Card/Deck How to execute a minimalist Enchantment theme

Mondschwein

Mondschwein

Theros 2.0 is there, and with it came a lot of new enchantments matter cards! The question I have for you: do we now have reached the critical mass to add an enchantment-theme to RipLab-Cubes™ which is non-poisonous/parasitic and feels like it connects to other decks you can draft?

Personally, I have the feeling that's the case. BG are it's main colours, second are blue and white. Red does have some enchantments, but it doesn't really have any payoffs and generally lacks the incentives to draft an enchantment deck around it.

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The density of payoffs we now have makes it possible to reject otherwise useless cards like Sigil of the Empty Throne.

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There are lots of enchantments that take several roles without being overpowered garbage and compare more to instants/sorceries, triggering cards that care for enchantments as well as Prowess.

The previous spoiler also makes clear: with Sagas, removal in the form of enchantments and also selfmilling being part of some, graveyard strategies as well as Delirium (which has also it's home in - surprise - BG!) benefit from the newly gained density of such cards, not only Aphemia and Tymaret Calls the Dead.


Looking at UG, there are more possibilities: you could go straight selfmill into LabMan win, playing Baron Harkonnen, milling your opponent to death:

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or using a Pod-style strategy:

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although I have to admit that this seems pretty unplayable as it's multicoloured and you need good enchantments and creatures.

Don't you?

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..and that's not even all, you also have access to removal like Pacifism or Stasis Snare, Underworld Connections and Squirrel Nest which benefit from untappers in UG like Voyaging Satyr and Vizier of Tumbling Sands, there's Demonic Pact which you want to bounce back to your hand and play again. It naturally bleeds into Reanimator, Baron, LabMan and Graveyard Matters.

I think we are finally there. :)
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

Fulcrum said:


It doesn't work with every enchantment, but if you decide to push enchantment theme towards auras it seems like a nice card. It's not as narrow as Kor Spiritdancer and the 2/2 body is meh but serviceable. If the aura deck doesn't come together it'll do just fine drawing a card off of Bonesplitter or Grafted Wargear. I kind of like it as a mediocre card for white weenie that adds "Draw a card" to things like Rancor and Bonds of Faith.
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Dom Harvey said:
Sram is kinda intriguing. The problem with Aura or equipment (or Vehicle tbh) subthemes is that they are too shallow individually; between them you can muster ~15 solid cards that trigger Sram, but you can't play too many because they all demand a certain creature density (accounting for Living Weapon, Bestow etc). You're right that the base case of drawing one card is perfectly fine
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From some investigative work, it appears aura-lords aren't a heavily discussed topic; y'alls discussion here may just be to totality of it. :)

Does anyone have thoughts on what the base case for Kor Spiritdancer being "on average" better than Sram, Senior Edificer? Also, is the decision point of augmenting the Spiritdancer versus another creature to get a power-toughness booster interesting to you as a player?

Both draw cards for auras. Sram also draws cards for equipment/vehicles. For the sake of this comparison, let us look at aura support only, as if the case for Spiritdancer is much weaker, it will become Sram.

Impact of creature in question scenarios
  1. No auras. Spiritdancer's stats are -2/-0.
  2. One+ aura, not targeting the creature in question. Spiritdancer's stats are -2/-0. Both draw cards. This does not expose the aura and creature in question concurrently.
  3. One augmenting aura (improves the creature enchanted), targeting creature in question. Spiritdancer's stats are +0/+2. Both draw cards. This is the break-even scenario; Spiritdancer is impactful in combat. This exposes the aura and creature in question concurrently.
  4. More than one (x) augmenting aura (improves the creature enchanted), targeting creature in question. Spiritdancer's stats are +2(x-1)/+2(x). Both draw (x) cards. This is where Spiritdancer assuredly outshines Sram. This exposes the (x) auras and creature in question concurrently.
Some amateurish analysis of probabilities. I just used the hypergeometric calculator on https://aetherhub.com/Apps/HyperGeometric and my foggy memory. Feel free to poke holes with abandon. My assumption is the H2/H3 scenarios give good cases for how to look at the early-to-mid game.
  • H1: # of auras in deck
  • H2: chance of having drawn at least 1 aura by turn 3 (on the play, 40 card population, 9 cards drawn sample size, # of auras are successes); if the creature in question has been drawn, what chance is there is also an aura to be played by turn 3?
  • H3: on turn 2, with no auras drawn, chances of drawing through turn 6 (on the play, 32 card population, 4 cards drawn sample size, # of auras are successes); if the creature in question has been drawn by turn 2, but no auras were drawn, what chance is there is also an aura to be played from turns 3 to 6?
H1 - H2 - H3
1 aura - 20.0% - 12.5%
2 aura - 36.4% - 23.8%
3 aura - 49.8% - 34.0%
4 aura - 60.7% - 43.1%
5 aura - 69.4% - 51.2%
6 aura - 76.4% - 58.4%
The above doesn't take into account augmenting auras on the creature in question versus non-augmenting. Nor does it break out the multiple augmenting aura scenarios (where Spiritdancer becomes BIG). Nor does it take into account the risk of putting all auras on a single creature (which I assume wouldn't happen a lot with Sram).
Of course, there is also some additional context of what 4+ toughness means in combat and against removal, how much removal an opponent would be expected to have in any given game and the like. My assumption is at 4 toughness, Kor Spiritdancer survives against almost all unaugmented, nongreen creatures with cmc 4 or less in combat and ~15 percent of removal spells. Most opponents will have between 3 and 6 removal spells.
Please let me know where I may add anything further!
 
ravnic

ravnic



Could this card be enough as a build around if ~20% of your white cards are enchantments already? Technically I already have a few cards caring about enchantments (Stone Haven Pilgrim, Starnheim Courser, Trusty Retriever, Enlightened Tutor ...) but most of them are primarily artifact/equipment support.

How many enchantments other than SotET does a deck need to make it work? My cube is low powered enough that 2 angels from a 5 mana investment would probably be good enough most of the time.

I am kinda looking for a white Drake Haven here.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Sigil is close to playable, but it's often hard to fit in a five mana do nothing in a game without falling too far behind. I ran a custom that also triggered on itself entering the battlefield for a while, but that was almost too strong, so Sigil is not far off.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Interesting that it triggers on casting enchantments and not them entering the battlefield, since that means you can't really reanimate enchantments or cheat them into play to get triggers from sigil, you really do have to have the enchantment in your hand.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Onderzeeboot said:
Sigil is close to playable, but it's often hard to fit in a five mana do nothing in a game without falling too far behind. I ran a custom that also triggered on itself entering the battlefield for a while, but that was almost too strong, so Sigil is not far off.
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Hmm, maybe this card would be a better fit for a lower powered environment? It has a much lower ceiling, but also a much higher floor, which is usually a good thing for limited. A healthy thing. I mean, a 3/3 flier for 5 is not great, but also never super terrible if you're topdecking it later.

 
japahn

japahn

The issue with these enchantments payoffs is that at 5 mana, you've often already cast many of your enchantments to buy time to play a do-nothing 5-drop without dying. Celestial Ancient is better in that it's a 3/3 flier, so it blocks, but worse in that it's much easier to remove and it feels really stupid to sandbag those enchantments and have it all fall through because of Lightning Strike. Sigil of the Empty Throne at least runs a much lower risk of that, but still requires a high density of enchantments to be playable. In my cube, I'd put it at ~9 other enchantments to be barely playable, ~12 to be actually good.

I do not support enchantments anymore because the enablers lacked cohesion and very few were creatures, so the deck only really worked when drawing the payoffs, and even then it was a fragile gameplan that lacked agency. I'd have needed to change my cube's environment a lot so that normal decks can run 10+ enchantments, but that would warp it a lot.
 
shamizy

shamizy

I think the main issue is that there just isn't enough incidental support to or early plays that are really conducive to your gameplan. Every payoff or card that makes the enchantment deck worth playing falls into the glut of 4/5 cmc cards and there are only so many of those you can run. They really need more Constellation cards that are decent on their own but also promote nice synergistic interactions as you curve into your payoffs. Right now? Just not there. Eidolon of Blossoms type cards are what you want to get yourself going, but a 2/2 for 4 mana is almost never a good play unless you can guarantee drawing 2+ cards off it. I tried to give it a shot after TBD but there just weren't enough cards to make it work from my brief testing. Maybe Theros 3 will let us hit the critical mass necessary.

I've had an Karametra EDH deck with an Enchantress package for about 7 years now and I've found that Enchantments, in a non-constructed deck, are most suitable to as a secondary gameplan. It's nice when you can incidentally draw an extra card off an Enchantress effect, but the luxury of time to set up that engine does not exist in most Cube matches. And even then, a lot of the best standalone enchantments are worth snapping up elsewhere which just saps away your options in a draft setting.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi



Sure, it requires that you're running the right kind of enchantments, but Sagas and seals are going to end up in the graveyard anyway, right?

On a different note:

 
Brad

Brad

Sigil is interesting in that it does nothing when it comes in. It's decent at 1 cast, good at 2, and unfair past that. Seems maybe really variable?

Ancient looks cool if your 1R spells won't all slap it.

Banishing Light, etc, are also good targets for Dance.

I haven't actually played with it yet, but I conceptually like Zur the Enchanter. Changes the draft portion to value Zur targets more highly and he doesn't ask for much. Plenty of nice targets.
 
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