Don't forget that it's my feeling from my experience and I'm not a pro player.Originally Posted by The_Dingo
Yes Leafcrown Dryad applies pressure to combo. 2/2 then 4/4 so 2 then 6 damages by turn...
For me, you can't win by playing enchantress then try to be faster than combo.
Elephant Grass is no more efficient for me. Pay 2 to deals 3 damages by turn (Delver/TNN) it's enough to kill us.
Moreover, Elephant Grass slow us instead of really protect us. It's my feeling from my experience, I lose many game where Elephant Grass was totally useless (and it's not VS combo.deck).
It's just my personal list. I don't incite you to play my list (except if you like it ^^). It's just to give you an example of a GWb Enchantress list that I tested.
Regards,
Dihensoeur
1 Sanctum makes it too easy to get blown out. No Crop Rotation or any method to fish it out either. I also really don't like the absence of a basic plains, or at least a Savannah... What is your local meta like? I'm curious. I guess not having Emrakul may be your rationalization for not having more Sanctums... Perhaps I'm just inexperienced and am missing something, which could be and is very true. Would love to have your thoughts here.
No Elephant Grass is peculiar but I'll go with your reasoning.
Also with so many fetches this deck is just BEGGING for Mirri's Guile... There's no reason not to run the maindeck standard of 3 with so many fetches. I don't think "having faith" in your draw engine as you said replaces the empirical consistency of Guile. I can't imagine not running this in Enchantress. Drawing cards is that much better with deck manipulation. You complain about drawing too many lands which leaves me to believe you don't have the faith in your draw engine that you seem to extoll. I feel like if you could cut some Abundants for this, which is a card I don't really like in Enchantress. More perplexing is how you don't take advantage of all the additionalEnchantments with more Sanctums but I digress...
I'm not attacking you here but I'm trying to get into your mindset and understand your choices, because this is a very unorthodox list.
Last edited by Bertrand Hustle; 03-29-2014 at 02:24 AM.
There are 3 colors in the deck (8, 7
and 26
Emrakul can be a reason. But It's mainly because I don't play many white spells and so having lot of white mana can be sometimes useless and to keep the chance to have green mana in opening hand without too many non basic land.
I said "having faith" in my draw engine specially because I don't want to play Mirri's Guile. The reason is that it takes 2-3 slots and doesn't "attack" the opponent (that I found missing in Enchantress). We have already 9-12 Enchantress like (Argothian, GSZ and Presence) more 8-12 enchant lands so 17-24 spells that do nothing VS the opponent. Yes we need them, but we need to be more aggressive, to more control the board and don't let the opponent does anything he want (it's my personal opinion).Also with so many fetches this deck is just BEGGING for Mirri's Guile... There's no reason not to run the maindeck standard of 3 with so many fetches. I don't think "having faith" in your draw engine as you said replaces the empirical consistency of Guile. I can't imagine not running this in Enchantress. Drawing cards is that much better with deck manipulation. You complain about drawing too many lands which leaves me to believe you don't have the faith in your draw engine that you seem to extoll. I feel like if you could cut some Abundants for this, which is a card I don't really like in Enchantress. More perplexing is how you don't take advantage of all the additional
No problem. I know this list shocks many people. I'm convinced that classic Enchantress has no chance to be competitive actually, so I tested so many splash, so many "alien" cards in order to found a solution. I studied DTB.deck and tried them to understand "why they wins and Enchantress not?", "What is missing to Enchantress ?". It's maybe stupid questions for you but for me they were crucial.
Regards,
Dihensoeur
It seems like there's been a trend (at least with the last few lists posted) to use Wild Growth instead of Exploration. Could someone please explain why? (Or point me to an existing explanation?) Thanks!
The reason is ramp (Growth) vs. pure acceleration (Exploration). A lot of our strength against tempo and control is our ability to overload their countermagic by dropping bomb after bomb, and that requires a lot of mana since our bombs aren't cheap. Exploration can lead to turn 2 Argothians that dodge Daze, but it doesn't lead to 5-6 mana turn 3s where you bait a counter with your second Enchantress effect and proceed to drop Confinement or your second Grove. It definitely doesn't lead to the 12+ mana turn 5s where you play 5 enchantments, draw 10 cards, and set up an inevitable turn 6 win with RiP/Helm or Words of Waste->empty their hand->Sigil or Sigil->Counter->Replenish Sigil and make 3 tokens with Elephant Grass + Guile + Growth effects. It does help with using Sanctum as a super-Black Lotus, though. I'd be interested in seeing a list that uses Exploration to make the explosiveness of multiple Sanctum activations in a single combo-like turn work better than the grindier Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl approach. Maybe something with Courser of Kruphix for the long game?
@Dihensoeur - I think you're misunderstanding why Enchantress isn't a tier 1 deck, and what its role in a game is. It's a tier 2 deck because it has an abysmal combo matchup, though the lack of combo in the top tier right now might provide an opening for us. The other thing I think you're misunderstanding is that Enchantress is a control deck with favorable aggro and midrange matchups and ~50/50 tempo matchups. If played correctly, Enchantress has a very strong matchup in the control mirror. Miracles has to float their useful answers and wincons to use counterbalance/top since most of our spells cost 3, 4, or 5 mana, and we brick their MD Swords by not running targetable creatures and brick their Spell Pierces by being able to ramp over the taxing effect. And I'll 2-for-1 them with their own Forces all day because at the end I get to Replenish my stuff back. We don't need pressure at all against aggro, tempo, or control, and suck at applying it against combo. There are plenty of unconventional paths we might take to achieve a better combo matchup, though, and we should discuss them. Do we want to try a sideboard that starts with 4 Bayou/4 Hymn/1 Thoughtseize with the other 3 TS main? Do we want to run as GWu and board Force and Spell Pierce? Things like this fit with our game 1 plan and are broad in scope. Adding small, targetable creatures that die to common removal dilutes the game 1 strategy and offers little to no gain. Please don't take this the wrong way, because I don't want to drive people away from the Source or this thread or the deck, but perhaps your testing results are too preliminary or you just don't have enough experience with the deck to be proposing radical changes to its fundamental strategy.
In regards to exploration I was running 2 in my deck for a very long time. I started with 3, but hated seeing them in my opening hand because it is worse than wild growth early in the game. So I cut exploration down to 2 for a while and it worked well. Recently I cut exploration down to 1 to try some other things in that spot, and i saw it so infrequently that I feel as if 2 or 0 is the correct number. It made for some absolutely absurd turns, and I was at times able to chain multiple sanctums into an absolutely crushing position. It doesn't always work that well, but it does help a lot once the engine is online to keep the draw chain going for several more spells, which spills over to the next turn, and the next if the game goes on that long. Post board exploration was almost always the first card that I boarded out which makes me think that there are better cards for the MD.
@btm10:
Yes, and without complete this gap, Enchantress can't be a tier 1. That was my goal with Black splash.
You forget a main thing. This is not because there is no/few combo in the top tier that you will not meet them in a big tournament. So, except if you're very lucky, you will meet combo.deck. Moreover, Enchantress is sensitive to some hate-combo that many deck have in their sideboard.
In order to start a discussion about the needs to change Enchantress, Enchantress's players have to establish the real rate of matchups. Because saying 50/50 for all non-combo.deck doesn't seem to be correct. Maybe you just don't have enough experience with the deck on the actual meta. You should play the last top Enchantress deck list VS actual meta (at least 40 games per deck (20 without sideboard, 20 with sideboard)) and expose results in this thread. With your results, every body will be enable to correctly and really see where Enchantress is in the actual meta, the gap between each deck and start to work together how fill gaps.
Like you, I don't want to drive people away from this thread. I just expose my personal best list, that I found fill at max the gap with actual meta, because someone asked for a B splash list, and I answered questions.
I will just continue to answer questions and I will not interfere into this thread in order to break the Enchantress fundamental strategy.
Thanks for the explanation.
Hello all. I have been extremely busy in my non-Magic life as of late, but I did want to report that in spotty testing that cutting the (3) Carpet of Flowers for (3) Swords to Plowshares in the board does seem like the correct call.
Unfortunately due to my schedule these testing sessions are not long enough to fire-up the stream to do it with all of you. Having said that I'm seeing a slow down starting next week and hope to fire it up sometime then to further prove it out.
I have beat D&T with this plan, and that makes me very happy.
Here is my list that I've used for a while. Lots of auto wins against various decks. I haven't been able to test much against fast combo but I'm trying this sideboard for now. I know the 1-of Teeg is probably wrong but I haven't given it much thought lately. I know the order the cards are listed is wacky; that's because it's copied from Cockatrice. I know many people dislike Words of War but it is excellent and I would never cut it. Sacred Mesa is pretty chill for making some chump blockers and with Sanctum you can easily flood the board, especially with the new legend rule. Against many decks, Rest in Peace + Energy Field = automatic win and same goes for RIP + Web of Inertia (prevents annoying crap like Annihilator).
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Enchantress's Presence
4 Sterling Grove
4 Elephant Grass
2 Rest in Peace
1 Energy Field
3 Solitary Confinement
4 Wild Growth
4 Utopia Sprawl
2 Serra's Sanctum
6 Forest
2 Plains
1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
1 Sacred Mesa
1 City of Solitude
1 Web of Inertia
1 Tropical Island
2 Savannah
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept Heath
1 Words of War
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Arid Mesa
1 In the Eye of Chaos
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Green Sun's Zenith
SB: 2 Oblivion Ring
SB: 2 Stony Silence
SB: 1 Humility
SB: 4 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 2 Carpet of Flowers
SB: 1 Gaddock Teeg
SB: 3 Mindbreak Trap
Hey guys, long time lurker here. Just wanted to chime in and throw my support behind dihensoeur though I doubt I’m brave enough to try anything that radical at this point. I sympathize with your aims and goals.
I’ve radically torn apart this deck many times in search of something better and I’m sad to say the vast majority of ‘improvements' have done little to make the deck stronger than it already was or improved upon known cards and solutions. I do think it's really important to ask if changes to deck produce something truely better then what exists. I think running more than a bare minimum of non-enchantments that aren’t cantrips in the deck significantly detracts from the synergy of the whole deck. For a period I was trying a similar line with silence effects and they tend to hurt us most in the early game where we really need to be playing enchantments to power our engine, or under solitary drawing into enchantment's to keep from stalling out. The same is generally true of artifacts. Which is not to say they can’t be run, but we should always ask ourselves if the same issue could be resolved with an enchantment.
I had a similar moment of searching for a decent enchantment creature, most of the choices seem underwhelming. The best I’ve really found if you wanted that sort of effect is Hidden Gibbons, which is still underwhelming and goes against our strategy of blanking removal. For enchantment based discard for a period I was playing with parallax nexus along side words of waste though I doubt anyone else would recommend it.
It saddens me to say it, but I’ve come to except there are just things enchantress cannot do without radically altering our fundamental game plan, i.e. locking the game, or in helm enchantress, starting our engine and resolving rip/helm. Enchantress as an archtype is a victim of the limitations of its synergy.
I have buckets of wacky idea’s about enchantress most of which I generally don’t feel comfortable sharing and opening up to public scrutiny, at some point we have to be honest why we are playing the deck we are playing or perhaps one should be running a different shell altogether. That being said, I’ve been toying with trying to find a way to run counterbalance inside the enchantress shell alongside grove, guile and e tutor =P. Case and point, perhaps I should be playing countertop ;).
Here’s my current list:
7 forests
1 plains
4 windswept heath
1 savannah
1 karakas
3 serra’s sanctum
4 wild growth
4 eutopia sprawl
2 exploration
4 argothian enchantress
4 enchantress presence
3 green sun zenith
3 mirri’s guile
3 elephant grass
3 leyline of sanctity
3 solitary confinement
2 oblivion ring
2 rest in peace
1 aura of silence
1 wheel of sun and moon
1 enlightened tutor
1 city of solitude
1 helm of obedience
1 emrakul, the eons torn
SB
1 leyline of sanctity
1 karmic justice
1 aura of silence
1 oblivion ring
1 enlightened tutor
1 choke
1 city of solitude
2 sterling grove
2 runed halo
3 suppression field
1 gaddock teeg
Interesting new card:
Downsides are that it casts four mana, is susceptible to both creature and enchantment removal (spot and sweepers), and doesn't allow you to draw a card if your enchantment is countered.
Upsides are that it cantrips naturally, can be fetched with GSZ, and plays ridiculously well with Replenish.
Is there a spot in the deck for this?
Interesting. Another card it plays nice with is eureka.Interesting new card:
Downsides are that it casts four mana, is susceptible to both creature and enchantment removal (spot and sweepers), and doesn't allow you to draw a card if your enchantment is countered.
Upsides are that it cantrips naturally, can be fetched with GSZ, and plays ridiculously well with Replenish.
Is there a spot in the deck for this?
i could see this card playing nice with replenish as a 1 of, but that 4 mana cost is very prohibitive i feel. if it was a 3 drop 1/1 it would be much much better :CInteresting new card:
Downsides are that it casts four mana, is susceptible to both creature and enchantment removal (spot and sweepers), and doesn't allow you to draw a card if your enchantment is countered.
Upsides are that it cantrips naturally, can be fetched with GSZ, and plays ridiculously well with Replenish.
Is there a spot in the deck for this?
4 mana is too much because by the time you have 4 mana you should hopefully already have an enchantress effect out, or 2, and be doing meaningful things to stabilize you, not keep building more and more enchantress effects while legacy decks just.. WIN XD.
I don't want it due to lack of ability to play it on turn two realistically. I don't really want to turn the deck upside down to make that happen while opening it up to their removal.
Whenever I see a kid in a wheelchair it makes me a little sad. Because I always think, "Gee, they could have used those same wheels to make a bike for a regular kid. What a waste."
I agree the card is interesting, and as an enchantress player extremely exciting to see, but it is not a snap to place it in the Rest in Peace builds for the following reasons (most of them you mentioned.)Interesting new card:
Downsides are that it casts four mana, is susceptible to both creature and enchantment removal (spot and sweepers), and doesn't allow you to draw a card if your enchantment is countered.
Upsides are that it cantrips naturally, can be fetched with GSZ, and plays ridiculously well with Replenish.
Is there a spot in the deck for this?
-Tempo: in Enchantress 3 mana is much different than 4 mana, and it competes for slots of 2-3 mana spells (argothian, Presence, GSZ)
-Its a Creature without shroud: blanking removal is important, unless you plan to overload removal. i.e. Opalescence, or hidden enchantments
-It does not draw on cast: This is very difficult to overcome. Drawing on cast is what makes are control MU's favorable
...at best I see it as a 1 of tutor target, but I don't even think it makes that cut because it is not draw on cast, and I personally wouldn't want to cut any of the 4 Green Sun's because they are crucial to find Teeg for the combo MU. ...at least as the deck is build currently.
Where it may work is:
-Hypothetical Commune with gods / Attunement Replenish build.
-Hypothetical Eureka build. ...actually this could be a lights out card there. (dump mega hand draw mega hand proceed on)
-Modern: Enchantress up to this point was dead in Modern (outside of auras) this may be a birthing point.
That is my inital reaction to it at least.
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/jou/aasd7y23m34co/VZ2R4jw0d4_EN.jpg
That seems a very nice addition to the G/W/B version (Junk enchantress?) of Dihensoeur. Its a wincondition with the mana ability (not very fast to to WB mana, but it's good enough), stall condition (lifegain) and a creature to attack with (like the Dryad in the list). Talk about sweet! More interesting as the Eidolon of Blossoms in my opinion.
You know, this just made me wonder why i haven't been running 1-of Elvish Visionary for those awkward times I'm stuck with a GSZ and no enchantments in hand.Interesting new card:
Downsides are that it casts four mana, is susceptible to both creature and enchantment removal (spot and sweepers), and doesn't allow you to draw a card if your enchantment is countered.
Upsides are that it cantrips naturally, can be fetched with GSZ, and plays ridiculously well with Replenish.
Is there a spot in the deck for this?
That 2/2 just looks too expensive. Could work with a combo-y Replenish build, but that seems bad against DRS and the RiP plan. Also just turns on their StPs in game 1. It dodges Abrupt Decay, but so does GSZ @ Argothian for 1 less mana.
Dihensoeur's list looks unorthodox and probably far from optimal, but I see merit in what he's trying to do. The implementation could probably be tweaked. But there is a fundamental weakness that makes traditional Enchantress bad in the current meta. Yeah, OK, you beat Miracles and D&T, but the rest of the tier decks don't look like better than 50/50 matchups.
Enchantress just fundamentally scoops to T1/T2 Emrakul. Solitary and Elephant Grass don't save you from them paying 2 and annihilating your board before smashing you for 15. They both stop damage from Griselbees though, so I guess the opponent has to suffice with drawing ONLY 14 cards. Seems bad. Random stuff like Tin Fins and Belcher are a nightmare. A smart ANT/TES player is probably winning unless you win the die roll and lucksack T2 Enchantress T3 Confinement. Combo sucks.
The next worst matchup, tempo, while not abysmal is tough when you have to play around counterspells while getting Lightning Bolted every turn by an unblockable blue creature. Elephant Grass is annoying, but after the first turn ends up making you spend more than they have to spend -- maybe not the best way to beat a mana denial deck. Solitary lock is the main line of defense, but that can be hard to set up through free counterspells and mana disruption and discard.
Looks like what he's trying to do is:
-gain interactivity vs combo
-buy some time against tempo
-avoid getting manabase wrecked by tempo
I see merit in that general plan, although maybe the discard package and Leafcrown Dryad are not the best ways to attain that.
This deck is called Solitaire for a reason. More than half of the deck doesn't interact with the opponent. The deck overly relies on a few enchantment lock pieces to hold off the opponent while you progressively masturbate to completion. I've managed to beat Enchantress with decks that Enchantress SHOULD beat just by exploiting the fact that it's too dependent on a few cards to interact with the opponent. Combo can mostly ignore them; tempo can do a good job of keeping them off the board. One way to combat that is to remove some durdle and add more interactivity.
So how to boost interactivity?
4 Leyline of Sanctity SB seems like a much better way to beat Liliana/edicts/discard than running targetable creatures. Also helps against some combo.
Lots of basics seems good.
As janky as it might sound, Sunspring Expedition is a 1-mana enchantment that curves into your gameplan but buys you 8 life for 1 mana. Maybe helps stabilize? Makes Tendrils and EtW somewhat harder to win with. Buys a couple timewalks against Delver/TNN, more than Elephant Grass would.
Porphyry Nodes should beat Delver, although it will probably just trade 1-for-1 with a tempo player unless they crapped out creatures on the board.
Humility SB helps against fatties, TNN, Delver and random stuff although also costs you some of your draw engine. Not sure if that's worth it. Maybe 1-2 copies.
Discard may still be a good idea.
Last edited by FTW; 04-09-2014 at 01:49 PM.
I too am a supporter of Dihensoeur's and have been for some time. It takes a lot of testing to develop something "new." ...and this is just a step towards that.
I would be more interested in his list if he explored Dark Confidant as an independent draw engine that gets around a fair amount of enchantress hate, and works extremely well with Mirri's Guile (another card I'm skeptical of it's omission.)
Having said that I still encourage him to keep testing & tweaking.
...not exactly true. Enchantress has Oblivion Ring, Karakas and build pending their own Emrakul, Sphere of Safety, or Helm of Obedience. All of which are good things to drop in off of a hasty Show and Tell or clean up post show.
It's really not as bad as you make it out to be the MU is pretty even, and pending how they board favorable. Suppression Field also slows down Fetches and Grizzy activations.
[QUOTE=FTW;804524]Random stuff like Tin Fins and Belcher are a nightmare. A smart ANT/TES player is probably winning unless you win the die roll and lucksack T2 Enchantress T3 Confinement. Combo sucks.[/cards]
Of these the worst MU you mentioned Tin Fins is the worst, but certainly beatable. Leyline and Stony Silence, RIP, Suppression Field, o ring, Karakas, elephant grass all give them a run for their money. Maybe something like 65 / 35 Tin Fins favor.
Blecher does not like Suppression Field, Leyline, Elephant Grass, Stony Silence, an Teeg it's a coin toss 50 /50.
Tempo is very beatable with Elephant grass and Carpet of Flowers. I recently have dropped carpet from the board in lieu of Swords to Plowshares, and have not played the MU since the change. I would imagine if we can resolve carpet to win we could resolve swords to stall to win.
Discard is a good idea for those things. I played a BW Kor Spiritdancer deck years ago, and the main reason it could compete was because of the hand disruption. The problem is though there is an early expiry to discard and it doesn't allow you to draw. To offset this he should run Bob.
For Reference here is my current list:
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Enchantress's Presence
4 Green Sun's
4 Wild Growth
4 utopia Sprawl
3 Mirri's Guile
3 Rest In Peace
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Emrakul
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Suppression Field
4 Solitary Confinement
4 Elephant Grass
4 Serra's Sanctum
1 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
1 Karakas
11 Forest
Sideboard:
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Suppression Field
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Stony Silence
2 Oblivion Ring
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