Hello all!
Welcome to my Standard Theros Bantress deck! Theros is my favorite plane in magic and I'm super happy were returning. So happy in fact that I almost want to make a standard deck (I am mostly an EDH player). So here is my first take on Theros Bantress.
So to start, there are a few cards that I believe help make this deck work. The first is Starfield Mystic. If you look at most pioneer enchantress decks they run 4 of him and 4 Herald of the Pantheon. Wish I had herald too but oh well. Reducing the cost of our enchantments lets us cast them more often which is always good. Another piece to this is Wolfwillow Haven. Finally, a decent mana aura. This card is great because it ramps and is an enchantment. What is not to love. And if for some reason we need it, it can become a wolf.
So now that we have a little bit of ramp/cost reduction we need our enchantresses right? In steps Setessan Champion. What a beautiful enchantress card. It's a 1/3, it's draw is etb not cast, and it can get beefy with those counters. I cannot express how much I love this card. Sadly, there is nothing else in the format quite like her. But we do have something close. In steps Nessian Wanderer. At first I wasn't too impressed with this card but after thinking about it I realized how powerful it can be. Just like Setessan Champion it has constellation but instead of draw it digs 3 for a land. I was running this card in limited and with it I almost never missed a land drop. Even with our ramp and cost reduction cards we need mana to cast as many enchantments as possible as quick as possible. Yes to draw but also support our finishers (get to those in a bit). Ideally we will hit a land most times with our satyr friend. This can also give us random discard fodder depending on the match-up. It's not the most ideal enchantress card but it is a 2-drop and it is card advantage.
So now that we are reducting costs and drawing cards how do we win? Well this deck comes with three different ways to win. First is our Archon of Sun's Grace. This improved Ajani's Chosen will let us spam out pegesi with lifelink hit our opponent and gain us life. This one is pretty straight forward. Get him out, start casting enchantments, win. The next one on our list is Kiora Bests the Sea God. I mean what do I say about this card? It costs a lot but an 8/8 with hexproof for its first counter is just amazing. Even the saga get's removed that is still sweet but if it lives even to the next turn we have all but won. And then we have our final ein con which is Destiny Spinner. I flipped when I saw this card. It's so good and only an uncommon. It's an enchantment creature so it triggers our constellation stuff and it makes out creatures and enchantments uncounterable! I love this card. But those things weren't enough to bring it out of the sideboard. No, it's final ability to turn one of our lands into a trampling mad lad is what gives this lovely card a place in the mainboard.
So that is the core of the deck. We run Alseid of Life's Bounty for both constellation triggers and protection. Omen of the Sea is a 2 cmc Opt that gives us another enchantment for triggers and can be thrown away later for scry 2 in a pinch. Then we have 4 Banishing Light to remove anything that might give us too much trouble (looking at you cat oven).
The mana base is mostly the way it is because those are the lands I own. It may change after I build the deck in arena and mess around with it more.
As for the sideboard we run 2 Revoke Existence in case our Banishing Light aren't enough, 2 Negate because why not, 2 more Destiny Spinner for heavy control matchups, Omen of the Sun to help us survive aggro, 3 Layline of Sanctity to help us against a lot of decks but especially mill, and then 2 Soul-Guide Lantern for all the gave hate. Oh and I threw in 2 Arasta of the Endless Web to help with izzit decks and the like. Probably a questionable card but she seems real fun.
Now one problem I see with the deck is the lack of enchantments. We're running an aweful lot of non enchantments for an enchantress deck. One thing I thought of was to possibly run Simmerwing Chimera in order to return our enchantments to our hand then throw them out again. This would work wonders with Omen of the Sea. I could also see cutting some of our Nessian Wanderer for some enchantments. A lot is up in the air right now and needs tweaking.
Making this deck has been both fun and frustrating because there are so many good enchantment cards in Theros. All recommendations and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated!
Update #1:
So Finally got the deck up and running in Arena and did a little bit of play testing.
Destiny Spinner did not pay as much as I was hoping. It certainly has its place against control decks but in this build that second ability just didn't do enough for me. A lot of the enchantments I run don't stick around for too long.
Nessian Wanderer is another one that isn't quite as good as I was hoping it would be. It's good, don't get me wrong, but I have yet to find myself ever wanting two of him on the field at a time. One card though that I knew was good but just didn't want to admit had a place in here is Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. Its an amazing card for so many reasons. It ramps, fixes mana, is an enchantment and is a decent blocker. This plus Nessian Wanderer can let us cast Kiora Bests the Sea God very fast. For now I think three of each is a good amount for both. I am happy to have just one and we scry and draw pretty often so finding them isn't much of an issue.
I also added two Eidolon of Philosophy for some more cheap enchantments that can also be blockers or draw me cards in the late game. I felt that I needed more enchantments for cheap to proc constellation more often. I also noticed that besides Kiora Bests the Sea God our enchantments are pretty cheap plus I can ramp pretty fast (not goose fast but still not too bad) so I don't think Starfield Mystic needs to be at four. This is another card that is great but only having one on the board is fine. I also went down one Archon of Sun's Grace. This move I'm not sure about. I kind of want to go up back to four with him and maybe take out another Nessian Wanderer but I'm still not too sure about that one.
Those are the major updates this time around. Arasta of the Endless Web is out entirely. One beacuse I don't like spiders much and two it is just too reliant on the opponent doing things for it to be great. Instead I put in two Return to Nature in.
Update 1.1
Went down to 23 lands, down one Nessian Wanderer and up an Archon of Sun's Grace and a Starfield Mystic
Took out Revoke Existence for Dance of the Manse in the sideboard for those long, grindey removal match-ups.
Got up to Silver 1 running this deck but my rapid rise has kinda slowed down. Cat aristocrats and red aggro still give me one hell of a fight. I still feel like I'm running into issues both balancing my mana and draw power. Maybe I've just had some bad draws lately but more testing will hopefully help.
Update 1.3
A good deal of changes this time around. To start I was playing around with Urban Utopia for a while because I feel like the previous version of this deck just wasn't drawing enough. A huge problem I run into with this deck is removal. I can't count the number of times losing Setessan Champion has just ground my strategy to a halt. What I wouldn't give to have another enchantress in the format. But since we don't I decided to try out Medomai's Prophecy because Urban Utopia just wasn't impact enough for me. Dyrad of the Ilysian Grove Is better at fixing our mana. I originally thought that Medomai's Prophecy was way too slow but after seeing a few streamers use it to great effect I decided to give it a try and boy am I glad I did. Sure, telegraphing that I'm about to throw out Banishing Light can suck but in most match-ups it just works. It's a great card that does a lot and even if it dies right after we cast it scry 2 is nothing to sneeze at. I loved this card so much I actually decided to run 4 of it instead of 4 Wolfwillow Haven.
The sideboard has also had a bit of a change-up. No more Soul-Guide Lantern because I just didn't find it to be any better than Return to Nature. So up Return to Nature and Negate. Omen of the Sun is just not a great card. I really only had it in there because I was trying to find better ways to deal with aggro, but with prophecy helping us get the cards we want (looking at you Archon of Sun's Grace) it is all but useless. That being said, Elspeth Conquers Death is an amazing card that I can't believe I wasn't running earlier. It is so good for dealing with heavy removal. Dance of the Manse is great for getting my enchantments out of the grave but if all four of my champions or archons have been removed/milled I am seriously hurting. This card helps to fix this issue. Pulling a champion out with this and then using dance to pull a bunch of enchantments feels great.
Well that is it. Made it to gold using this set up! Next stop, platinum!
As always if anyone has suggestions for improvement please share them!
