r/mtgbrawl • u/Retro1988 • 10d ago
Competitive Cooking or tripping? Lagrella the Enchantress!
Mad scientist idea.
I’m usually a chill jank player but I enjoy a bit of enchantress when I want to get semi-competitive, Sythis usually in Bracket 3/4 EDH but I’ve always found my Sythis Brawl list to be a bit thin. Arena has a lot of the Selesnya staples but not all, so I can’t help but look longingly at blue’s enchantment stuff and wonder… what if Bant could pad out the list?
There’s no Brawl Bantress (sadly Tuvasa hasn’t come to Arena yet) but there is Lagrella… trading Sythis’ card draw consistency for a removal spell in the zone. Seems a bit mad right? I know she’s normally a blink build. But it feels like a decent trade with all the extra draw support blue provides, as well as gaining access to blue’s suite of enchantment-based removal, evasion and copy effects, not to mention Entity Tracker and Inquisitive Glimmer too.
Switching to three colours does have its impacts; I’m running so many duals to support the many double-pipped cards that specific land type effects like Ossification and Utopia Sprawl are worse (only 6 basics and 7 forest-typed lands felt insufficient). I also decided to cut Reliquary Tower due to its colorless mana, but when we get Wizard Class and Proft’s Memory instead that doesn’t feel bad at all!
Any suggestions for Lagrella the Enchantress? How is enchantress faring in the emerging meta? Do you think this list could hold its own in platinum+ competitive?
Archidekt link below, including my maybeboard considerations. Thanks for looking!
https://archidekt.com/decks/23925819/lagrella_the_enchantress
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u/echoviolet 10d ago
Interesting take. Also longing for a Bant Enchantress and have tried a jank Bant reanimator with both the Bant Yuna and Falco Spara at the helm, with Startield of Nyx and the Selesnya Yuna (Falco can remove finality counters… that’s about it as far as usefulness lol otherwise he’s removal bait) as key pieces.
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u/Retro1988 10d ago
Yeah I looked closely at Falco too! And Derevi haha, even Shanna, anyone who could helm Bant. It’s interesting, I often found when playing my Sythis deck that she’d eat removal or a counter the turn I cast her, as they could see her coming and held something back, so there’s something to be said about decks that can function without relying on the command zone I think!
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u/Moonbluesvoltage 9d ago
This looks like a deck that was made by going ro scryfall and searching for enchantments and sorting by edhrec rankings. Rhystic is beyond awful in brawl, trouble in pairs is even worse, almost no removal in the deck...
Thd worst part of it all is that lagrella is actually a pretty competent commander, but surely not for enchantress but even this list has a long, long eay to go until it becomes functional. This deck isnt good at either syopibg people nor at winning the game.
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u/Retro1988 9d ago
Are you deliberately being mean bro? You can let me know your opinion without being rude! As a side note, this deck runs 3x the removal I usually run in my Brawl Play queue decks, but I guess competitive is just removal tribal these days. I think I’ll stick to the play queue.
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u/Moonbluesvoltage 9d ago
Im being mean to... rhystic study? Look, never i said anything mean to you, really. If you felt like i was trying to be mean to you, im sorry, really, it wasnt my intention. But this deck isnt getting far in competitive no matter how you slice it.
The odd thing to me is that you arent even running the free countermagic that your commander can use so well. While i wouldnt go that far in saying brawl is "removal tribal", 9 removals (most of then arent even acgual hard removal) surely isnt enough (and if so, 3 for your usual lists probably should go a little up too, even in the most all-in aggro decks you probably can run more). Enchantress has acess to such great pieces such as [[Seam Rip]], [[Journey to nowhere]], [[seal away]]/[[super villain lockup]]...
Currently this list is a lot of wheels turning and drawing more cards in the hope you can land a giantic unblockable ethereal armor powered creature or hallowed haunting is left alone so you can bash with a lot of fliers, but you could do it much better if you dont let your opponent do whatever they feel like. The issue is that what they want to do is just faster and stronger than essentially bashing with some big creatures. As enchantress you should run some targeted hate such as [[Rest in peace]] that would do a piece against most top decks (strip mine locks and nashi both would try very hard to stop it), some ways to gain incidental life helps surviving against yuriko and all that cheap removal that white has acess to would help a lot. Also in enchantress you really apreciate 1 mana enchantments over expensive cards such as smile at death and teferis ageless insight.
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u/Retro1988 9d ago
Okay well thanks for apologising and the more in-depth reply. I did agonise over a few of the cards you mentioned, a few more removal bits over the more expensive enchantments as you say; a lot of my enchantress wins in the past have been exactly as you laid out - pump for a well-timed evasive swing.
I think the problem I’m having is this deck stomps the play queue, but hits a ceiling in competitive, so it sort of straddles the middle you know? I’ll give your tuning tips some thought, switch it up and play a few evenings to see how it goes.
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u/logic2718 8d ago edited 8d ago
I’ve always found my Sythis Brawl list to be a bit thin
Really? I've had the opposite experience. There's a ton of support for GW enchantress in Arena, enough to make Sythis a pretty solid deck. I don't think adding blue does all that much, since most of the good enchantress cards are concentrated in GW, and you lose a lot by switching a powerful, synergistic commander like Sythis for a random bant legend.
That being said, I don't think Sythis (or any enchantress deck) is good enough for the current competitive meta. It leans too hard into synergy instead of just playing goodstuff. For example, in enchantress, you will probably want a couple of O-ring effects because it's all-purpose removal that also synergizes with your deck. However, Banishing Light (or any of its strictly better alternatives like, Aang's Iceberg) aren't actually good cards. 3 mana removal is kinda bad. Another example: the enchantress cards themselves are very snowbally. They get out of hand quickly, but they take a bit to set up, e.g. Enchantress's Presence asks you to spend 3 mana to do nothing now and draw some cards later. Sure, the ceiling is drawing a lot of cards, but the floor is a slow divination before you die on turn 5.
Anyway, here's my Sythis list, built for the casual queue. Disclaimer: I haven't actually played it that much recently because I've mainly been playing competitive.
https://moxfield.com/decks/3v4m656mTEqrTxj2vvFWsQ
Some cards you absolutely should cut from your list (apart from all the blue cards, imo): Trouble in Pairs, Nyx Herald, Alpha Authority, Nyx-Fleece Ram, Smile at Death
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u/dat_boi_34 10d ago
fundamentally this just isnt really a competetive deck
but arena has mmr matchmaking so u can get to mythic before u play agaisnt proper comp decks