Top Fun's Top 200 Enchantments: Part XI

#173: Hermetic Study
I noted the combo with Charisma earlier. Hermetic Study by itself on a creature that can easily untap, such as Horseshoe Crab or Morphling, creates the "machine gun" effect of being able to deal lots of damage to individual targets. And it goes beyond that, turning any creature into a Prodigal Sorcerer. This works well on its own (certainly well enough to make up for the common problem with creature enchantments: risking the card disadvantage if the enchanted creature is killed). But it's even better if the creature has an ability that has synergy with the effect. For example, any creature with the deathtouch ability can tap to destroy any target creature. Fungusaur can keep growing larger turn by turn. Creatures that give players poison counters become even more deadly.

#172: Elemental Augery

I've always liked Elemental Augury. I've never seen it any really powerful cut-throat decks, but it has cool interactions with things like Booby Trap and Chaos Harlequin. These days, a lot of the functionality of Elemental Augury can be more effectively replicated with Sensei's Divining Top, which doesn't have any colored mana requirements and can actually get cards into your hand when you need them. But Elemental Augury does have the advantage of being able to get into your opponent's library, rather than just your own. Although it's a bit mana intensive, you can use Millstone and manipulate your opponent's draws in a game-breaking way. Requiring three different colors to play and a mana cost of 3 for its activated ability causes this card to be disregarded, but it really does have a fun and impressive effect on the game if used properly.

#171: Battle of Wits

Five mana to win the game--if you happen to have at least 200 cards left in your library. And why wouldn't you? When giving newer players advice on deckbuilding, I've stressed the importance of cutting one's deck down to 60 cards. It isn't obivous to everyone, but increasing your chances of drawing your best cards is much, much more important than playing with all the different cards you'd like to. That's why I'm such a huge fan of Street Wraith. But there are certain cases where you really do want to take an unorthodox approach and use a larger deck. Most prominent among these cases are Battle of Wits decks. Play Battle of Wits and lots of ways to find it. You'll need lots and lots of ways to find it. And alternate win conditions too. It won't be the best deck, but it is so fun and different that it merits Battle of Wits ranking as highly as it does on this list.

#170: Breeding Pit

Breeding Pit is a classic. It provides a stream of token generation in exchange for a little mana. The 0/1 tokens aren't much good as attackers and aren't numerous enough to provide appreciable blocking power either. But they are thrulls, so they're quite useful in thrull decks. Mainly, the tokens from Breeding Pit are used with cards that require creature sacrifices, which black has a lot of. This list already covered Hecatomb. But there are plenty of creatures that could use sacrificial fodder. Lord of the Pit is the classic combination with Breeding Pit, there are also Devouring Strossus, Ebon Praetor, Minion of Leshrac, Delraich, and the list goes on and on. Black decks have plenty of ways to turn the 0/1 thrull tokens into something useful. I tend to use other cards that make tokens faster, but the slow, steady stream of Breeding Pit certainly has its place.