Last updated on April 23, 2024
Starfield Mystic | Illustration by Eric Deschamps
Enduring Enchantments from Commander Masters takes the iconic enchantress strategy and moves it into black from primarily white and green. This third color adds a new direction the archetype gets to explore: graveyard shenanigans.
I’ve got some easy changes you can make to upgrade it out of the box and add some more punch to the deck. I’ll cover everything from ramp and interaction to win conditions and the overall mana base.
Ready? Let’s go!
Enduring Enchantments Overview
Enduring Enchantments wants to cast as many enchantments as possible while sticking expensive ones in the graveyard to cheat out for cheap. The face commander is Anikthea, Hand of Erebos, who cheats out expensive enchantments from the graveyard as 3/3 creature tokens.
The remainder of the deck is focused on all elements of an enchantment spell’s lifecycle: casting enchantments, sacrificing enchantments, and using enchantments to attack your opponents’ life totals and board states.
- POWERFUL RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX—Take your Commander game to the next level with a high-powered, ready-to-play deck
- PLAY WITH COMMANDER’S GREATEST HITS—Turn heads with a deck stacked with reprints of some of the greatest cards to grace Magic’s most popular format
- INTRODUCES 10 COMMANDER CARDS—Each Commander deck also introduces 10 never-before-seen Magic: The Gathering cards
- WHITE-BLACK-GREEN COMMANDER DECK—get the Enduring Enchantments Commander Deck, a White-Black-Green 100-card deck containing 2 Foil Legendary cards and 98 nonfoil cards, and battle your friends in epic, multiplayer games
- COLLECT SPECIAL TREATMENT CARDS—Each deck comes with a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack containing 2 special treatment cards from the Commander Masters set, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare
Strengths and Weaknesses
Out of the box, Enduring Enchantments is packed full of classic enchantress staples that help keep your hand full. It has built-in win conditions with Anikthea’s ability and Starfield of Nyx alongside some large creatures to move consistently towards victory.
Some lands included here aren’t reliably working with the deck’s game plan to reliably fix its colors. The deck also needs better setup pieces. Anikthea can put any mana value enchantment into play from the graveyard; the issue is getting the big enchantment in the graveyard in the first place when the list only includes a few self-mill pieces to try to get you there.
Wild Growth
Suggested Cut: Greater Tanuki
Wild Growth is cheap and efficient mana acceleration that gets you ahead quickly while triggering constellation and other enchantment cast or enters the battlefield triggers.
Greater Tanuki costs three times the mana to use and isn’t the kind of enchantment you want to waste tour commander’s trigger getting back out as a 3/3.
Utopia Sprawl
Suggested Cut: Omen of the Hunt
Utopia Sprawl is an improvement on Wild Growth if you can make sure you have a Forest in play. Land base upgrades go hand in hand with this addition; not only is this equally as cheap as Growth, it helps fix your mana, too.
Omen of the Hunt is an expensive way to get more mana on the table. I want my ramp pieces cheap and efficient; Omen is neither.
Out of the Tombs
Suggested Cut: Love Song of Night and Day
Out of the Tombs provides an increasing stream of cards to your graveyard. More cards to the graveyard means more opportunities to find something good for your commander, all while being an enchantment that triggers all the enchantment synergy pieces you’re running.
Love Song of Night and Day is pretty bad; two cards for you and an opponent with a couple of extra birds can be fine, but I don’t think there are enough synergies beyond the card types to include it.
Cemetery Tampering
Suggested Cut: Abundance
Cemetery Tampering, like Tombs before it, puts cards directly from the deck to the graveyard to give you more opportunities to get juicy hits with Anikthea. Its hideaway isn’t that likely to pop up, but you only need two or three triggers from this to be happy for its cost.
Abundance costs a bit too much mana for only being a form of card selection.
Entomb
Suggested Cut: Ghoulish Impetus
Entomb finds the best enchantment in our deck for the situation and puts it right where Anikthea can pull it out. It's easily the best tutor option the deck has.
Ghoulish Impetus cards are fun in the right decks, but not this deck.
Hallowed Haunting
Suggested Cut: Herald of the Pantheon
Hallowed Haunting pays you for casting enchantments with giant spirits to attack with. Enduring Enchantments ultimately looks to get a bunch of enchantment creatures in play with bonkers effects and attack with them. It's a perfect match!
Herald of the Pantheon doesn’t set you up that well for big future turns. These upgrades are looking to enhance Anikthea, where the mana discount effects want to be in a deck chaining dozens of enchantments together on a single turn. It’s a fine effect, but not exactly what this deck wants.
Mana Reflection
Suggested Cut: Jukai Naturalist
Mana Reflection is normally nuts in whatever deck you include it in. In this one, where you can cheat it out on turn 4, it's bananas.
Jukai Naturalist is being cut for the same reasons as Herald; in some builds it’s great. I don’t think that’s the case with this one.
Growing Ranks
Suggested Cut: Arasta of the Endless Web
Populate works beautifully alongside Anikthea; Growing Ranks takes the Anikthea enchantment copies and gives you a way to duplicate them. If Ranks was copied by Anikthea, it can populate itself for silly amounts of value.
Arasta of the Endless Web makes a bunch of 1/2s with no major synergies with the deck. See ya!
Rootborn Defenses
Suggested Cut: Narci, Fable Singer
Rootborn Defenses also highlights populate, but this time as a much-needed protection piece. Generating a wide board of enchantment creatures makes the deck fold to board clears; having a tool to protect your stuff that duplicates an enchantment is great.
Narci, Fable Singer definitely wants to be in a dedicated saga deck, which this is not.
Full Flowering
Suggested Cut: Dreadhorde Invasion
Full Flowering continues with the populate theme, this time attached to an X spell. Want three or four copies of a 3/3 Sigil of the Empty Throne token? I sure do!
Dreadhorde Invasion doesn’t provide this deck with anything it's looking for outside of its card type.
Song of the Worldsoul
Suggested Cut: Starfield Mystic
Song of the Worldsoul is the best populate effect this deck could ask for by far. If you make a copy of this with Anikthea, it cascades wildly out of control as you copy it over and over, each one letting you populate extra times per cast.
Starfield Mystic is another enchantment mana discounter that doesn’t line up perfectly with this deck’s strategy.
Wound Reflection
Suggested Cut: Erebos, Bleak-Hearted
Speaking of gross cards to populate, Wound Reflection multiplies the damage your opponents take on each end step. Copies double with each trigger, making even small hits incredibly deadly.
Erebos, Bleak-Hearted belongs in a different deck. It wants you to be regularly sacrificing creatures to draw cards, which isn’t anywhere near what you’re doing.
Doubling Season and Primal Vigor
Suggested Cut: Destiny Spinner, Heliod, God of the Sun
Doubling Season and Primal Vigor are the first two token doublers to add. Anikthea makes a powerful token; why not make two?
Destiny Spinner’s value depends on your playgroup and local meta. In some games its abilities won’t come up ever, making it a dead card that’s easy to cut. Heliod, God of the Sun, like many other cuts, doesn’t have enough synergy.
Parallel Lives and Anointed Procession
Suggested Cuts: Spirited Companion, Omen of the Sun
Parallel Lives and Anointed Procession do what Doubling Season does, but cheaper. With all three token doublers in the deck, Anikthea becomes an enchantment cloning factory.
While cute, Spirited Companion isn’t much more than a cheap cantrip enchantment. It’s better than Omen of the Sun, at least, but neither outclasses these additions.
Mana Base Improvements
Suggested Cuts: Tainted Wood, Tainted Field, the Temples, Sungrass Prairie, Shineshadow Snarl, Necroblossom Snarl, Fortified Village, and Sandsteppe Citadel.
These lands can easily be replaced with upgrades like the shocks, duals, and fetches (Temple Garden, Scrubland, Windswept Heath, etc.).
Cheaper alternatives include the check lands (Sunpetal Grove), the pathways (Branchloft Pathway) if you’re working with a tighter budget.
Commanding Conclusion
Herald of the Pantheon | Illustration by Jason A. Engle
Commanders that cheat expensive cards into play historically have been quickly identified as archenemies. I think Anikthea fits that description.
With some of these upgrades, you take this precon to the next level for your next commander game. They’re aligned with everything Anikthea cares about and should provide you with tools to do wild stuff.
Thanks for checking out Draftsim and this deck guide! If you’ve got recommendations for upgrades, or disagree on cuts, you can let me know in the comments below, or on the Draftsim Discord.
Have a good one!
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