A Different SB Strategy for Enchantress?

[cooberp]

For the record, I hate combo Keeper.  I think that running totally dead cards MD to support a gi-normous combo in the SB that eats up like half your sideboard is fucktarded.
That said, I've realized that Enchantress doesn't really play control against aggro.  It plays control just long enough so it can smack down its combo--Enchantress-Worship.  The more I play the deck, the more I think that Worship is the key to stomping creatures like the pathetic bugs they are.  Moat, Abyss, etc. are nice, but as the Keeper threads concur, they are no longer one-card auto-wins.  Worship plus an untargetable, protected by Groves if necessary, is.
Moreover, especially against Sligh, many of the cards that are supposed to buy me time--CoP: Red and Samite Ministration come to mind--wind up working against me.  I find that Sligh has little trouble overwhelming a CoP with mana denial and building up a hand, especially the builds that now run 8 sources of colorless damage.  But moreover, the need to hold back mana for CoP stops me from doing what I want to do, which is casting stuff during my main phase.  Ministration has the wonderful element of surprise if it catches PoP, but I don't want to hold back that 1W, I want to use it!
I think that if Enchantress wants to increase its post-board aggro matchups from 60/40 to 70-80%, simply devoting more slots to generic creature removal or specific deck hosers isn't the answer.  I think it needs to become more of a combo deck.
Right now, Enchantress has four untargetable creatures, four tutors, and its Worship.  What if, in addition to the 3 Plows and a Keg, it boarded in, say, 2 Nimble Mongeese, 2 more Worships, and a fourth Grove (against removal)?  That would bring the deck up to six untargetables, three Worships, and five tutors, which seems to me a pretty strong guarantee that if you could get to four mana, you would have the lockdown.
It would mean the removal of the last Powder Keg.  But you beat Stompy anyway, and you'd just go the combo route against Sligh.

That SB would look like:
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Worship
2 Nimble Mongoose
2 Choke
1 City of Solitude
1 Aura Fracture
1 Karmic Justice
1 Celestial Dawn
1 Compost
1 Sterling Grove

Am I out of my mind?

[jdl]

It seems like you're shoring up your deck versus aggro only though, which Enchantress is already good against.  Is it such a lost cause versus combo that it's pointless to even try?  Dragon, TurboNevyn, and Academy should destroy this deck, but there's very little in the SB to deal with them.

[Vegeta2711]

OMG, it's like T2 enchantress all over again, haha.

Yeah Mongoose + Worship + Grove is basically a lock against any aggro deck. It's not too hard a lock to break, but considering how most aggro is built, they just don't have the capacity too. Certianly would own Sligh good...

Seems like it would work fine, just why 3 STP if your going to bother going for a Worship lock?

And also I wonder with jdl, is it just a total lost cause against combo?

[walking dude]

if you want to side into combo, consider the following as a sideboard.

        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Mox Diamond
        2 Undiscovered Paradise
        4 Gemstone Mine
        4 City of Brass
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Tolarian Academy
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Grim Monolith
        1 Mana Vault
        4 Helm of Awakening
        2 Candelabra of Tawnos
        1 Mind over Matter
        1 Braingeyser
        1 Stroke of Genius
        1 Windfall
        1 Wheel of Fortune
        1 Time Spiral
        1 Timetwister
        1 Fastbond
        1 Regrowth
        1 Crop Rotation
        1 Mystical Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Frantic Search
        1 Lingering Mirage
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        4 Meditate
        4 Impulse
        2 Abeyance
        4 Force of Will

. If your goal is to beat aggro with a combo, a real combo deck will have much higher % then enchantress scrambling to find a pseudo combo that produces a breakable soft lock. Additionally, right now you say combo is almost an autoloss. Playing true combo will get you at least 50%. The only matchup you would rather be enchantress is for keeper, but you have said in the past that you only go around 50% against good keeper players. Plus this will only go down as you reduce the # of side cards for this match to fit in combo stuff.

If you go the combo route then the reason for enchantress existing as a deck makes no sense, you no longer get the coolness of being non-blue control and have much worse matchups against both combo and aggro in order to get a decent but not great mathcup against control.

Why? if control is really so prevalent that the extra 10% you could pick up in that match (as opposed to with pure combo) matters more than aggro or combo then why not play a real dedicated anti control deck that still beats aggro (stacker with main deck blood moons for example) or even the oathy version of fub.\n\n

[Rico Suave]

Quote (jdl @ Dec. 21 2002,18:22)It seems like you're shoring up your deck versus aggro only though, which Enchantress is already good against.  

The point is he wants to improve it even more.  

If I'm not mistaken, he's only replacing cards which are dedicated to aggro, so he's not taking away from other matches.

walking dude, Academy vs. mono-U is ugly, Enchantress vs. mono-U is funny.  I think coober likes to have that feeling of being able to do more than just hold his own against mono-U and relatives.

Personally, I like the idea of multiple Worships.  Just out of curiosity, what would you board in/out against sligh with that SB?

[Smmenen]

Quote (Rico Suave @ Dec. 22 2002,12:56)

Quote (jdl @ Dec. 21 2002,18:22)It seems like you're shoring up your deck versus aggro only though, which Enchantress is already good against.  

The point is he wants to improve it even more.  

If I'm not mistaken, he's only replacing cards which are dedicated to aggro, so he's not taking away from other matches.

walking dude, Academy vs. mono-U is ugly, Enchantress vs. mono-U is funny.  I think coober likes to have that feeling of being able to do more than just hold his own against mono-U and relatives.

Personally, I like the idea of multiple Worships.  Just out of curiosity, what would you board in/out against sligh with that SB?

That is simply not true.  I have played Against Cooberp numerous times with mono blue and my mono blue had always had a winning record versus him - and the games that I lost were usually very long.  

Steve

[Rico Suave]

And Academy does better than Enchantress against you?

[cooberp]

I clearly don't remember the same Enchantress/Mono U matchups that you do...

Can we set up a time to play best of [insert large number] games/matches?

[walking dude]

Quote (Rico Suave @ Dec. 22 2002,12:56)walking dude, Academy vs. mono-U is ugly, Enchantress vs. mono-U is funny.  I think coober likes to have that feeling of being able to do more than just hold his own against mono-U and relatives.

Opps, i had forgotten about mono U, when I think of control I just assume keeper. my bad, i can certainly see enchantress doing much better against mono the combo.

[ZoneSeek]

Well, I must say I am intrigued by the possibilites of this strategy. However, even as reduntant as you might get, we may still run into problems. The problem I see is the mana denial we will run into. Granted, with 4 Fetches, Enchantress has become alot stronger against mana-denial strategies, keeping Enchantress from reaching 4 mana for a Worship before it is too late may not be all that impossible.

We'll take Suicide Black for an example. Given an average draw, they will likely run into 1 land removal spell/strip, and 1 discard spell quite often, because they run 9 and 8 respectively. When facing a Shade or Negator and having even 3 mana sources on the board, with a land in hand, I believe I still almost always tutor for the Pariah over a Worship. Why? Because if I get blasted with an LD spell, or a Discard spell, I will still be able to cast the Pariah. If I simply can't cast the Worship, that sets me behind the turn I draw it, which means I will take 5 or more damage, and possibly another turn if I fail to draw it again. This is ALSO presuming I have drawn and casted one of the untargetable creatures.

Sligh of course has less mana denial (5 strips only) but has a new weapon which I very much fear - Ankh of Mishra. This thing is a nightmare. It has the capacity to do ALOT of damage very quickly. I believe it to be just as dangerous as Price of Progress as it is not circumvented by CoP: Red and Samite Ministration. Again, with this big threat, selling your soul to a Worship lock without the option of more flexible answers may simply be suicide.

Now I understand that the sheer redundancy would certaily help circumvent mana denial / discard problems. The extra grove will be used more for tutoring than protection given that I believe Stompy and TnT are the only decks that can eliminate the worship once it has landed; and we already have favorable matchups vs. these two decks.

The true strength of Enchantress has always been versatility and resiliency. Being redundant is too much of an aggressive or combo strategy; Enchantress fundamentally is a control deck with a minor aggressive and minor combo element (given that it is often pro-active and can "go off" with multiple draws). I have always believed in sticking to your guns.

I don't see how the combo would be needed to improve the mono-blue matchup. We already have a good matchup with mono-blue; there are just too many threats to deal with and the game is sealed with a resolved Replenish.

I have always viewed Worship as the huge nail in the coffin vs. aggro. You use Enchantresses backed up by solid threats / stall cards until you can drive home that huge silver bullet; Moat, Abyss, Story Circle, or Worship. Yes, Worship lock is a threat vs. almost any non-combo deck from Keeper to Stompy. However, if you are going to go strictly for this as your win condition, I think that takes away from the ideas of Enchantress and begs for a whole new decktype.

So, to summarize, I think the idea is fundamentally good; I have dreamed of an end-all answer to aggro that can be boarded in, but it's just not going to happen yet.

[Project5]

So if Enchantress runs Groves and Replenishes, and is having problems with some aggro and combo, has anyone thought of a transformational sideboard to produce infinite squirrels?

--Ben

[cooberp]

It's not having problems with aggro; I was just looking for a way to be more efficient/even better after boarding, although I think it was probably misguided.  Yes, I've thought of boarding SquirrelCraft, but you can't do it without more basic lands.

[ZoneSeek]

Squirrelcraft is an idea I have tossed around as well. There's always this option:

3 Earthcraft
3 Squirrel Nest
1 Forest

2 Choke
1 City of Solitude
1 Aura Fracture
1 Karmic Justice
1 Celestial Dawn
1 Compost
1 Sterling Grove

With the 4 Fetches, the odds of finding the lone Forest definitely increase. Normally, it would be a Plains but I think a Forest would drive us closer to the combo as we will may be boarding out white cards in favor of the green combo. The combo may come around alot sooner than an attempted Worship lock. Enchantresses will help alot with the combo because of the extra card drawing, and they will also let us go off quicker by providing us the first untap necessary to generate infinite boys.

Actually, the more I think about it, this may be an idea worth testing.  We do unfortunately lose the Swords in favor of the combo components, which weakens us vs. TnT and Mask.

So, cooberp, care to join me in some testing?  

[cooberp]

4 fetches is not enough to find 2 basic lands.  I tried it.  It's a 3 card combo, not a 2 card one.
And you can't lose StP.

[ZoneSeek]

I've got to quit posting when I'm tired. Well, as it stands, I think Enchantress just doesn't have the capability of boarding in a combo and we should just stick to our versatile arsenal of boardable creature hate. I'd like to improve aggro matchups just as much as the next guy but I just don't see that happening right now.

I do agree that we should use a more pro-active answer instead of keeping 1W open for a Samite Ministrations. I will continue searching for ways we can quiet that attack phase...

[Godder]

If you're looking for a combo SB, have you considered Krosan Reclamation + Oath of Druids? If you sideboard out all your creatures (a radical move, admittedly), then you set up a monster Replenish/YawgWin off an Oath. It only works against creatures, but it might be good...

[Rogue]

Actually, thats the best idea ive heard yet. The problem is that it requires kind of a lot of mana. Decking wouldnt be an issue, because of the pok. But you would need a moxen to go off turn 3, and without accel turn 4. its 4 oath, 2 korsan, which is less that the number of anti aggro you have right now. What do you think coob?

[ZoneSeek]

I have thought of this as well ... but boarding out Enchantresses is a very, very radical idea. The Replenished wall, however, is nigh-unstoppable. The only decks that can get around it initially are Sligh (Direct damage, although your Story Circle and Worship + Mesa helps here) and TnT (depending on Wonder or not) Upon the resolved Replenish, you can basically just tell your opponent you are decking them. Sligh can as always prevent you from Oathing by killing their own creatures off; however, this will slow them down enough to resolve more significant threats.

4 Oath of Druids
2 Krosan Reclaimation
2 Swords to Plowshares

2 Choke
1 City of Solitude
1 Aura Fracture
1 Karmic Justice
1 Celestial Dawn
1 Compost

I'm indecisive as to whether or not 2 Reclaimations are necessary. Right now, my boarding strategy would be:

-3 Duress, -1 City of Solitude, -4 Argothian Enchantress
+4 Oath of Druids, +2 Swords to Plowshares, +2 Krosan Reclaimations

I think I will dust off my Oaths and give this bad boy a shot.

[cooberp]

I don't like it.
You need 6 mana to KrReclaim and Replenish, first of all, and secondly, they can just respond with like an Ancestral and kill you.  It's really sketchy if you ask me.  Like I said up top, I hate Combo Keeper.
But feel free to try it.

[Matt The Great]

You sort of only need two mana though, if you can spare the extra turn - Reclaim Lotus and Replenish, draw Lotus, next turn draw Replenish and voila. Assuming a turn two Oath, the combo hits on turn four, which is not bad at all. And being fully powered, there's a good chance for a turn one Oath.

Also, what creature decks are going to have Ancestral?

Among those, which are going to 1) be able to have it on hand, 2) be able to cast it, 3) [and this is the real kick in the nuts] NOT have cast it already?

[ZoneSeek]

I'm not 100% sold on it either ... it is a little inconsistant for me, but we do still get the same amount of swords. I'm going to give it a test run. It's promising enough to be worth a few shuffles. At worst, it'll make for a few interesting games one evening.

[Godder]

The main creature deck to worry about would be TnT in that respect, and you can just wait till they cast it before going off. Also note that Krosan Reclamation says 'up to 2 cards', so you can just put YawgWin as your library, cast it and win. Having access to your entire deck for a turn is pretty good, I hear.

That said, you don't have to remove all the Enchantresses - you could just Oath up an Enchantress and then Replenish a sizeable chunk of your deck into play. Not the same sense of immediate death, perhaps, but it does avoid Ancestral Recall problems.

Come to think of it, this transformational SB would probably work best in a deck designed to maximise its effectiveness - Oathing into a huge YawgWin is very attractive, but it's so effective against creature decks, it would probably be better in conjunction with a deck designed to otherwise hose control, which would probably require using counters.

[ZoneSeek]

We don't run YawgWin in Enchantress. We run 4 Replenishes, which are better; but YawgWin would function better for the combo. It's an interesting idea to leave one or two enchantresses in, but I fear Oathing only 4 cards of my library away before hitting it...

[Godder]

A free Enchantress is hardly a bad thing, is it? I can't see it mattering how many cards you drop into the GY, since Replenish will get the important ones back when you want them, and in the meantime, you have an Enchantress. If you're playing against an aggressive deck, chances are you'll be able to Oath again next turn anyway.

Re: YawgWin - Side it in then . I didn't actually realise it wasn't in the deck, since I just figured any deck with access to some Black would make use of it... Sorry about that.

[Rogue]

Matt makes some good points. One i had not thought of was the non inclusion of worship, as it is useless. Sligh would eventually be able to burn you out, would it not? Then you have to have an ivory mask in the board, i believe. Or, you could keep enchantresses in, probably 2 or 3. I think it has too many possibilities to simply write off, but it doesn't seem stellar, either.

[cooberp]

Ivory Mask doesn't stop PoP.