I feel so awful posting yet ANOTHER deck advice thread here. I was planning on just making a clean switch to R/G. But after FNM I ended up deciding I liked the look of some of the enchantment decks, and that I wanted to turn my lame W/B Midrange deck (Without any of the cards that actually make it good save Desecration Demon) into kind of a heroic/enchantment deck. I've already started the conversion process, take a look:
So, obviously, it's still kinda stuck in the middle here.
I need help improving it though. Because I'm not sure if it'll be at all something I want to continue after some of the important cards rotate out (Ethereal Armor and Gift of Orzhova, plus Desecration Demon) I want to keep it pretty budget.
One of the main things I'm not sure on is which two drop to run. Thrill-Kill isn't going to cut it. However, I'm stuck between Underworld Coinsmith or Hero of Iroas. Hero seems like it could be more bomby, but Coinsmith also seems like it could be good as well, so I'm not sure. Besides that, it really feels like this deck is crammed, and I'm not sure how to change that. I feel like the deck still wants Gray Merchant, and I feel like it still wants a lot of the cards that are in it now, but it also wants other cards, like possibly different auras or more heroic creatures like Tormented Hero and I just don't know where to put them.
Let's face it, Underworld Coinsmith is just a more complicated and expsensive version of Extort, though with more of a double edge - you have to be in a position to spend enough of your life so that your opponent can lose it. Luckily, things like Divine Favor can definitely help, and will turn your Coinsmith into a nice fat wall to block oncoming attacks with.
Though I desperately want to work in Eidolon of Rhetoric, it's just too fragile, even if it is an enchantment creature.
I'd go with the Underworld Coinsmith, Grim Guardian, and cheap enchantments and enchantment creatures option. They'll lose life when you enchant your own creatures and when you enchant theirs, and then you can use any loose mana to keep pinging them for damage.
I'm not seeing a good justification for an enchantment base as you are. Just banking on drawing ethereal armor and being able to land a fat hit with it is over optimistic. I think you need better justification to play a heavy enchantment type deck. For example, funsy constellation or sphere of safety. Grim guardian especially as noted. If you really want that enchantment train, you might as well dig into constellation anyway whether you make that the base of the deck or not.
Other things I'd include are Nyx-Fleece Ram (hoses early aggro, gains you life for later), Chosen by Heliod (probably a sideboard option, although cantrips in any deck are not to be sneezed at), Oppressive Rays, and some cheap controlly auras from RTR for now. The way I look at it, if you slow your opponent down enough, whatever creatures you land late game are going to cinch it for you, since you'll play a small creature and then attach Ethereal Armor to it.
I agree that ethereal armor can win late game. The main gripe over doing enchantments for just that from me is that it is a rather heavy constraint for such a thin synergy. Something like constellation would validate it on a wider scale and make ethereal armor fall in naturally whereas if it was just for ethereal armor, I think I'd rather be playing a hexproof deck.
Drop Thrill-Kill, and bring in Rakdos Shred-Freak. He's better for the devotion and has haste and things. Don't even need to splash red!
If you are considering running Constellation for B/W, Doomwake Giant is always a scary thing to bring out. Grim Guardian is good for minor damage, Deviant Glee is an easy 1 drop for constellation procs and buffs, and Oppressive Rays act like a miniature Sphere of Safety for cheap.
If you're into splashing blue, Aqueous Form can be a nightmare with an enchantment deck. It demands your opponents attention and grants you unblockable damage for a period of time that can be horrifying paired with Ethereal Armor
The one thing I know for sure now is that I DON'T really want to go totally enchantment themed. I'm not all that interested in basically gutting this deck to turn it into something else.
What about heroic? That's more what I was going for? Basically, my goal here is to make threats by either upgrading big creatures with things that make them better (IE: Giving Desecration Demon lifelink) or taking a small creature and making it into a threat (IE: Agent of the Fates into a 6/5 flier with Herald of Torment.)
So... I've found making skeletons for decks is often helpful, so here's a skeleton:
Creatures are expendable and easy to destroy right now, and Heroic requires you to invest in your creatures. If you want to play a deck based around one or more Heroic cards, then it is imperative you have protection for your Heroic creatures. If they get your Heroic centerpiece, then the whole thing will fall apart.
Bestow for me is a very slow, clunky, and lackluster mechanic, and I would simply use a cheaper enchantment rather than an enchantment creature with Bestow.
Heroic in this color choice isn't so great and agent is laxluster but if I had to, I'd do it ub.with all frankness, you're going to end up tossing half the deck or more because you have a hodgepodge that has many cards that can be replaced with more cohesive ones cheaply. So either a bunch of it will go or it'll remain without focus. If you wanted heroic, uw or wr would be miles better for cheaper and if you wanted enchantments, you'd be gutting most of the deck for the better cheapo enchantments since they mesh better and actually benefit the strategy.Not to mention tgat a lot of the pieces could probably be gathered for cheap or free after a draft night.
I added in Hopeful Eidolon and Akroan Skyguard because Hopeful Eidolon can be used as a bestow card for lifelink and Akroan Skyguard is one of my favorite early game creatures with heroic. I put in 8 removal spells, feel free to change them to w/e you want. I considered Gift of Orzhova, but if you run 11/18 creatures that have flying...it just wasn't appealing. If you change the roster, consider Gift of Orzhova; it is a great card. Underworld Connections for card draw, Mortals Ardor for heroic procs and lifelink, and Whip of Erebos for mid/late game lifelink on all creatures is great, plus the revival when you need it.
I'd like to question. Why wb heroic enchantments? Let's stack up the goodies. White is the core color of heroic without a doubt with the best heroic creatures and the best defensive tricks along with ethereal armor. Blue gives you evasion and gas in spades. Red gives you madcap skills and boros charm. Black gives you... heroic creatures? No. They're weaker than either other color in that respect and even white by itself gives you plenty. Hand hate? Not really. Kill spells? Mo s tly a waste of space for heroic. Bestow? Terribly slow for heroic and not something that you'd put at the core. Lifelink? White has already got that. Desecration demon doesn't really belong and whip? That is a lot to pay for lifelink when you could just play the cheaper, more synergistic, and on theme ordeal of heliod without binding yourself to another color. There's no compelling reason I'm aware of to play black in heroic.
The idea was to use Agent of the Fates for some extra removal. But nevermind, I suppose. The deck advice here is all over the place, so I think I'll just figure it out on my own, thanks.
Agent of the Fates is one of the stronger heroic effects out there and is a pretty compelling reason to at least consider black heroic. You could try a BW aggro deck. Cap the the curve at 3-4 and bring in Pain Seer. There's also the option of adding Xathrid Necromancer and a Human subtheme.
On the contrary, agent of fates is probably the weakest heroic creature once you discount those that are just there and focus on constructed. Tapping out on turn 1 for a heroic creature? You're fine and not losing time. Tapping out on turn 3 so you can maybe do something turn 4? Way too slow, more likely to eat removal, and not even in a good heroic color. You can make them sac a creature... or they could be half dead. Compare to uw heroic and wr heroic and you'll see that no amount of budget, no amount of thoughtseize will change the fact that black doesn't support the heroic theme well and that the best wb heroic is probably just mono white, splashing for goodstuff cards that doesn't even include agent. There are worse cards than agent of fates. There are also better ones that outperform it in every matchup except maybe hexproof.
Favored hoplite, hero of iroas, lagonna-band trailblazer, and fabled hero to name a few.
I have a similar deck I run and while I'm not going undefeated in every single FNM or anything I do fair quite well with the deck. It has gone through a few changes since I first built it and so is more "tuned" than the random suggestions others have offered so far. I'll post the list here:
Hero of Iroas is an absolute house. Hold onto your Gods Willing until they use removal on him. Then when its down to the last attack of the game use one to make him unblockable by giving him protection against the color of your opponent's creatures. Rogue's Passage offers an additional option for getting in for the last few damage of the game and so does Herald of Torment.
I typically use Ultimate Price as my first choice in removal against targets with high toughness. Orzhov Charm is for anything that is multi-colored and things like mana dorks. It is also good to get back a Hopeful or Nyxborn and begin suiting that up with more bestow creatures.
Don't cast read the bones until it is the last card in your hand or until you need a specific type of removal to push damage through. Casting it before that is a huge tempo loss because this deck wants to win fast. You have to know what your win conditions are (Gods Willing, Rogue's Passage, Ultimate Price, and Herald of Torment) and use it to find them.
Celestial Archon is...okay I guess. It does not die to Bile Blight or Lightning Strike and is a good target to put enchantments on but you could just as easily replace it with something like Spiteful Returned. I've tried a lot of things in that slot including Spear of Heliod and Eidolon of Great Battles. Spear was okay but I found that I would almost always rather have a creature. Eidolon of Great Battles was awful. He almost always ended up being a 3 or 4 mana 1/1. Gnarled Scarhide made early mana wierd becuase I almost always wanted at least 1 white source by at least turn 2. In order to be able to play him on turn 1 as consistently as I drew him I had to add more swamps which meant there were times I didn't have the Plains I needed to use Hero or Iroas or Ethereal Armor on turn 2 or did not have the plains to play Hopeful or Nyxborn turn 1 if I didn't draw a Gnarled. Honestly I just don't know what to put there. Desecration Demon would be as good as anything else honestly.
I do not recommend Gift of Orzhova. The only reason I even run Ethereal Armor is because it is freaking nuts with Hopeful Eidolon or Nyxborn if you can drop it and another 1 drop on turn 2. I'm sure you already know what kind of crazyness that is. If you can't do that just hold up your guys and start Bestowing them onto Hero of Iroas. If he dies you can just Bestow them onto whatever creature you had attached to Hero and keep going.
Rogue's Passage seems really crappy but I'm telling you, do not underestimate it. Also, if you can, do not play it before turn 5 so the opponent can't plan ahead for it. If you do it right they will tap out to build up some kind of defense only for it to not matter. It happens more often than you'd think.
You see this list is highly aggressive and wants to get in as much early damage as it can. Then once the opponent begins to stabalize you use Celestial Archon, Herald of Torment, Gods Willing, Rogue's Passage, Underworld Coinsmith, or one of your removal spells to push through the final damage to close out the game before their defense can muster.
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I'm working on building up a similar deck and I had two [[Hero of Iroas]] in it but I ended up swapping them out for an extra [[Underworld Coinsmith]] and [[Brain Maggot]].
2x Hopeful Eidolon
3x Thrill-Kill Assassin
3x Agent of the Fates
3x Herald of Torment
4x Desecration Demon
2x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
4x Ethereal Armor
4x Gift of Orzhova
Instants/Sorceries:
4x Duress
3x God's Willing
3x Ultimate Price
2x Orzhov Charm
4x Orzhov Guildgate
4x Godless Shrine
7x Plains
8x Swamp
So, obviously, it's still kinda stuck in the middle here.
I need help improving it though. Because I'm not sure if it'll be at all something I want to continue after some of the important cards rotate out (Ethereal Armor and Gift of Orzhova, plus Desecration Demon) I want to keep it pretty budget.
One of the main things I'm not sure on is which two drop to run. Thrill-Kill isn't going to cut it. However, I'm stuck between Underworld Coinsmith or Hero of Iroas. Hero seems like it could be more bomby, but Coinsmith also seems like it could be good as well, so I'm not sure. Besides that, it really feels like this deck is crammed, and I'm not sure how to change that. I feel like the deck still wants Gray Merchant, and I feel like it still wants a lot of the cards that are in it now, but it also wants other cards, like possibly different auras or more heroic creatures like Tormented Hero and I just don't know where to put them.
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Sig Credit: Pegasus Bishop
Though I desperately want to work in Eidolon of Rhetoric, it's just too fragile, even if it is an enchantment creature.
I'd go with the Underworld Coinsmith, Grim Guardian, and cheap enchantments and enchantment creatures option. They'll lose life when you enchant your own creatures and when you enchant theirs, and then you can use any loose mana to keep pinging them for damage.
If you are considering running Constellation for B/W, Doomwake Giant is always a scary thing to bring out. Grim Guardian is good for minor damage, Deviant Glee is an easy 1 drop for constellation procs and buffs, and Oppressive Rays act like a miniature Sphere of Safety for cheap.
If you're into splashing blue, Aqueous Form can be a nightmare with an enchantment deck. It demands your opponents attention and grants you unblockable damage for a period of time that can be horrifying paired with Ethereal Armor
The one thing I know for sure now is that I DON'T really want to go totally enchantment themed. I'm not all that interested in basically gutting this deck to turn it into something else.
What about heroic? That's more what I was going for? Basically, my goal here is to make threats by either upgrading big creatures with things that make them better (IE: Giving Desecration Demon lifelink) or taking a small creature and making it into a threat (IE: Agent of the Fates into a 6/5 flier with Herald of Torment.)
So... I've found making skeletons for decks is often helpful, so here's a skeleton:
3x Herald of Torment
4x Desecration Demon
3x God's Willing
WUBRGCommander Decklists - PaperWUBRG
CCCCCommander Decklists - TheorycraftCCCC
Sig Credit: Pegasus Bishop
Bestow for me is a very slow, clunky, and lackluster mechanic, and I would simply use a cheaper enchantment rather than an enchantment creature with Bestow.
4x Hopeful Eidolon
4x Akroan Skyguard
3x Agent of the Fates
3x Herald of Torment
4x Desecration Demon
4x Ultimate Price
2x Doom Blade
2x Bile Blight
3x Gods Willing
2x Underworld Connections
4x Mortal's Ardor
3x Gods Willing
2x Whip of Erebos
I added in Hopeful Eidolon and Akroan Skyguard because Hopeful Eidolon can be used as a bestow card for lifelink and Akroan Skyguard is one of my favorite early game creatures with heroic. I put in 8 removal spells, feel free to change them to w/e you want. I considered Gift of Orzhova, but if you run 11/18 creatures that have flying...it just wasn't appealing. If you change the roster, consider Gift of Orzhova; it is a great card. Underworld Connections for card draw, Mortals Ardor for heroic procs and lifelink, and Whip of Erebos for mid/late game lifelink on all creatures is great, plus the revival when you need it.
WUBRGCommander Decklists - PaperWUBRG
CCCCCommander Decklists - TheorycraftCCCC
Sig Credit: Pegasus Bishop
Favored hoplite, hero of iroas, lagonna-band trailblazer, and fabled hero to name a few.
12 Plains
9 Swamp
2 Rogue's Passage
CREATURE (22)
4 Hopeful Eidolon
4 Nyxborn Shieldmate
4 Hero of Iroas
4 Underworld Coinsmith
4 Herald of Torment
2 Celestial Archon
3 Gods Willing
3 Ultimate Price
3 Orzhov Charm
2 Read the Bones
4 Ethereal Armor
3 Duress
1 Ultimate Price
3 Divine Favor
3 ???
3 ???
2 ???
Hero of Iroas is an absolute house. Hold onto your Gods Willing until they use removal on him. Then when its down to the last attack of the game use one to make him unblockable by giving him protection against the color of your opponent's creatures. Rogue's Passage offers an additional option for getting in for the last few damage of the game and so does Herald of Torment.
I typically use Ultimate Price as my first choice in removal against targets with high toughness. Orzhov Charm is for anything that is multi-colored and things like mana dorks. It is also good to get back a Hopeful or Nyxborn and begin suiting that up with more bestow creatures.
Don't cast read the bones until it is the last card in your hand or until you need a specific type of removal to push damage through. Casting it before that is a huge tempo loss because this deck wants to win fast. You have to know what your win conditions are (Gods Willing, Rogue's Passage, Ultimate Price, and Herald of Torment) and use it to find them.
Celestial Archon is...okay I guess. It does not die to Bile Blight or Lightning Strike and is a good target to put enchantments on but you could just as easily replace it with something like Spiteful Returned. I've tried a lot of things in that slot including Spear of Heliod and Eidolon of Great Battles. Spear was okay but I found that I would almost always rather have a creature. Eidolon of Great Battles was awful. He almost always ended up being a 3 or 4 mana 1/1. Gnarled Scarhide made early mana wierd becuase I almost always wanted at least 1 white source by at least turn 2. In order to be able to play him on turn 1 as consistently as I drew him I had to add more swamps which meant there were times I didn't have the Plains I needed to use Hero or Iroas or Ethereal Armor on turn 2 or did not have the plains to play Hopeful or Nyxborn turn 1 if I didn't draw a Gnarled. Honestly I just don't know what to put there. Desecration Demon would be as good as anything else honestly.
I do not recommend Gift of Orzhova. The only reason I even run Ethereal Armor is because it is freaking nuts with Hopeful Eidolon or Nyxborn if you can drop it and another 1 drop on turn 2. I'm sure you already know what kind of crazyness that is. If you can't do that just hold up your guys and start Bestowing them onto Hero of Iroas. If he dies you can just Bestow them onto whatever creature you had attached to Hero and keep going.
Rogue's Passage seems really crappy but I'm telling you, do not underestimate it. Also, if you can, do not play it before turn 5 so the opponent can't plan ahead for it. If you do it right they will tap out to build up some kind of defense only for it to not matter. It happens more often than you'd think.
You see this list is highly aggressive and wants to get in as much early damage as it can. Then once the opponent begins to stabalize you use Celestial Archon, Herald of Torment, Gods Willing, Rogue's Passage, Underworld Coinsmith, or one of your removal spells to push through the final damage to close out the game before their defense can muster.
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