Enchantress
Parallax Wave is a great but tricky card, and understanding it is important to this deck’s main plan. Fading 5 doesn’t have helpful rules text on the original version of this card, so here it is:
This enchantment enters with five fade counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a fade counter from it. If you can’t, sacrifice it.
I always get confused about this, but remember it only sacrificies when you can’t remove a counter, so if you do nothing with it and you cast it on turn 4, it won’t be sacrificied until your upkeep on turn 10.
Parallax Wave is good temporary removal, buying you time, the more creatures you remove with it the less time it buys you though, but the deck’s main prison is Parallax Wave + Opalescence. Opalescence already makes all your enchantments into creatures and is the main way you can close out a game, but it has a tricky combo with Parallax Wave!
- Activate Parallax Wave one or more times by removing fade counters, targeting your opponents’ creatures. These activated abilities go on the stack.
- While those abilities are still on the stack, remove another fade counter to target Wave itself (possible because Opalescence makes it a creature).
- Let that last ability resolve first. Parallax Wave is exiled, which triggers its leave-the-battlefield ability. That triggered ability goes on the stack on top of the remaining exile abilities.
- Let the triggered ability resolve. Wave returns to the battlefield as a new object with five fresh fade counters (Nothing else returns yet because nothing else has been exiled).
- Now the original exile abilities resolve, exiling your opponents’ creatures. But those creatures are never coming back—the Parallax Wave that created those abilities no longer exists, so its leave-the-battlefield ability will never trigger for them!
If you already used Wave a few times before Opalescence came down, that’s fine! Have Wave target itself to flicker it and get fresh counters. Your opponents’ creatures will come back, but then you can do the combo above to exile them permanently.
If your opponent tries to Naturalize your Wave, you can have it target itself in response, it exiles and returns as a new object, and their Naturalize fizzles!
Now that they’re locked out of having creatures, swing with your Wave for the win!
The setup engine are the Enchantresses: Argothian Enchantress and Enchantress’s Presence, drawing you a card when you play most of the cards in this deck. You have echantments for ramp, filtering, protection and tutoring!
Serra’s Sanctum can make lots of mana, accelerating you play and dumping more enchantments, drawing more cards, etc
Sterling Grove does two things: it tutors any enchantment from your library to the top of your deck (do it on your upkeep or their end of their turn!), and it makes all your other enchantments indestructible. Once Grove resolves, targeted removal mostly stops working on your setup. Parallax Wave is interactive: it can phase out the opponent’s creatures until Wave leaves play, and it can phase out your own permanents in response to removal, saving them.
Solitary Confinement is the protection piece. It prevents all damage that would be dealt to you, makes you immune to targeting, and skips your draw step in exchange, but the draw engine can cover that. With Confinement in play and Sterling Grove making it indestructible, the opponent typically cannot attack or remove you, and the game ends when you cast Opalescence.
Replenish is the reset button: if the board gets wiped, one Replenish puts every enchantment from your graveyard back into play for four mana.
Maindeck
Sideboard
Sideboarding Thoughts
Elephant Grass: Against wide creature decks like Goblins or Elves, this can prevent big attacks and slow their deck down dramatically.
Swords to Plowshares: Bring in when you need to remove a specific threat before it becomes a problem (Phyrexian Dreadnought, Psychatog, or a large Terravore), or just slow down aggro until you can get to Waving.
Worship: Keeps you alive against direct damage decks that can ping through your life total, like Goblins with Mogg Fanatic and Siege-Gang Commander. An Enchantress or Opalescence fulfills the creature requirement.
Defense Grid: Brings in against counter-heavy decks like Stiflenought and Psychatog: Counterspell becomes 5 mana and Annul becomes 4, making it very hard for them to hold up interaction during your turn. Also slows down the go wide decks playing cheap threats.
Sacred Ground: Completely blanks land destruction plans like OathPonza’s Thermokarst and Winter’s Grasp, every destroyed land comes right back.
Tormod’s Crypt: Brings in against any deck using the graveyard: prevents Replenish from recovering your destroyed enchantments, or disrupts Psychatog and Accumulated Knowledge chains.
Aura of Silence: Taxes key permanents like Sphere of Resistance, Mox Diamond, and Oath of Druids, and doubles as removal if needed.
Replenish: An extra copy of the deck’s reset button for matchups where you expect your enchantments to get destroyed and need multiple ways to recover.
Gaea’s Blessing: Graveyard removal and could keep you from decking or having key enchantments be exiled before you can Replenish.