As stated many times on this site giving away mana in a game of group hug is a very dangerous thing to do. It can be even more dangerous than giving away card draw in certain metas. But let’s be honest the danger is what makes it fun!

Every once in a while a commander comes along that is so powerful when built around that it can overcome just about anything you give the table. Sythis is one such commander! In fact this raw power makes her a very good candidate for a budget deck. I have set the budget to two hundred dollars, but it would be very possible to go even cheaper. I have played this deck with no budget considerations, and it was frankly too powerful for a casual pod. As it is I think it strikes the right balance of making the table very powerful but still having a chance to win. Here is a link to the moxfield list!

Sythis so completely solves card draw that it becomes unnecessary to play any other form of card draw in the deck. Plus the variety and power level of enchantments in the history of magic is incredible. Flickering Ward and Whip Silk can both be played multiple times in a single turn making them just a few of the ways we can benefit from the extra mana this deck generates. Mana Bloom is not as powerful but it does return itself to your hand every turn. I usually end up playing it with X equaling zero just to draw a card with Sythis but it can filter green mana into white in a pinch.

The fact is it is very possible to storm off with Sythis and even just one more enchantress effect in play…

When deck building I usually go light on the same effect that I get from the command zone in the 99 but that is just my personal preference. Having two enchantress draw effects in play however is very powerful. On the flip side it also has the potential to deck us out since most of these effects aside from Mesa Enchantress make you draw the card even if you don’t want to. Psychosis Crawler is a very fun way to ping down the table while you draw your way through your deck. It can even become a win-con late in the game!

This deck draws so many cards I found it necessary to practice piloting the deck so that I could effectively make snap decisions and not slow play. In the non-budget version of this deck that I made I reduced the amount of fetch lands to save time during turns. Playing a political deck effectively is almost impossible if we annoy the table to the point that they want to turn on us just to keep our turns from going too long. Another thing I did for playing at a shop is make sure that my life counter was easy and quick to adjust. Just maybe before you try this deck in a pod put in some games and time your later turns to make sure they aren’t five plus minutes each.

I consider all of these downsides worth it because Sythis solves card draw very effectively by playing enchantments. And players are usually not super prepped to deal with them. This combination of card draw and an evasive board state opens us up to give away the most dangerous resource, mana!

All these mana doubling effects are very good for us in this deck since with Sythis we can use the extra mana dig deeper through our deck each turn. Giving away mana is always risky but in this case we are using it to build up a board that isn’t easy to remove all the while drawing more cards to build up more future value. I have given away mana in a creature reliant group hug strategy before and that can go very wrong. The mana usually gets used to wipe the board and then we are back to square one. There are very few commonly play enchantment wipes or permanent wipes. As always there is a risk but hey the game has to end at some point right?

I didn’t opt to play a ton of dorks in this deck for a couple reasons. Number one that is a flavor fail in my opinion. Take a look at the second reason…

The second reason is that effects like Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth exist. They are enchantments and they also synergize quite well with Natures Chosen. And that brings us to the all-star of this deck. Sanctum Weaver! This thing can generate a ton of mana especially in the late game. If you put Nature’s Chosen on Sythis you can tap Sythis to untap Sanctum Weaver and double the mana output! I find this to be a better line than putting Nature’s Chosen directly onto Sanctum Weaver which is such an obvious target for removal.

But how do we turn all this mana and all these draws into wins? The first step is not losing in the meantime. Strategies for this will differ depending on your meta but I find that keeping large blockers up is better for me that pillowfort effects. In most metas I play in, telling the table they can’t do something makes them want to do that and only that. So I play this deck with basically no safety net. But that is the fun in brewing enchantment decks, you have a shell that functions very well and a myriad of enchantments to choose from in green and white. Let’s take a look at the win-cons I chose to run. Keep in mind these are not what I consider the best ones but working within budget and trying to keep the power level at a reasonable threshold pushed me onto these in particular.

Ancestral Mask is a heck of a magic card! In this deck it can easily pump a creature into one shot territory! It also makes a very large blocker too which can hold off attackers while you attempt to one of the other win conditions. Helix Pinnacle is kind of funny and it feels far fetched but keep in mind you can pay into it at any time, so if you have Awakening and Sanctum Weaver in play the mana really stacks up. Approach of the Second Sun is a bit of an eye roll way to win but I’m sure we’ve all been in games that we just want to end! The amount of cards drawn per turn makes this card a very compact win condition that can come out of nowhere and win a game on the spot.

So that is the deck. In a nutshell the goal is to build up a large board of enchantments that help you pump up a creature to massive size with Ancestral Mask while also generating a ton of mana that can be dumped into Helix Pinnacle all the while drawing a ton of cards which makes playing Approach of the Second Sun twice in a single turn very likely!

This deck can get too powerful if we aren’t careful so I’d like to talk about some of the cards that got cut and why the current version is where I landed. There are lines that are just oppressive and so consistent that when I built this deck the first time I won every game I played. No one packs mass enchantment removal and the inevitability of setting up for a few turns then playing out a mana doubler and storming into a win was very easy to do. And very boring and predictable. In an effort to battle this I removed a lot of the over the top powerful cards. Let’s take a look…

Academy Rector and Defense of the Heart are both completely bananas! Cheating permanents into play is just busted and going to pick exactly which ones you want is even more busted. I also don’t like the samey feel that cards like this bring to a deck and Sythis provides such good card draw that they are just not necessary to keep up in a casual game of commander.

With so many ways to cheat Nyxbloom Ancient into play on top of drawing a ton of cards the deck was just too good. Earthcraft provides such explosive early game mana and makes navigating later turns in a timely fashion a challenge. It is wildly powerful card since you can tap a creature with summoning sickness to untap a land and get mana. Basically it makes every creature you play a dork with haste. Take it easy spellslingers!

This is something I haven’t talked about much here on the site but if you win too much with group hug decks it will warp your meta. You may have played against players that will target you just for playing a group hug deck. Usually this is a result of a couple of things. They have encountered a sneaky group hug player that pretends they aren’t trying to win or a group hug player that has seriously overpowered their tables too often. I start every game of commander when I’m piloting a group hug deck by saying. “This deck gives away resources, but it hopes to benefit more than the rest of the decks from said resources so that it has a chance to win.”

I also cut the mana base down to Command Tower, Canopy Vista and basic lands. Having no fetch lands saves time during the game and makes the deck more budget friendly!

I find that all these changes make the deck have a larger replay value. It does draw a lot of cards every game but each game feels like a variation on a theme rather than a rerun. Add to this the excitement and risk of accelerating the mana for the table makes for a ton of fun in a magical pod!

Thanks for reading this deck tech! For a full deck-list over at Moxfield, click here!

-marksquare