pie chart

Cruel Enchantments + EDH Formula

Commander / EDH Bestow Enchant Goad WB (Orzhov)

ZaneOlric3


Maybeboard


Cruel Enchantments is a strategy focused around putting auras with a variety of negative effects onto creatures your opponent controls. These can shut down their creatures entirely or force them into attacking anyone but you. It leaves you relatively safe while everyone around you is being chipped down.

Bestow creatures enhance this, often attaching themselves to gouded creatures before returning as bodies once their host is finally vanquished. It is important to note that effects that reduce the cost of Aura and enchantment spells do work on the bestow ability.

This strategy finds new life with Eriette of the Charmed Apple, who acts as an additional safety mechanism and a finisher once enough aura build up on the board.

The deck is also built using the Tolarian Academy "formula".

Include 10-15 card draw effects. The “core 10” should either be recurrent effects or draw 2+ cards.

  • Ambition's Cost
  • Night's Whisper
  • Painful Truths
  • Read the Bones
  • Hateful Eidolon
  • Kor Spirit Dancer
  • Mesa Enchantress
  • Sram, Senior Edificer
  • Ashiok's Reaper
  • Three Dreams

Bonus Draw

  • Sages Reverie
  • Songbird's Blessing

4 Wrath Effects

These should be 6 or less mana ideally

  • Damn
  • Merciless Eviction
  • Winds of Rath
  • Wrath of God

6 Spot Removal

Should be 3 mana or less, but can be more if they synergies with the decks strategy.

  • Anguished Unmaking (non-land)
  • Utter End (non-land)
  • Fracture (artifact + enchantment + planeswalker)
  • Mortify (creature + enchantment)
  • Twisted Embrace (creatuer + planeswalker)
  • Planar Disruption (creature + artifact + planeswalker)

5-10 other interaction

Make sure that somewhere in the deck are at least 3+ graveyard hate and 4+ artifact/enchantment hate

  • Doomwake Giant
  • Shatter the Oath (creature + enchantment)
  • Petrify (creature + artifact)
  • Dog Umbra (creature)
  • Minimus Containment (non-land)

Bonus interaction

Should be about 8-12 cards that ramp how much mana is available. This can be an artifact that taps for mana or a spell that tutors a Land ONTO the battlefield. A good thing to remember is a "solid mana rock" will produce at LEAST half as much mana as it costs. Example: spend two, get an artifact that taps for 1. Spend 3, tutor one land onto the battlefield and another into your hand. Spend 4, artifact that taps for 2.

  • Danitha Capashen, Paragon
  • Hero of Iroas
  • Killian, Ink Duelist
  • Starfield Mystic
  • Starnheim Courser
  • Transcendant Envoy
  • Arcane Signet
  • Orzhov Signet

Bonus Ramp

Planning on using 38 lands, giving me about 27 cards to play around with

Servitude Card

Goad or can't attack you

  • Ghoulish Impetus
  • Martial Impetus
  • Parasitic Impetus (bleed)
  • Redemption Arc
  • Spectral Grasp
  • Vow of Duty
  • Vow of Malice
  • Vow of Torment

Pseudo-servitude

  • Spirit Loop
  • Spirit Link
  • Vampiric Link

Bleed Effects

  • One Thousand Lashes
  • Pillory of the Sleepless
  • Clawing Torment
  • Stab Wound

Additional Aura's

Bestow Creatures - they benefit from cost reduction for aura when bestowed

  • Baleful Eidolon
  • Eidolon of Countless Battles
  • Ghostblade Eidolon
  • Hopeful Eidolon
  • Gnarled Scarhide
  • Nighthowler
  • Nyxborn Shieldmate

Reanimation Auras

  • Not Dead After All
  • Minion's Return
  • Unholy Indenture
  • Blessing of Leeches

Other Synergy

  • Archon of Sun's Grace
  • Retether

Something to remember is to try and avoid having more than about 1/3 lands enter tapped. It helps have a "smoother" game experience.

Mana Lands

Untapped Lands

  • Command Tower
  • 7 Plains
  • 7 Swamps

Tapped Lands

  • Age-Graced Chapel
  • Orzhov Basilica
  • Goldmire Bridge
  • Restless Fortress
  • Silverquill Campus
  • Temple of Silence

Utility Lands

Mono Color Effects (tapped)

  • The Dross Pit
  • The Fair Basilica
  • Barren Moor
  • Secluded Steppe
  • Memorial to Folly
  • Hidden Courtyard

Colorless effect lands

  • Volatile Fault (land destruction)
  • Tectonic Edge (land destruction)
  • Field of Ruin (land destruction)
  • Pit of Offerings (graveyard removal)
  • Scavenger Grounds (graveyard removal)
  • Arcane Lighthouse (anti-hexproof)
  • Detection Tower (anti-hexproof)
  • Hall of Heliod's Generosity (recursion)
  • Rogue's Passage (evasion)

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

93% Casual

Competitive

Date added 8 months
Last updated 2 months
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

1 - 0 Mythic Rares

25 - 0 Rares

31 - 0 Uncommons

28 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.81
Tokens Pegasus 2/2 W, Treasure, Wicked
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views