Strictly Eternal 101 – So Wait, You Wanted to Play Magic?

Howdy folks! It’s Joe again and we’re here with a look into Solitaire: The Early Years Before Things Got Weird. Or rather, a little Legacy!

This week we’re diving into a deck that has been a long-time deck in the Legacy format, but is only just now getting back into the swing of things with Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe gone, due to the fact that Leovold, Emissary of Trest is also seeing less play. This deck does one of my favorite things in all of Magic in that it draws cards. And I mean lots and lots of cards. It does this under the pretense that your opponent likely isn’t getting to play Magic for the most part.

That’s right, I’m talking about Enchantress.

The Core of the Deck

Whew. This deck is something to behold. What drives this deck for the most part is the fact that mana acceleration such as Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth exists. A typical setup turn for this deck often consists of Turn 1 Sprawl/Growth, Turn 2 Argothian Enchantress, and play a second 1 drop enchantment to draw a card. From there, the deck plays prison pieces such as Elephant Grass, Solitary Confinement, and exile like Cast Out/Banishing Light to place its opponent in a position where they simply cannot play the game. Combine this power with the mana generation from Serra’s Sanctum, and you have a deck that durdles hard, but also draws more cards per turn than most blue decks will ever do in an entire game of Magic. The win condition of this particular variant of course, belongs to Living Wish, being able to go grab a creature out of the sideboard (usually Emrakul, the Aeons Torn) and use that to win the game.

One of this decks biggest issues however is that if you interrupt their early game of setting up an enchantress effect, sometimes the deck can simply not draw enough gas to win the game. However, if you can stick even just 1 Enchantress to the board, you will do well enough, even through a card like Chalice of the Void.

This particular version comes to us from MTG The Source user “Spatula of the Ages”, with a unique name in “Witch House” (a reference to H.P. Lovecraft). You can check out his thread on the Source over here.

For this deck we played 5 matches on XMage and for the first time ever since I started doing these articles, we went 5-0!!!!!! Let’s take a look at them!

Round 1 vs UB Affinity (2-1 WIN)

Round 2 vs RUG Delver (2-0 WIN)

Round 3 vs Soldier Stompy (2-0 WIN)

Round 4 vs Nyx Fit (2-1 WIN)

Round 5 vs Grixis Control (2-0 WIN)

Post Thoughts

Obviously we were pretty pleased at the fact that we went 5-0 with a list the very first time ever in these articles, and I was really pleased with the construction of this list. The extra 1 CMC Land auras like Abundant Growth and the main deck Gaea’s Touch really made this deck draw so many cards and made for some explosive turns. The Living Wish package was very spicy and made for some interesting decisions. I never saw every little card there, but I did get to play Wickerbough Elder in a game and that was hot fire.

While yes, this can be boring to watch for your opponents, if you like drawing cards this deck might be for you, and what’s even better is that this deck is only about 134 tix on Magic Online. So, if this tickles your fancy, then go forth and annoy the heck out of your opponents!

Wrapping Up

That’s all the time we have this week folks! Next week we’re gonna be doing something a little special and different. It’s the first time that we’re constructing a deck all on our own for Legacy! We’re taking a cue from recent Modern spice and hotness and seeing if we can convert the R/B/g Vengevine lists that have been rolling around into a Legacy version!

So join us next time on Little Shop of Vengevines!