Ghen, Arcanum Weaver "Don't Sacrifice What's Enchanting" - Plot Twist #29

Ghen, Arcanum Weaver 

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.

Last time on Plot Twist, we experimented with an anti-non-flying creature deck with Ovika, Enigma Goliath as the commander that looked to give our creatures flying, take it away from our opponents, and profit from the Goblin tokens that Ovika makes along the way.

What we ended up building used a lot of strange anti-non-flying creature tech to break parity and attack our opponents from an unusual angle, just the sort of deck we love to play.

This week, we're going back a few years to build around a creature from Commander Legends: Ghen, Arcanum Weaver. I remember there being a lot of chatter around Ghen when he was revealed during spoiler season because he takes the classic aristocrats strategy of sacrificing creatures for fun and profit and turns it on its head by encouraging us to sacrifice enchantments instead.

Ghen created space for an enchantress deck in Mardu colors that hadn't really existed before and hasn't seen a really standout commander since.

With just over 2,000 decklists to his name on EDHREC, Ghen is outside the top 600 commanders at the time of writing this article, but popular enough that you might stumble across him at your local game store every once in awhile.

How Does Ghen, Arcanum Weaver Work?

Ghen is arguably the most straightforward commander we've ever build around on Plot Twist, and certainly the easiest since Plot Twist #21 with Kirri, Talented Sprout or Plot Twist #1 with Vannifar, Evolved Enigma.

He only has one activated ability that costs and allows us to sacrifice an enchantment in order to return another enchantment from our graveyard to play.

While this ability is expensive compared to other aristocrats-style sacrifice outlets, like Viscera Seer or Ashnod's Altar, it's rather unique in allowing us to 'reanimate' an enchantment. Enchantments can be difficult for white, blue, and black decks to deal with, and can help us accrue lots of extra value over the course of a game.

Plus, between Sagas, Auras, enchantment creatures, and regular ol' enchantments, there's a lot of versatility in the effects we can access.

On Ghen's EDHREC page, we can see that brewers are leaning on staple enchantress cards, like Mesa Enchantress and Sphere of Safety (each appearing in more than 55% of Ghen decks at the time of writing), alongside other powerful enchantments, like Treacherous Blessing and Smothering Tithe.

Having access to three colors, lets Ghen decks run all sorts of powerful enchantments, but I can't help but notice that the decks are light on aristocrats effects that allow us to sacrifice our enchantments. Let's see if we can change that.

Doing the Twist

This week, we're going back to Ghen's original promise of being THE aristocrats-enchantress deck and see just how busted of a deck we can make that wants to repeatedly sacrifice its own enchantments.

We'll be leaning heavily on Rancor-style enchantments that return themselves to our hand when they hit our graveyard, like Glistening Oil, Spirit Loop, and Unquenchable Fury, to make sure we always have an enchantment to sacrifice.

Meanwhile, we'll use some odd sacrifice outlets, like Auratog and Faith Healer, to set up aristocrats payoff cards, like Ashiok's Reaper, Sawblade Skinripper, and Wicked Visitor. Of course, this wouldn't be Plot Twist if we didn't look to sneak in a couple of interesting inclusions, like Lich-Knights' Conquest, Captive Audience, and Celestial Ancient, to help us win in unexpected ways.

Aristocrats Who Love Enchantments

If we're going to build a more aristocrats-style Ghen, Arcanum Weaver deck, then we need to start with sacrifice outlets to get our enchantments into the graveyard. Auratog and Faith Healer are the two standout options we're running because both are free and don't limit the number of enchantments we can sacrifice.

We're not running too many cards that care about lifegain, and Auratog doesn't have a natural form of evasion, so these two will be mostly be outlets for us to repeatedly sacrifice our "fodder" enchantments for free.

There are also a handful of cards, like Braids, Arisen Nightmare, Doom Foretold, Rottenmouth Viper, and Sawblade Skinripper, that allow us to sacrifice a limited number of enchantments. These all provide a lot more return on our investment though, mostly in the form of card advantage or doing damage to our opponents.

We'll probably want to play these sacrifice outlets early on and save Auratog and Faith Healer for later on in the game when we want to try to close out the game in a single turn.

Enchantments We Can Sacrifice Repeatedly

The inspiration for this week's decklist actually came from a card that we can't play: Rancor. I remember playing and loving Rancor when I first started playing Magic: The Gathering as a kid, and I was surprised to see just how many of this style of "fodder" enchantment there are that can return themselves to your hand when they go to the graveyard from the battlefield.

I realized they work really well as enablers for a Ghen, Arcanum Weaver aristocrats deck because we can sacrifice these "fodder" enchantments and not end up down a card because they automatically return themselves to our hand. We want to have a handful of enchantments we can easily and repeatedly sacrifice to Ghen, Arcanum Weaver's ability, but that doesn't mean that they can't be powerful cards as well!

Glistening Oil is probably the best of these enchantments that we're running because it won't be too hard for us to deal 10 damage at once and knock out an opponent with infect counters thanks to Celestial Ancient, Demon of Fate's Design, Juri, Master of the Revue, and Unquenchable Fury.

Unquenchable Fury and Spirit Loop are also strong enchantments we can repeatedly loop while chipping away at our opponents' life totals or gaining life respectively. Cessation, Fallen Ideal, and Sluggishness are definitely weaker effects for their mana value, but given we want to repeatedly sacrifice enchantments in this week's deck, we need a certain density of enchantments that can return themselves to our hand automatically.

We're running six in this week's deck, but there are a handful of others, like Undying Rage and Fiery Mantle, that we could add if we find that we need more of this effect in playtesting.

Ways to Fill Our Graveyard

To maximize Ghen, Arcanum Weaver's ability, we're running a handful of ways to either discard enchantments from our hand or mill them directly into our graveyard. Bitter Reunion and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker both allow us to discard any clunky enchantments that end up in our hand, and each provides a lot of additional value in addition to their card draw.

Solitary Confinement helps us stay alive AND fill our graveyard at the same time, and while discarding a card can be rather steep, we should be easily able to draw an extra card a turn through Mesa Enchantress, Pearl-Ear, Imperial Advisor, Ashiok's Reaper, and friends. Ripples of Undeath is poised to really shine, helping us fill our graveyard and/or 'draw' an extra card every turn.

Enchantments to Return with Ghen

Since our commander allows us to 'reanimate' an enchantment, we want to run a handful of strong, high mana value enchantments that we can cheat into play with Ghen, Arcanum Weaver. Captive Audience and Havoc Festival both put our opponents on a clock to speed up the game. Keep in mind that Havoc Festival does prevent us from gaining life as well.

Battle at the Helvault is a great piece of removal that gives us a double Grasp of Fate-effect, and then an 8/8 Angel when it hits its final chapter. Plus, since Battle at the Helvault is a Saga, it'll sacrifice itself so we can immediately return it to the battlefield with Ghen.

Necromancer's Covenant is potentially graveyard interaction, lifegain, and a mass token-producer all in one card in this week's deck. I might be overestimating how good it will be, but the ceiling on Necromancer's Covenant seems very high if we're playing against another reanimator deck. Being able to exile an opponent's graveyard at instant speed AND make a bunch of 2/2 Zombies by using Ghen, Arcanum Weaver's ability at instant speed is the sort of play we live for on Plot Twist.

Starfield of Nyx is another way for us to reliably reanimate enchantments and can turn our enchantments into lethal attackers in the late game, especially in combination with the evasion that Soaring Lightbringer gives them. We'll need to be careful when we cast Starfield of Nyx, though, because it tends to get removed rather quickly if we can't protect it.

Winning the Game

Like any aristocrats deck, we need to stop playing with our food (metaphorically; not literal tokens) at a certain point and just win the game. We've got lots of ways to eke out a little extra card advantage, but fortunately there are a lot of strong ways for us to close out the game as well.

Celestial Ancient, Hallowed Haunting, and Sigil of the Empty Throne all help us build out an exponentially more powerful board of creatures with every enchantment we cast. In the late game, we can repeatedly sacrifice and cast our "fodder" enchantments to generate extra tokens or buff our team.

While it's less straightforward, we can whittle down our opponent's life totals with artistocrats-style cards, like Balemurk Leech, Grim Guardian, Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz, and Wicked Visitor. These are all great ways for us to slowly but surely do damage and are particularly explosive if we happen to have Captive Audience or Havoc Festival out at the same time.

The tension that happens whenever an opponent goes to four life off of Captive Audience will always make for a memorable game, especially if we need to piece together a win by casting or sacrificing multiple enchantments in a single turn.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

It's time for my favorite part of Plot Twist: highlighting the weird cards we uncovered along the way!

Two rather interesting and unusual ramp pieces made it into this week's decklist: Pearl-Ear, Imperial Advisor and Skittering Precursor. Pearl-Ear seems amazing as a ramp spell that can occasionally draw us an extra card, and Skittering Precursor rewards us for sacrificing more permanents, something we're looking to do anyways. I always love finding ramp cards that help further a deck's gameplan like both of these do.

Measure of Wickedness is a really weird card, but we're able to donate it whenever another permanent goes to our graveyard so we won't have issues giving it to our opponents. Plus, since it sacrifices itself, we can then reanimate it with Ghen again to keep the pressure on our opponents' life totals.

I recently played against Planar Chaos for the first time, and it made the game really tense not knowing if every spell would resolve; we're in a great position to exploit it with Ghen, Arcanum Weaver because we can cheat any important enchantments that get countered by Planar Chaos right back into play with our commander.

Ondu Spiritdancer copying our enchantment spells is going to be amazing, especially if we can copy a Havoc Festival, Battle at the Helvault, or Captive Audience. Last but not least, I want to shout out Lich-Knights' Conquest as both a way for us to sacrifice enchantments AND a mass-reanimation spell.

Cards like this are always so splashy and make for swingy, interesting games. Just what we love to do on Plot Twist!

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Ghen, Arcanum Weaver. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction. I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I've been tinkering around with my Signature Ikra/Bruse Secret Commander Wild Pair Deck lately, and really enjoying looking back at the deck now that I've gotten quite a few games under my belt with it. I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Mono-Green 'Reanimator' Deck and Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.

I'll be at MagicCon Chicago in just a few weeks, so please come say 'hi' if you happen to see me there!

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.