Enchanting Daxos





One of the presents Santa bought me this Christmas was the Daxos pre-constructed Commander Deck - "Call the Spirits".

In my wisdom I decided to go all out enchantments with this deck - which isn't easy and to some degrees would make my deck especially vulnerable to Tranquility effects. But, aside from Akroma's Vengeance, who plays them in Commander?

As we'll see I ended up going mostly enchantments as I opted to include cards that 'care' about enchantments and I added mana rocks to help with my mana base.

 So what I thought I'd do is share some of my thought processes with you.

When looking at a pre-constructed Commander deck from wizards you have to keep in mind that they set them up so that they can be developed in different ways. To this end they always come with extra Legendary Creatures who can replace the advertised Legend as the deck's commander.

In this case the two legends are Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts and Karlov of the Ghost Council. Neither of these work with the way I want the deck to work. Basically they aren't Enchantments so have to go.

The choice of what to replace them with is simple - the Theros block brought us Enchantment creatures and of those the Gods are first and foremost. 

So out went Teysa and Karlov and in cames Athreos and Heliod.  But, there's a third god - possibly the best of the three in the colours of my commander and I have to include him.



The Myriad ability really doesn't suit my deck so it made sense to take out Banshee of the Dread Choir and replace it with Erebos, God of the Dead.

The other Myriad creature in the deck is Herald of the Host removing this gave me the chance to start adding some of the other Enchantment Creatures from the Theros block which aren't deities.

Aegis of the Gods is one of those creatures whose ability is simple but effective and a must have for me in my enchantment based deck.

Theros also gave us creatures that can become creatures themselves or enchant other creatures using the Bestow ability.

Corpse Augur is a draw engine when it dies. But, I already added Erebos as a draw engine so I'm not so worried about doing a like for like swap as I do with other cards in the deck. So incomes Baleful Eidolon with his Bestow and Deathtouch abilities. 

Dawnglare Invoker has an interesting yet expensive ability. I guess you pay a high price for tapping creatures outside of Blue. The Invoker was removed to make space for Hopeful Eidolon.

There are some creatures I want to play that, shock horror, aren't enchantments.

Umbra mystic, for example, gives all my auras Totem armor which means they can be used to protect my creatures against things like board wipes. If I've enchanted a creature with an Eidolon then I get to choose which creature I save which is always useful. 

In other cases I've taken creatures out and replaced them with Enchantments that can do a similar job.

Kor Sanctifiers is a hard card to replace and destroying Enchantments with an Enchantment isn't that common but I did find Serra's Liturgy as a replacement.

Ajani's chosen could have stayed it's not actually a bad creature in this deck but, in the end I opted to swap in Felidar Umbra instead of it.

I also went the other way and replaced some Enchantments with creatures.

 I like Daxos's Torment but I felt it just didn't work well in the deck as I created it so I replaced it with the Archetype of Finality. The Archetypes are a cycle I've looked at in the past and work well in this deck.

One of several questions I had to answer during deck construction was can enchantments do ramp? That is get me more lands to play with. And the answer is just about.

There's also Oath of Lieges that could go in the deck as well.

Lieges and Land Tax stop me falling behind on Lands. Endless Horizons is a gamble so you just have to be a little cautious on the number of basic lands you remove from the deck.

There's also another card I wanted to add to the deck was one that would make the majority of my cards cheaper.

As mentioned at the start of this post I also decided to play with some artifacts. Enchantments really can't replace mana rocks for starters and Cloud Key just works so well in this deck.

I've never been a fan of Bauble so it's one of the cards I replaced with a mana rock.

The other major question raised by trying to enchantments only is: "Can enchantments do removal?"

And the answer is: Yes but, not at instant speed.

 If your opponent doesn't have a readily available 'sac outlet' - a permanent that allows the player to sacrifice a creature at instant speed - then Faith's Fetters and Arrest can be two of the best ways to shut down their commander.

 

O-Ring, as Obilivion Ring is popularly known, is great because it targets any permanents that aren't lands that usefully includes Planeswalkers. However, it's useless against your opponent's commander as they can just send their commander back to the commander zone rather than let it be exiled.

Soul Snare is nice because it's a visible threat and so works from a political stand point. It shouts attach me and risk loosing a creature.

Grave Peril is actually enchantment removal. But, it is so limited in use. In targets non-black creatures and you have to sacrifice it the next time a creature enters play so you could end up only killing a Saproling.

Black and White have a plethora of enchantments that can be used for removal purposes the above are just three of the choices I made.

Another thing white enchantments are very good at is tapping your opponent's creatures when they come into play.

 

This can be invaluable against infinite token producers like Ghave. I know Necromancer's Covenant is an enchantment but it's an expensive enchantment that wants to go in a zombie deck. Oddly Zombie decks, in my opinion, are usually Black/Blue or Black/Blue/Red so I probably wouldn't play it in one of those either.

Gild is interesting removal including a small amount of ramp. But, as I discussed earlier, I'm using enchantments for my removal. So it's going and I'm bringing Replenish into the deck. If my board gets wiped then it's the perfect answer.

 

Another interesting question is can enchantments do mass creature destruction. Again the answer is in a way. To that end I've swapped out Deadly Tempest and added Vile Requiem



 

Finally I've recently decided to swap out Lightning Greaves for Sram, Senior Edificer. No I'm not so sure about this I think I need to play more Aura's - even if a Bestowed Eidolon is an Aura - to make it worthwhile and I may consider swapping him out for Greed, Underworld Connections or Necropotence.

There's loads you can do with this as your theme and these are just a few suggestions.

If you want to view the full deck list as it stands you can view it here.

Until next time, remember don't over commit yourself.

Phil