Enchantress had long intrigued me - the card that names a deck, but where the old wisdom goes: ”to improve an Enchantress deck, remove the Enchantresses from it”. How close to decent could I get such a deck, while keeping the namesake in it?

Pretty decent it turn out :-) My goal was to build enchantress deck that would not lose to not drawing the lady. To me, this meant that the traditional Wombat combat plans were out - see example below from https://www.wak-wak.se - I want to cast non-attached enchantments or enchantments on opponents cards to avoid 2-for-1 situations.

Stasis frightens me, so I did not even look into UG direction here. I toyed with the idea of tax-edge enchantress ( another example from https://www.wak-wak.se below), but I suspect I would personally enjoy a more aggressive version of that deck with Lions instead of ladies.

I then toyed around with Nether void, Gaea’s touch, Underworld Dreams style ideas, but those got me nowhere. GW enghantress with Force of nature, Ramp, Spirit Links, Iff-Biffs is a deck I will build one day, but still missing some pieces for that.

Then I stumbled upon DFBs Dark enchantress - first a version for Xpoints (more on the format at https://xpointoldschool.com/ ) in some Discord chat:

And then another version of the same with more power for Paladin (more on that format at http://northernpaladins.com/paladin-magic/ )

Now this I could see working! I was building for SWE and wanted to keep it BG only - so I build something like the above ones, keeping at those colors, and tested it out - no pic of that version sadly. However, in the testing, this first version felt too slow, especially as I was expecting local meta to have lots of bolts, dibs and also aggression of all other kinds.

Next I did something like below, adding mid range threats and totally cutting dreams - but this felt really unfocused to me, I missed Underworld Dreams, and I really wanted to have Dark Heart of the Wood main, it performed so well against burn in the testing.

So I put dreams to side, and cut Iff-biffs for more enchantments in main. Also cut blights from four as they weren’t performing that good, and added one Evil Presence. Plan being here to side Ernies out and Dreams in for slower, creature light decks. Final version ended up looking like below - NOTE: one warp artifact in sideboard is camera shy here.

This final version worked like a charm in the tournament, winning 2-0, 2-0, 2-0 agains two UR based decks and one reanimator. Main deck Ernies worked very nice, and Dark heart of the Wood was the MVP against burn. If something, I would have liked access to some more artifact destruction (crumbles or scavengers).

After tournament, I also went 2-1 against the Deck in a challenge match - there post-sideboard Dreams, Winds and Warp artifacs really pulled their weight.

I hindsight I would:

• Consider 3 Evil presence and 2 Blight

• Play more Scavenger folk or Crumble at least in the side

• Maybe swap Imprison for Demonic Torment/Scavenger/Crumble.

  • Demonic Torment is really nice against dibs.

Other notes:

• Single Sylvan library and Dark heart fo the woods main were really, really good.

• Tried out Paralyzes, was not impressed here, YMMV

• Fallen Angel is really good with all the elves, birds and ladies.

• Plan is to swap Ernies for Underworld dreams against slower decks

  • … and weaknesses for Warp artifact / Haunting winds if no creatures are seen.

• Leaving out Sol ring is intentional, as is only 1 Pendelhaven, I want more basic forests to sacrifice, not so many things to do with 2 colorless.

• The deck gives nice mind game possibilities:

  • Usually people remove the lady on sight since most Enchantress decks rely so much on it. So with no enchantments in hand, you can play it to bait removal before Ernie. Or with enchantments in hand, first bait removal with Ernie, then play lady AND enchantments, then laugh as lady gets bolted (and you have no more enchantments in hand).

  • Additionally, quite often you look at first to be playing normal DFB green with slightly odd black splash, and people are confused by sudden Ernies and Angels

    • Playing less blights and more Evil presences would also support this illusion.