Eriette of the Charmed Apple Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on March 6, 2024

Eriette of the Charmed Apple | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

Magic’s recent return to the plane of Eldraine brought along with it more great reimagined fairy-tale characters. After sets like March of the Machine and Lord of the Rings, this set actually feels very restrained in terms of the number of commanders being printed, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any good ones. In fact, I think all three witch sisters, Agatha, Eriette, and Hylda, make for very interesting options to build around.

For this deck, I’m going with Eriette of the Charmed Apple because as soon as I saw their abilities I knew exactly how I wanted to build this deck. It’s also just hard to beat the Magali Villeneuve artwork on the regular treatment of this card. It seems to have been printed with Commander in mind, since there are only three auras coming out in Wilds of Eldraine.

You typically need multiple builds of a deck to get different playstyles out of a commander. What I found really fun when putting this deck together was that Eriette’s ability actually allowed me to create a deck that can be either group hug or Voltron depending on how the game is going. Of course, just like with the evil queen who inspired Eriette, the “gifts” this deck hands out may seem to be helping your opponents but it’s really all for your own benefit.

The Deck

Gift of Orzhova | Illustration by Johannes Voss

I wanted to include lots of auras in this deck to synergize with Eriette of the Charmed Apple’s abilities. While both black and white have auras that are great for slowing down or putting some negative effect on your opponents’ creatures, I decided to go in a different direction. By mostly including auras like Gift of Orzhova that only grant positive abilities to creatures, you have the option to enchant your own creatures as well as your opponents’. It also allows you to help your opponents take each other out while preventing them from attacking you with their best creatures.

Because this is an enchantment-heavy deck, I also included cards like Danitha Capashen, Paragon and Archon of Sun's Grace that either support or payoff enchantments. I also included some cards like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose that help improve Eriette’s second ability.

The Commander

Eriette of the Charmed Apple isn’t just a well-designed commander, it’s also a good example of translating a story into card form. Just like Eriette in Magic’s story used the Wicked Slumber to enchant sleepers into doing her bidding, this card allows you to use your opponents’ creatures against one another. By putting your auras on your opponents’ creatures, they’ll be forced to only attack each other instead of you. This is an interesting strategy that also perfectly reflects a queen sitting on her throne making others do her dirty work.

The second half of Eriette of the Charmed Apple is also a pretty powerful effect. You can force your opponents to attack one another, but you also drain them of life throughout the game while you continue to gain life back. While you could definitely build more around these lifegain and life drain mechanics, I’ve recently built several decks like that so I leaned more into the auras.

Auras

There are a few different types of auras I decided to include in this deck. One type is auras like Gift of Orzhova or Angelic Destiny that just offer benefits to the creature it enchants. These work well on your own creatures and on your opponents' as long as you control Eriette.

Perhaps the most powerful of these types are All That Glitters and Ethereal Armor since you probably control a good number of enchantments in this deck.

I also tried to pick enchantments like Spectral Steel or Hyena Umbra that give you more staying power as the game progresses, either by keeping your creatures intact or returning auras from the graveyard back to your hand

There are also auras like Casting of Bones or Chime of Night that won’t necessarily give any positive effects to the creature they’re enchanting but benefit you when that creature dies. These are great for putting on your opponents’ creatures to prevent them from attacking you with a promise of something later.

Then there are cards like Banewasp Affliction which allow you both to stop a creature from attacking you while they’re on the board and to have a negative effect on your opponent in some way.

Enchantment Support

Because you’re running lots of enchantments, you’ll also want some cards that either support them or give you additional benefits for playing them. Cards like Danitha Capashen, Paragon, Starfield Mystic, and Transcendent Envoy all make it easier to cast your auras.

Archon of Sun's Grace is one of the best payoffs you have for playing enchantments since it allows you to establish a board state for free each time you play one. Daxos the Returned has a similar effect. Although you have to pay for the tokens Daxos makes, they can also be very powerful.

Umbra Mystic is a great way to keep your enchanted creatures around, and Sun Titan can also help you get a few auras back from the graveyard since most of the ones in this deck fall into the 3-mana or less category.

Open the Vaults is another powerful way to get your enchantments back from your graveyard. You’ll just have to be careful when you play it. If you have nothing to attach your auras to, they’ll go right back to the graveyard. Also, your opponents may have better resources in their graveyard than you do, so it might not be worth playing in that case.

The Mana Base

As with any 2-color mana base, dual lands that come in untapped are always a strong option. Godless Shrine is nice because it can be searched for with Marsh Flats, and it isn’t a big deal for you to pay 2 life in a deck where you gain a good amount. This also means that Caves of Koilos and Silent Clearing don’t have as big of a downside as they do in other decks.

Other good dual lands in this deck include Vault of Champions and Isolated Chapel because both of their requirements to come in untapped are pretty easy to fulfill. Likewise Tainted Field can usually act as a dual land as long as it isn’t one of the first lands you play.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is also helpful for mana fixing in this deck. While this card might occasionally help your opponents out a bit as well, it seems to fit nicely into the pseudo group hug feel of the deck.

Hall of Heliod's Generosity is a huge plus in this deck since auras are harder to keep on the field than other enchantments. This way you’ll be able to make sure you aren’t running out of ways to enchant your opponents’ creatures, or your own depending on the situation.

Card draw is always important so both War Room and Castle Locthwain seem like easy choices for this deck. Thanks to the extra life you gain from Eriette, the life cost for these cards won’t be as big of a deal.

I included a Plaza of Heroes because it can be helpful for casting your commander, and keeping it safe from targeted removal on future turns.

The Strategy

When playing this deck, you don’t want to give away your strategy right away. Make sure early on you seem like you’re ready to play ball with the rest of the table. This works best if another player establishes themselves as an early threat. Then you can give helpful auras to your other opponents’ creatures as a way to encourage them to take out the threat. Of course, each new aura means a better trigger off Eriette of the Charmed Apple and one more creature that won’t be able to turn on you later.

You’ll probably want to get Eriette of the Charmed Apple on the field as quickly as possible since you don’t want to be buffing any opponents’ creatures when they can still attack you. Of course, if you’re struggling to keep Eriette on the field, you can always use your auras to buff your own creatures and keep up with the rest of the table.

When I was playtesting this deck, I had a few different kinds of wins. One game I managed to attach most of my auras to a Kor Spiritdancer and just deal a lot of damage to my opponents. In other games I had more success buffing my opponents’ creatures and slowly draining the table of their life while preventing them from hitting me with Eriette and cards like Ghostly Prison.

If one of those two strategies feels more appealing to you, you could rebuild this deck in a way that focuses on it a bit more efficiently. However, I enjoy this build because it gives me a little bit of flexibility and allows me to make decisions based on what decks I’m matched up against.

Combos and Interactions

I built this deck to be a little more casual and budget friendly, so I decided not to add in any infinite combos. That said, I want to touch on one interaction to keep in mind because it relies on proper sequencing to get the most out of it.

When you have both Eriette of the Charmed Apple and Astarion, the Decadent on the field at the same time, they both trigger simultaneously at the beginning of your end step. This allows you to decide the order in which they resolve on the stack. You want to make sure you’re resolving Eriette’s ability first, that way regardless of if you’re choosing feed or friends with Astarion, you’ll get more out of it.

Rule 0 Violations

With this deck being more on the casual side of things, I really don’t see there being any Rule 0 issues with it. The only thing I can think of is that some more casual players might not be super thrilled about the infect auras in this deck. You should point out that you’re just as likely to give one of their creatures infect as your own, but still worth checking just in case. Sometimes newer players who might be using precons with inefficient mana bases feel too outpaced by infect and would prefer you take those cards out.

Budget Options

One great thing about Eriette of the Charmed Apple is that it lends itself to budget friendly builds. Many of the auras I included in this deck were pretty cheap since they aren’t as good without Eriette’s ability offering extra support. That said, I did throw in a few more expensive cards that you could cut if you want this deck to be even more affordable.

The first cut I’d make for money purposes is Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. It won’t always pay off in this deck, especially if your auras aren’t sticking around as long as you would like them to. It’s much more consistent in mono-color decks, so you could easily switch this out for a cheap dual land or even a basic land and save yourself around $40.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is probably another card you could cut. Though its mana fixing is nice, you already have a good number of dual lands, and the casting costs in this deck aren’t all that restrictive.

Another cut you could make is Esper Sentinel. The card is really good in several formats, which means it’s pretty expensive. Loran of the Third Path is a nice bit of removal as well as a way to draw cards, and it leans into the group hug aspect of this deck. You could swap Esper Sentinel out for Loran and save about $12.

The last card I might recommend cutting is Xenk, Paladin Unbroken. Because this card was originally part of the Dungeons and Dragons Secret Lair, it isn’t as widely available and costs a bit more than it probably should. At some point this card will be printed into an actual Magic set which will likely drop the price, so you could always wait to pick it up, though who knows how long it could take.

Other Builds

Because Eriette of the Charmed Apple’s ability is so focused on auras, no matter how you choose to build this deck you’ll want to make sure it’s focused on that card type in some way. You can always switch out some of the auras I’ve included in this deck for others that you think are more fun, but I’m not seeing Eriette as the kind of commander that has lots of wildly different builds.

One I considered while building this deck was to lean a little more heavily into stax effects. I was thinking about using cards like Authority of the Consuls to slow down my opponents’ creatures and Hushbringer to make them even less effective when they enter the battlefield. I’d then have included more cards like Archon of Absolution or Champions of Minas Tirith which make it a lot harder for my opponents to attack me. These combined with the auras I’d be placing on their cards would make it very difficult for them to swing attackers at me.

I ultimately decided against that build because it didn’t feel like it would be as fun for everyone involved, but if you’re more interested in building a deck that’s going for the win it might be the route to take.

Commanding Conclusion

Angelic Destiny | Illustration by Jana Schirmer & Johannes Voss

I always appreciate when a new commander comes out that allows me to use cards in a new unique way. I’d never considered making an aura deck that was focused on giving positive effects to my opponents’ creatures before so it was cool to try and use Eriette’s ability to make a type of deck I’d never played before. I’m also a fan of Eldraine and the look of the card, so it was an easy choice to build a new deck around.

Which Wilds of Eldraine commander are you looking forward to? Which direction would you take an Eriette deck in? Let me know in the comments or on Draftsim’s Twitter.

Thank you for reading and I’ll see you next time!