Commander Collection: Diamondback

Commander / EDH Bracket 4 Combo Enchantment GW (Selesnya)

Jurrane

Land (33)

• 1x Ancient TombGC
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures P
• 1x Brushland
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 5x Forest
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1x Horizon Canopy
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Farmland
• 6x Plains
• 1x Razorverge Thicket
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Serra's SanctumGC
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Extra Card Draw (5)

• 1x Argothian Enchantress
• 1x Eidolon of Blossoms
• 1x Enchantress's Presence
• 1x Mesa Enchantress
• 1x Sylvan Library

Supporting Creatures (5)

• 1x Delney, Streetwise Lookout
• 1x Destiny Spinner
• 1x Drannith MagistrateGC
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Myrel, Shield of Argive P

Ramp (14)

• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Chrome MoxGC
• 1x Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
• 1x Exploration
• 1x Fertile Ground
• 1x Jukai Naturalist
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana VaultGC
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

Tutors (9)

• 1x Congregation at Dawn
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened TutorGC
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Ranger-Captain of Eos P
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Sterling Grove
• 1x Survival of the Fittest PGC
• 1x Worldly TutorGC

Protection (7)

• 1x Alseid of Life's Bounty
• 1x Dawn's Truce
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x Privileged Position
• 1x Solitary Confinement
• 1x Teferi's ProtectionGC

Other Win Conditions (4)

• 1x Archon of Sun's Grace
• 1x Hallowed Haunting
• 1x Luminarch Ascension
• 1x Sigil of the Empty Throne

Commander (1)

Removal (11)

• 1x Aura ShardsGC
• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Banishing Light
• 1x Darksteel Mutation
• 1x Grasp of Fate
• 1x Kenrith's Transformation
• 1x Oblivion Ring
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Seal of Cleansing
• 1x Seal of Primordium
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Combo Pieces (8)

• 1x Concordant Crossroads
• 1x Gauntlets of Light
• 1x Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1x Sanctum Weaver
• 1x Seedcradle Witch
• 1x Shielded by Faith
• 1x Siona, Captain of the Pyleas
• 1x Walking Ballista

Other Enchantment Synergies (3)

• 1x Cloudstone Curio P
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Mirri's Guile

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{W}{G} Introduction: Enchanted, I'm Sure {W}{G}

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Welcome to my primer for EDH Selesyna Enchantress. "Diamondback" is my 35th Commander deck and third variant of a Selesnya build. It's been quite slow to develop but is maturing in age like a fine wine and is becoming increasingly competitive. Along with this deck, I have two builds that are beginning to approach cEDH level.

The centrepiece of the deck's strategy is Sythis, Harvest's Hand who helps us gain incremental value from casting enchantment spells. We use our enchantments to control the board, build an unassailable game state, or to deliver combo finish that allows us to win out of nowhere. While some Enchantress decks can be quite linear, the advantage of this build is it has a number of different ways to win, allowing us to adapt to the circumstances of a variety of games. Each win condition is outlined below.

Power Level

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I categorise decks in my collection according to four tiers of power, from 1 (most powerful) to 4 (least powerful):

Tier 1: Higher powered decks with fast mana, free spells, and infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors.
Tier 2: Well tuned decks which may have infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors, but not many fast mana sources and/or free spells.
Tier 3: Reasonably well tuned casual decks that are capable of powerful plays. May occasionally have infinite combos or instant wins but don't generally use tutors to find them.
Tier 4: Lower powered or linear decks, weak enough to play against other casual decks.

This is one of my three current Tier 1 decks (the other two are here and here). It features numerous sources of fast mana, some free spells, and is designed to be as fast and efficient as possible. We want this efficiency in order to able to win in the first few turns to outrace other fast decks, or beat slower opponents before they have time to set up.

"Diamondback" is also the deck I've tried to tweak the most for competitive play. The list as it stands isn't fully optimised for cEDH as I would play far more Stax elements in a competitive environment to try and lock the game down, and prevent other high powered decks from doing their thing. However, as I'm trying to stay on the powerful side of casual, I'm not playing many Stax cards other than Drannith MagistrateGC and Aura of Silence.

In terms of WotC's new power brackets, this is an easy Bracket 4. It's easily one of the strongest decks in my collection as it's highly resilient and can win in very short order with its infinite combos. Although it runs no less than ten game changer cards (Ancient TombGC, Serra's SanctumGC, Chrome MoxGC, Mana VaultGC, Enlightened TutorGC, Survival of the FittestGC, Worldly TutorGC, Drannith MagistrateGC and Aura ShardsGC), it stops short of Bracket 5/cEDH as it's not optimised for the competitive meta.

Budget

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This is my most expensive deck. Its average price on Card Kingdom is around $1500 as it runs fast mana sources like Mana VaultGC, Chrome MoxGC, Serra's SanctumGC, Ancient TombGC and Gemstone Caverns, all of which are necessary for a more competitively-focused build. However, believe it or not, it actually started life as a budget build and even lower-budget Sythis lists are not to be sniffed at. The only things budget versions usually lack are the fast artifact mana and more expensive lands, but otherwise Auras strategies are pretty cheap as many of their cards are commons and uncommons. It's also worth mentioning that budget mono-white Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice aura decks are also ruthlessly efficient and can give many opponents a real run for their money.

Win Conditions

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We have a few different ways to win so we can deal with different strategies from our opponents and adapt to the circumstances of each individual game. These strategies are:

Go Wide: Although we don't run a particularly large number of creatures, we're capable of overwhelming our opponents with plenty of tokens created with Sigil of the Empty Throne, Hallowed Haunting, Archon of Sun's Grace or Siona, Captain of the Pyleas The goal here is that more enchantments we cast, the greater the number of tokens we get, with Sythis, Harvest's Hand's draw ability keeping us in gas.

Infinite Combos: Sometimes we can bust out an instant win by calling on either of our two infinite combos to end the game on the spot. The nice thing about each of these combos is their key pieces are searchable with our tutors such as Worldly TutorGC, Congregation at Dawn, Enlightened TutorGC, Idyllic Tutor or (sometimes) Three Dreams. We can use Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista to deal infinite damage, or we can enchant a creature with Shielded by Faith while Siona, Captain of the Pyleas is on the board, enabling us to create an infinitely large army of 1/1 Human Soldier tokens (who can attack immediately if we have Concordant Crossroads in play).

Infinite Mana: Providing we have enough enchantments in play, Gauntlets of Light goes infinite with Sanctum Weaver or Serra's SanctumGC to generate arbitarily huge amounts of mana. We can then sink it into Luminarch Ascension for an infinitely large number of Angels.

Our Game Plan

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We're an aggressive deck so we want to come out of the blocks quickly, either by playing early threats or ramping. Early enchantments like Carpet of Flowers, Exploration, Burgeoning, Fertile Ground, Utopia Sprawl or Wild Growth help us accelerate with mana. SYTHIS, HARVEST HAND's low mana value means she's all but guaranteed on turn 2 and will occasionally come down on T1 with the right draws (usually involving Chrome MoxGC or Gemstone Caverns). From there, she can help replenish our hand as we generate threats and buff them with Auras, as either the Voltron or go-wide strategies mentioned above.

From experience, enchantment removal tends to be fairly few and far between at most casual tables so usually the greatest threat we have is overextending, usually as a result of a well-timed board wipe. Cards like Dawn's Truce, Flawless Maneuver, Heroic Intervention and Teferi's ProtectionGC are there to limit the impact of board wipes. If we have to be defensive, Solitary Confinement can shut down most threats against us and its drawbacks aren't usually a problem because we draw so many cards with our Enchantress abilities.

Having added a bunch of tutors to the decklist, I tend to save them for when they're guaranteed to assemble the second (or sometimes third) part of a combo. We often draw a lot of cards with Sythis, Harvest's Hand and our other draw engine cards (see the following section) so the chances of drawing naturally into the first piece of a combo is quite good. We don't usually mind if Sythis is removed as she's relatively cheap to recast, she can usually sustain several instances of Commander tax and we have build-in redundancy with several identical effects form other cards.

Other Card Choices

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Card Draw
We want to churn through as much of our deck as possible over the course of a game, seeking to find the right combination of cards to win the game. To do this, we need to draw as many cards as we can, using Sythis, Harvest's Hand and our other draw engine spells. Ideally we want to be drawing a minimum of one card each time we cast an enchantment and ideally more. We run Argothian Enchantress, Eidolon of Blossoms, Mesa Enchantress and Enchantress's Presence to duplicate Sythis' ability, either to augment her power when she's on the field, or to replace her if she's not. Cloudstone Curio allows us to bounce cheap enchantments back to our hand so we can play them again and continue drawing cards.Reliquary Tower and Thought Vessel mean we don't have to worry about hand size.

Protection
Opponents will try to interact with our draw engine and try to remove our key permanents from the board. We run Privileged Position and Sterling Grove to give our stuff hexproof or shroud (note that we don't include Greater Auramancy as shroud stops us interacting with our own permanents, thus preventing us executing our combos). Dawn's Truce, Flawless Maneuver, Heroic Intervention and Teferi's ProtectionGC are included to protect us from boardwipes. We also have Grand Abolisher, Myrel, Shield of Argive and Ranger-Captain of Eos to stop opponents interacting with us in the critical turns, with Ranger-Captain of Eos doubling as a useful way to tutor for Walking Ballista.

Lands
For the most part I've stopped running fetchlands in my two-colour decks other than when they synergise well with the rest of the deck. Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile are the reasons they're included here, as fetches allow us to shuffle away the top cards from our library if we don't need them, allowing us to dig for key cards more effectively. This deck is the natural home for my only non-proxied copy of Serra's SanctumGC and we run other premium lanc choice including Gemstone Caverns, Ancient TombGC and Boseiju, Who Endures. Finally, Hall of Heliod's Generosity is an all-star in this deck, allowing us to return enchantments back to the top of our library from the graveyard.

Fast Mana
In a perfect world, this (and many of my other decks) would have Mox DiamondGC as part of its fast mana package but I sold my playset many years ago, to my eternal regret. Instead I've included as many fast mana sources as I can afford to ensure the deck comes out of the blocks as quickly as possible, potentially enabling a turn 1 Sythis, Harvest's Hand. To do this, we run Mox Amber, Chrome MoxGC, Gemstone Caverns Lotus Petal, plus other ramp and fast mana sources. When they work, they really work: I had access to 7 mana in my first main phase of turn 2 in a game I recently played.

Removal
Needless to say, our opponents will try to thwart our plans by playing threats of their own. We run a range of different removal cards to deal with them, a number of which are enchantments so we can gain value from Sythis, Harvest's Hand and our other draw engines. These include Aura of Silence, Banishing Light, Darksteel Mutation, Grasp of Fate, Kenrith's Transformation, Oblivion Ring, Seal of Cleansing, Seal of Primordium. They're supported by the usual staple creature removal cards in white: Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile.

The Ten Game Take

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After playing ten games with each of my decks I'll share its win percentage over that time, together with feedback and learnings from my experience so far.

While I try not to play favourites and ensure each gets an airing fairly regularly, this was one of my first wave of decks to reach ten games. I enjoying playing in higher powered pods and had plenty of opportunities to test this list against other strong builds. It also makes for some quick games as we can assemble our combo or achieve other paths to victory quite quickly, so it's an ideal deck to bring out at the end of the night when everyone wants to play one last match.

In terms of performance, after an underwhelming first three outings in its original Auras iteration, this list won six of its last seven games in the form you see here, achieving a win rate of 60% across its first 10 matches. That's way above average for the typical Commander deck as, assuming 4 players in each pod, statistically each player should be winning about 25% of the time. While it didn't exclusively play in pods with other Bracket 4 decks, for the most part it was matched against lists at a proportional power level.

I've found that one of the nice things about playing this deck is the different play patterns it offers. While the basic principle is pretty consistent (get your Sythis engine going as quickly as you can, preferably with extra card draw support from Argothian Enchantress, Eidolon of Blossoms etc; then cycle through the deck to find your win conditions), in execution in plays quite differently depending on what you draw into. I've had quick wins from ramping very quickly and tutoring into Heliod // Ballista combo, but I've also had plenty of slower, grindier games when I've hid behind Solitary Confinement (often supported by Privileged Position and/or Sterling Grove) when it's taken longer to find a combo or to win in other ways. A recent game involved making dozens of 4/4 Angel tokens with Sigil of the Empty Throne, powered by bouncing cheap enchantments like Exploration and Carpet of Flowers with Cloudstone Curio and overwhelming my opponents in combat.

Overall, after its first ten games, I've found I love playing this deck. I'll definitely keep it around but it's definitely one for higher powered tables ie. Bracket 4 at a minimum.

Upcoming Changes

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Thanks for checking out my primer :) I'm very happy with this deck and I'm not looking to make any major adjustments. It's a fun, powerful and competitive deck to play and I'm always keen to give it a spin in higher powered pods. I hope it gives you some ideas!

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All My EDH Decks

{W} Giada, Font of Hope {W}
S(i)erra Sidewinder: Mono-White Angel Tribal

{U} Orvar, the All-Form {U}
Clone Zone: Mono-Blue Shapeshifters Combo

{B} Sidisi, Undead Vizier {B}
Swamp Thing: Mono-Black Midrange Combo

{B} Ayara, First of Locthwain {B}
Black Diamond: Mono-Black Aristocrats Combo

{R} Torbran, Thane of Red Fell {R}
Red Force: Mono-Red Group Slug

{R} Rionya, Fire Dancer {R}
Firebird: Mono-Red Storm/Tokens

{G} Titania, Protector of Argoth {G}
Timber Terror: Mono-Green Land Sacrifice

{W}{U} Grand Arbiter Augustin IVGC {W}{U}
Control Freak: Azorius Control

{W}{U} Elminster {W}{U}
Crystal Wing: Azorius Skies & Scry

{U}{B} Oona, Queen of the Fae {U}{B}
Dreamcatcher: Dimir Faeries Tribal

{U}{B} Narfi, Betrayer King {U}{B}
Ice Breaker: Dimir Snow/Zombies

{U}{B} Lord of the Nazgul {U}{B}
The Black Gate Opens: Dimir Spellslinger

{B}{R} Rakdos, Lord of Riots {B}{R}
Steamin’ Demon: Rakdos Life Loss

{B}{R} Juri, Master of the Revue {B}{R}
Pandemonium: Rakdos Sacrifice

{R}{G} Wort, the Raidmother {R}{G}
Barnstormer: Gruul Conspire

{W}{G} Sigarda, Font of Blessings {W}{G}
Stampida: Selesnya Humans Tribal

{W}{G} Captain Sisay {W}{G}
Legendia: Selesnya Legendary

{W}{G} Sythis, Harvest's Hand {W}{G}
Diamondback: Selesnya Enchantress

{W}{B} Daxos the Returned {W}{B}
Curse of Novgorod: Orzhov Constellation

{W}{B} Kambal, Consul of Allocation {W}{B}
Oblivion: Orzhov Lifegain & Lifedrain

{W}{B} Eriette of the Charmed Apple {W}{B}
Flight of the Wicked Witch: Orzhov Auras

{U}{R} Firkraag, Cunning Instigator {U}{R}
Dragon’s Fury: Izzet Dragons/Goad

{B}{G} Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons {B}{G}
Scorpion Express: Golgari Deathtouch

{B}{G} Nath of the Gilt-Leaf {B}{G}
Outlaw Run: Golgari Elves/Discard

{W}{R} Bruenor Battlehammer {W}{R}
Steel Force: Boros Equipment

{W}{R} General Ferrous Rokiric {W}{R}
Gatekeeper: Boros Multicoloured

{U}{G} Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres {U}{G}
Toxic Garden: Simic Infect

{W}{U}{B} Tivit, Seller of Secrets {W}{U}{B}
Steel Vengeance: Esper Artifacts

{W}{U}{B} Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign {W}{U}{B}
Riddler’s Revenge: Esper Topdeck

{U}{B}{R} Marchesa, the Black Rose {U}{B}{R}
Revenge of the Mummy: Grixis Dethrone/Combo

{B}{R}{G} Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire {B}{R}{G}
Dragon Wagon: Jund Dragons Tribal

{W}{R}{G} Pantlaza, Sun-Favored {W}{R}{G}
Raptor Attack: Naya Dinosaurs Tribal

{W}{U}{G} Galadriel, Light of Valinor {W}{U}{G}
Vapour Trail: Bant Flicker

{W}{B}{G} Karador, Ghost Chieftain {W}{B}{G}
Hair Raiser: Abzan Reanimator

{W}{B}{G} Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant {W}{B}{G}
A Long-Expected Party: Abzan Lifegain/Combo

{W}{U}{R} Kykar, Wind's Fury {W}{U}{R}
Storm Runner: Jeskai Tokens

{W}{U}{R} Hinata, Dawn-Crowned {W}{U}{R}
Phantom’s Revenge: Jeskai Control

{U}{B}{G} Yarok, the Desecrated {U}{B}{G}
Boomerang: Sultai ETB Triggers

{W}{B}{R} Kaalia of the Vast {W}{B}{R}
Abyssus: Mardu Angels & Demons

{U}{R}{G} Omnath, Locus of the Roil {U}{R}{G}
Boulder Dash: Temur Landfall

{U}{R}{G} Eshki, Temur's Roar {U}{R}{G}
Thunder Striker: Temur Power Matters

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 weeks
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 5 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.16
Tokens	Angel 4/4 W, Human Soldier 1/1 W, Pegasus 2/2 W, Soldier, Spirit Cleric */* W
Folders	Destroy