Ghen, Arcanum Weaver Mardu Enchantments.
Ghen, Arcanum Weaver RWB
Legendary Creature - Human Wizard
RWB, T, Sacrifice an enchantment: Return target enchantment card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
2/3
The Deck
Ghen is the newest, fugliest man alive, and he hates fun! I decided for my first build to make a combo centric control deck with a plethora of options to maintain board control.
This deck seeks to win with either an Exquisite Blood//Sanguine Bond finisher, or the classic Animate Dead // World Gorger Dragon combo, and massive enchantment creature boards courtesy of Opalescence or Starfield of Nyx.
Parallax Wave: All-Star
Parallax Wave is a monster in this deck. With Ghen's ability, it is possible to exile 5 (!!) target creatures, then sac the enchantment to Ghen's ability leaving all 5 (!!!) remaining in exile. Permanently. Opalescence also allows a similar use case, you exile 4 other creatures, leaving the final trigger for the Parallax wave, which sets up the stack so once the trigger exiling Parallax Wave resolves, it will only return itself. The other 4 targets will be exiled permanently. A fresh Parallax wave on board to exile another 4 creatures. This means a permanent board lock. No creature gets in, no creature gets out. Parallax Nexus is an option as well, if you hate having friends. The Wave is already pushing it man, take it easy on them.
Sac Fodder
Glistening Oil and Spirit Loop both are recurrable sac fodder for Ghen's ability, since they return to your hand once put in the Grave. They're also fairly useful in their own right, and cheap enough to cast.
There aren't many great options for other sac fodder. Heliod, God of the Sun's ability may seem like a steep cost, but with Serra's Sanctum in the deck I believe he is a decent fit. There's also the cycle of cards that produce enchantment tokens on untap, but really they are too slow and unreliable.
Value Town
Demonic Pact and Treacherous Blessing are both amazing cards with Ghen. Recurrable draw effects without the drawback? Yes please!!
Filling the grave is pretty easy in our colors. I am running a full suite of self mill effects in an effort to fill our graveyard with as many enchantments as possible for maximum recur options. Perpetual Timepiece, Codex Shredder, Entomb, Faithless Looting, Altar of Dementia, Doom Whisperer, Valakut Exploration and Mesmeric Orb all help cover that base. Mesmeric orb and Basalt Monolith even combo together to completely fill our yard for a massive swing with Replenish.
Finding The Pieces
As a Combo focused deck, tutors are a must run for us. Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Academy Rector, Gravebreaker Lamia and Entomb all bring our most needed pieces into the fray very efficiently. This current version is lacking most of the tutors, as I am currently running mine in a cEDH deck. Feel free to add or take out of your as needed.
Imperial Recruiter is a decent piece for our deck. It tutor out powerful value engine cards. Mesa Enchantress, Academy Rector, Daxos, Faith Healer, Grim Guardian, and Starfield Mystic that are all very usable in almost any situation.
Necropotence also presents an interesting use case. We can pay tons of life to prepare for a massive draw, then sacrifice Necropotence to allow us to discard to graveyard instead of exile. VERY good for filling the grave. Kaya's Wrath, Faith Healer, and Exquisite Blood allows for some amount of breathing room to offset the life lost. I am considering adding Underworld Coinsmith for this effect as well, especially since he himself is an enchantment.
Why All the Hate?
Removal and graveyard exile are our major weaknesses. There's not a whole lot you can do against grave hate unfortunately, other than responding to a targeted exile trigger from Tormod's Crypt by resurrecting a Solitary Confinement. We can try to protect our board with cards like Boros Charm, Brought Back, Lightning Greaves, Possibility Storm, Planar Chaos, Martyr's Bond, Greater Auramancy. Really though, as long as the effect doesn't exile our enchantments we really don't care about combo pieces being sent to grave.
If All Else Fails
Swing out! The potential damage output with a massive board state with Opalescence or Starfield of Nyx with Iroas, God of Victory could easily knock out an opponent or two. Glistening Oil, Eldrazi Conscription, and your indestructible gods can lead your enchantments to a glorious combat victory.
Thank You!
And that's pretty much it! I hope you enjoyed, i spent a lot of time coming up with ideas, and am still learning more about how I can improve this deck tech! Let me know your thoughts down below!
In's and Out's
In: Seal of Cleansing
Out: Daxos, The Returned
After playing a good number of times, I think I can safely say that Daxos is a little too difficult to accumulate value with. 6 mana just to create one enchantment token? I would much rather pay 3 to activate my commander or play basically anything else. I am on the fence with Heliod. I haven't drawn into him too many times, but the fact he's an enchantment himself and provides vigilence is probably relevant enough.
In: Imp's Mischief
Out: Captive Audience
Captive Audience unfortunately just is too slow a card in commander. The fact you lose control of it really hampers it's usefulness. Imp's mischief will provide very relevant interaction protection, seeing as we lack blue we need all the help we can get with resolving an infinite loop with sanguine bond and exquisite blood.
