The deck I'm working on today is Adaptive Enchantment, the Bant colored deck focused on enchantments and auras. I've built Bant enchantments in the past, using Jenara, Asura of War as the commander. I had mixed results with that deck, but one of the things I always wished for when playing it was for an "Enchantress" in my command zone. A source of card draw would have made a huge impact on that deck's viability.
Well, luckily, Adaptive Enchantment comes with just such a card: Tuvasa the Sunlit. That's right, for this one, we're ditching the Planeswalker in favor of an alternate. True, Tuvasa is somewhat limited as an enchantress, since she only draws you a maximum of one card per turn - but if we can find a way to cast some enchantments on our opponents' turns as well, we can maximize our draws that way.
Tuvasa gently pushes us toward a Voltron strategy, which I am fine with, but as she triggers on any enchantment, not just auras, we aren't completely obligated to go that way. We can also go wide with things like Sigil of the Empty Throne. And we can probably get up to some shenanigans with Enchanted Evening as well. Lots of options, and I want to explore as many as possible - why limit ourselves to one mode of play when multiple modes of attack are open to us?
Enchantress decks are a heavily- and long-supported archetype so the card pool for us to draw from is very deep. I have a LOT of ideas for this deck but we're not going to be able to fit anywhere near all of them into it. I could probably, actually make three separate decks - one for each of the three commanders, and while they would all still be considered "enchantress" decks, they would all feel and play quite differently.
In fact, if I had the lands to make three Bant decks at once without shafting one of the mana bases, I might actually do that! But alas, as good as my land collection is, I am pretty sure even I could only support two Bant decks at once, and even then it might get spotty. So, for now, we're just going to cram as much as we can into this one deck.
I've already figured out my changes and will break them down by sections. Afterward I'll talk a bit about things that didn't make the cut as well.
Silent Sentinel ---> Sun Titan
Loyal Guardian ---> Celestial Ancient
This first batch is just a couple of cards that I feel had almost strictly better options out there. The vast majority of our key cards are going to be cheap enough that Sun Titan is likely to outperform his jank cousin. And while Loyal Guardian provides an effect I'm just flat-out skeptical that this deck even wants at all, if we do end up wanting a 5-drop that puts counters on our team, Celestial Ancient is more on-theme and has a much higher power level (potentially), so we'll at least give the Ancient a shot.
Dictate of Kruphix ---> Satyr Enchanter
Ever-Watching Threshold ---> Femeref Enchantress
Loyal Drake ---> Kor Spiritdancer
Yavimaya Enchantress ---> Argothian Enchantress
Next up, we want to supplement out card draw with more Enchantresses. I think I'm basically running them all, save the O.G. Verduran Enchantress and her color-shifted counterpart, Mesa Enchantress. I'm just not a big fan of the three-mana 0/2's these days. And we probably don't need to overdo it in this category - after all, our we're hoping our commander will fulfill that role most of the time. To make room, I just cut three worse card-draw effects and the one Enchantress that isn't really and Enchantress (you have to draw cards to get that title!).
Ravenous Slime ---> Faith Healer
Arixmethes ---> Auratog
Daxos of Meletis ---> Hanna, Ship’s Navigator
Phyrexian Rebirth ---> Starfield of Nyx
Empyrial Storm ---> Replenish
Here we have some sac outlets and recursion pieces. Replenish replaces Empyrial Storm as a much more reliable and synergistic win condition. Hanna and Starfield are slow recursion/value cards. Phyrexian Rebirth was an awkward cut, and I am worried about cutting sweepers but, oh well. Daxos was just clunky and when I played this deck before, he never managed to connect even once. Meanwhile Arixmethes and Ravenous Slime are too very cool new cards I'm excited to use... in other decks. They nobly sacrifice their slots so we can get our sac outlets into the deck.
Myth Unbound ---> Karmic Justice
Vow of Wildness ---> Grasp of Fate
Spawning Grounds ----> Faith’s Fetters
Soul Snare ---> Darksteel Mutation
Bant Charm ---> Song of the Dryads
Vow of Flight ---> Cage of Hands
Obviously we need removal and so that brings us to this batch of enchantment-based removal. This is a category that has a ton of room for selective choices, as the few I've picked out are just the tip of the iceberg. There are a ton of Oblivion Ring variants, but I like Grasp for it's card advantage potential. Faith's Fetters and Song of the Dryads are great because they can shut down more than just creatures - I've even put Fetters on annoying lands like Maze of Ith or Volrath's Stronghold before. Song of the Dryads and Darksteel Mutation are particularly good at neutering enemy commanders without allowing the option of just recasting them. Karmic Justice is one of the all-time great Rattlesnake cards. And Cage of Hands is a Pacifism variant that let's us rebuy and reuse it.
Ground Seal ---> Sterling Grove
Loyal Unicorn ---> Shalai, Voice of Plenty
Whitewater Nyads ---> Treachery
Martial Coup ---> Cyclonic Rift
Archetype of Imagination ---> Sphere of Safety
Removal isn't the only form of protection we can use, of course. I like Sterling Grove over Ground Seal here because I'd rather broadly protect my own game plan than narrowly screw over someone else's deck. Plus, Ground Seal doesn't do anything to stop mass-reanimation effects, which are the more scary ones anyway. Shalai provides a much more comprehensive and robust form of protection for our army than the Unicorn does. Spot removal is the bane of decks that want to pile on Auras, so mass-Hexproof is huge. I probably want some redundancy here, actually, but couldn't find room. Cyclonic Rift is powerful, duh. And Sphere of Safety you often see played along side all the other pillow-fort enchantments (Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, etc.) but with all the other Enchantments in the deck, it seems like it can be quite effective on it's own.
Eel Umbra ---> Rancor
Sage’s Reverie ---> Ethereal Armor
Genesis Storm ---> Spirit Mantle
Epic Proportions ---> Angelic Destiny
Celestial Archon ---> Eidolon of Countless Battles
Righteous Authority ---> Steel of the Godhead
Snake Umbra ---> Shield of the Oversoul
This batch contains our buffs. Like the removal suite mentioned above, this portion has an enormous card pool to choose from. I could easily triple the number above and still not cover all the playable ones. But I think, I hope, I have chosen a good cross section of the best of the bunch. Rancor is essential for Trample, reusability and it forms a powerful draw engine when combined with any Enchantress and Auratog or Faith Healer - basically you can pay G to draw a card as many times as you can afford to. The rest of them all provide some combination of evasion and stat boosts. Pretty basic stuff, really.
Forge of Heroes ---> Noble Hierarch
Sol Ring ---> Bloom Tender
Mosswort Bridge ---> Serra’s Sanctum
Meandering River ---> Tundra
Tranquil Expanse ---> Savannah
Woodland Stream ---> Tropical Island
Tranquil Cove ---> Hallowed Fountain
Blossoming Sands ---> Temple Garden
Thornwood Falls ---> Breeding Pool
Terramorphic Expanse ---> Flooded Strand
Krosan Verge ---> Windswept Heath
Evolving Wilds ---> Misty Rainforest
Plains ---> Glacial Fortress
Plains ---> Sunpetal Grove
Forest ---> Hinterland Harbor
Plains ---> Mystic Gate
Forest ---> Wooded Bastion
Island ---> Flooded Grove
And finally we come to the mana base! We really want to reliably hit Tuvasa on turn three as often as possible, so we're going all out to beef up the land package. I feel like we can easily shed a land or two, given that we have greatly reduced the average CMC of the deck and have a commander with built-in card draw. So, I'm cutting one land in favor of Noble Hierarch, which is kind of like a land but can wear auras and attack, in a pinch. Sol Ring felt weirdly out of place being the only Artifact in the entire list; plus, we need colored mana to hit our commander on time, so this is one of the rare times you'll see me cut Sol Ring. Instead, we're going with Bloom Tender which I always like to play with three-color, three-CMC commanders; it let's us do stupid things like casting Tuvasa AND another three-drop on Turn 3. And since I have a couple of Serra's Sanctums but never get to use 'em... here's my chance. Sanctum comes in for the Hideaway land because I just don't like those much.
After that, it's all just cutting mediocre lands for really, really good ones. ABUR Duals, Fetches, Shocks, etc. You know the drill by now. Just run the best duals you have access to and the fewer ETBF-tapped ones the better.
Well, those are all the changes I have made thus far. I could certainly see going even futher, and a lot of cards I wanted to run wound up on the cutting room floor. I'm also giving the benefit of the doubt to a handful of cards I could see myself cutting later - Estrid and Kestia, the two other new commander options, don't seem super great, but probably are fine cards in their own right, so I'll try them out for a while. Kruphix's Insight should probably just be Plea for Guidance or Three Dreams, but I like that it's so cheap and has a lot of potential for massive card advantage.
Hydra Omnivore has no particular synergies but with all the various buffs to give it evasive abilities, it could be a very potent finisher. Boon Satyr is flexible thanks to having Bestow and Flash - I especially like Flash because our commander only draws cards for our first Enchantment spell each turn, so casting enchantments on our opponents's turns is a good way to get around that little restriction. And finally, Aura Gnarlid dodged getting cut simply because it has that evasion ability in addition to just getting bigger.
The rest of the deck seems, on paper, very solid and I wouldn't cut anything else until actual gameplay experience tells me otherwise.
As for what didn't make it... well, there's a ton! Let's see... first of all, I was initially going to run a nasty little "combo" in Enchanted Evening plus Cleansing Meditation or Calming Verse. This is the Enchantment-based version of the old classic Mycosynth Lattice into Vandalblast - i.e. together those cards read, essentially, "destroy all permanents you don't control". That tends to end games pretty decisively. But it is also something some might consider "unfun" - and I might tend to agree with them.
For similar reasons I didn't resort to using the old Standard trick of using Sovereigns of Lost Alara to cheat out Eldrazi Conscription. Instead I was going to use Sovereigns to cheat out more fair and fun things like Epic Proportion but eventually I realized I just didn't want those big, clunky auras in the deck at all. Without big, expensive things to cheat out, Sovereigns themselves no longer had much use. But it's definitely something I would consider if you find the deck needs a bit more help closing out games.
For similar reasons, Academy Rector didn't make the cut - there just aren't enough high-value targets for her to cheat out. Cutting almost all of the high-CMC Enchantments really lowers her impact.
There are five or six cards in both the buff and removal categories that I couldn't squeeze in as well. Stasis Snare, for example, is one removal piece I'd like to have, given that whole Flash synergy I mentioned above. And Daybreak Coronet was one of a few buff auras that I thought were shoe-ins but somehow didn't make the cut after all. Ancestral Mask is very powerful but I skipped in in the end because it always make doing the math to figure out how big your guy is annoyingly difficult, and it doesn't grant any form of evasion or protection.
I mentioned how good mass-Hexproof would be earlier, and so I gave consideration to Privileged Position but never quite figured out how to fit it in. Greater Auramancy would 100% for sure have made the cut, however, if it only said "hexproof" instead of "shroud" - Shroud is terrible if you want to target your own guys with more than one Aura! Rhystic Study made the shortlist of card draw effects until I realized we probably just don't need it, with all of the Enchantresses running around.
Finally, there are a few Theros gods we could use, but after looking over the rest of the deck, Heliod is the only one that seems particularly useful or relevant. We don't have a high enough creature count or a strong enough need for ramp to make Karametra work. Kruphix does virtually nothing at all for us. And Ephara has a similar need to be running out creatures to get value, but we're hoping that this deck is most often going to be functional with only a few creatures on the table at once. We aren't looking to go wide in most cases (though a few cards like Ajani's Chosen and Sigil of the Empty Throne afford us that option for when going tall doesn't pan out).
But, while I can imagine a scenario where Heliod + Serra's Sanctum just goes fucking ape all over the table, I don't think Heliod would be all that great without that absurd source of white mana. Still, of all the cards I didn't manage to include in this first iteration, he's near the top of the list of things I'd like to find room for later on, just to see if I can pull that off.
Well, folks, I think that about wraps it up for this one. I could go one for another couple hundred words about this deck, but that'd probably be overkill at this point. I'm just glad a deck I'd been trying to make for years finally has not just one but three possible commanders to properly support it. Kudos to WotC for, just this once, getting it right!
Consider asceticism for mass hexproof?
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