Smoke Spirits' Aid | Art by Uriah Voth

An Enchanted Evening With Mogis and Friends

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another installment of Do Your Worst, where we take a popular archetype and find the most unusual home for it! I'm your host, Philomène, and in this column, we look at decks that shouldn't be... or should they?

Today, we'll focus on the popular Enchantress archetype. This usually consists of playing a bunch of enchantments, drawing lots of cards, and winning with overwhelming amounts of value. Alternatively, you can suit up your commander and hit people in the face for 21 commander damage. Whatever works best for you!

To find the worst colors for our Enchantress deck, let's look at some data from EDHREC's Enchantments Theme page.

The five most popular Enchantress combinations are five-color with Go-Shintai of Life's Origin, Selesnya with Sythis, Harvest's Hand, Bant with Tuvasa the Sunlit, Sultai with Tatsunari, Toad Rider, and Esper with Zur, Eternal Schemer. I've compiled each commander's average deck, taken out the cards that don't relate to the archetype, like Generous Gift or Counterspell, and mashed them all together. We get this color spread:

Without much surprise, green and white come out on top. To build the worst Enchantress deck, then, we should be in black and/or red. I ended up being both, but let's check what mono-red and mono-black enchantments look like!

The Research

I started my journey by trying to go mono-red, since it's technically the worst color for that archetype. I ignored Valduk, Keeper of the Flame because I've already covered the Auras archetype in a previous article.

After some Scryfall browsing, it quickly became apparent that, even when confined to enchantments, mono-red just wants to smash. Eidolon of the Great Revel, Roiling Vortex, Spellshock, and Manabarbs are some examples of red doing what it does best, which is to deal damage to anything and everything. There are also damage multipliers, like Fiery Emancipation and the new City on Fire, which accelerate things even further. The obvious choice of commander for this strategy was Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, and you can check out my brew here!

The deck worked, but had some problems. Payoffs for enchantments were practically nonexistent, and while the deck did its thing, I didn't feel like it was that different from your usual Torbran deck. Thus, I wanted to check out what mono-black could offer.

Braids, Arisen Nightmare is the sixth most played mono-black commander, despite the fact that she came out only seven months ago in Dominaria United. Her average deck shows that she's usually built as an aristocrats commander, but what if we used the fact that she can sacrifice enchantments with her ability to our advantage?

Braids lets us use cards like Treacherous Blessing and get rid of the downside immediately. There are also enchantments that come back to our hand when they go to the graveyard, like Despondency, which is perfect fodder for Braids. Black also has access to powerful staples that happen to be enchantments, like Animate Dead, Bitterblossom, or Black Market Connections. The payoffs are a little better here than in mono-red; Doomwake Giant makes it very hard for your opponents to keep their board, and Grim Guardian can pair with Mourning for some repeated damage. I talked about Braids briefly in my 2022 retrospective article, so check it out if this sounds like a fun deck!

Braids could easily have been the focus of today's article, but I was too curious not to check out the Rakdos version of Enchantress, which turned out to be really fun too. So now, with all that understood, let's jump into Rakdos Enchantress!

Taking the Bull by the Horns

First things first. What are our commander options for enchantments in Rakdos? Well, since not a single Rakdos commander has the word "enchantment" in its text, I'd say our choices are limited. Yes, Grusilda, Monster Masher cares about enchanted creatures, but she isn't legal in Commander, so we'll pass. Mogis, God of Slaughter is an enchantment himself, though, and he seems like he would want a deck that deals a lot of damage. Luckily for us, our mono-red Enchantress brew did just that! With red's damage and black's enchantment payoffs, we might be on to something here.

We could have gone with other options. Blim, Comedic Genius is often built with Curses, which are enchantments. Obosh, the Preypiercer could replace Mogis, God of Slaughter at the head of a "everything hurts" enchantment deck, but trying to bend everything to use as many odd-mana cards as possible with Obosh as the commander just took things a little too far for me. Ultimately, I think it's best to go with the big minotaur in the sky.

Tired of Enchantress? Try Ouch-antress!

We've seen Group Slug decks before. Now let's try to hurt people using only enchantments.

Our first category is raw damage. Bloodchief Ascension is an absurd card and I don't know why it exists. Eidolon of the Great Revel, Roiling Vortex, Sulfuric Vortex, and Pyrohemia are just some of the tools we use to dish out fun in the form of pain. Smoke Spirits' Aid is neat: cast it targeting a lot of creatures, then wipe the board to deal the damage, and yes, we get the Treasures. We can also punish our opponents just for playing the game. They'll take damage for casting a spell, drawing a card, or just tapping a land. Havoc Festival doesn't actually deal damage, but are we not going to play an enchantment that halves players' life totals? Come on. Also, we're running Vicious Shadows, and you can't change my mind.

We have ways to multiply the damage we deal with Fiery Emancipation, Mechanized Warfare, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, and Solphim, Mayhem Dominus. I also like Warlock Class as a Wound Reflection that we can activate when we need it, and it gives us a bit of card selection, too.

Now, what kind of enchantment payoffs can we find in Rakdos?

I've already mentioned Grim Guardian and Doomwake Giant. Forgeborn Oreads is less efficient than Grim Guardian, but we'll take it. I also really like Goblinslide in a deck that can be light on creatures. Speaking of noncreature spells, Manaform Hellkite loves those. Agent of Erebos keeps graveyards clean. Daxos's Torment might seem really bad, but it's five damage in the air the turn we play it, and it's a threat that's hard to remove because it reverts back to an enchantment. Lastly, let's not forget that we have an indestructible commander. We might as well swing with a Helm of the Gods equipped, and Archetype of Aggression will provide the evasion we need to punch through.

A lot of Enchantress decks like to hide behind a "pillowfort", meaning they amass a wall of enchantments that makes them hard to kill, like Sphere of Safety, Propaganda, and Ghostly Prison. We have a similar effect in Koskun Falls, but we need to tap a creature every turn to keep the enchantment. We don't have much else, but since we're likely to get attacked by angry opponents, Bitterblossom and Dreadhorde Invasion can produce much-needed blockers.

Everybody Hurts (But Mostly Our Opponents)

We've got a good core of cards going. Now let's make sure our bases are covered.

Mana

Curse of Opulence will make us two friends at the price of making one enemy. I'd call that an absolute win! Black Market Connections has been a banger every time I've used it or seen someone use it. Descent into Avernus adds a really fun dimension to the game, in a "we're all in this together!" kind of way. It can also help mitigate some of the hate we'll get for, you know, hurting everyone. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker continues to impress, even in Commander. Mana, card velocity, and a threat to copy creatures? It's just so much value!

Card Advantage

Some people think Phyrexian Arena is slow, and I understand, but we can't just skip it in our Enchantress deck. In fact, we're running four more copies of it! Theater of Horrors, Valakut Exploration, Spiteful Visions, and The Ruinous Powers are all basically Phyrexian Arenas, but with added hurt. Sweet! Erebos, God of the Dead prevents our opponents from gaining life while providing a source of card advantage. Bitter Reunion is card velocity, not advantage, but I still like it quite a bit as an enchantment version of Tormenting Voice.

Interaction

Seal of Doom can be enough to convince a player to swing their big creature another way. Oubliette is especially good against enemy commanders, which will make your opponents really sad. They already kind of hate us at this point, though, so we might as well go all in. The Meathook Massacre was banned in Standard for a good reason. It's a busted card. That means we're definitley using it here. Lastly, a lot of our creatures are also enchantments, so Extinguish All Hope will be pretty one-sided when we cast it.

For protection, Kaya's Ghostform is awesome since it protects our indestructible commander from being exiled.

Recursion

It's good to have a plan if things go awry. Animate Dead lets us reanimate one of our key creatures or just steal an Archon of Cruelty from an opponent's graveyard. Underworld Breach is very good even when played fairly. Crystal Chimes is no Replenish, but it will help refill our hand if we've been wiped clean. Nightmare Shepherd is an enchantment creature that threatens to generate good value if it doesn't eat a removal spell.

Time to take a look at the deck in all its gory details!

Extinguish All Hope | Art by Chase Stone

Life Is Pain, and So Is Death

Let's talk about some of the notable exclusions from this list.

In the pillowfort department, Circle of Flame is interesting, but it really needs a damage enhancer to pop off, and Glacial Crevasses works best in a mono-red deck.
Maddening Hex sounds good, but it's kind of situational and creatures are very popular in Commander, so I ended up cutting it.
Blightcaster is a little too slow at four mana.
I love what Share the Spoils brings to a game, but I would make sure everybody at the table is okay with it first because cards will move around a lot. It also helps if everyone has sleeves of different colors!
Vampiric Link is really good with Mogis, but we have a few enchantments that prevent lifegain, so I cut it.
Captive Audience is seven mana, pretty slow, and targets a single person. Not a fan.
I also just want to shout out Blanket of Night as a budget replacement for Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth!

With a whopping 45 enchantments, I think we achieved our goal, even if our deck still looks a lot like your average Group Slug list. Also, we had no actual enchantresses in our deck. Nevertheless, we cast enchantments and use them to win, so I'd say mission accomplished!

What do you think? How would you build an Enchantress deck in Rakdos colors? Is there any sweet card or synergy that I've missed? Let me know in the comments below! I'm Philomène, and this has been Do Your Worst. See you next time!

black market connections

Do Your Worst - Rakdos Enchantress

Evasive Maneuvers — Iron Chef Burakos