Hello, Nation! Today, I want to present ten enchantments to you. These are great enchantments from old sets like Stronghold and Urza’s Saga all the way up to Shards of Alara. I’ll even put a couple of these in decks for you. Intrigued? Let’s take a look!

Remembrance – A few of the cards on today’s list have similar abilities, so I want to discuss them early so we can move through these similar mechanics and onto the other cards. What’s so great about Remembrance? Whenever you lose a nontoken creature, you acquire another copy from your deck to your hand. This clearly is not super-mega-hot in Commander, barring creatures that shuffle back into your deck like Serra Avatar. If you want to retrieve your dead Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, you can. Otherwise, this is a big non-bo for the format. On the other hand, it kicks the ass of anything else. All you have to have is a consistent and fun creature base in order to rock it right. Did I lose a Sakura-Tribe Elder or Mogg Fanatic? I guess I’ll just have to put one in my hand from my library. It’s card advantage after you lose just two creatures. I like cards like this that grow in power as the game goes longer and longer into the ninth inning. Remembrance is broken with creatures that have 187 abilities. Here comes Flametongue Kavu again. Other abilities work well, too. Evoke out Shriekmaw for 2 mana, kill something, and find another Shriekmaw in the hand. Here’s a nasty combo—did I forget to pay the upkeep on that Karmic Guide? Ahhh. Here’s another. Oh look, I returned the one that just died and then brought out a creature with it, leaving me two Guides and the creature I wanted to return. And then those two Guides die, I tutor for the other two from my deck, and then I have two more resurrection triggers coming. (Another good choice with the upkeep thing is Goblin Marshal.) I think you can find ways to really abuse this card.

Verdant Succession – Where Remembrance is a nice card for all colors and all situations, Verdant Succession is a kick in the face for Green. It doesn’t play well with others, but forget putting a creature on top of your library—let’s just put it into play. Otherwise known as Vigor’s best friend. (See also: Progenitus.) That Sakura-Tribe Elder just sacrifices to put another in play, which you sacrifice to put another in play, and suddenly you have a lot of lands on the battlefield and a quartet of Elders in the graveyard. Every Green creature that sacrifices for an effect becomes amazing. Take a look at things like Elvish Eulogist, Ravenous Baloth, Yavimaya Elder, and Qasali Pridemage. Look at the sheer power of Lifespinner, and this in a Spirit deck. Evoke creatures will die, but they give you their effect, and then search your library for a copy, put in on the table, and you’ll get a second effect. A simple 2 mana from Briarhorn becomes two triggers and one in play permanently. A Persist creature that dies not only triggers the Verdant Succession to tutor for another copy on the battlefield but will also trigger Persist and returns itself—Woodfall Primus is nasty here. With sacrifice outlets, you can go crazy. A simple Goblin Bombardment becomes a cannon of death. If you combine with something really broken, you can go to town. For example, imagine playing Deranged Hermit, sacrificing the Hermit to grab another, and another, and the fourth one. Now you have out sixteen 2/2 squirrels and have dealt 3 damage with the GBB. You have at least seventeen other creatures in play, so you sac them to kill someone. Vigor + [sacrifice outlet] is a combo to kill anyone at the table. This is a nasty enchantment, with a lot of uses, so build a deck around it today.

Mortuary – When one of your creatures dies, you put it right back on top of your library. The bad thing about this card is the lack of the word “may” anywhere on it. It’s a bit all-in. However, it really feeds the above cards like a little engine of death. Kill a creature of yours, put it on top of your library, and then search it for a copy and put it into your hand/onto the battlefield. Even in Commander World, this works to feed the combos above. Did I just lose my Baneslayer Angel to your silly little Terror? I guess another should make its way to the top of my library. Because this puts a creature on top of your library, it works very well with some cards—such as Primitive Etchings, Erratic Explosion, and Garruk's Horde. I’m sure you can find a lot of uses for this underused power.

Field of Souls – This is the last of the enchantments on today’s list with a death trigger. It’s very simple—every time one of your nontoken creatures die, you get a 1/1 flying token. Imagine it in the above decks. Ouch. If all you do is sacrifice a simple Mogg Fanatic, and you deal a damage to something, get a 1/1 flyer, and tutor for a Mogg Fanatic and put it into your hand—that’s nasty. With your sacrifice outlets already in the deck, you have a clear and present use for these tokens. You also have an army post-Wrath of God, something on the table after a Terminate comes your way, and a use for everything from Echo and Persist to Evoke and Fading/Vanishing. Trust me, this card is a lot better than it looks—it used to be in one version of Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy back when it was a sixty-card tournament deck.

Now that we are through the four cards that share a mechanic (the death trigger), let’s build a deck.

"Verdant Death"

• Creatures (22)
• 2 Vigor
• 4 Acidic Slime
• 4 Loaming Shaman
• 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 4 Wall of Blossoms
• 4 Woodfall Primus

• Planeswalkers (0)

• Spells (12)
• 4 Moment's Peace
• 4 Verdant Succession
• 4 Blasting Station

• Lands (26)
• 26 Forest

• Sideboard (0)

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This deck is built around the Vigor/Verdant Succession/Blasting Station combo. All you have to do is have out all three, and then tap the Station to sacrifice the Vigor for a damage to someone. Shuffle it back in, then put it right back into play, and untap the Station. Tap and repeat. Death to someone.

Supporting that theme are a variety of Green creatures that will make your Succession amazing. Acidic Slime will take out an annoying card, and then you can sacrifice it for another trigger, and again and again. If you want, you can just blow through four lands of your foe. You can pull the same trick with Woodfall Primus, and with persist triggers, you can destroy eight noncreature permanents in one turn with no mana needed beyond playing the first Primus. Ouch! You still have out four 5/5 tramplers to win the game, or four more triggers with the Station.

We’ve already discussed the power of Sakura-Tribe Elder here. Wall of Blossoms can be played early as a blocker, and then sacrificed when needed for cards.

Loaming Shaman is a great way to reset the cards in your deck for more abuse. You can reload your deck with another round of any and all of these creatures. Imagine a set of eight Woodfall Primus triggers followed by a Loaming Shaman and then another eight (that’s in addition to twelve total Blasting Station activations, and leaves you four 5/5 tramplers). Broken.

Moment's Peace is simply here to keep you alive. I’m not concerned about anything other than creatures, because you can easily handle something like a Leyline of Sanctity that would normally keep you from winning with a Blasting Station. Anyway, here we have a deck with a nasty enchantment, powerful creatures, and a three-card combo kill.

Vile Consumption – Creature-light decks benefit from playing cards that hose creatures. From classics like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and The Abyss all the way to modern times, we’ve seen a lot of cards that nail creatures. When you are playing these decks, you should really look for ways to punish those playing with more conventional means of winning via the red zone. Vile Consumption is a perfect way to do so. If you are going to punish your opponent, what better way than to force him to pay life for each creature, every single upkeep? In multiplayer games, be afraid of people attacking you back because they are upset at the new life-payment their creatures just got. On the other hand, if you are prepared with something like Silent Arbiter, Dueling Grounds, Moat, No Mercy, Powerstone Minefield, Circle of Flame, Caverns of Despair, or Dissipation Field, you may be sitting nicely.

Night Dealings – There are a number of cards from Kamigawa block that fly under the radar. The block is not exactly people’s favorite, and all of the Kamis and Legendary creatures sort of blend together. Everything has a Japanese name—Hondens, Akki, Kitsune, Shinen, and more. It can be a bit overwhelming. We have a lot of cards that are quite useful but have been removed from the collective consciousness of Magic players. Night Dealings is one of the best. I’ve abused the crap out of it over the years. Whenever any source you control deals damage to another player (including things like Pestilence, Chandra Nalaar, Mogg Fanatic, Drain Life, and attacking with dudes), you put a counter on this for each of those damage dealt. Did you deal 1 to everybody with a Shivan Gorge activation? Did you rock a Volcanic Fallout to clear out some creatures and also deal 2 damage to everybody? Then load up the Night Dealings with a ton of counters. Once you’ve done that, you can activate it and remove some counters for tutoring. Activate any time for , and search your library for a card with casting cost equal to the number of counters removed. You can’t use it for land, but you can get something else that costs zero if you remove nothing. With so many counters going on it, you can tutor again and again for a lot of cards in your deck. I think a lot of people look at Night Dealings and think it sucks because they read it wrong. You only remove those counters you want, so you can use it several times and keep the stored counters on it. You also put as many counters on as damage was done, so a Lightning Bolt to someone’s head nets you three counters. Night Dealings makes Sizzle good. It fits perfectly into a deck that deals a lot of damage through attacking, spells, or permanents. This will rock your table, so find some.

Where Ancients Tread – This card is amazing in any deck with larger creatures. At the multiplayer table, things are often a bit slower, and that means your creatures are a bit more expensive. You can easily have a deck where a majority of the creatures have 5 power or more. That makes this deadly. I’m sad when I see Dragon decks that don’t play this. If you thought Bogardan Hellkite was already a great card, imagine this being out! You don’t have to be playing the whole suite of Naya cards to have enough things to use Where Ancients Tread. It works in so many decks. You can have this break open a counterburn deck with large beef (maybe Sphinx of Uthuun), or perhaps a R/B deck with creatures like Avatar of Woe, Rune-Scarred Demon, Dread, and Kokusho, the Evening Star getting value from it. This is a lot better than most believe. (See also: Ball Lightning, Ancient Hydra, Blastoderm, and friends.)

"Ancient Angels"

• Creatures (20)
• 2 Deathless Angel
• 4 Aegis Angel
• 4 Baneslayer Angel
• 4 Exuberant Firestoker
• 2 Akroma, Angel of Fury
• 2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
• 2 Razia, Boros Archangel

• Planeswalkers (0)

• Spells (14)
• 2 Comet Storm
• 4 Orim's Thunder
• 2 Breath of Life
• 2 Angelic Chorus
• 4 Where Ancients Tread

• Lands (26)
• 10 Plains
• 8 Mountain
• 4 Boros Garrison
• 4 Sacred Foundry

• Sideboard (0)

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This is a nice little Angel deck, built around Where Ancients Tread, Angelic Chorus, Exuberant Firestoker, and many powerful Angels. You want WAT on the battlefield as soon as possible, and then abuse your Angels. You have several Angels that will trigger it for us.

With both Akromas, the powerful Razia, and then Deathless Angel, Baneslayer, and Aegis Angel rocking the table, we have some severely game-changing beef. Because my deck is a bit vulnerable to mass removal, I went with Angels that can keep things out with Indestructible. The Aegis Angels can protect a WAT or Chorus or even a clutch Firestoker.

The Firestokers are great here because they give you something to play early, accelerate your WAT to turn four, and become a 2-point clock each turn to someone.

I intentionally chose not to play the tribal elements that could be used for anything, like Adaptive Automaton. I also steered clear of the one changeling in my colors that works with WAT—Changeling Berserker. If I had more 187 creatures, I might have looked at the Champion ability of it more closely, but as it is, I didn’t want to force it.

For additional mass-removal help, I added Breath of Life to bring back a dead Akroma or Razia. Then I added a quartet of Orim's Thunder as both creature and artificial removal. With just two slots left, Comet Storm made an appearance as a finisher and emergency creature-removal spell.

Don’t forget that while WAT is destroying creatures or shaving off 5 points of life from a foe’s total, that Angelic Chorus is netting you massive life. While opponents should take out WATs first, the Chorus may allow you to get to 45 or 50 life easily, and then when you add in Lifelink from the Baneslayers, you are really doing some inflating to your life total. This should help keep you alive through the attackers you’ll see.

Dark Suspicions – There are a lot of people who don’t know what this card does, so take a look. Dark Suspicions does something unique in Magic, and it hurts all opponents, but not you or your allies. Everybody loses life equal to how many cards are in his hand above your own. Does that sound powerful? Let’s look at some ideas for breaking this. How about Hellbent decks? Toss your hand away, then laugh as everybody loses 2 to 7 life during his turn (or more if he is Reliquary Tower–prone). They’ll try to take out DS quickly, and if not, then they will blow through their hands. Cards that reload their hands, like Wheel and Deal, Time Reversal, and Wheel of Fortune are also great choices. If you can play your stuff every turn, why not try Howling Mine, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Prosperity, and Font of Mythos? If you are playing those things and Black anyway, cards like Underworld Dreams suddenly make sense. Feel free to hide cards under Gustha's Scepter. Pox will like that a lot. If you are filling up their hands, look at things like Storm Seeker, Sudden Impact, and Multani, Maro-Sorcerer for inspiration. See also: Ensnaring Bridge.

Arboria – When I was discussing the value of Vile Consumption, I mentioned keeping yourself alive with a variety of cards. One card that is often overlooked is the awesome Arboria from Legends. This uncommon is really cheap to buy from vendors, and it gives you a lot of value at the casual table. A player who does not cast anything or put anything into play (except tokens) cannot be attacked until his next turn. I’m sure you can find a ton of uses for this. A great example would be CounterPost, a deck built around instants and lands that make tokens, such as Kjeldoran Outpost. It will love Arboria. The disadvantage of Arboria is that you cannot always attack when you want to, so just toss it into a deck that doesn’t want to win by attacking. Combo decks come to mind, but there are others out there. A deck with a sacrifice theme can play it early, ride it for a while, and then kill it off when you need to attack to win. You can play creatures with Flash, or things like Winding Canyons and Vedalken Orrery in order to drop guys when it is not your turn—and thereby prevent yourself from being attacked.

Abundance – I know that it saw play in tandem with Sylvan Library for a triple threat of cards every turn. Abundance is more than the junior partner in the relationship. Every draw is either a land or not, based on what you need. Imagine playing six lands, and then every draw for the rest of the game is not a land. Perhaps some idiot plays Armageddon and you answer by making every draw a land until you are recalibrated. (You can be the idiot.) By clearing off the top of your deck regularly, you can see lots of new cards with things like Scroll Rack and Sensei's Divining Top. Please note that when you use this, you are never technically drawing a card. That means you cannot lose by being decked, and cards like the abovementioned Underworld Dreams, Consecrated Sphinx, Psychic Possession, and Mind's Eye will not work on you. I’m sure that you can find a lot of uses for this card.

And with that, we have knocked out ten enchantments and two decks for your enjoyment. I hope you found a few new friends here!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent