Cz's Multiplayer Top 10: Enchantments

Introduction and Disclaimers
Throughout my many years of playing multiplayer Magic I've come across numerous cards that have popped up many times and that have always performed admirably. In this series I'll go over 10 cards sharing a common theme that have proven themselves in battle across a variety of multiplayer formats and settings. In many ways it'll showcase cards that I'll almost always want to play myself.

Before reading, bear in mind that these aren't supposed to be "power" lists. I'm not trying to list the 10 most broken cards that will cost you thousands of dollars, oppress the table, get banned out, etc. I'm talking about fair-ish cards that are reasonably obtainable that aren't likely to offend anyone in a casual setting. I'm not going to list cards that are banned across multiple competitive formats because there's no point in doing so.

Honorable Mentions
Limited Resources
This card is amazing but ending the game on turn 1 is a bit too competitive for my blood. It has sheer power but it's not fun at all and so I don't think that it's a healthy card to ever be playing.

Hunting Grounds
Hitting Threshold is too hard if you're not cracking fetches and firing off Fact or Fictions and whatnot. It's great in Bant decks that have access to Blue filtering but I've just never liked the card in hard GW decks. It's never been very powerful in practice unfortunately.

Aura of Silence
This card is incredibly annoying and can shut down a solid number of archetypes, but ultimately it doesn't do quite enough. Making people mad isn't the best idea when you're not doing something powerful enough to justify the heat, and this certainly doesn't qualify in my mind.

No Mercy
I don't think that a purely defensive card should make the top 10 list, but if any of them were to come close it would be this one. It's very good at beating hesitant players... which basically means that it's good in multiplayer. People go too far out of their way to play around it and it's often a free pass to go full aggro with the rest of your team.

The Abyss and Nether Void
I love these golden-oldies that we'll never see ever again. Both cards are amazing powerful for their CMC and I would love to have a chance to play with them. That being said, their cost is out of this world, which prevents them from ever becoming actual multiplayer staples in my mind. Lovely cards with beautiful designs though.

The Countdown
#10: Dense Foliage and City of Solitude
These are the 2 cards that every Green deck needs but no green deck plays. I lump them both together because they both work best as 1-ofs and they both do the same thing; piss off Control decks. I like making people who play spot removal and counters feel foolish for doing so, and these are prime examples of how I accomplish that. Every action from every opponent is probably going to be illegal for the next few minutes, but that's ok, because as their frustration builds so too will your joy. The cards are hilariously fun to play since you basically just get to tell people "nope, can't do that either!" for the next 10 turns.

One of the key things to remember with Dense Foliage is that it doesn't stop abilities. You can still equip your Swords and you can still Kessig Wolf Run your beaters. That hasn't changed. What has changed is everyone else's ability to interact with creatures in general (more-or-less). They're 2 of the most underrated and underplayed enchantments in the game but they're also 2 of the best.

#9: Luminarch Ascension
This is a "love it" or "hate it" card and I don't think there's much wiggle room in between. The card is disgustingly powerful when played on turn 2, which is usually enough to activate it on the spot. It's also a fantastic post-Wrath play, since casting it alongside Wrath of God on turn 6 can lead to all kinds of trouble for the other players. Untapping next turn and having the ability to create 3 Angels is a big game after all. The game gets real scary for everyone else from that point on, since the game basically revolves around killing the player before he assembles an unbeatable army of Angelic warriors.

While this cards paints a bulls-eye on its owner head, it also protects him so it doesn't have that glaring weakness as a strike against it. The main problem with the card is that people don't play it properly and run it out when they figure to take hits, which is often why they come to the conclusion that it's "bad." It probably wouldn't be if it was abused correctly, but hey, it's not like people are used to playing with these kinds of cards so I can't blame 'em. Still, it has one of the single highest power ceilings of any card at the low cost of 2 mana, so I feel as though it would be silly to exclude it from the list.

#8: Aura Shards
This is probably the single best reason to be in GW. The ability to repeatedly nuke any troublesome enchantment and/or artifact is impressive to say the least. It's the kind of card that will enable you to grind the table out because each of your cards will be trading for 2-3 things themselves. Since multiplayer games tend to run long anyways, it's an amazing value card that provides an irreplaceable effect in my opinion. I love these "one-sided Wraths" that just decimate the enemy's position since they really help keep the game under control.

The biggest strike against this card is that it's not that great against the midrange/rampy creature-based decks with removal. A lot of lists simply aren't phased by this type of effect so it's tough to rate it any higher than this. It also draws a lot of hate and doesn't exactly do much to protect you.

#7: Sulfuric Vortex
Everyone needs to appreciate the fact that this is the best "grindy" burn spell in the game. If people are playing slow decks with big win conditions, a turn 3 Vortex is exactly what you need to bring them back down to Earth. A lot of decks simply cannot race it as they'll be too busy trying to sit back and do nothing. It's low CMC and ability to shut down lifegain make it the ideal spell to force the action. I can't remember the last time I've seen a boring game with it. If you're looking to turn up the heat fast and early, you really can't wrong with a full playset of these. Much like the other cards on the list, it's one of the best reasons to play the color in my mind. It's one of the most punishing spells in the game and I'm always smiling inside when I set it hit the field. I like action, and nothing generates more of it then this bad-boy.

#6: Humility
Functionally Similar Card(s): Moat
This card is just insane really. It's like a Wrath of God with a permanent Rebound. Paying 4 mana to shut each and every creature out of the game is disgusting, especially if your list is packing ways to pump your own. 3/3s are giants in the land of 1/1 midgets after all. If your deck lacks defense but has solid inevitability then it's hard to go wrong with something like this. I will admit that the card draws an obscene amount of hate and that it should be killed immediately, but that can only count so far against this beast. That's the reason why it's only ranked 6th. People will answer it as soon as they can, but I mean it often takes far too long to reach that stage of the game.

While Moat serves a similar role, its pricetag is a bit too steep for it to make it on the list. Realistically maybe 1 in 100 playgroups will ever get a chance to see it in action, and eh, even that might be a bit generous.

#5: Land Tax
White card draw doesn't exist. Not in any midway decent form anyways. Still, it could be worse all things considered. A turn 1 Land Tax is one of the scariest plays in all of multiplayer Magic, especially if things like Scroll Rack start joining the fray shortly after. It's one of the only ways that a base White deck can generate legitimate card advantage on its own, in addition to providing it with an alternate win condition in the form of Goblin Charbelcher. Still, even if you ignore everything that it combos with, just plain hitting your land drops every turn is nothing to scoff at. The deck thinning certainly isn't trivial either, since it happens much quicker and in much higher quantities than what other cards provide. While you can easily play around this card in duels, that's typically not an option in multiplayer. Players can't afford to just never play lands and so you should be drawing a steady stream of lands all game long. As long as you play it smart and avoid needless discards, you should be more than fine to play for the long haul.

#4: Defense of the Heart
4 mana "you win the game" is pretty tough to beat lol. Ok, I don't actually expect most people to combo the table out with this thing. That's a bit harsh for a casual game. Realistically though, how do you ever lose after this thing triggers? Getting the 2 best creatures in your deck for 4 mana is absurd to say the very least, and the drawback on the card is more than reasonable in a huge % of multiplayer metas. It's the kind of card that can't see constructed play but that's absolutely monstrous in the casual realm. It's a real back-breaker and there really isn't a Green creature-based deck out there that wouldn't want to run them.

I don't think I can rate this card any higher than this because it does have legitimate limitations on it. You can feasibly play around this card whereas you can't realistically play around some of the next ones, which is why it ended up here. It can also be removed before it triggers and any competent group of players would recognize that it would have to get axed before it did.

#3: Grave Pact
I rate this card higher than most because multiplayer games tend to feature casual, creature-based decks more-so then anything else. A solid Grave Pact deck will just stone the table dead even if they don't realize it right away. While its casting cost limits the number of decks that field it, I've always felt that a "good" Grave Pact will always be the best card on the table. Black has any number of recursive creatures and spells that can use tofuel it all game long. Ultimately, if people can't answer it in a short time-frame, then it figures to take complete control of the game. Again, I don't feel as though it's stronger than some of the other cards in a vacuum, but I do feel like it's the card with the highest likelihood of unintentionally oppressing entire metagames.

#2: Lurking Predators
This is the kind of card that you can just slam on turn 4-6 and win the game off of. It, much like most enchantments, is typically very difficult to handle because people just won't be packing much hate for it. As long as you packed your deck full of creatures, it's going to take a miracle for the other players to beat this behemoth. The best part about it is that you get to use all of your mana doing other things, such as firing off giant Kessig Wolf Runs or activating Ursapines and Silklash Spiders. It's the best example of burying your opponents in card advantage as I've seen it single-handidly dominate a game start to finish on more than 1 occasion.

Since the card itself is a bit slow to get going, I strongly encourage adding some ramp dorks to any decks that fields it. Sakura Tribe-Elder, Solemn Simulacrum and Oracle of Mul Daya are my 3 favorites. You will be hard-pressed to lose games where this is your turn 4 play after all.

#1: Rhystic Study
This is the best reason to play Blue in a multiplayer setting in my mind. I think that it's neigh broken in anything bigger than a 4 player FFA and I couldn't imagine the list that wouldn't want 4 of them. This card doesn't have the same weaknesses as a traditional "punisher" spell for many reasons. First of all, paying the extra 1 is easier said than done. Multiplayer decks tend be poorly and/or greedily built, especially when it comes to the mana base. You still see 20 land decks and so paying the extra mana just plain isn't an option for some people. Beyond that, you HAVE to spells or you'll die. You can't just sit around and wait with nothing in play; you have to keep doing stuff or other people will kill you. Yes, letting Bob draw cards sucks, but you can't lose trying to play around it. Ultimately this thing is going to draw its owner absurd amounts of cards in the early-to-mid game and there's no reason to think that it'll be useless later on. Very few cards can allow you to bury your opponents in card advantage, but this is certainly one of them. This card is pretty much a draw~7 (and that's being generous) for 3 mana which is completely absurd in every environment. I've always said that in order to consistently win in multiplayer you have to consistently be drawing extra cards, and this is the ultimate poster-child of that claim. If you're in Blue, you pretty much need to be running 4 of these. No questions asked.

Conclusion
There you have it, the top 10 multiplayer Enchantment cards. They may not be the most powerful ones, but they're certainly among the most influential in my experience. Next time I'll be taking a look at a different set of goodies, so be sure to keep checking back!
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