The Enchantress deck has been around for a long time in tournament and casual magic. But, has not been competitive in tournament magic for a long time, not since Urza’s block could Enchantress even be considered as a possible deck type. But, now with the release of 7th edition and Odyssey the deck type has once again become viable. The deck relies off casting enchantments to speed up mana development, and using enchantresses to draw off more and more cards. Then dropping Worship or Dueling Grounds can effectively stall out many beatdown strategies. While multiple silver bullets stop the most popular deck types dead in their tracks. The new Enchantress is different than other versions simply because, it does not have enough mana acceleration or support cards to make it worthwhile to drop a huge creature on turn 3 or 4. It also does not support combo elements, so this Enchantress it control, a direction most Enchantresses stray away from in construction. Also this Enchantress is 3 colors, which is way different from the Enchantress decks of the past. But, is it the right way?
Here is my G/W version and my G/W/U version.

Nine Ball
Creatures
4x Verdruan Enchantress
3x Yavimaya Enchantress
3x Thorn Elemental
Enchantments
4x Sterling Grove
3x Holistic Wisdom
4x Worship
3x Dueling Grounds
1x Harsh Judgment
Spells
3x Orim’s Chant
Mana Acceleration
4x Wild Growth
4x Fertile Ground
Lands
8x Plains
8x Forest
4x Elfhame Palace
4x Brushland

Now this is the current G/W deck, it’s effective because it’s redundant. The problem is against control, they can counter and Wrath your Enchantresses away and only your chants can power you through a counter wall. Beatdown will get stalled out, by the 4 Worship and Dueling Grounds, and with multiple enchantments, the Yavimaya Enchantress will become too big to be killed by burn or blocking. The key is even if the sideboard was completely transformational into say a half assed Stompy deck, you would still get maybe 25-75 odds on any U/W stall match up, and aggro control can counter some of your creature stall, to slow you down long enough for them to kill you, especially U/G running Overrun.

But here's what the article is about, now we come G/U/W enchantress.
The parenthesses are there because some card choices work better in some metagames.

Ultimate Nine Ball
Creatures
4x Verdruan Enchantress
4x Blurred Mongoose
3x Iridescent Angel
Enchantments
4x Sterling Grove
2x Holistic Wisdom
3x Worship
1x Dueling Grounds
1x Teferi’s Moat
1x Opposition
1x Harsh Judgment
1x Whip Silk
1x Pariah
Spells
3x Orim’s Chant
Mana Acceleration
4x Wild Growth
3x Fertile Ground (Or BoP)
Lands
4x Plains
5x Forest
4x Coastal Tower
3x Yavimaya Coast
4x Elfhame Palace
4x Brushland
SB
1x Sacred Ground
4x Mystic Snake
4x Extract
1x Orim’s Chant
1x Worship (Or a CoP of whatever your most annoying color is)
1x Opposition (Or a Karmic Justice)
3x Druid Lyrist

Here's a 2nd experimental SB for control.
3x Druid Lyrist
4x Mystic Snake
4x Synopcate
4x Call of the Herd

This version of the deck focuses more on specialty enchantments to screw people over, thanks to the addition of Teferi’s Moat and Opposition. The creature base has also changed adding Blurred Mongoose to stall, and to abuse Opposition a little. The kill mechanism has also changed to Iridescent Angel, simply because when it gets out it’s a 5 turn clock. Also it combo’s great with Dueling Grounds and Worship. The SB has changed even more with 4 Mystic Snakes and 4 Extract going in against counterspell packing decks. The Druid Lyrist stops nasty enchantments of the opponents. Sacred Ground kills Ponza. The rest of the cards are extra’s for some more consistency. One card I didn't have room for, but wanted to add was Call of the Herd, and after seeing the extended decks from New Orleans, I think this could be modified into a slighty similar control deck. But, that's for another time.

Reasoning behind the card choices.

Creatures
Verdruan Enchantress- The core of the deck, it’s your only draw function in the entire deck. It’s cheap a 3 mana and in multiples can easily outdraw any deck in the environment. The card drawing also helps with recursion through Holistic Wisdom. On the downside it is very easy the kill, and cannot kill the smallest of creatures. But, as a nice bonus it can be used for Opposition and Worship.

Blurred Mongoose- This creature is great in conjunction with Worship, and with grove you can pretty much put an end to any kind of quick beatdown deck. Even if they have enchantment removal by the time it will come into play you will have multiples of the cards and can easily win. It also works amazingly well with stomping early creatures, against counter decks as well, since it is uncounterable.
Kill Mechanism
The 4 kill mechanisms reviewed for the deck were Thorn Elemental, Yavimaya Enchantress, Questing Phgalifdif, and the angel. Thorn is rejected for the new version, because he dies too easily in comparison to the Angel and Grif. Yavimaya Enchantress is thrown out of this deck, since what if the enchantments die? You have a very puny creature, although it is cheap. Which still makes it effective. Lacking the option for the following 2 creatures. The G/W got a combination of the 2. Out of the other 2 options the Grif was found to be too mana intensive, and hard to protect against bounce. So I settled on the Iridescent Angel.

Iridescent Angel- What is there to say that hasn’t already been stated in Odyssey reviews. It’s akin to Morphling in being nearly unstoppable. But, as a result the mana cost is 7 mana, still it’s too good a creature to pass up, even with such a high mana cost.

The Enchantments

Sterling Grove- The enchantment that makes the deck runs, it protects and searches for enchantments for only 2 mana. It is Da Man.

Holistic Wisdom- Your recursion for the deck, it is highly effective offering 1 for 1 trades with your dead cards. It’s main use is for bringing back silver bullets. It’s good most of the time. But, sometimes it just sits there doing nothing, so beware.

Worship- This is the life blood of the deck, it keeps you alive pretty much the entire game, and with mongoose, Angel, and Groves. You can easily abuse it, with your hard to kill creatures.

Teferi’s Moat- The crappier Moat is another solid creature stopper. That’s pretty much it.

Opposition- Another great silver bullet in turns all your creatures into Icy Manipulators, and can quickly lock down your opponents most annoying permanents.

Harsh Judgment- This is your burn killer, this combined with Teferi’s Moat can usually mean the end of sligh decks. It also can stop annoying Corrupts and Death Grasps from being a factor.

Dueling Grounds- Another creature stall device, it limits the damage done to you. Also with Angel out you won’t take any damage as long as you remember too block.

Pariah- Used to buy some time against aggresive decks and can be used to kill a creature normally.

Spells

Orim’s Chant- Your way to get by annoying counterspells. Also is used to stall the opponent. At least until you kill them with Iridescent Angel.

Mana Acceleration

Wild Growth- For G you get a enchantment that will give you one more G per turn, basically. This goes in over BoP or Elves, because as an enchantment it can be used to draw more cards later, and is less disrupted by creature kill.

Fertile Ground- More cheap mana acceleration in enchantment form.

Lands
Personally I think the current land list covers all colors enough for their respective mana requirements. But, one or two more blue sources would be great for the deck. I just can’t see anything really worth cutting.
Sideboard

(Refer to the main deck options for the one or two cards that are multiples.)

Druid Lyrist- To stop other annoying enchantments from getting in your way.

Sacred Ground- This kicks LD in the nuts, and can turn any kind of LD spell into a dead card.

Mystic Snake- I felt the deck would work slightly better with a few counters to back the chants up in the control match-ups.

Extract- It allows you to remove some annoying SB cards from the opposing deck.

Match-ups
All the match-ups were out of 20 games, 10 without SB, 10 with SB.
The match-up analysis’s are below the statistics.
Without SB With SB Total
Sligh- 80/20 90/10 85/15
G/R- 80/20 80/20 80/20
Mono U- 80/20 70/30 75/25
U/W- 20/80 40/60 30/70
WW- 90/10 90/10 90/10
W/R- 90/10 90/10 90/10
B/W 40/60 70/30 55/45
B/U/W- 30/70 40/60 35/65
B/R- 70/30 80/20 75/25
U/G- 70/30 80/20 75/25
U/B- 70/30 90/10 80/20
Domain- 60/30 70/30 65/35
LD- 20/80 40/60 30/70
5cg fire- 40/60 60/40 55/55

Now for a brief description on the match-ups.

Sligh- You can for the most part walk all of over them, Worship + Mongoose is usually game, but Angel + Worship is game. The land mana enchantments can't be burned away which is a big help to you. Occasionally they can get off to a quick enough start to fry you, but not often.

G/R- It's like Sligh as in how you lock them up, even if they have 4 Lyrists it's not enough to stop you from locking them up. Plus G/R usually has a ramp up time to set up the Fires and has less burn, in case the creatures get locked up. After SB they might have more enchantment removal, I know I put more in my version.

Mono U- I've seen some versions of Turbo Xerox floating around so, I threw them together and god did they get slaughtered. U/W beats me, because they have enchantment removal and Wrath of God. This has nothing to stop me with...

U/W- These people have counters, Wrath, and Iridescent Angel or Fat Moti.... So basically you’re in deep crap. Your best shot is to use one Mongoose at a time, and try to overload their counters to get a Opposition out. Then use whatever creatures in a desperate attempt to lock them down. Orim's Chant can help, but usually your dead until you SB. Even with SB, you can add some additional cards to help, but it's always an uphill battle.

WW- This is a joke, there creatures aren’t as fast as slighs. They’re not as powerful as Rocket Shoes huge green beasties. They also lack any sort of evasion and the ability to bring out more of them like the old Rebel decks. The new WW decks lack the consistency, effective creatures and reset button (Armageddon) of the past. The most resistance I’ve encountered was when I was floundering to mana screw and they had two disenchants ready to stop me from Grove/Worship lock. Not a threat.

W/R- Another joke, but this deck has a bit more fight in it, because of the burn it runs. Otherwise apply the description of WW to this match-up.

B/W- The discard is a real problem, and the creature rush with lynx’s, foul imps and rotting giants can be vicious. But, usually you’ll Grove/Worship/Mongoose lock them. The sad part is, almost every time you play this deck and you get your lock out, they die to their own arena, rather than any damage dealt on your part.

B/U/W- Your Dueling Grounds and Worships can slow the small rush down, rather easily. Plus your Whip Silk/Enchantress card draw engine can outdraw them even with there FoF. But, counters hurt, counters hurt a lot.... Plus with Wrath's they can clear your angels and mongooses out, and you can only do so much recursion.

B/R- They have no way to stop Angel from hitting the table, and other than void lack any way to destroy it. All the enchantments in your deck slows it down considerably.

U/G- Counters cause major problems with your enchantments, but getting a Worship lock out is easier than against U/W. Making it far easier to win against them after recurring mongooses and continued attacking. Oppositions can heavily slow you down, if you get off to a bad start and they get Opposition out it could be game. So mulligan into a quick starting hand.

U/B- With only 3 cards to counter an Angel, it's simply a race to drop a 5 turn angel, against one of there 20 turn clocks. Static Orb usually hurts them more then you, unless they get the total lock on you.

Domain- Use your mongoose's and your own enchantments to screw them over. The versions running Duress could be problems. But, this also comes down to wether you can hold an Angel on the board. Becuase, if you can get one in, before Legacy Weapon comes, you will win.

LD- Just forget it, unless you manage to get Angel/Worship lock, you lose badly. There just is no good way to get around losing a lot of your lands. With SB you at least have Sacred Ground to try to stop the pain of having your lands explode.

5cg Harvest combo- This match-up was more luck based than anything I have played thus far. For the most part pre-sb it comes down to wether they have a Deed ready to blow your Worship lock away with. If so, you lose, if not you win. After the SB you at least have Counters and Extracts to try to fight them with. On another note, this match-up is heavily determined by the skill of the combo player. These results came from someone who practiced with this deck quite a bit. But, if you play someone worse it will be much easier and vice versa for better players.

To finish up here are 3 basic tips on playing the deck.

1. Drop a Worship lock as quickly as possible. Woship + mongoose/Angel = game against aggro. Any control without Wrath will have major problems dealing with the lock. Enchantment removal other than Tranquility is not a threat thanks to Sterling Grove.

2. Speed is your freind. If possible drop as many speed enchantments as you can, then drop Iridescent Angel for a quick victory. Abuse the Whip Silk enchantress draw engine as much as you can with more your mana. Always drop the Angel if you believe the path is clear for it, i.e Wrath's and Innocent Bloods.

3. Play and search for your other enchantments when needed, Opposition against control, Judgement against Burn or G/R, Pariah against G/R, Teferi's Moat and Dueling Grounds against anything aggro, Holisitc Wisdom against discard.

Basically to sum it all up, this deck will destroy most aggro decks, but will lose to purer of the control decks. This is one of the best decks to play in aggro heavy fields. Also it doesn't take to much experince to effectively play the deck.

Well I hope someone decides to play this deck at states, anyways, that's all from me.
Hopefully i'll have my last minute states prep article done soon, look for that one soon.
Have fun at states.

*Edit's- I can't get that stupid stats table to look right!!!!

Vegeta2711

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MOTL Moderator for:

Vegeta2711

Thanks for the thoughts... I had been thinking of anchantress decks purely in the form of speed via beefy critter enchantments. I think your version works very well. However, a couple thoughts:

Squirrel Nest... fuels Opposition, chump blocks, survives wrath.

Still Life... tutor for a beefy critter, also survives wrath.

Tattoo Ward... Not so much for its beef up or the pro-enchantment... you can sac it to destroy another enchantment.

and how about hidden gibbons in this deck? ever considering maindeck 4 of those?

quote:

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Why do you post this here if you already wrote it for Neutral Ground?

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tedman, there's no rule that says you can't post your work here if it's already on another web site. The answer is that he posted here to help out his fellow MOTL members. That's similar to asking ppl to write exclusively for MOTL, which is unfair and inconsiderate.

Vegeta2711