
-It did not require an activated ability (to avoid needles as it is also another common tool that fought helm)
-It was uncounterable (This way timely counters wouldn't just make us auto loose)
-It can be cast with a Gaddock Teeg on the board (in an effort to fight combo decks the deck tried many avenues to fight combo Gaddock was the best, but it also beat ourselves we had to re assess the win)
This left very few options:
-Progenitus -- This could be green suned for so we effectively had more copies and would shuffle in with RIP on the battlefield
-Thrun -- Just too weak. We ignore the board and it could be chumped
-Emrakul -- Was after testing the clear winner.
The fact the Emrakul is a good S&T answer, good against decking, and able to go infinate was all was icing, and raised the power level of the deck.
Therefore in the end I think your assessment of Emrakul in a typical GWr shell is a correct statement. Marginal yet meta specifically justifiable. When it comes to RIP Enchantress it plays a much larger role in the decks success.
You can win without it, but I personally believe you are running a weaker deck. At least for now.
Here's my list, see you later for comments :)
// Lands (19)
1 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
2 Serra's Sanctum
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas
7 Forest
2 Plains
1 Dryad Arbor
// Creatures (3)
3 Argothian Enchantress
// Enchantment Spells (30)
4 Wild Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
2 Mirri's Guile
3 Elephant Grass
4 Sterling Grove
4 Enchantress's Presence
3 Solitary Confinement
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Humility
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
// Non-Enchantment Spells (8)
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Living Wish
2 Replenish
// Sideboard
1 Serra's Sanctum
1 Karakas
1 Argothian Enchantress
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Stony Silence
1 Suppression Field
1 Ground Seal
1 City of Solitude
1 Choke
4 Leyline of Sanctity
Last edited by anakyn; 02-07-2014 at 04:35 AM.
@ Freggle: I'm willing to concede the point that perhaps he does have more MD relevance in other builds. As it stands, my primary experiences lies with the GWr/UG variants. I've no genuine tourney/grinding experience with builds running RIP or the Helm combo, so I won't make outlandish claims about builds I've no experience actually playing. He could very well be much stronger in those builds. The point I made primarily stands, as noted, in the mainstream GWr shells.
@anakyn: Overall your build/SB are somewhat standard in terms of numbers and what they mean to accomplish. My only suggestions would be to decide between GSZ and Wish. Running both often times can weaken opening hands, and frankly they're somewhat contrary to run together. Elect Wish if you need utility to answer a diverse meta. Elect GSZ if you're against standard decks and are simply looking for a little additional tempo via Enchantress redundancy. Running both just subtracts MD slots you could otherwise dedicate to Enchantment-based utility. A secondary option might be to run something to the effect of 2 GSZ for Enchantress 9/10 with 2 Enlightened Tutor or perhaps 3 Living Wish with 2 Enlightened Tutor. At 4/5 spots respectfully, a little bit better than 6 slots, and might give you some better synergy.
I also question Humility MD. What decks are you looking to hose which can't be answered more readily by other cards?
Forlorn Egoist
Last edited by ForlornEgoist; 02-06-2014 at 11:05 PM.
How to play Belcher:
Step 1) Draw 7 cards.
Step 2) Throw said 7 cards onto the table while making a "BLAH!" sound.
Step 3) Hold up hands quizically and ask: "Do I win?"
Decks
Enchantress
Dragon Stompy
Rock
UG Madness/Thresh (Pauper)
I've been running them both for about 8 months, and both my results (in my local meta) and my feeling about them are good/great: I haven't experienced any "anti-synergy" between these 2 cards honestly, because their roles aren't overlapping.
GSZ is like having more virtual copies of Argothian, while Living wish plays a much wider role since it can grab not only Argothian, but also (and especially) answers / engines / win condition from the sideboard.
GSZ is good to have/play in the first stages of the match while Living wish is great at every stage: early if you need combo answers (Karakas / Canonist / Gaddock) or if you are lacking engines (Argothian) which is very rare since I'm running 10 virtual copies maindeck (3 Argothian + 3 GSZ + 4 Presence), mid game if you need acceleration (Sanctum), late game when you wanna just close the match (Emrakul).
I don't wanna cut neither GSZ nor Living wish because they both are necessary for the kind of strategy I wanna play.
With this configuration I'm playing 30 enchantments, which is enough to get the engine rolling.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There are other choices where I'm a bit on the fence:
- Humility maindeck (which you already noted): its anti-synergy with Argothian sucks, but since one of my worst matchups so far has been Jund, I find Humility to be a necessity because I have no other answers to Shaman and Confidant. I've added 4 Leyline very recently, so maybe now the Jund matchup is better and I won't need the Humility anymore specifically for it.
The other reason I'm reluctant to cut Humility is the fact I've already cut Moat, and having a lone Sphere of safety as a 4CC+ answer to creatures seems a bit lackluster to me.
- playing the 20th land or not: most Enchantress list play 20 lands, my list plays 19. I rarely experienced mana issues, yet sometimes they happen. If I come to the conclusion to cut the Humility, I'll probably play the 20th land in its place.
- I'd like to have a 2nd Ground seal in the sideboard because it's a nice answer to difficult matchups like Reanimator and Jund (Shaman), but I really don't know what to cut for it.
I'm pretty happy about the rest of the deck.
Later on I'll leave some details about the meta where I played Enchantress in the last months: it's been very successful, but honestly the meta seems very favorable too because there are lots of fair decks and only one combo (Storm), so no S&T / Reanimator / Elves.
I'm less put off by the 19 lands than I am by the choice of nonbasics. I know some people have liked running Horizon Canopy, but in my experience it never pulled its weight as either a substitute for Savannah or a bonus cantrip. I think if you want built-in cantriping, Abundant Growth is the stronger option. And I get that Arbor is a 1-of and is Green Sun's-able, but when I tested it I felt like every time I had it in my opener it was a mulligan and that it undid a lot of what is good about Enchantress game 1, which is that it gives opponents dead draws like Bolt when you're under Leyline or Confinement. Turning their creature removal into land destruction just isn't good, and also gives you a land that's unenchantable even when you'd be willing to do it to Savannah or Sanctum.
He didn't say Sphere was always great, just that it's better to run Sphere/Grass over Moat, and I agree with that. Moat is alright but the stuff it stops isn't really the stuff I'm most concerned about. TNN beats or the like isn't generally what kills Enchantress since that clock is not extreme, you have multiple turns to dig out and get the engine roaring. Stuff like Marit Lage, Griselbrand, Emrakul, etc. is what's going to end the game before Enchantress can really get going. Elephant Grass is great for buying a little time in those cases (especially vs Lage and Grisel due to the black clause) until you can get a Solitary lock on or find a Sphere. There have been more games than I can count where I was able to chain Elephant Grass into Elephant Grass paying the upkeep as long as I could on each one until I could find a more permanent answer.
Good points overall.
It is true that Enchantress wanna play basics because a Growth effect on a non-basic just loses to Wasteland.
While I could, and I probably will, cut the Canopy (we already draw tons of cards), I don't think I'll cut Dryad because fetching her on the first turn with GSZ is another way to have (potentially) 3 mana on second turn, which is very valuable to me.
I guess that Canopy will become a Forest.
can someone answer some questions for me?
i seem to only have a basic understanding of this deck. i've tested and tested (and probably need even more testing) and tried different versions of the deck, and i cant seem to figure out which build / win condition is the most consistent with the strongest / hardest to disrupt 'foundation'.
the UG words of wind build seems interesting, and is certainly very fun when you are 'going off' with cloud of faeries, but it feels weak to disruption, and i feel like maybe if you have the time to 'go off' and essentially make it into magical christmas land untapping lands and playing whatever you want, is it really necessary? is that way actually better than just trying to resolve a rest in peace, then try to resolve a helm of domination with 1 mana ready to 1 shot their library?
is words of war a thing at all? i feel like its hard to set up but i must confess i only have very limited time trying to test this card and might not have set up my build right to sustain it, or make it useful.
are there any other 'good' win conditions that fit into our 'engine' at all? so far i know of the following win conditions, none of which really -effectively- help our engine out.:
-words of wind
-words of war
-sigil of empty throne
-parallax wave / opalescence combo
-rest in peace / helm
-emrakul
words of wind KIND of helps our 'engine' but only if you have a resolved cloud of faeries, and enough enchanted lands to 'go off'. more of a late game card.
i have a feeling that green sun's zenith / living wish could fit this 'win condition' spot that also help with resiliency, but it does suck that it takes non-enchantment slots when i want to usually build with no less than 29 enchantments.
do you guys know of any other win conditions or atypical card choices that seem like they could have potential / room to explore?
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