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By: Kumagoro42, Gianluca Aicardi
Jun 27 2012 4:01am
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 Welcome to Building Lab: Combo Edition! Please don't mind the mess.

 Now, as you may have already guessed, this (randomly scheduled) series is about deckbuilding. But it's also about sharing ideas. In fact, I wanted to devote a group of articles to this simple concept: building a deck in collaboration with a fellow player, especially someone who's more of an accomplished deckbuilder than me within a specific area. Then testing the concocted deck in a chosen arena, and publishing the results in the form of commented videos. So here we are, albeit this first installment took a while to see the light, due to real life being a bitch to both me and my first guest.

 The initial trilogy of Building Lab will be organized around the eternal concepts of Combo, Control, and Aggro. And the testing arena will be Tribal Apocalypse, which is the place where I spend most of my MTGO time, and at the same time allows for an almost complete pool of cards (being Legacy), while giving us the freedom to build in hazardous directions (not really being Legacy). I don't exclude to continue the series using a different format, though, and probably Modern, which is another pretty balanced eternal format. But for now, what I'll do is asking three different players to create and refine a decklist with me, through a real time chat session I'll transcribe here, then play the deck in one Tribal Apocalypse event, make videos of the game and audio-comment on them. We're in multimedia territory here, folks. Each of the three players will have been chosen for being especially adept in one of the three deckbuilding areas I want to cover. For the Combo department, I chose Josh Tran, aka Ayanam1, the 2011 Ultimate Tribal Champion, who has often brought a vast array of different combo decks to Tribal Apocalypse.

 And I went to Ayanam1 with a particular idea in mind. See, I like combos, but I don't like that much non-interactive combo decks, the ones that just aim to resolve one endgame combo, and where everything else in the deck is just there to help this attempt (like Storm decks, or Cephalid Breakfast). Plus, I wanted the deckbuilding to be a bit of a challenge, something that it's not easily done in the Tribal format. But also something that involved a creature somehow. After a while, this fascinating lady came to mind:

 Will you honor me with this dance, milady?


PART 1: THE DISCUSSION

 Kuma: Ok, so, the Legacy Enchantress deck. A truly classic combo deck, right?

 Josh: Yes, it's a combo deck with a strong card drawing engine that utilizes Argothian Enchantress and Enchantress's Presence to draw and play a bunch of enchantments, ultimately winning you the game, in this build, with the Angel tokens created by Sigil of the Empty Throne, or alternatively with direct damage from Words of War. Some builds use Sacred Mesa in place of the Sigil, given that at some point we'll be able to generate a great amount of mana via Serra's Sanctum.

 

 Kuma: I indeed remember an older, classic build where the endgame amounted to untapping Serra's Sanctum again and again via Mind Over Matter, then creating a huge number of Pegasi and sacrificing them to Goblin Bombardment. Probably a more hazardous path that implied the use of more enchantment tutors, up to Academy Rector for playing around the four blue mana in the cost of Mind Over Matter.

   

Three-colored coolness 

 Kuma: So, let's review all the elements based on that list from MTG Salvation. First, we have the draw engine: the Enchantress herself and her Presence, which is an enchantment in itself. This is obviously the core part of the deck 

 Josh: We also have Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, and Exploration to help accelerate our output of enchantments, as well as serve as a cheap way to draw with Argothian Enchantress or Enchantress's Presence on the board.

 Kuma: Another central element is Sterling Grove, which works both as a way to protect all the enchantments, and to tutor them up, allowing for a nice toolbox.

 Josh: The deck also features several enchantments to protect us while we assemble our draw engine and win condition. First we have a single Moat and four Elephant Grass to help protect us from aggro-based decks. The reason that we have four Grass instead of more Moats is because it allows us to draw for one mana with our draw engine in place. We also have Solitary Confinement to protect us from any combo decks that has to target the player, like storm combo or Dream Halls decks, as well as stopping aggro cold.

 Kuma: The idea is to draw so many cards that Solitary will be maintained for a while, right? Also, you can use an Elephant, then let it go, and at some point you'll get a Replenish, that brings everything back.

 Josh: Yeah, with our draw engine active, and most of the deck being enchantments, we can draw multiple cards to replenish our hand in order to discard each turn for the Confinement. You are also spot on with Replenish being able to bring back all the Elephant Grass in the graveyard later in the game.

Just as powerful as you might think

 Kuma: Next we have answers, of course always in enchantment form: Lignify for creatures, Aura of Silence mostly for artifacts, Oblivion Ring for everything. There's a lot of possible variant options here, like Seal of Cleansing/Seal of Primordium, and the whole Pacifism family of creature-stopping auras (Pariah, Prison Term, Faith's Fetters, and such).

 Josh: As our main win condition, we have Sigil of the Empty Throne. With the Sigil active, we can make a 4/4 flying beater for the cost of one or two mana in most cases. With multiple Enchantress effects in play, we can also play any cheap enchantment and burn the opponent out by paying one mana for two damage with Words of War.

 Kuma: The remaining stuff are the maindeck answers to meta threats: Ground Seal against dredge, City of Solitude against permission. We also have some more silver bullets in the sideboard, notably Runed Halo, Rule of Law against storm, Sacred Ground against land destruction. And there’s a single Nevermore too, which means this list is very up-to-date. All these elements need to be assessed properly for our tribal purpose.

 Josh: The great thing about this deck is that it offers utility. We can include silver bullets to prepare for the meta game and tutor them up with Sterling Grove. And even when an enchantment is irrelevant against our opponent, it is never a dead card since it can still draw you cards off the draw engine.

 Kuma: All right, so let's start thinking about how this will be done in Tribal format. It's a deck with just 20 lands, of which 6 are fetch lands. Of course,  with all those enchantments on the board, it's able to greatly exploit Serra's Sanctum. Managing to keep the mana base at 20 would be great, because we will need to scavenge as much non-tribal slots as we can. But is it feasible?

 Josh:  I think that 20 lands is plenty for this deck. One benefit of having fewer lands (and more fetch lands) in the deck is it will allow us to draw into more enchantments instead of just lands. Most of our spells will be relatively cheap and instead of lands we'll have one-mana acceleration spells to compensate, while still playing into the engine.

 Kuma: And you just love decks with little lands, don't you? Even when it's not so healthy to do it!

 Josh:  Sometimes decks can get away with that. Aggressive Legacy decks, like Zoo, often run 21-22 lands with many fetch lands, since the mana curve is so low. And they don't even run mana acceleration. 

 Kuma: Before we start picking a tribe and diving into the building process, let’s also have a look at two Extended variants of this deck (well, from 12 years ago, so of course they’re not Extended anymore, they’re not even Modern!)

Bernabe Merino's Extended Enchantress
Grand Prix Buenos Aires 2000
Creatures
4 Argothian Enchantress
3 Yavimaya Enchantress
2 Verduran Enchantress
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Wall of Blossoms
1 Spike Feeder
1 Masticore
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
19 cards

Other Spells
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Seal of Cleansing
4 Rancor
3 Eladamri's Vineyard
2 Ancestral Mask
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tithe
22 cards
Lands
3 Savannah
4 Brushland
2 Treetop Village
10 Forest
19 cards

 
Survival of the Fittest


 

 

 Kuma: Both these decks use secondary toolboxes (Survival of the Fittest and Living Wish), which are unfortunately not available to us in the current Legacy Tribal Wars meta. The second list looks more control-ish, using Words of Wind to bounce the opponent’s entire board while drawing even more, then Stroke of Genius as a wincon. The first one is the more interesting for us because it uses more creatures: enter some other enchantresses, including Yavimaya Enchantress acting as an ancestor to Tarmogoyf. And that single Masticore fueled by Squee and pumped by Rancor gave me an idea, but I’ll tell you about it later.

 Josh: I honestly have never seen this build so I will be waiting to see what your idea is! For now, let's discuss what tribes may be viable for our enchantress deck. I would think that the two obvious choices for tribes would be Humans or Druids (as in, the creature types of our centerpiece Argothian Enchantress). With Humans, we basically have one of the largest tribes at our disposal. Likewise, we can also use the more narrow Druid tribe which gives us access to some mana-accelerating creatures in case we need to cut a few mana-producing enchantments due to our noncreature/nonland slot limitation of 20 or so.

 Kuma: There's also the option to use the Argothian off tribe, but I don't think any tribe will give us enough advantage, battleplan-wise, to justify the loss of 4 nontribal slots this way.

 Josh: The original deck list is very light on creatures. Using Humans and Druids also gives us access to Mesa Enchantress and Verduran Enchantress to improve our draw engine considerably. 

 Kuma: Ok, I have to mention Lucent Liminid at this point, the only Enchantment Creature in existence, just to show that we're knowledgeable. But it's not a serious path to take, since the other 16 Elementals wouldn't be anything particularly useful, and Sterling Grove doesn't put the Liminid directly into play unfortunately, so we would likely just end up stuck with a 5cc creature in hand.

But he's so cute!

 Josh: No, that's not an option, I think. And between Humans and Druids, I think I would prefer Druids. Having Druids as our base tribe, I think we can cut down on Wild Growths and instead rely on awesome mana generators unique of Druids such as Rofellos and Seton, Krosan Protector. Rofellos gives you one mana for every forest you control when you tap him and only costs two mana to play. With Seton, you can turn all of your other creatures to even more useful mana producers to pump out enchantments.

 Kuma: I like the Seton way, Argothian Enchantress would get something to do other than looking great (and untouchable) on the battlefield. Let's start establishing this: do we try 20 tribal creatures, 20 lands, 20 other spells, then? (Sort of a Golden Ratio from back in the times.) And do we stay in Selesnya colors? I would avoid the red splash, if it's only to get an alternative wincon.

 Josh: I think that Words of War could be very useful if we pick out the right creature package. If we ran some Mesa Enchantress or Verduran Enchantress, we could potentially draw even four or five cards off any enchantment we play, and do a better job at burning out our opponent than the original deck. If we keep Utopia Sprawl and being able to fetch a red-producing land with six fetch lands, the splash doesn't sound too hard.

 Kuma: Yeah, you're right, Words of War just asks for 1 red mana when you cast it. It cries "splash me!" out loud.
 

 Josh: As for creatures, we have four slots taken by Argothian Enchantress already. I would recommend having four copies of Verduran Enchantress too, as it helps our draw engine significantly.

 Kuma: I wouldn't do the three full Enchantress playsets though, since Verduran and Mesa are bad at everything except the combo, and are 3cc creatures.

 

And the Enchantress to be eliminated is...

 Josh: I agree, I think if we play one set of both Argothian and Verduran Enchantresses we would be in good shape. Taking Verduran over Mesa is an obvious choice since our main color will be green and we don't want to have to produce double white to play her.

 Kuma: There’s also Femeref Enchantress. She costs less and defends better than Verduran (well, at least she's able to kill 1/1s), but I assume you don’t consider her because she only triggers with Sterling Grove being sacrificed.

She's not the most fun at parties

 Josh: Yeah, she doesn't feel as really necessary. We would need some enchantment sacrifice engine to exploit her.

 Kuma: And here comes my idea indeed, which is from a deck I built once. It did two different intertwined battleplans, but half of the deck featured an Enchantress engine, using Rancor and what could become our secret weapon: Gatherer of Graces (who also happens to be a Human Druid). With an Enchantress, Rancor and a Gatherer on the board, you essentially have “G: draw a card”, because the Gatherer will eat the Rancor for free. And a rancored Gatherer is a 4/3 trampler with free regeneration, which means she's great at both attack and defense.

 Josh: That's a pretty good idea! That'll make our card drawing even easier and more consistent, so that's a reason more to keep Words of War in. It never hurts to have more win conditions. I also just remembered another card that we might be able to use with your Gatherer combo: Whip Silk. As a one-mana enchantment that allows us to return it to our hand for one green, it would replicate your secret tech. Well, for one mana more.

 Kuma: Yeah, I used that too in my old deck (and also Moldervine Cloak), but in the end it had less punch than Rancor, reach not being so relevant so often. And you can get caught with no open mana and suffer a 2-for-1, which is what you should avoid at any cost when dealing with auras. Anyway, I like the Gatherer very much, she's versatile, she does cool things like blocking for 4 damage THEN regenerating. And wearing 2 Rancors makes her a 7/4 regenerating trampling monster: a veritable secondary (tertiary?) wincon, this time aggro-oriented, to cover all bases. Plus, Rancor is always relevant in a tribal deck, even a meek Verduran can connect some damage this way.

 

She will not wear "insight and zeal, ambition and flame" with us. She will wear RANCOR!

 Josh: The secondary/tertiary Druid beater plan sounds tempting. My only concern is: will we have enough free enchantment slots to fit Rancor in. Well, let's run with it for now and see where it takes us.

 Kuma: It will look more tribal-oriented, probably. So, what about this for a monogreen Druid tribal base: 4 Argothian Enchantress, 4 Verduran Enchantress, 4 Gatherer of Graces, 4 Noble Hierarch (just your basic multipurpose mana dude), 2 Rofellos, 2 Seton?

Enchantress Project – The Tribal Base
by Ayanam1 & _Kumagoro_
Creatures
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Verduran Enchantress
4 Gatherer of Graces
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Seton, Krosan Protector
20 cards

Other Spells
0 cards
 
Lands
0 cards

 
Argothian Enchantress

 

 Josh: I like the creatures selected so far. I am sold on 16 of the 20 creature slots. We might have to see if Gatherer of Graces will fit in the deck as running Rancors will take down our enchantment slots which have already been reduced by the fact that we are running 16 more creatures than the original Legacy list. 

 Kuma: And yet I think Gatherer is the only way to replicate the huge drawing at the cheapest cost, using only one enchantment that recycle itself. The original deck was running 34 enchantment cards. We will have 20 at most. And I'm not sure if a Replenish strategy will be the best for us, since we will already get hands filled with creatures that don't trigger any draw engine per se.

 Josh: I agree with taking out Replenish. We really don't have room for any more nonenchantment card since we are forced to cut down to 20 enchantments only.

 Kuma: Also, consider this: our meta is very different than the meta of the original deck. We will face Goblin decks. And we don’t have any true removal in there. Rancor doubles as a pseudo-removal via chump block, and the Gatherer makes possible to chump block indefinitely, under the right circumstances.

 Josh: I am still not quite sold just yet. I agree that you'll get chump blockers this way, but we might be able to stop caring once we get some global protection from our enchantments, such as Solitary Confinement or Elephant Grass.

  

One of these will definitely not be there

 Kuma: We should think if we'll have fuel enough for Solitary Confinement and Elephant Grass, though. That were part of the Replenish plan: in the original deck, you couldn't keep a Grass on for too long, but at some point you know you'd take it back. And you had a lot of cards to discard to Solitary to freeze the board while you put yourself in position for the endgame. Also, again, that deck rarely had to face a Goblin-style kind of deck that brings waves upon waves of creatures on you (and probably when it did, that was a bad matchup for it). 

 Josh: I think we should see enough fuel for Solitary Confinement. Even though we lost enchantments to play, we have a playset of Vedurian Enchantress which gives us the added boost in drawing power. As for Elephant Grass, I have to agree with you there. Without Replenish, it's just not as good as it should be. As an alternative, even if it’s in white, I think we can use Ghostly Prison. It does the same thing as Elephant Grass for two more colorless mana, but at least we don't have to pay the upkeep cost. With this being said, let's discuss what are the staple enchantments that we  should  include. I would say we need some number of Sterling Grove, maybe 3 or 4, to protect our enchantments and tutor up a Sigil of the Empty Throne for our win condition.

 Kuma: I think Sterling Grove has to be the basis. I’d start with a full playset of it. I’d probably try with that and Rancor at full force, definitely 2 Sigils of the Empty Throne and 2 Ghostly Prisons, plus 8 other enchantments as a 1- or 2-of toolbox set to be tutored by the Grove.

 Josh: From the original deck we can cut out Ground Seal since dredge is not running rampant in tribal. I think it's also safe to exclude City of Solitude, as we see very few decks with counter magic in tribal. And unfortunately Moat is an auto-exclude since it's banned.

 Kuma: We also agreed to take out Elephant Grass. So, we bring in the Ghostly Prisons, and maybe 1 Solitary Confinement?

 Josh: Yeah, I think that would suffice to give us protection from more aggressive decks, as well as from burn and some combo strategies. 

Enchantress Project – The Staple Enchantments
by Ayanam1 & _Kumagoro_
Creatures
4 Argothian Enchantress
4 Verduran Enchantress
4 Gatherer of Graces
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Seton, Krosan Protector
20 cards

Other Spells
4 Sterling Grove
4 Rancor
2 Ghostly Prison
1 Solitary Confinement
2 Sigil of the Empty Throne
13 cards
Lands
0 cards

 
Ghostly Prison

 

 Kuma: Ok, 7 enchantment slots left. I assume all the mana acceleration is out, right? And what about Enchantress's Presence? Redundant?

 Josh: Earlier I commented on how the mana base was sufficient since we would have access to some mana acceleration. I think we might need to include some mana acceleration or we'll face a rocky mana base. We do have a set of Noble Hierarchs, but I would think a couple (Utopia Sprawl)s would give us something more stable. As for Enchantress's Presence, in a way it is redundant, but having a few copies in the deck could be an advantage. First, it's an enchantment. In tribal, enchantments are hard to get rid of compared to creatures, for which there are ample solutions in any deck. Second, we lost 14 of the original enchantment slots, so being able to draw more would be good to balance this loss.

 Kuma: Mmm, this is already getting crowded for the last slots. Let's say we add one Presence, and keep the Utopia on hold for a moment, because in the last 6 slots we have to deal with direct answers and other useful/cool stuff. I think one Oblivion Ring is a no-brainer here. What about Lignify and/or Aura of Silence over a second Ring?

 Josh: Oblivion Ring is way better than Lignify, since it's an answer to pretty much any permanent. As for Aura of Silence, not many people play colorless tribals to make this very good. And not many people heavily play enchantments or artifacts. You do see the blades being popular from time to time. However, people playing with equipment seem to have a habit of cheating them into play with Stoneforge Mystic (that was before she got restricted to Kor and Artificer decks in Tribal Apocalypse – Editor's Note), so it's ability to make spells cost more for your opponents isn't as relevant.  If we have room, I'd definitely add an additional Oblivion Ring.

 Kuma: Playing the devil's advocate for Aura of Silence (which I usually like): that's a permanent answer. O-Ring (just like Lignify) isn't. Still not worth it?

 Josh: Although Oblivion Ring doesn’t permanently answer a threat, it is often times an answer to twenty more cards in any given deck, as you can use it on creatures (not to mention, planeswalkers).

 Kuma: Ok, let's add 1 Ring for now. So, 5 slots to go. We probably have some room for more silver bullet-y things. Let's just assess for a minute the other auras, though, since you mentioned Whip Silk, which can be recast at will but serves little purpose. Flickering Ward seems better, in this sense. And in green, as a 5th Rancor, there's Aspect of Mongoose which grants shroud, and that may be slightly more relevant than reach. But I strongly feel we don't need to meddle with auras more than we currently do, and they are all vastly less cheap to use than Rancor, so I'll pass on them.

  

Thanks but no, thanks

 Josh: Yeah. Auras should be avoided in general since, as it is known, every time the opponent kills your creature before an aura sticks, it's an awful two-for-one for them.

 Kuma: I stumbled onto Hoofprints of the Stag, instead, and that's a nice, cheaper alternative to Sigil which plays into the architecture of the deck.

 Josh: Although Sigil costs more to play, I think it's a lot better. With Sigil, you get an Angel every time you pay one green and do your Rancor/Gatherer of Graces interaction (to which I'm warming up more and more as we speak). Hoofprints on the other hand requires you to draw four cards before you can even make a token. To top it off, you have to play three mana to do it.

 

Ok, not exactly in the same league

 Kuma: Yeah, I just wanted to mention it. I also have to bring two more cards to our attention, but first let's see if we strongly feel like including some proper silver bullets. I think we can't afford the room for things like Runed Halo or Nevermore, albeit this latter is tempting, and never got wasted. What do you think? 

 Josh: If we have Solitary Confinement, I don't think we need Runed Halo. However, I like the idea of Nevermore. We have been seeing more combo decks in tribal lately, and a card that stops a combo cold is always a good tool to have. I can see Nevermore also being useful against board sweepers your opponent might have. I think it makes a great silver bullet.

 

Then the bird said, "Nevermore!"

 Kuma: And Nevermore joins us then. Which brings me to the two other cards I want to consider, as they are other ways to protect the deck by shutting down broad strategies. The first is Leyline of Sanctity (the card that made Ivory Mask obsolete), as typically burn and discard decks don't have a way to deal with it. The second idea I would advocate is a blue splash for Teferi's Moat. I have some experience with it, and there are so many monocolored decks in the meta that it's often an instant concession card when the opponent isn't prepared (Goblins and Zombies almost never are, Elves only sometimes, when they didn't make all the deck about their combo). I know the (lesser) Moat is a 5cc card, and requires both blue and white mana, but still...

 Josh: I am not quite sold on Leyline of Sanctity. We have Solitary Confinement which gives us shroud and prevents all damage. The draw back is we need our draw engine in order to sustain it. The good thing about Leyline is you can potentially have it out for free and it doesn't require any upkeep, but I think we can make better use of an enchantment slot. As for Teferi's Moat, I was going to suggest the same thing, but you beat me to it! I think it’s a great card since many tribes are land based. You would have a great advantage over Goblins and Elves, which seem to be two of the most popular tribes in Tribal Apocalypse. We have four Noble Hierarchs that can produce blue. Furthermore, if we decide to stick to the 6 fetchland layout of the original deck's mana base, it would not be hard to splash for.

The Scourge of Goblins

 Josh: All this talk about Teferi's Moat just reminded me of Island Sanctuary which has the drawback of skipping your draw step, and allows creatures with islandwalk to attack you, but it's cheaper to cast, and a solution to all ground creatures, not just the ones of a named color. What do you think of running it over Teferi's Moat?

When was the last time you saw this in play?

 Kuma: Man, it's really tempting! I'm kinda worried about the deck having a wider curve than the original (a turn 3 where we just drop a Verduran is a very bad turn 3), and the Sanctuary would be something to drop earlier, triggering a draw (the draw triggered by the Moat would come relatively late in the game, so wouldn't be so relevant in starting the engine), and then wait until it's needed. This is the kind of deck that can skip a draw for sure. Downside is: if we aren't in the position to skip the draw, the Sanctuary doesn't save us at all. Then again, if we're at that point, we probably don't have the mana to drop the Moat too, so it's probably a tie here. I'm conflicted. It's surely not wise to use both: if we face Merfolk, we will nullify the power of the Sanctuary only because we'll have islands to pay for the Moat later. That would be moronic. 

 Josh: There is also the downside of skipping payment on Island Sanctuary and being hit by strategies that utilize hasted alpha strikes like some Elf builds. But I think we should be able to draw enough thanks to our card engine to constantly pay for the Sanctuary. Often you can predict what kind of strategy your opponent is going to use based on the cards he's playing, so you can make an educated guess on what to expect.

 Kuma: However, as you said, it doesn’t protect us against hasted attacks, and we know Goblins and Elementals like those too. And we also know we may be tempted to not skip the draw if there’s no creatures on the board in the early turns.

 Josh: I am conflicted too on whether to run Teferi's Moat or Island Sanctuary. You are right that we might be in trouble if we face Merfolk; however, there's also a lot of decks that run different colored creatures, so Teferi's Moat does have its weakness as well. I''ll leave the choice to you. 

 Kuma: If you leave the choice to me, you’ll make sure we will do the weird, bad choice! But ok, I’ll say let’s give good ol’ Island Sanctuary a try, awful art and all (after some preliminary testing, the Island Sanctuary got promptly replaced with Teferi's Moat, so no goofy revival of vintage stuff after all – Editor's Note). At this point, we could even add 2 Utopia Sprawl (I’ve grown concerned about our early turns), and another O-Ring, and call it a day. But now that we don’t splash blue, there’s still the question of a red-splashed Words of War, which is a good card, a problem solver, and an alternate wincon over Sigil. It still depends on our engine running hard, though. 

So very red

 Josh: I still like Words of War. You can use it to burn out troublesome creatures as well. I think we should give it a go and play with it a bit to see if it should be kept or cut from the deck. Perhaps we should hold back on that second O-Ring for now. As for Utopia Sprawl, I am all for them. I think we might even need to find room for a third one if our deck is running a bit slow.

 Kuma: So, Words of War over the second O-Ring or maybe over the second Ghostly Prison instead?

 Josh: I like the protection Ghostly Prison offers us. It’s a card we should be playing and not tutoring for.

 Kuma: I was thinking the same thing, we can't tutor everything. And now that I can see the first draft of the deck (supposedly) completed, I realize that one thing we miss over the original is that we can’t recycle the Groves. I suppose we have to live with it, even if I’m foreseeing a Human variant of the deck having some solutions for that.

 

 Kuma: Let’s talk the mana base now. I assume Serra's Sanctum is still a go, two of them seem justified: even with our reduced number of enchantments, it will be very unlikely to not have at least one on the board, and fairly likely to have two. And we need white mana, since we produce mostly green with the mana accelerators.

 Josh: I do have a concern about Serra's Sanctum, though. The number of one-mana acceleration enchantments has been cut down, so Serra's Sanctum would be one of the lands we pray not to open with. We do have Rancor to bring our one-drop enchantments to 6, but they need to stick to a creature (and the Argothian Enchantress isn't an option). Other than that, almost half our enchantments cost 3 or more. With that being said, I still think it's a really powerful land for this deck, and two copies of it might be the right number. Another utility land that was featured in the original deck list is Karakas, which I really like. At worst it works as a Plains, but if you have opponents playing legendary stuff, it becomes really good.

 Kuma: Karakas doesn't even need to be discussed. We even have four legendary guys of our own we really want to save in our deck. Should we maybe cut the Sanctums to just 1 instead?

 Josh: Yeah, let's cut it down to 1 for now (we'll later decide that two Sanctums are worth the risk – Editor's Note). Moving to other nonbasics, we will want to run some number of Savannahs and a copy of Taiga for our secondary colors. As for fetch lands, I think the six from the original decklist would be good. It will allow us to fetch any secondary color land we need. 

 Kuma: The deck is essentially a Selesnya build, so I'd go with my usual Selesnya package: 4 Windswept Heath, 2 Savannah, 2 Temple Garden, 2 Sunpetal Grove. I don't really understand why the original deck is so low on duals/nonbasics, but I suspect is due to some kind of meta-call (Blood Moon? Back to Basics?) which we shouldn't care about too much in our meta. The lonely Taiga as the only source of red mana is absolutely risky though, as we're seeing more and more Wastelands on Tribal Apocalypse (since when their price has lowered). I'd go with at least 2 Taigas. With 2 Wooded Foothills as the secondary fetch (that's just for thematic coherence, as Misty Rainforest or, say, Verdant Catacombs would just do the same job).

 Josh: For the most part, I think I am in agreement with you. We need that secondary Taiga in there. We cut down to 2 Utopia Sprawl from the original list so we don't have that many red sources to play Words of War. But we shouldn’t run Sunpetal over lands with the Forest type, since Sunpetal doesn’t count towards Rofellos.

 Kuma: You’re right. Let’s do it with more Savannahs and/or Temple Gardens, for who owns them. After Karakas and the Sanctum(s), the rest will be basic Forests and one Plains. Just because stuff like Blood Moon and Path to Exile DO exist after all. (Choosing Teferi's Moat over Island Sanctuary in the end meant we also needed some blue mana sources, so there's a couple Tropical Islands in the final list – Editor's Note)

 Josh: And the deck is built! Time for some tournament action!

 


PART 2: THE TEST RUN 

 And here we go, the deck was entered by Ayanam1 in Tribal Apocalypse on May 12, 2012 (Week 71), ending 5th place with a final score of 2-1. Let's look at the videos of all the games and listen to Ayanam1's audio commentaries (registered afterwards). 

 Round 1 vs. Aggro: Goblins by r0x0r:

 So, 2-0 against a Goblin deck that was most refined than most, but still had no real way to outplay Solitary Confinement. At 23:00, Josh made a little mistake, in that his Gatherer of Graces didn't have to die while being enchanted with Rancor, she could have eaten the OTHER Rancor and regenerated. The Gatherer doesn't just sacrifice the auras on her, but any aura you control on the battlefield. Which means it might be a good play to cast an early Rancor on, say an opponent's Wall, if we only have Argothian Enchantress in play; later, we can take that Rancor back with the Gatherer. Anyway, Ayanam1 himself talks about this in the last video, so that was just a momentary distraction, due to the fact that the board position was pretty solid.

 Round 2 vs. Control: Rats by Krosanbeast9359:


 Admittedly, the Rat deck underperformed in this match, even being kinda mana screwed in game 2. We can see the true potential of the Enchantress deck here, but things are not always going to be so smooth. For instance... 

 Round 3 vs. Combo: Walls by misterpid: (that was the 1st place deck of the tournament, you can see the decklist here):


 Game 1 tells us that a well-timed Slagstorm is enough to entirely wreak our deck, and that running 20 lands has its downside. Game 2 is interesting, in that the sudden win misterpid managed to pull off was totally unexpected and surprising (that deck was strong, after all), yet the Enchantress could have stopped it nonetheless. Yes, Josh, you definitely should have O-Ringed that Warstorm Surge on sight!


 PART 3: THE BUDGET

 So, the deck is fun and decently successful. But how much it costs? Well, it's not cheap, that's for sure. The version ran by Ayanam1, including the manabase, is $318.87, of which, no surprise here, mostly is represented by the 8 dual lands. The nonland part of the deck is $105.97, and it's actually workable towards a more budget-friendly version. For starters, if we're going to play Enchantress with a cheaper mana base, we can take out Rofellos. As you saw, he was mostly irrelevant in these games, and if we're going to take out the ME duals, we will not be able to exploit him anyway. And that's 12 tix saved. In his place, we have plenty of druidic options, like Druid of the Anima (who helps with Words of War), or just some other copies of Seton. We could also replace Noble Hierarch with just good ol' (Llanowar Eves) (too bad (Avacyn's Pilgrim is a Monk), and that's another 22 tix you wouldn't have to spend. The only money cards you can't absolutely take out are Argothian Enchantress (unless you're going to go with Mesa Enchantress instead) and Sterling Grove, for a grand total of $55.52. I'd also keep both Solitary Confinement ($4.00) and Enchantress's Presence ($2.93), so here's a reworked budget version worth $76.64, all included.


  If you took out Argothian for Mesa, the cost of the deck would ultimately go down to $38.72.


PART 4: WHAT ELSE?

 All of this was done with Druid, which admittedly is a cooler tribe than Human, that's just everywhere these days. Yet, Humans are so huge that you can find virtually everything among them, including some other enchantment-related creatures: Academy Rector (also a Cleric) to fetch them; Auramancer (also a Wizard) to bring them back from the graveyard; and Faith Healer (another Cleric) to trade them for life, which is interesting when combined with recurring auras like Rancor. In order not to merely running the same build as Ayanam1, in that same TribAp event I tried a Human build more heavily based on the Rancor engine, and featuring Faith Healer as a backup for Gatherer of Graces. But that turned out not to be very interesting or consistent in the end. So, as a bonus, here's a Cleric build with Academy Rector instead, trying to replicate the old Mind Over Matter combo I mentioned at the beginning of the article (I also entertained the idea of building around Abjure and Hatching Plans, but so far that went nowhere. Same goes with putting Celestial Ancient in there to have the Enchantresses grow while they draw).

 

 And Ayanam1's own bonus deck is a Wizard build, that features the most recent take on the Enchantress concept: the sexy albino girl known as Kor Spiritdancer.

 

 Finally, TrevaWhateva kinda beated us to the punch and played an Enchantress Druid deck on Week 65 of Tribal Apocalypse (so, one month and a half before), with a final score of 2-2 but weird matchups: he won against Bats and Elders, lost to Wizards and Elves. The peculiarity of his build, that's not cheap at all, is to ignore Argothian Enchantress entirely.

 

 The star here appears to be Yavimaya Enchantress, thanks to the huge number of 1-mana enchantments the deck is running (with full playsets of both Wild Growth and Utopia Sprawl). The engine is enhanced by 4 copies of Enchantress's Presence and by the cool interaction with another card of the Words cycle: Words of Wind, that's able to both hinder the opponent and recycle our low cost enchantments, thus creating a situation where you tap a land enchanted with a Growth or Sprawl, activate Words of Wind causing the opponent to bounce something while you bounce your enchantment back, then recast it on another land (maybe after untapping it with Arbor Elf), rinse, repeat. Nice build. 

 So, that's all for this very enchanted time. Next, we'll delve into the mysteries of Control with a special guest... that I can't announce right now mostly because I have to get back to him first, since the last time we spoke of this project was about three months ago! Until then, have a good brewing with the Enchantress you like the most. 

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