How They Brew It - Ghired's Enchantmentless Enchantress
Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds by Diego Gisbert
Sleep No More
Good evening, and welcome, one and all, to the Her Royal Highness's Exaltation of His Bacchanalia Theatre, Centre for All That is Artistic and Oil Change. My name is Michael Celani, and hush; breathe in the sounds of drama. Tonight's play is like no other, for it is happening all around you. When you walk through these halls, you'll witness the story unfolding in real time. Tread carefully and speak softly, for, like the cast, you, too, shall play many roles in your time here. If hear a cell phone go off, I swear to God we're gonna switch from The King in Yellow to Saw: the Musical! real goddamn fast.
Reading the Script
Now, when I said you'd be playing many Roles tonight, I meant it: literally. Roles are token Auras that enchant creatures. They (usually) provide a power and toughness boost to whatever they enchant as well as other small benefits, such as adding a scry to your attacks or giving a creature ward. Only one Role can enchant a creature at a time; if a second Role becomes attached a creature, the first one is put into the graveyard. This isn't forensics: you can't pop into ten different characters and expect me to look at you like you're still sane at the end of the night.
Just like real life, there are six standard Roles that a person can play: Wicked, Cursed, Royal, Young Hero, Monster, and Sorcerer. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince Commander's Herald to publish a quiz that tells you which one you are, because they were too busy building Spellify, so, we're just going to build a Commander deck around all six, and you would do well to familiarize yourself with each one.
Since Roles are tokens, you're not going to cast them like you would any other Aura. Instead, you'll usually get a Role token as part of a creature's ability, or as a secondary effect of an instant or sorcery. The density of Role-generating effects in their home set, Wilds of Eldraine, means it's possible to build a fully-functioning enchantress deck without including a single actual enchantment in the entire deck. That's exactly what I've done here: welcome to enchantmentless enchantress.
Roles are full-fledged enchantments, so when they enter the battlefield, they'll trigger any Constellation effects you might have. Constellation effects refer to those abilities that trigger whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield; think cards like Composer of Spring or Setessan Champion. Since Role tokens are far easier to procure than other enchantments, you'll invoke Constellation substantially more often than the designers of the game ever thought reasonable.
That brings us, finally, to the main character of tonight's tale: Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds. Everything's in place for Ghired to tell a fantastic story: his ability lets every nontoken creature you control copy any Role as long as it entered the battlefield this turn, which effectively lets you get as many Constellation triggers each turn as you have creatures!
Role Call
When it comes to which roles we're looking for, we're Nicolas Cage: we'll take anything we can get. It turns out that it really doesn't matter how we enchant our creatures in this deck as long as we're enchanting them. Monster and Royal Roles do command a slight premium, as trample and ward are better than the other upsides available, but it's not a make-or-break scenario in most cases.
Our main method of metering out Roles comes from creatures. Having our creatures create Roles serves two purposes in our strategy: the creatures not only generate the tokens that Ghired's ability can copy, they also act as the nontoken bodies that will eventually make use of that ability themselves. There are plenty of interchangeable creatures in here, like Embereth Veteran, Merry Bards, and Redtooth Genealogist, which create Roles when they enter, but there are some far more interesting inclusions as well.
Gylwain, Casting Director automatically gives each of your creatures their own Role when they enter, meaning each of your creature spells trigger Constellation abilities, too. Ellivere of the Wild Court gives you access to the rare seventh Role, the Virtuous role, which grants the enchanted creature +1/+1 for each enchantment you control. This is far and away the best Aura you can give your creatures, so make sure to spread it across your army as soon as you get the opportunity. Syr Armont, the Redeemer comes with his own Role while giving your enchanted creatures an additional boost.
There's a few noncreature spells that create Roles, too. Become Brutes is especially useful, since it creates one of the better Roles and lets any creatures that entered the battlefield this turn participate by giving them access to Ghired's ability. Return Triumphant brings back most of the Constellation creatures in the list. Curse of the Werefox and Cut In are both pricey removal spells, but they make up for it by putting a Role on one of your creatures.
Royal Treatment is also excellent; use it to counter a spell targeting a creature of yours, then keep the Royal role around on any creatures you'd prefer your opponents ignore. Thankfully, Ghired's ability is not at sorcery speed, so you can even cast this on an opponent's end step and enchant your entire board while retaining the ability to swing the turn after.
And though it's not exactly a Role, Smoke Spirits' Aid is also useful for triggering Constellation multiple times. Even after you get your X initial Smoke Blessing tokens, you can still leverage Ghired's ability to keep the smoke stack rolling. If you're holding your Generous Gift or Stroke of Midnight, try using this technique to punch through a hefty board state. Pile a ton of Smoke Blessing tokens onto one creature and then blow it up, recouping all your mana, removing a threat, and dealing tons of damage in one single blow.
Diamonds in the Sky
We've got our Roles, so let's move on to talking about how we're gonna play 'em. Typical Enchantress decks leverage cast triggers, like on Sythis, Harvest's Hand, to draw cards each time you cast an enchantment spell, but since this deck contains no enchantments, we've gotta throw that strategy into the pit. Instead, we're gonna take a page from my astrology-crazed Aunt and focus way too much on Constellations.
Card draw's our obvious first step. It's unfortunate that Elvish Archivist only triggers once per turn, but both Setessan Champion and Tanglespan Lookout draw a card each time any Role enters under your control. Effectively giving all your nontoken creatures the power to tap and draw a card is clearly absurd. It's also pretty likely that Setessan Champion will grow up to become a threat in its own right, especially if you get a Monster Role onto him, since he also gets a counter for each Role you create. If you're willing to compromise the deck's integrity, you could also include Eidolon of Blossoms in here, but I'm not a coward.
There're more ways to accrue value from Constellation than just raw draw, though. Nexus Wardens makes up for the fact you're likely going to be tapped down most of the time by gaining you two life for each Role you create. Nessian Wanderer pretty much turns a Role into a guaranteed land drop for next turn, and if you happen to have Composer of Spring on the field as well, you can put those lands down immediately.
The best payoff, if you have an opportunity to really leverage it, is Rite of Harmony. It not only draws a card for each Role you create, but also for each creature that enters under your control that turn, too. If you cast it and flash it back in a single turn, all of your Roles and creatures are drawing you two cards that turn. It doesn't even specify nontoken creatures, which is especially important because this deck wins by going wide.
There're plenty of creatures in the game that make tokens whenever an enchantment enters. Ajani's Chosen, Chishiro, the Shattered Blade, and Archon of Sun's Grace each make 2/2s whenever you trigger Constellation, Siona, Captain of the Pyleas gives you a 1/1 Human Soldier each time you attach a new Role to a creature, while Knight of Doves creates a 1/1 with flying whenever you overwrite one Role with another.
Although the tokens these cards create create are locked out of using Ghired's ability themselves, they're more than redeemed by the rapid pace you can create them. Being unable to use Ghired's ability is a bit of a blessing for them, too, since you can attack or block with them without feeling like you're wasting an opportunity to trigger more Constellation.
Since our main strategy is to go wide, Second Harvest can outright win you the game in a lot of circumstances. It not only refreshes all of your Roles, giving you a fresh Constellation trigger for each one, it also doubles any token creatures you happen to have created along the way, all for four mana at instant speed. Bonkers.
Enchantment Under the Sea
We've got the script rehearsed and we're ready to go, but like any good performance, the way to make it something truly special is to pay off all your critics into writing a good review really make sure every member of the crew works together. Let's take advantage of the fact that our whole board is going to be consistently enchanted every time we play this deck.
Koll, the Forgemaster and Umbra Mystic give your Role tokens a bit more protective power. Koll blanks most of your opposition's removal, since any nontoken creature that's enchanted will simply bounce back to your hand instead. Umbra Mystic fills a similar role niche, though in a much more straightforward manner: she just gives each of your Roles umbra armor, meaning they'd be destroyed in place of the enchanted creature.
It also makes sense to buff up our enchanted creatures in combat so we can go for lethal swings. Archon of the Wild Rose transforms anything you control that's enchanted into a 4/4 by default, which is stronger than practically every creature's base power and toughness in this list. Mazzy, Truesword Paladin gives each of your attacking enchanted creatures +2/+0 and trample, which is devastating if you're swinging in with an army of enchanted tokens. Couple that with Reyav, Master Smith, who gives your board double strike, and your opponents will be absolutely annihilated on even modest attacks.
Since all of our creatures are enchanted, that means they're modified, too. Kami of Celebration gets us a little extra card advantage this way, while Akki Battle Squad gets us a whole second combat with our modified creatures. You can use Akki Battle Squad to get even more Constellation triggers, too: simply tap out all but one of your enchanted creatures, swing with the remaining one, and then use your freshly untapped board to pass even more Role tokens among your crew.
Operating on a similar wavelength is Preston Garvey, Minuteman. He goes one step further and untaps all of your enchanted permanents, not just creatures, which is especially lucky since he creates a Settlement token every combat. Those Settlement tokens are just as valid as the Roles are when it comes to being copied through Ghired's ability, so swinging with him can mean untapping all your lands and creatures all at once.
If mana's what you're looking for, though, look no further than Jaheira, Friend of the Forest. Your Roles are all tokens, and they're never tapping for anything else, so why not leverage all of them to make additional green mana?
You don't have to enchant your own creatures, either. Should you find Cursed Courtier, you can clone his Cursed Role token onto enemy creatures to reduce them to 1/1s. Add Kaima, the Fractured Calm to the fray and you can goad your whole opponent's army while creating a huge blocker.
And finally, should you have Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier on the field when one of your creatures triggers to make a Role token, target him and pay the additional cost to enchant your whole field, token creatures included. Just be careful: it won't trigger on a standard application of Ghired's ability, since that creates a new Role wholesale which attaches to a creature via a state-based action.
And the Curtain Falls
Thank you for joining us tonight. We all know it was very tempting to simply do nothing, so the fact that you decided to enjoy this theatrical production really warms us all. Unfortunately, one of our patrons in the next theatre over got a little too invested in our live reenactment of Titus Andronicus. Bake into a Pie, indeed.
If you enjoy How They Brew It, please check out the Discord and my other projects at my website. You can vote for which article you want to see next there, so make sure you check it out. Thanks for reading!
Enchantmentless Enchantress
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