One of the best things about following Magic: The Gathering long-term is seeing how far players push the boundaries of deck construction. The general notion of a deck as a mix of creatures, spells, and lands tends to pull through most of the time, but in rare cases, we see some truly experimental creations. Oops, All Spells in Legacy and Pauper is probably the most well-known example. This week, one such Naya deck, made up almost entirely of enchantments, landed some serious results in MTG Modern.
This isn’t a deck that cares about winning the game so much as it is one that cares about never losing. By assembling a few key enchantments in play, it’s very possible for it to create an impossible obstacle for your opponent to overcome. Thanks to a new addition from Tarkir: Dragonstorm, it can do so surprisingly quickly, too. It’s rare to see a deck like this doing well, especially in a format like Modern, so this is truly a list to relish.
Naya Enchantments In MTG Modern
Today’s Naya Enchantments deck comes to us via Internetsurfer09, who piloted it to a 5-0 finish in yesterday’s MTG Online Modern League. At its heart, this is a lockdown Combo deck. It wants to assemble a combination of enchantments that make defeat impossible, and it has a couple of ways of doing this.
The best of these is getting Solemnity and Phyrexian Unlife into play simultaneously. Unlife keeps you alive even at zero life, with the drawback that you start taking Infect damage after that. In a normal game, this essentially extends your life by 10. Solemnity prevents players from receiving counters, however, including the poison counters from Infect. With these two in play, you actually can’t lose the game through traditional damage-based means.
Alternatively, the deck can aim to assemble Solitary Confinement, Case of the Crimson Pulse, and Wheel of Sun and Moon. Confinement also stops you from dying to damage, but it cuts off your draw step and forces you to discard every turn instead. Handily, this helps you solve Case of the Crimson Pulse, which in turn lets you draw two cards every upkeep to keep Confinement around. Wheel of Sun and Moon then prevents you from decking out by shuffling your discarded cards back in.
Whichever combo you go for, United Battlefront from Tarkir: Dragonstorm helps massively. This digs you seven deep into your deck and can put any two combo pieces into play, all for just four mana. You can assemble the Solemnity/Unlife combo single-handedly with this, and get most of the Confinement/Case/Wheel one too. It’s a recent card, but Battlefront has become a real staple in this deck over the last few months.
My Immortal
Once it has one of the above combos in play, it’s pretty tough for any deck in MTG Modern to beat Naya Enchantments. That said, it does have a huge, glaring weakness: enchantment removal. This deck plays literally no creatures, in order to maximize its chances of hitting a combo. As a result, the removal of one of its crucial lock pieces can lead to a swift death in many cases.
To combat this problem, Internetsurfer09 runs a ton of protection cards. Both Sterling Grove and Greater Auramancy give all your other enchantments Shroud, which makes them immune to targeted removal. A lot of the commonly-played enchantment removal in Modern is single-target, so these do a great job. If you get two in play, they even protect each other, so your opponent is out of luck even if they do have it.
Sterling Grove also doubles as an enchantment tutor, which can nab your missing combo pieces in a pinch. Alongside Malevolent Rumble, this goes a long way towards boosting the consistency of the deck. Case of the Crimson Pulse’s rummage effect helps here too, and with United Battlefront in the mix, it’s totally reasonable to have a protected combo in play by turn four.
From there, all the deck needs to do is land a Wheel of Sun and Moon to prevent decking out, and that’s game over. All of the big decks in Modern right now, even the Combo decks, ultimately win through damage. This deck shuts that down completely, and usually mill too via Wheel.
An Eternal Flame?
With such powerful lockdown potential, why hasn’t Naya Enchantments broken out in MTG Modern before now? The answer to that becomes clear if you check out the current best decks in the format.
Boros Energy, for example, runs a ton of incidental enchantment removal. Thraben Charm regularly shows up in the main board, as does Static Prison, both of which can take out any of your key enchantments for cheap. The -4 ability on Ajani, Nacatl Avenger, another staple in the deck, can even break your combo through Shroud protection. Internetsurfer09 runs Flame Blitz to counter this, but only a single copy. Factor in Wear/Tear and Wrath of the Skies in the sideboard, and Boros Energy is very prepared to deal with what Naya Enchantments is putting down.
Domain Zoo and Amulet Titan aren’t much better. The former has Leyline Binding and Stubborn Denial in the main for interaction, as well as a similar sideboard to Boros. The latter is admittedly lighter on enchantment interaction, but it can easily search up Boseiju to break through your lock in a pinch. It’s also fast enough that it can often win before you get your walls up properly.
Since Naya Enchantments has to literally wait the opponent out to win, they have all the draws they need to grab this interaction, too. This puts the deck in a rough spot, and one that’s unlikely to change until a major metagame shift pushes out enchantment removal. Internetsurfer09’s 5-0 finish is admirable, but unfortunately, I don’t expect it to mark a renaissance for this strategy, innovative as it is.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage!