Much Abrew: Enchantress (Pioneer, Magic Online)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. This week, we are heading to Pioneer to play a deck that I've been dying to play ever since Setessan Champion was previewed: Enchantress! With Setessan Champion joining Eidolon of Blossoms, we now have two very powerful enchantresses in the Pioneer format to reward us (with card draw) for casting a bunch of enchantments. Toss in Sigil of the Empty Throne to finish the game, a bunch of weird enchantment-based removal, and Gideon's Intervention to lock our opponent out of playing combo pieces like Underworld Breach and Inverter of Truth, and you've got the recipe for a potentially powerful deck! Can Enchantress work in Pioneer thanks to some new Theros: Beyond Death additions? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Much Abrew: Enchantress (Pioneer)
Discussion
- Pioneer Enchantress felt great! We played a league with the deck and ended up going 4-1, romping through the top decks in the meta (beating Sultai Delirium twice, Mono-White Devotion, and Dimir Inverter), with our only loss coming to Izzet Ensoul Artifact.
- You might have noticed that the deck we played today was a bit different from the Instant Deck Tech build. The original build of the deck had Gideon's Intervention in the sideboard, but the enchantment is so good against the top decks in the Pioneer meta that I moved it into the main deck. In practice, it was even better than I had hoped, beating Dimir Inverter by itself, keeping us alive against the Heliod, Sun-Crowned / Walking Ballista combo, and locking Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath out of the game against Sultai Delirium. Without Gideon's Intervention, we probably would have lost at least one additional match, possibly two. While it does have a downside in some matchups compared to Cast Out (which is what we cut to make room for Gideon's Intervention), most notably against planeswalkers that have already hit the battlefield, it more than makes up for this by allowing us to stop cards like Inverter of Truth, Walking Ballista, and the other popular combo pieces of the Pioneer format. Without it, our matchup against combo would be pretty bad, but with Gideon's Intervention, the combo matchups actually felt pretty solid.
- The core of the deck is the enchantresses: Eidolon of Blossoms and Setessan Champion. We want at least one and hopefully more on the battlefield every game, to give all of our random cantrips the kicker of drawing us a card when they enter the battlefield. This steady card advantage allows us to grind with just about any deck in the Pioneer format. Our matches against Sultai Delirium were a great example, where we simply drew so many cards that our opponent's Uro, Titan of Nature's Wraths and Tireless Trackers couldn't keep up.
- The other key aspect of our deck is the ramp, with Wolfwillow Haven and Herald of the Pantheon giving us eight two-mana accelerants to get us into our more powerful plays faster. While ramping into Eidolon of Blossoms and Calix, Destiny's Hand on Turn 3 is nice, these cards become especially powerful in the late game after we've stacked up a couple of enchantresses, allowing for big, pseudo-combo turns where we play a bunch of enchantments, draw a bunch of cards, and hopefully snowball the card advantage into a win.
- When it comes to winning the game, we have two plans. One is to simply bury our opponent in card advantage. While none of our creatures are especially great attackers (outside of Setessan Champion, which can grow into a real threat), if we can get enough of them on the battlefield, we can win by attacking with 2/2s. The faster way is Sigil of the Empty Throne, which quickly makes a board full of 4/4 Angels after it hits the battlefield, allowing us to close out the game quickly in just a couple of attacks.
- Mana Bloom is weird. We didn't draw it at all during our matches, but the idea is to cast it with zero counters to trigger our enchantresses and then have it bounce back to our hand the next turn to do it again. I'm sure there are some games where we actually want to use it to ramp (and it is fine as a weird ramp spell on Turn 2), but generally speaking, it's more of a combo piece to trigger all of our constellation creatures than a true ramp spell.
- So, should you play Pioneer Enchantress? I think the answer is a clear yes. The deck is super fun to play, and it felt oddly competitive against most of the top-tier decks in the Pioneer format. Even better, it's only $165, putting it outside of our normal Budget Magic price range but making it much cheaper than most competitive decks in the format. If you like drawing tons of cards or just like Enchantress-style decks, I could certainly see Pioneer Enchantress doing well at an FNM or even a Grand Prix / SCG Open.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
