Last weekend, a play-from-home Alchemy tournament called the Hooglandia Open pulled 93 competitors. Naya Enchantress was the breakout deck of the event, taking first, fourth, and sixth place.
I’ve worked a lot on Enchantress in classic Standard, so I’ll use that background to walk you through two different versions of Alchemy Enchantress. We’ll discuss what they’re capable of, and what you need to know in order to pilot them effectively.
Here’s a starting place for my work with Standard Enchantress:
I’m more excited about Naya’s prospects in Alchemy than I am about its prospects in Standard. This is for two main reasons.
First, the mana is better. My Standard Naya deck was plagued by color problems and lands entering the battlefield tapped at the wrong time. All the while, it was unable to support double-red cards, and really needed to reduce the third color to the status of a splash. My conclusion was that I liked plain Selesnya better than Naya, even though it meant missing out on some very powerful cards.
Alchemy offers access to a dual land (tri-land?) that doesn’t exist in Standard: Forsaken Crossroads. It’s an excellent card which can fix for any color of mana, and contributes a scry to help you smooth your draws. Nowhere is the scry more valuable than in a deck that needs three colors of mana, plus key pieces like Jukai Naturalist and Showdown of the Skalds.
In particular, not having to face fully-powered Goldspan Dragons is a boon for Naya because the deck list is tight and you can’t afford to main-deck too many removal spells for a flying, haste creature.
