I've also been working on enchantress decks for a while. I finally settled on mono-green, which I know is somewhat unorthodox. I use Nissa, Sage Animist as the general, and the win condition is usually a giant Hurricane (or Dark Depths)
it's probably not as strong as GW can be, but I find it enjoyable. There are some interesting green effects like Ritual of Subdual and Tornado, and people it tends to take people by surprise.
I have been putting together both a GW list and a BW list for Daxos. Sigarda is helming my GW list. I am still polishing them up a smidgen before I post the lists, but I definitely like the minor aura subtheme that Sigarda makes possible. She killed the table with an early ramped out Eldrazi Conscription. Her hexproof and immunity to sac effects were just enough to keep the table from killing her before she killed them.
Yup. Ramping by Wild Growth effects are very powerful. They cantrip very well with Enchantress effects, fuel other "enchantment matters" cards, trigger various ETB effects, and on top of all that, are still frikking RAMP effects at the end of the day letting you cast commanders early, or big bomb spells like Conscription, in addition to being combo enablers. In enchantress, these benefits are all so valuable that the only mana rocks that ever make it into a finalized list are MAYBE Sol Ring and Mana Crypt. My finished list did not play either, and instead just played more Wild Growth.
You are probably already aware of this, but it's important to note that Mirari's Wake and Mana Reflection work differently when using lands like Serra's Sanctum. Sanctum with 4 enchantments and Wake on the field will produce WWWWW when tapped, whereas if Mana Reflection was on the field, you would get WWWWWWWW. If both are on the field, you'll get WWWWWWWWW. Also note that neither enchantment cares about Wild Growth effects- a mana reflection out with the same Serra's Sanctum, 4 enchantments, and the wild growth will make WWWWWWWWG, not WWWWWWWWGG. The Wild Growth doesn't make the land tap for any more mana, it just adds the mana when the land is tapped for mana.
Oh yeah, wanted to add that Overgrowth is an often overlooked Wild Growth effect you can also add to your list of things to consider.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Another similar card which is pretty good in my experience is Mana Bloom. I usually only pay a single mana into X (if any at all) just to have the option of another round of draw triggers on the following turn. Admittedly it has gone in and out of my decks but found its place most recently when Bring to Light became a mainstay in my Bant list as being able to resolve it for a 4 drop is generally very powerful. I'm looking at you Academy Rector and Replenish.
Oh yeah, mana bloom is great. The only one of the 3+ mana wild growth effects I ran was Overgrowth. Verdant Haven is not worth the extra mana, and 4 mana is makes cantripping clunky and difficult, though some 3 color enchantress builds might like the flexibility. I did opt to play Verdant Haven though because sticking this on a land you can untap with Earthcraft or something is super powerful.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
This thread was the single most useful thing I found on the whole wide internet on my Enchantress quest. I signed up to this forum just to thank you guys for such comprehensive posts <3
I fell in love with enchantments earlier this year and have gone from monowhite to Orzhov with Dax, to now playing Abzan Enchantress for the last month or so. Right now I am going back and forth between Teneb and Anafenza, but lots of people I have spoken to online seem determined to convince me I should be playing Ghave. Most Ghave brews I have seen have a high creature count; I feel like they are divorced from the pillowfort/token/combo strategy I have enjoyed so far. I am also not ruling out Atraxa, Enchanted Evening is a beauty.
This thread was the single most useful thing I found on the whole wide internet on my Enchantress quest. I signed up to this forum just to thank you guys for such comprehensive posts <3
I fell in love with enchantments earlier this year and have gone from monowhite to Orzhov with Dax, to now playing Abzan Enchantress for the last month or so. Right now I am going back and forth between Teneb and Anafenza, but lots of people I have spoken to online seem determined to convince me I should be playing Ghave. Most Ghave brews I have seen have a high creature count; I feel like they are divorced from the pillowfort/token/combo strategy I have enjoyed so far. I am also not ruling out Atraxa, Enchanted Evening is a beauty.
The idea is mainly just to make a bunch of mana to dump into Ghave's abilities to make an unstoppable army of Saprolings-Turns out that enchantments are good at this, so this deck has an enchantress theme.
Wow! I logged on for the first time in a while, and saw this old resurrected thread of mine! Thank you all so much for the advice, and I thought I'd pop back in and mention what has finally become of all my Enchantress dreams. Daxos ... died. Instead, he became a Zur the Enchanter build for my darling. My Sigarda Enchantress deck? It became Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis. I absolutely love it. My win-cons actually ended up being any of several things. Infinite attack phases with Bear Umbra and Aggravated Assault? Yes. Drawing through my whole deck with Mindmoil and playing everything with Omniscience? Yes. Purphoros, God of the Forge triggers killing everyone when I spam Angel and cleric tokens? Yes. This list is here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/kynaios-and-tiros-enchanted-realm/
Starfield of Nyx can be useful for dumping enchantments or recover ones that can be sacced. I tend to mix this with enchantments that give mass creature buffs, once they become creatures they'll be pretty beefy. Especially White/X ones with Light from Within out.
I just came across this thread and it is great! I just put together an abzan enchantress deck with Anafenza at the helm. She really doesn't contribute to the game plan, but she can be a relevant hatebear and put me in the colors I want to be in to abuse the Living Plane I picked up.
Reading through the pages it sounds like everyone agrees that the 4 mana enchant lands are a bit clunky. I really like the color fixing, but would something like Frontier Siege fit in better? At least you gain 2 green during you second main on the turn you cast it. The Dragons mode can also be relevant if you have a Sigil in play or an Ascension online.
The deck can win with Living Plane into Elesh Norn/Linvala/Doomwake Giant. Or draining people out incrementally with Flickering Ward and Grim Guardian, or all at once with Grim Guardian, Opalescence/Starfield of Nyx. I have also just beat down with a Bear Umbra'd Sigarda while I'm sitting in my pillow fort. But I've found that winning in any of these ways is a ton of fun! I really like what black brings to the deck. Demonic and Vampiric Tutor are superior to Idyllic Tutor. Doomwake Giant is an excellent way to control the board, and Thoughrender Lamia + Grim Guardian can really wear people down. And of course there is Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence.
Anyway, I hope this list gives people some ideas and stimulates more discussion.
Do you guys find Doomwake terrific in any enchantress with black? I never had one and didn't know how often you get real use out of it. Seems like I need to find room for it.
Oh doomwake is excellent. Even without living plane, he wipes out tokens simply by hitting the board, and if you are “going off” he can definitely wreck opponents fields.
Am I the only one with interest in Esper? I mean yeah it sucks that it only gets one proper enchantress but it seems like it could be a really vicious combination to play enchantress in. Dovescape is great and few colors can make use of tokens like Black. Illness in the Ranks can make it particularly nasty. And leading the charge is Ertai, the Corrupted(I was initially thinking Oloro but around the same time one of my friends started building his own Oloro deck I discovered Ertai) I guess it comes down to willingness to sacrifice synergy for controlling power.
So this post from a few pages back doesn't directly relate to Esper, but I think it gives you a good idea on why Blue over Green could hinder the deck. I don't think it would be impossible to make an Esper deck with a lot of enchantments in it, but I don't know if it'd really fall in to the Enchantress category.
What kind of shell did you have in mind? I could see Ertai being good with Starfield of Nyx, Auramancer, and Monk Idealist. Dovescape and Illness in the Ranks would definitely shut everything down, but that includes your own things too. Elesh Norn would go great with Dovescape. I'm curious to hear more about how you win with the deck.
Daxos is a weird one. I really have had a hard time figuring out the right direction to go- it was my friend's first EDH deck and he liked the black cards a lot, so he wanted to keep black but still play Enchantress (which is where the Teneb deck came from).
There's a lot of different ideas with Daxos. You can try and play cheap, efficient enchantments so you can cast Daxos and start gaining experience counters as fast as possible and make him a main focus, or you can focus on playing just a really good enchantment based B/W deck where he's just a 3 drop that's always in your hand so to speak.
If I were building B/W enchantments (from a competitive standpoint), I would probably go all in combo with a core shell of:
You don't get nearly as many enchantress effects anymore, so it's important to have other draw engines, and we should look to enchantment based draw engines where possible. Black gives you Phyrexian Arena and Underworld Connections for example, as well as Greed and Erebos God of the Dead, and everybody's favorite Necropotence. These should fill in the blanks nicely, but our draw is probably outclassed by other decks, so we can add some things to make it more oppressive, like Spirit of the Labyrinth, or maybe even Underworld Dreams to punish players who try to get ahead in card advantage.
You don't get access to Gaea's Cradle anymore, but you can run Cabal Coffers/Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to make up for it.
Now that we don't have green must-play cards anymore, we have more space to run other things instead. We can look to black for enchantment based removal, like Seal of Doom, with white offering Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, and maybe Return to Nowhere. So you can pick up a decent bit of spot removal that can also be tutored for in a pinch.
For further protection, we'll play the obviously powerful Sphere of Safety, and probably Ghostly Prison, but black also gives us No Mercy, and Grave Pact.
We also need protection to be able to beat combo decks. Leyline of Sanctity and maybe Ivory Mask help here, but so can cards like Rule of Law.
White also gives Aura of Silence, but we'll probably want to ensure we've got some more destruction that we can hopefully keep enchantment based. Let's also play Seal of Cleansing. Between Aura, Seal, O-ring, and Banishing Light, we have four different ways to deal with artifact/enchantment based issues that are all enchantments themselves. Still, Austere Command is another card I would probably sleeve up. Its versatility makes it worth playing.
So we should probably figure out ways to kill our opponent outside of Daxos tokens. Sometimes he'll get killed as soon as he's cast, or you won't be able to gain worthwhile XP, or be allowed to untap with him if you do. Let's see how enchantments can produce kill conditions.
Aside from our two card combos (that are both decent on their own), our first look should be Enchantment Creatures. There's some real good ones here, but not a whole ton since they were only in one block.
Erebos and Heliod, God of the Sun are good places to start, they're pretty good inclusions and I like that the tokens Heliod makes are also Enchantments, meaning they help fuel Serra's Sanctum and Sphere of Safety and similar cards. Ghostblade Eidolon makes just about anything quite terrifying and so does Eidolon of Countless Battles. Doomwake Giant is a house. Underworld Coinsmith gives us a nice big fat mana sink that can kill on its own when Sanctum and Cabal Coffers is online, or can be used to setup Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood. He's an easy inclusion. Athreos, God of Passage may or may not end up making the cut depending on the rest of the bodies we slot in, but let's just keep him in mind for now that he exists. The rest of the enchantment based creatures may not be good enough unless they play to a specific focus, but they're a good start. Let's look at non-enchantment creatures. Academy Rector provides defensive and offensive capabilities. Please, attack me while this guy is out so I can tutor up and play something really dumb, or maybe just finish assembling a combo. Easy pick. Auramancer is our version of Eternal Witness. It's an easy include, as is Odunos River Trawler. Ajani's Chosen is a card that might not make the cut in GW, but probably could here. He's worth trying at least. Blessed Spirits and Blightcaster are also good cards to feed off of your deck doing what it does. Mesa Enchantress is a no brainer. It's the only one we really get to play though. Celestial Ancient is another good choice we might look to to make our utility creatures more threatening, and Treasury Thrull is also a good beatstick.
We'll of course play Sigil of the Empty Throne and Luminarch Ascension as well for additional killcons.
That should give you a good starting point to flesh the rest of the deck out with, but the important thing is to look at the functions you need your cards to perform and then see if there's a decent enchantment that can perform that function. Powerhouse cards that enchantment themed decks scale upwards in power, and so the criteria for a card to go into the deck needs to basically be:
1) It needs to be an enchantment.
2) If it's not an enchantment, does it benefit from enchantments? (Mesa Enchantress et al)
3) If it's not an enchantment, and doesn't benefit from enchantments, it needs to be a really good card to make the cut. (Demonic Tutor is an example)
There are two concerns with this deck- there's not a lot of ways to make Sanguine Bond good on its own (Blind Obedience might be a decent start though) and focusing hard on that might take the deck off course. Sanguine Bond is probably just a card you hope you don't draw until you're ready for it.
The second is that there's little to no acceleration. The deck will be capable of producing tremendous amounts of mana mid-late game with Sanctum, Nykthos, or Urborg, but there aren't black or white wild growth effects. This leaves you with mana rocks if you want to have acceleration. There's not room for much, you don't want to dilute the deck, but you should probably sleeve up Sol Ring, mana Crypt if you have it, Orzhov Signet, and Pearl/Jet Medallions. I like the medallions because enchantress style decks really like to play several enchantments in one turn if possible and so the medallions are better at ramping several small spells as opposed to one big one. But that's just my two cents. Anyway, if I built Daxos, that's kind of the thought process I'd have for a rough draft.
Anyway, there's a skeleton of Daxos for you with plenty of free slots to figure out what else you want to play.
Honestly I haven't put a ton of thought into it since I have a half built Neheb deck that I'm still working on. I have a Kynaios and Tiro Pillowfort Enchantress style deck but I'm kind of boring of it and want to come down in colors since I have like 5 decks of four or more colors(I bought the whole set of that generation of decks and Dragons from last year).
If your playgroup is cool with it, Tamanoa also makes for a very potent Naya enchantress commander with a built-in wincon. Play the usual defensive enchantments a la Ghostly Prison and Greater Auramancy and ye olde enchantress card draw, and then watch your opponents die to Overabundance, Manabarbs, Primal Order, Citatel of Pain, Ancient Runes....while periodically clearing the board with Pyrohemia and comfortably sitting on hundreds of life.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
Hey all. I'm a pretty new player, I've built a few decks which all have obvious problems I'm working on, but the first one was with Daxos. It's not great. I'm about ready to just dismantle it, but I'd like to approach this commander from another angle and I was wondering people's thoughts.
Now, this was my first deck. I didn't get that many games in. I didn't get to try out some tweaks I made over the course of a month or so. But my experience with it has been that it's glacially slow, it has a tough time handling fast aggro, and if you make it to a point where you have a good mana base and lots of experience counters, there's really only one route to victory (unless you're packing pretty boring combos like Sanguine Bond+Exquisite Blood or Tainted Remedy+Beacon of Immortality.) And from reading up on Daxos decks, it seems like this is par for the course.
My idea was to try a sort of token deck. Go wide in the beginning with the many Anthem effects white gives, and then start going tall when I have a decent number of experience counters. Focus a lot less on pillowfort and control and just get bodies out quick and start swinging, with experience counters sort of just a byproduct of this process.
Thoughts on using Daxos like this? I might end up replacing him with one of the couple other Orzhov commanders that abuse tokens pretty well, but I'd like to give this a try first.
it's probably not as strong as GW can be, but I find it enjoyable. There are some interesting green effects like Ritual of Subdual and Tornado, and people it tends to take people by surprise.
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
You are probably already aware of this, but it's important to note that Mirari's Wake and Mana Reflection work differently when using lands like Serra's Sanctum. Sanctum with 4 enchantments and Wake on the field will produce WWWWW when tapped, whereas if Mana Reflection was on the field, you would get WWWWWWWW. If both are on the field, you'll get WWWWWWWWW. Also note that neither enchantment cares about Wild Growth effects- a mana reflection out with the same Serra's Sanctum, 4 enchantments, and the wild growth will make WWWWWWWWG, not WWWWWWWWGG. The Wild Growth doesn't make the land tap for any more mana, it just adds the mana when the land is tapped for mana.
Oh yeah, wanted to add that Overgrowth is an often overlooked Wild Growth effect you can also add to your list of things to consider.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Marath, Will of the Wild
Friendly Kess Twin Combo
Tatyova - Sir Bounce A Lot
Gonti's Luxury Pie
Prime (Eldrazi) Speaker Zegana (Retired)
Another similar card which is pretty good in my experience is Mana Bloom. I usually only pay a single mana into X (if any at all) just to have the option of another round of draw triggers on the following turn. Admittedly it has gone in and out of my decks but found its place most recently when Bring to Light became a mainstay in my Bant list as being able to resolve it for a 4 drop is generally very powerful. I'm looking at you Academy Rector and Replenish.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I fell in love with enchantments earlier this year and have gone from monowhite to Orzhov with Dax, to now playing Abzan Enchantress for the last month or so. Right now I am going back and forth between Teneb and Anafenza, but lots of people I have spoken to online seem determined to convince me I should be playing Ghave. Most Ghave brews I have seen have a high creature count; I feel like they are divorced from the pillowfort/token/combo strategy I have enjoyed so far. I am also not ruling out Atraxa, Enchanted Evening is a beauty.
Here is what I have so far if anyone is curious
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/abzanenchantress/
If you are still interested in a Ghave-Enchantress-type build, you can check out my list here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ghave-guru-of-spores-super-synergies/
The idea is mainly just to make a bunch of mana to dump into Ghave's abilities to make an unstoppable army of Saprolings-Turns out that enchantments are good at this, so this deck has an enchantress theme.
Reading through the pages it sounds like everyone agrees that the 4 mana enchant lands are a bit clunky. I really like the color fixing, but would something like Frontier Siege fit in better? At least you gain 2 green during you second main on the turn you cast it. The Dragons mode can also be relevant if you have a Sigil in play or an Ascension online.
The deck can win with Living Plane into Elesh Norn/Linvala/Doomwake Giant. Or draining people out incrementally with Flickering Ward and Grim Guardian, or all at once with Grim Guardian, Opalescence/Starfield of Nyx. I have also just beat down with a Bear Umbra'd Sigarda while I'm sitting in my pillow fort. But I've found that winning in any of these ways is a ton of fun! I really like what black brings to the deck. Demonic and Vampiric Tutor are superior to Idyllic Tutor. Doomwake Giant is an excellent way to control the board, and Thoughrender Lamia + Grim Guardian can really wear people down. And of course there is Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence.
Anyway, I hope this list gives people some ideas and stimulates more discussion.
1x Anafenza, the Foremost
Enchantment (34)
1x Aura of Silence
1x Bear Umbra
1x Dark Tutelage
1x Dawn's Reflection
1x Enchantress's Presence
1x Exploration
1x Fertile Ground
1x Flickering Ward
1x Ghostly Prison
1x Greater Auramancy
1x Karmic Justice
1x Land Tax
1x Living Plane
1x Luminarch Ascension
1x Mana Reflection
1x Market Festival
1x Mirari's Wake
1x Mirri's Guile
1x Necropotence
1x Opalescence
1x Overgrowth
1x Parallax Wave
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Prismatic Omen
1x Privileged Position
1x Protective Sphere
1x Solitary Confinement
1x Sphere of Safety
1x Starfield of Nyx
1x Sterling Grove
1x Stony Silence
1x Sylvan Library
1x Utopia Sprawl
1x Wild Growth
1x Bayou
1x Brushland
1x Canopy Vista
1x Caves of Koilos
1x Command Tower
1x Deserted Temple
1x Exotic Orchard
1x Fetid Heath
4x Forest
1x Godless Shrine
1x High Market
1x Isolated Chapel
1x Mana Confluence
1x Marsh Flats
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Overgrown Tomb
3x Plains
1x Reflecting Pool
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Sandsteppe Citadel
1x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Serra's Sanctum
1x Sunpetal Grove
2x Swamp
1x Temple Garden
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Woodland Cemetery
Instant (4)
1x Eladamri's Call
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Teferi's Protection
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Academy Rector
1x Argothian Enchantress
1x Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Doomwake Giant
1x Dragonlord Dromoka
1x Eidolon of Blossoms
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Erebos, God of the Dead
1x Eternal Witness
1x Faith Healer
1x Grim Guardian
1x Herald of the Pantheon
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Mesa Enchantress
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer Flip
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
1x Sun Titan
1x Thoughtrender Lamia
1x Verduran Enchantress
Sorcery (5)
1x Austere Command
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Genesis Wave
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Replenish
Maybeboard (6)
Enchantment (3)
1x Frontier Siege
1x Overwhelming Splendor
1x Carpet of Flowers
1x Sigil of the Empty Throne
Creature (3)
1x Auramancer
1x Heliod, God of the Sun
1x Monk Idealist
Sorcery (1)
1x Eldritch Evolution
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
(U/B)(U/B)(U/B) JUMP IN THE LINE, ROCK YOUR BODY IN TIME
(R/W)(R/W)(R/W) RISING FROM THE NEON GLOOM, SHINING LIKE A CRAZY MOON
(U/R)(R/G)(G/U) STEALIN' WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUYIN'
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
What kind of shell did you have in mind? I could see Ertai being good with Starfield of Nyx, Auramancer, and Monk Idealist. Dovescape and Illness in the Ranks would definitely shut everything down, but that includes your own things too. Elesh Norn would go great with Dovescape. I'm curious to hear more about how you win with the deck.
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
Now, this was my first deck. I didn't get that many games in. I didn't get to try out some tweaks I made over the course of a month or so. But my experience with it has been that it's glacially slow, it has a tough time handling fast aggro, and if you make it to a point where you have a good mana base and lots of experience counters, there's really only one route to victory (unless you're packing pretty boring combos like Sanguine Bond+Exquisite Blood or Tainted Remedy+Beacon of Immortality.) And from reading up on Daxos decks, it seems like this is par for the course.
My idea was to try a sort of token deck. Go wide in the beginning with the many Anthem effects white gives, and then start going tall when I have a decent number of experience counters. Focus a lot less on pillowfort and control and just get bodies out quick and start swinging, with experience counters sort of just a byproduct of this process.
Enchantments to include anthems like Intangible Virtue, Spear of Heliod, and Cathars' Crusade and token creators like Sacred Mesa, Bitterblossom, Luminatch Ascension, and Sigil of the Empty Throne, and they'd also be backed up by sorcery and instant token creators. I'd also get to use Mentor of the Meek and Skullclamp.
Thoughts on using Daxos like this? I might end up replacing him with one of the couple other Orzhov commanders that abuse tokens pretty well, but I'd like to give this a try first.