Magic Memories: Enduring Ideal

Yeah, I never saw any Enduring Ideal decks in Legacy at that time either and I played with/against a lot of weird stuff. You might have been able to take games against Goblins but even then it was not consistent (hello Waste/Port and the uncommon turn 3 kill) but the other two decks that were played a lot back then (Threshold and High Tide) were probably unwinnable.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
You might have been able to take games against Goblins but even then it was not consistent (hello Waste/Port and the uncommon turn 3 kill) but the other two decks that were played a lot back then (Threshold and High Tide) were probably unwinnable.
Given the timing, Threshold decks would likely have been the biggest obstacle. But realistically, I don't think that that there was a window for a Legacy version of the Extended Enduring Ideal deck to flourish. The deck would have struggled to move quickly enough against stuff like Goblins, Aggro Loam, Landstill, and Survival decks. And it would have hit a wall with the rise of Legacy Zoo decks.

Notably, I'm thinking of a deck using those traditional Enduring Ideal play patterns, and not really analyzing the card in other contexts. The Enduring Ideal deck would have been too slow. The Enduring Ideal card, on the other hand, has cropped up in Enchantress decks, albeit not often.

The Legacy card pool was a good place to explore other options for the Enduring Ideal deck outside the sets from Invasion to Eventide. Of course, there have been Enduring Ideal decks in the Modern format too, but I was playing the card in Legacy before the Modern format existed, so perhaps we'll get back to that later.

I wish I could find a decklist I used for Legacy Enduring Ideal, even if it were just a crappy one from early testing or something like that. Alas, my habit at the time was l to use the Apprentice software to save all of my decks, and it looks like those files were corrupted. Proceeding from memory, I recall that probably the biggest improvement was superior mana acceleration. Cards like Ancient Spring were mainstays of the Extended version of this deck, and I wasn't happy with that. So even though it's kind of bland and obvious, the most important change was probably to the mana base.
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Enough to outrace Zoo? No, not really. But enough to make it feel a lot better than the Extended deck? Definitely.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
From pretty early on, the card I was most interesting in cutting from the Enduring Ideal toolbox was Form of the Dragon. In the context of the Standard deck, this would probably be an impossible proposition. Form of the Dragon was key to the whole deck. It would have been one of the first enchantments fetched, and would shut down most non-flying creatures. It was also the deck's win condition. In the same fashion, Form of the Dragon proved invaluable in the Extended version of this deck.

Once the Enduring Ideal deck is brought to a larger card pool, the inadequacy of Form of the Dragon becomes clear. We essentially have a prison deck. Solitary Confinement + Honden of Seeing Winds + Dovescape stops anyone from hurting us and constitutes a hard lock against most opponents. Now, Psarketos could theorycraft all sorts of decks that could break out of this prison. In fact, if it's just those three enchantments, a simple Monk Realist could be used to blow up the Dovescape, freeing the opponent to cast other spells. The question I approached this with was not "How hard can I lock some chump down?" Rather, my inquiry was more like "If I'm spending two or more turns locking the opponent down, why is Form of the Dragon the finisher?"

Form of the Dragon is merely an OK defensive tool, not a great one. Solitary Confinement is better anyway. And if we're aiming for the best defensive tools, the only real use for Form of the Dragon would be on offense. Essentially, it's the enchantment we always fetch last. Once we're safe behind our wall of other enchantments, we pull out the 5-damage cannon. And that's not worth a card slot.

If we're already using Solitary Confinement anyway, why not make the enchantment that deals with pesky creatures be the one that does it the best? Form of the Dragon is not that enchantment. You'll get killed by a 6/6 flying, pro-red angel if you don't already have Solitary Confinement out. No, there's something much better. It was not available to Extended players at the time, but it exists and we can use it.
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Humility stops that pesky Monk Realist from blowing up our other enchantments. It turns the mighty Akroma into a measly 1/1. Now all that any creature can do is bounce harmlessly off Solitary Confinement. And if you've got life to spare when you cast Enduring Ideal, you can safely grab Humility and Dovescape to start with, leaving opponents free to work on your life total with 1/1 creatures, setting up Solitary Confinement after that. Unlike Form of the Dragon, there's no kill mechanism built in, but that shouldn't matter: the lockdown here is so much tighter that most opponents, once ensnared, cannot break out. You're free to kill them however you like, so long as it doesn't involve you casting a spell.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
In considering enchantments for a Legacy format Enduring Ideal deck, I turned to one of my old favorites: Zur's Weirding. Of course it's not much of a stretch: the 2005 Standard format enchantment package I showed earlier used it. So I'd simply be bringing it back. Dovescape and Humility serve well enough to defend against most enchantment removal cards, but there's always some chance for opponents to sneak through some means of escaping the prison. Zur's Weirding can create a more thorough prison. Instead of letting the opponent eventually topdeck the one card that can stop you, just never let the opponent topdeck anything again!

I tested Zur's Weirding, but I believe that my testing of the card in this deck was relatively brief. Ultimately, I didn't go down this road. Ultimately, I found the card to be unnecessary and unreliable. Well, I should get at why that was...
  • The Legacy format in the era from 2006 to 2008 didn't have a lot of the familiar tools that we have access to now, and that includes most of the ways to break free of enchantment-based prisons. For instance, opponents could run Dismantling Wave and use its cycling ability to blow up all enchantments, something that almost none of my Enduring Ideal concoctions could deal with. But that card didn't exist until 2020! If I didn't have a way to prevent abilities from targeting my enchantments, an opponent could potentially cast Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and use its cast trigger to blow up one of my enchantments. That card has been around a lot longer, but was first printed in 2010 (and I could defend against targeted abilities anyway). There were a few cornercase exceptions, but against almost any Legacy deck at the time, if I established a few lock pieces, then those pieces were probably safe from opponents' cards.
  • In my previous post, I mentioned my assessment of Solitary Confinement as one of the most powerful tools available to Enduring Ideal, and the use of the Dovescape + Humility + Solitary Confinement trio to shut out virtually anything an opponent can do against me. In order for Solitary Confinement to work, I'd need to either have enough cards in hand to keep it going until my other protective enchantments had come in and locked down the board, or I'd need to find some way of getting cards into my hand under Solitary Confinement (such as Honden of Seeing Winds). Zur's Weirding gives opponents a tool to stop me! Now, I wasn't too crazy about Honden of Seeing Winds, but that's another issue. Zur's Weirding was bad for lines of play that relied on Solitary Confinement, and adding another card to make up for that weakness was unappealing to me.
  • The old Standard deck used Zur's Weirding alongside Form of the Dragon, the one card that I was most interested in cutting. And Zur's Weirding has an interaction with Form of the Dragon because your life total keeps getting reset to 5. Under Form of the Dragon, you can reject your opponent's card draw every turn and still have a little life to spare. Against some opponents, you could just fetch those two enchantments and win. The key word there is "some." Against other opponents, those two aren't very good by themselves and will set you up to have your enchantment-fetching chain disrupted. Since your life total is now 5, it's also likely to be easy to kill you. To make Zur's Weirding work without Form of the Dragon, you need some life source to sustain it.
  • I was quite familiar with lifegain sources to fuel Zur's Weirding, as I'd been using Ivory Tower for that purpose since the late 90's. Ivory Tower is an artifact. Actually, I think that every lifegain card I'd used alongside Zur's Weirding was a non-enchantment. In other decks that's fine, but if we want to some assurance that we'll have our lifegain source on the battlefield after Enduring Ideal has been cast, we need it to be an enchantment. It also has to be something that gains us life without needing some other thing going on that we can't provide (like sacrificing creatures or whatever). Such enchantments did exist! But have you seen them?
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They're kind of bad! I couldn't find a satisfactory way to make Zur's Weirding play nicely with the flow of other enchantments I'd be fetching. So even though I am fond of the card, I decided against it for this deck. And once I came to that decision, I knew that I needed to take a different approach to fortifying my prison package.
 
But at that point there really isn't any reason to play Enduring Ideal and all that would need to enable it instead of Enchantress: it's faster and less burdened with awkward cards and easier to support Enlightened Tutor. Easier to support Confinement with Enchantress effects and lets you eventually overpower the Blue decks. Plus you can play Elephant Grass and then pivot into Confinement much easier than trying to cast Enduring Ideal. Easier to support Humility as Enduring Ideal but man 7 mana is just too much. But this is an interesting exercise, hopefully I haven't taken what you said the wrong way!
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
But at that point there really isn't any reason to play Enduring Ideal and all that would need to enable it instead of Enchantress: it's faster and less burdened with awkward cards and easier to support Enlightened Tutor. Easier to support Confinement with Enchantress effects and lets you eventually overpower the Blue decks. Plus you can play Elephant Grass and then pivot into Confinement much easier than trying to cast Enduring Ideal. Easier to support Humility as Enduring Ideal but man 7 mana is just too much. But this is an interesting exercise, hopefully I haven't taken what you said the wrong way!
I think that's about right. Enchantress certainly has a better track record in the Legacy format, and is overall the more robust archetype. Enchantress decks are better at using Solitary Confinement, but an Enduring Ideal deck might have an easier time using Humility (you're not shutting off your own enchantress creatures). I like both archetypes and have explored them in the past. The one that enables lots of card-drawing and doesn't lock you out of ever casting spells again is generally the stronger option. Racing to get enough mana for Enduring Ideal and then using Enduring Ideal to set up a prison combo is something that can be done, but perhaps it was just never quick and reliable enough for Legacy. I mentioned it earlier, but it's worth noting that the only home in Legacy for Enduring Ideal seems to be as a niche option in Enchantress decks.

Or perhaps not? I just found this list from a Spanish tournament in 2016. The deck database mislabeled it as Enchantress, but as you can see, it's most certainly an Enduring Ideal deck...

1 Crop Rotation
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Enduring Ideal
1 Aura of Silence
1 City of Solitude
1 Dovescape
1 Exploration
1 Form of the Dragon
1 Humility
1 Karmic Justice
1 Land Tax
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Peace of Mind
1 Phyrexian Unlife
1 Rest in Peace
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Sylvan Library
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
2 Ghostly Prison
2 Runed Halo
3 Sterling Grove
3 Suppression Field
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Mistveil Plains
2 Forest
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2 Serra's Sanctum
4 Plains
4 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath

Sideboard:
1 Pithing Needle
1 Rule of Law
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
4 Silence
1 Choke
1 Story Circle
1 Stony Silence
1 Torpor Orb
2 Replenish
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Once I abandoned my Zur's Weirding experiment, I really zeroed in on the Enduring Ideal package that became my mainstay for my own experiments with the card. Most of the pieces in my toolbox have already been introduced. But here are a few I don't think I've mentioned in this thread...
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And my kill condition? Not an enchantment at all! But that's OK: Enduring Ideal only stops you from playing spells. Lands are unaffected.
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If, during the course of gameplay, one of my key enchantments ended up in my graveyard, I could put it back into my library for Enduring Ideal using Mistveil Plains. And since I was already using Mistveil Plains anyway, I had a way to prevent myself from losing to decking. I took a hardline prison approach with this deck. The idea was to using Enduring Ideal to set up a board state my opponents couldn't break through, then let them deck themselves. Once enough enchantments were deployed, most opponents simply couldn't break out of the prison...
  • Sterling Grove + Greater Auramancy stopped opponents from being able to use targeted removal on my enchantments.
  • Moat + Humility neutralized all creatures that existed at this point in the game. And I do think it was all of them. Cast triggers on creature spells didn't exist yet, and none of the creature abilities that functioned in the hand or graveyard did anything that could deal with Humility.
  • Dovescape + Solitary Confinement protected me against almost every spell that existed in the game and against direct damage from other sources, such as Shivan Gorge.
  • Honden of Seeing Winds kept Solitary Confinement fed, while Mistveil Plains kept Honden of Seeing Winds fed. So I could keep passing the turn with all of my prison pieces out, and I could do so indefinitely.
This wasn't a concept that I thought could seriously compete with tier 1 Legacy decks. Even with my acceleration and the use of various support spells, the deck was not reliably fast and resilient enough to compete with the decks that were winning tournaments at the time. But I wasn't involved with tournaments, and the deck could hold its own in the casual environment I found myself in at that time.

I think I scrapped this Enduring Ideal deck in 2008 or 2009. It didn't see a whole lot of actual gameplay, in part because I was collaborating with Al0ysiusHWWW on his Magic blog project a lot back then, and he was waffling on what kind of format we'd focus on. But my vague recollection is that my Legacy Enduring Ideal deck mostly lost pretty badly, usually just because other decks were too fast for it or could counter Enduring Ideal (Boseiju helps with that, but it isn't foolproof). If the deck did manage to cast Enduring Ideal and fetch at least two enchantments, it almost always locked the game down completely and won by opponent concession.

These days, this prison wouldn't be so secure. For instance, an opponent could cycle Dismantling Wave. Then there's a card I fortunately don't encounter too much: Chandra, Awakened Inferno. That thing shuts down so many of my dumb deck ideas all by itself and with no counterplay, but it's not generally that great of a card and I have only actually had to face it once. However, 2008 was long before those cards existed. Back then, I think it was almost inescapable once all pieces were in place. I attempted to think of exceptions. Since almost all my disruption here is passive, if there's a card an opponent can eventually use to break the lock, my opponent would eventually find that card. But I thought that I ruled out all such cards, with the exception of proactive countermeasures coming down before my deck could get going. It's possible that I missed something, but even now, I can't think of anything.

I also had the notion to try running Enchanted Evening so that I could reuse Seal of Cleansing (or Seal of Primordium or Aura of Silence) with Mistveil Plains + Enduring Ideal to pick off my opponent's lands. But I deemed it superfluous and didn't go down that road.
 

Ferret

Moderator
Staff member
Ooo! I just thought of something that your Moat inspired me to remember: Island Sanctuary and that one Enchantment that prevents critters with Islandwalk and/or Flying from attacking you. Get those both out and just sit back and watch your opponent die of boredom...
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Ooo! I just thought of something that your Moat inspired me to remember: Island Sanctuary and that one Enchantment that prevents critters with Islandwalk and/or Flying from attacking you. Get those both out and just sit back and watch your opponent die of boredom...
Are you thinking of the old Island Sanctuary + Mystic Decree combo?
 

Ferret

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, that one! It's cheap and more or less keeps you in a nice situation while your opponent's deck reaches zero. It's not perfect, but can get the job done against critter-heavy decks...
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Stuff changed and I moved on. My playset of Enduring Ideal moved around in various boxes as I sorted my collection, taking up nearly half of all Saviors of Kamigawa cards I physically owned (the set was one of the most glaring gaps in my collection, and kind of still is, although I've slowly picked up certain cards here and there). I had fond memories of the card and vague aspirations of breaking that playset out again, building some kind of Enduring Ideal deck. It would be nearly a decade before the development that would really rekindle my interest in Enduring Ideal...
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I didn't do anything with it right away, but my plan for this card was to pair it with Dovescape. Moat makes a lousy partner for Dovescape because all those bird tokens fly right over the Moat anyway. Humility works, but has other implications. The two-card combo of Dovescape + Sandwurm Convergence presents a pretty potent threat and a kind of hard lockdown all by itself. Well, there are certainly cards that can break through the lock, but a lot of opponents just won't have those. This combo saw real tournament success in Legacy Nic Fit decks, and I noted that in the Magic Memories thread for Evolutionary Leap. Perhaps inspired by the sight of Dovescape in a Legacy deck, I got Enduring Ideal on the brain. Here's another thing I said in a Magic Memories thread.

Oversoul said:
I've got to rebuild my silly old Legacy Enduring Ideal deck one of these days. Some of the new stuff could give a suite of enchantments to fetch that would be better than ever before. I'm thinking Overwhelming Splendor + Sandwurm Convergence + Moat + Dovescape + Solemnity + Decree of Silence + Form of the Dragon + Privileged Position + Phyrexian Unlife + Lich's Mastery + Solitary Confinement + Parallax Tide + Limited Resources + Paradox Haze + Copy Enchantment...OK, that's too many cards already. I'd need to trim it down. Whatever. This has got to happen at some point.
Ultimately, I didn't really revisit the idea of a Legacy Enduring Ideal deck, and I haven't been participating in Legacy tournaments since around that time anyway. It became a moot point
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
About three years ago, the advent of the West Coast Commander League pulled my Magic focus to EDH as a primary format, and shifted my attention away from refining pet decks over a matter of years to building more and different decks, often on the fly. One of my earliest points of interest in this shift was Enduring Ideal, a card I had put away, but wanted to return to. How I ended up there, though, was pretty strange...

Oversoul said:
I was somewhat inspired by the realization that my local Commander League's rotating points system will still be rewarding players for having 10 or more tokens in a game. I outright stated that I intended to play a deck with The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and to punish token generators. Instead, I'll be actively helping everyone to get those points!
Enduring Ideal doesn't make tokens! No, my rather perverse reasoning went something like this...
  1. If players are going to be rewarded for having lots of tokens, I'll feed on that by punishing them for having lots of tokens. I'll get to use The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale!
  2. If I only punish my opponent for having creatures, I won't have any way of earning my own points. I need a way to make my own tokens. What if I gave everyone tokens?
  3. If I play a Phelddagrif deck, I can force-feed all of my opponents tokens. It could be a group hug deck?
  4. How will I get my own tokens? I could fetch enchantments to make tokens. Maybe Academy Rector? Enduring Ideal!
  5. If I use Enduring Ideal, I can use Dovescape to help my opponents make tokens.
  6. If I use Phelddagrif and Dovescape to give opponents tokens, how will I get my own tokens? Oh, I've been wanting to use Enduring Ideal with Sandwurm Convergence.
  7. If I am fetching a bunch of enchantments with Enduring Ideal to get points, I might as well lock my opponents down so that they can't kill me.
  8. I'll build a Phelddagrif group hug deck with an Enduring Ideal package that locks the game down and prevents anyone from killing anyone else.
And so, my "Epic" deck was born. Most of my other West Coast Commander League decks got scrapped pretty quickly. Some stayed together for a few weeks, while others were scrapped for parts after just one. Being one of my earliest League decks and a fun group hug oddball, this one stuck around for a month or so before I needed one of the cards for a different deck. In an inspired moment, I swapped in Divine Intervention. From May of 2019 until the end of last year, I kept this around as one of my regular decks for pickup games. I loved the typical play pattern this deck had. I'd start out ramping and also deploying some friendly cards to help bolster the weaker decks at the table, helping them weather the assault of whoever was on top. Then I'd build up mana and enchantments, protecting myself. Next, I'd cast Enduring Ideal and start fetching enchantments to keep the game from ending. Finally, once I had a robust lockdown in place, I'd fetch Divine Intervention and end the game in a draw. A friend termed it "group bearhug."
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Last August, I started regularly playing EDH on Wednesday nights at the LGS that opened up in my old hometown (it's just down the highway from where I live now). At that time, I had two long-term decks from 2019 that were still assembled and ready to play. "Epic" was one of them. So I got to do Enduring Ideal shenanigans several times last year. Eventually, though, I had poached individual cards from the deck enough times that it was becoming tedious to reassemble it. I came up with the idea for an Oath of Druids deck ("Time to Scrouge") and assembled it in early January as my first new deck o 2022. After that, my use of Enduring Ideal has been on hiatus. It's not a permanent retirement. I'll return to Enduring Ideal someday. In fact, I've started branching out into the other Epic spells. But for now, all I have are the Memories. Or something. Anyway, here are the enchantments that were the final roleplayers in my deck before the dismantling...

Abundance: not a primary EI payload, but it does function as a way to prevent decking, and that function has saved me from defeat. More generally, it's there for the combo with Sylvan Library and for the overall filtering utility. I use this card in lots of decks and it has served me well. I've gone on record declaring to all EDH players at my local stores that I would drag them kicking and screaming onto the Abundance bandwagon. I've seen some success there too. As a four-drop with no immediate impact, Abundance is a lousy tempo play. But if it gets going and does its thing, it provides excellent value in almost any green deck.

Awakening: not a primary EI payload, but it was in the deck for the group hug aspect. I don't normally use Awakening in my decks because it helps other players a bit too much, but this deck has several creatures with useful activated abilities. It's nice. I didn't lean into that theme as much, but it's nice.

Decree of Silence: combo piece alongside Solemnity. In a pinch, it can be used on its own to counter spells. The Solemnity + Decree of Silence combo is so compact and effective that I've set it up without using Enduring Ideal at all. If I have one piece out already, I can use Enduring Ideal to fetch the other piece.

Divine Intervention: ends the game in a draw! What's not to love?

Dovescape: traditional EI payload. Few non-creature spells cannot get through it. If I'm worried about gamebreaking spells, this becomes the first enchantment fetched with EI. If I don't need my own creatures to help along the way, then I fetch Humility. If I want to keep using my own creature abilities, then I fetch Sandwurm Convergence instead. Dovescape is obviously more compact than Decree of Silence + Solemnity, but does nothing to stop creatures.

Eladamri's Vineyard: not generally fetched with EI, but it can be used to help cast EI in the first place. Also, it's just a good group hug enchantment.

Estrid's Invocation: amazing utility. My default for it with EI is to make a copy of Paradox Haze. That's three upkeeps per turn, which means three epic triggers on EI per turn. Prior to EI loops, Estrid's Invocation can be used to copy all sorts of things. Sterling Grove, Sylvan Library, and Sandwurm Convergence are the likeliest targets.

Greater Auramancy: protection for other enchantments. It's not as flexible as Sterling Grove, but once I have both out, my enchantments are all safe from targeted removal. In some games, getting this shroud is vital to keep opponents from disrupting my EI loops.

Heartbeat of Spring: not an EI payload. It's primarily here for group hug, but it also can help me cast EI or just help me hardcast my expensive enchantments.

Humility: the first EI payload I fetch in most of my games. It won't save me from huge armies of creatures and it doesn't do well against creatures with lots of +1/+1 counters on them. So once I've got Humility out, the clock is ticking for me to use either Moat or Solitary Confinement. Notably, Solemnity can mitigate the use of counters on enemy creatures.

Kumena's Awakening: initially included as a dedicated tool for feeding Solitary Confinement. It also masquerades as a group hug card, and is generally pretty good on its own.

Moat: potentially the first EI payload in games with overwhelming creatures on the board. Doesn't stop creature abilities or flying creatures. Pairs nicely with Sandwurm Convergence, and that one-two punch is compact enough to achieve even without EI loops. Dovescape + Humility + Moat is quite the prison.

Oath of Lieges: not an EI payload at all. But it's great for fixing mana and is more friendly as a group hug card than Land Tax would be in this slot.

Oblivion Ring: useful with EI and without it. I can get rid of pesky permanents by putting O-Ring on them and sacrificing a Seal of Cleansing to destroy the Ring with its EtB trigger on the stack.

Paradox Haze: makes Enduring Ideal do its thing faster. Since the epic ability precludes casting spells for the rest of the game, the only ways to get more copies are to copy the original EI while it's still on the stack, to copy the epic trigger itself, or to take more upkeeps. I go with the third option.

Sanctum Weaver: not an EI payload as I've used it, but in theory it could be fetched that way. This creature makes loads of mana and can easily ramp out EI or other big spells. I didn't run other enchantment creatures, but there might be an interesting EI deck in the future that is based around enchantment creatures. I just used this one. It's almost as good as Serra's Sanctum!

Sandwurm Convergence: an excellent general board control option and protective enchantment for either Academy Rector or EI. A lot of EDH decks can easily outpace my wurm tokens, so it's not foolproof on its own. But it's quite the obstacle early on. Moat + Sandwurm Convergence means no creatures can attack me at all. Dovescape + Sandwurm Convergence is another strong pairing.

Seal of Cleansing: prior to setting up EI, this is just a removal tool for me to kill troublesome artifacts and enchantments. Looped with EI and recursion, I can use this to kill my own enchantments. In particular, Oblivion Ring, Solemnity, Solitary Confinement, and Humility are all enchantments that I might use at one point, but need to get rid of at another point.

Search for Azcanta: not a primary EI payload or group huge piece. Both faces of this card are useful in the deck overall for sculpting a hand. Always nice to have the deck perform smoothly in setting up EI, and later in the game I can use this to filter my draws.

Solemnity: only fetched with EI in specific circumstances. The main role for Solemnity is to pair it with Decree of Silence. It's also just a powerful effect to stop cumulative upkeep from growing, which makes my group hug creatures turn from friendly to more pragmatic. Hosing enemy counters is nice utility too. I have to kill my own Solemnity before trying to put Divine Intervention on the table, but the card is well worth that drawback.

Solitary Confinement: other than Humility, this is my most frequent first pull for the initial casting of EI. The need for cards in hand limits Solitary Confinement, but the defensive power of this card beats any other single enchantment in the deck. Either Kumena's Awakening or Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin can sustain Solitary Confinement for a time. If I also have access to either Hall of Heliod's Generosity or Mistveil Plains, then I can put cards from my graveyard back into my library, sustaining Solitary Confinement indefinitely. Before I started running Divine Intervention, this was how the deck ended the game. After I started running Divine Intervention, Solitary Confinement became a strong card to carry me through the game long enough for Divine Intervention to end it.

Sterling Grove: targeted enchantment removal disrupts my EI loops. Sterling Grove can protect my other enchantments. If I don't need that or can't set up EI yet, then I can just fetch some other enchantment instead.

Sylvan Library: not an EI payload ordinarily. Sylvan Library does what Sylvan Library always does. Awesome with Abundance, but useless with Solitary Confinement. It draws extra cards for cheap. It just makes sense to run it in any enchantment-based deck that runs green.
 
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