Card/Deck How to execute a minimalist Enchantment theme

[ahadabans]

Delirium is turning out to be a wild ride of environment design. Are there any Enchantment Creatures that totally could be included, but are a little fringe and so might be overlooked normally? It'd a be a solid way to overcome the delirium barrier, having two types on one card is just so nice.

I haven't tested the new set yet, but I have high hopes that Delirium has a natural home in my enchantment/heroic/prowess module. They all play nice together in theory.

Where I'm going with that is maybe you don't need to run every questionable enchantment creature out there. Maybe it's enough just to run the good ones and increase your aura count. Things like Madcap Skills, Moldervine Cloak, even Bonds of Faith are all decent cards in a lower power meta even without a lot of synergies. They actually become super solid when they get paired with enchantress/heroic/prowess (provided your instant speed removal is in check).

YMMV here, but the higher power your cube is the more important it will be for the cards you add to be relatively "stand alone" in power level. By that I mean, if they are grossly under curve unless you are triggering multiple synergies, they are going to be poisonous. So this will be quite the balancing act.

Someone else also mentioned Nameless Inversion in another thread. That's a decent removal spell by itself, and it also has random synergies (some tutor effects and now delirium).

Anyway, I just think there are several angles you can come at this and support delirium without having to get too desperate.

 

[RavebornMuse]

I've been wanting to push the enchantment theme some more, especially after seeing the last iteration of the MTGO Legendary Cube. Here are my thoughts on the enchantment creatures of note:

Top-Tier Includes:
Athreos, God of Passage - It might look bomb-y but the token-friendly state of white and the recursive-friendly state of black makes getting value off of this maybe a bit harder than it looks.
Boon Satyr - This bad boy has great art and wins games all the time. Flash + Green is my favourite.
Courser of Kruphix - Needs to explanation.
Doomwake Giant - B-List if your environment is light on X/1's, but if tokens are ~a thing~, this can be pretty nice.
Eidolon of Blossoms - top-tier adjacent, this card really depends on your enchantment density to be truly worth including.
Eidolon of the Great Revel - a good card that nobody but me was willing to run in my environment, which is heavy on <3 CMC. Potentially dragged down by being , but it's on my mind for re-inclusion.
Erebos, God of the Dead - this has real potential if your list is mono-black friendly, and the card draw cost isn't really that terrible in my experience.
Gnarled Scarhide - it's nice and there's a cute way to "remove a blocker" with it, but, this is much less exciting than some of the other black 1-drops we have these days.
Herald of Torment - Pretty cool I guess, though I'm not gagged, personally.
Keranos, God of Storms - Pretty solid win-con, but does even need this anymore? I guess it depends on your perspective.
Mogis, God of Slaughter - I loved this when we ran it, but is a bit stacked at 4 for us.
Nyx-Fleece Ram - this may lead to battlecruiser magic. But it's really pretty and pretty nice?
Purphoros, God of the Forge - Sure!
Thassa, God of the Sea - Yes!
Xenagos, God of Revels - This does some great work, and is a nice payoff for .

More Questionable Includes:
Aegis of the Gods - better if your environment is edict-heavy, but not really that good at all.
Eidolon of Countless Battles - ehhhhh
Eidolon of Rhetoric - Ethersworn Canonist is pretty great over here for more controlling decks, but adding a mana and fattening the ass isn't likely where you want to be.
Ephara, God of the Polis - Is this really going to draw enough to be better than even, say, Honden of Seeing Winds? The niche level (multicolour, creatures-only) really seems to raise that question.
Heliod, God of the Sun - This kinda depends on format speed, because the token-making can be valuable, but the vigilance often is a bit more questionable.
Master of the Feast - be careful, now
Nighthowler - Do you have self-mill themes? It's probably better in them. I can see a real cute T3 Buried Alive, T4 bestow Nighthowler.
Nylea, God of the Hunt I tried her for a while in a mono- angle to Green, and I had fun with her there. I don't know that she's as likely a "thing" as Erebos, though.
Nyx Weaver - I'm sorry but IDK why people like this. If the draw-from-the-'yard ability was cheaper, I'd be all for it.
Pharika, God of Affliction - I feel like I'd rather do other things with my graveyard, personally.
Phenax, God of Deception - not all heroes wear capes.
Spirit of the Labyrinth - I guess?
Underworld Coinsmith - Kind of a slow card for my tastes.

 

[ahadabans]

Enchantress is fun. The one time I saw it do exceptionally well was in a a Abzan aggro/control shell. Deck didn't look good on paper but it won a lot of games. I think the key was that it ran stuff like Oblivion Ring. Things that are good on their own and are just insane value when they have a cantrip or sweeper rider on them (blossoms/doomwake - these are the key cards in my mind).

From your top tier list, courser of kruphix was annoyingly powerful and I finally just cut it. It does too much and 4 toughness is just rubbing salt in the wound. All the gods play a little too much like walkers and I've moved away from them (between repeatable value at not cost and being indestructible, they have a mini-game feel to them I don't care for). Thassa is the least obnoxious and it was fun trying to trigger devotion. Purphoros is very strong regardless of hitting devotion but I did really enjoy that card. Keranos is actually slow and not as good as it looks (at least in my cube with a weaker control support structure).

From your questionable includes, Master of the Feast I think is definitely powerful enough (it was in many power max lists), and it looks like a great aggro incentive card. It will suck in midrange decks and that sort of makes it interesting. Nighthowler I suspect is bad just based on how borderline Bonehoard was.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Any thoughts on this now that Delirium is a thing? Building around Eidolon of Blossoms/Doomwake Giant is still hard but getting an incidental benefit from just having them in your deck helps a lot (you laughed at Whip of Erebos, huh? who's laughing now?!)

Vessel of Nascency is a nice development too

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Caveat: theorycrafting.

Reading through the rest of this thread, still the only pay off cards are eidolon of blossoms and doom wake giant, so only relevant thing is having enchantments for delirium. I'm only playing 3 delirium in my graveyard focused cube (gnarlwood dryad, ishkana, traverse) so there is maybe a bit of overlap.

To contribute to delirium you need self mill, discard or self sac. There are a couple of immediately cool overlap cards



It still comes down to are the pay off cards good enough/interesting enough?

Ps. I do really like vessel of narcency.

 

[James Stevenson]

Since we're short on payoff cards, has anyone come up with some cool customs? Can we modify payoff cards from other archetypes to care about enchantments?

 

[japahn]

In my experience, Sigil of the Empty Throne, however poisonous, is the real payoff card that makes drafting the deck worth it.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Starfield of Nyx had been nothing but fantastic for me. I also play Replenish and Argothian Enchantress, but those are marginal/deep includes.

For customs, I run buffed versions of a couple of the constellation creatures.

Oakheart Dryads as a 2/2 that gives out +1/+1 counters. Has been a strong 3 drop.

Thoughtrender Lamia as a 2/2 for 2BB. Decent, but discard a card is usually weaker then draw a card and its probably less fun too. Hard to cost this effect well.

Forgeborn Oreads as a 1/1 for 1R. Nice pinger.

I ran a version of Harvestguard Alseids with flash and a protection from a color, but it was basically a combat trick for three which was just awkward.

 

[Mondschwein]

I like Luminarch Ascension a lot better as an enchantment that's producing 4/4 flyers (fliers?).
You don't need to gather a lot of that certain cardtype of which you already have just a few in your list but there are several ways of bringing your token maker to work. Eidolon of Blossoms is completely different, it's a 2/2 draw 1 all by itself and gets pretty good for each single enchantment you play after that. The Sigil is a do-nothing more often than not, and really poisonous.

 

[japahn]

Luminarch Ascension is a better card, but it doesn't spawn the archetype, or even help it much. It's a control finisher.

My point is, Sigil of the Empty Throne is the only card that actually makes drafting a deck full of enchantments worth it for me. I'm not going to draft 9 enchantments to make my Doomwake Giant a terminateable Curse of Death's Hold, but I will do it if I can make an Angel a turn.

Constellation has failed us.

 

[sigh]

Why was constellation focused in GB? Just seems so weird not to give it to white. I guess heroic was crowding it out, but still....

Isn't Daxos's Torment a pretty good payoff card for enchantments? It even has immediate value.

 

[safra]

Since we're short on payoff cards, has anyone come up with some cool customs? Can we modify payoff cards from other archetypes to care about enchantments?

Satyr Wayfinder but for a Land or Enchantment and it's a Human. Chris' design I think? Maybe OZB's.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Nah that ain't me. Enchantments are like the opposite of my jam

 

[Diakonov]

I also run Starfield of Nyx, Argothian Enchantress, and Replenish in my narrow card stack, and they are quite strong with the right pool. The best thing about the enchantment theme is that most of the enchantments and auras integrate naturally with everything else and don't feel poisonous.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Daxos's torment is good, but black has plenty of oversized flying creatures with caveats (Persecutor, Desecration, Tombstalker) that I wouldn't call it a draw too enchantments. If you already have an enchantment theme, run it, but it isn't an exciting payoff card by itself.

 

[Taamas]

If there's anyone still interested in this, and since the focus of the enchantment theme uses to revolt around white aggro, take a look at Ethereal armor. Has been good in my cube, specially with its best friend Eidolon of Countless Battles, and I don't even have a proper enchantments theme (yet).

 

[sigh]

Ethereal Armor is strong. In a properly supported theme probably the best aura for its cost. Wordmail is also a powerful effect here, and might stand a little better on its own?

I'm currently working on supporting a great minimalist enchantment toolbox, led by:


Really cool effect, and currently finding stuff like

 

[inscho]

This will get some value in my next update. I've been looking for cards to bridge the gap between artifact and enchantment support.

 

[Taamas]

Enlightened tutor should definitely be an inclusion to my cube, didn't remember it also searches for artifacts. Amazing.

Wordmail may prove to be interesting, although almost all the cards in my cube are in Spanish and the rules say official names are the English ones. When I see this card, I always debate between not including it because following the rules would be tedious (looking at the Gatherer each time it's played) or just ignoring that rule and letting it be more powerful than it would be in an English cube.

I mean, who doesn't prefer Lince de la estepa, Anafenza, espíritu del árbol familiar or El de las cien manos?

 

[sigh]

You're in luck! Un-cards follow the rules of the un-rules manager, MaRo, and he has ruled that un-cards follow cards as they are printed, so you would count the words in Spanish. No need for gatherer!

 

[Diakonov]

I was planning to add Ethereal Armor, but then remembered Hyena Umbra and added that instead.

 

[ahadabans]

I'm assuming you are already running Griffin Guide and Gryff's Boon? I'd run both of those over Hyena Umbra. I tried the umbra and had one too many edicts two for one me. Both Guide and Boon offer you value when your dude dies while the umbras don't.

 

[Diakonov]

Yup running both already

 

[ahadabans]

Power level I feel drops considerably after those two auras. If you are looking for something else, I'd be looking at non-auras (o-ring and it's brethren). If you need more auras specifically, maybe pacifism? If they need to target your dudes (say for heroic), I would probably play with spirit loop or spirit link before I'd go back to the umbras. I think they are bad.

If you instant speed removal is super tame, you could also look at other colors. Something like Flight of Fancy is surprisingly playable in a slower meta with really light instant speed removal. OG Ravnica had a bunch of cool stuff like that you could play with. Power level must be lower obviously.

 

[GiftsForgiven]

I find it interesting that nobody's mentioned this absolute beast of a card in reference to aura payoffs:



Is it because of power level? I've been tinkering with an enchantment/constellation theme in my cube, and this guy is huuuuge.