The slow death of Enchantments

 

As some of you may have remembered, I don't like Planeswalkers, as spoke about in a much earlier article. Today, I announce the death of Enchantment design space.

Some of you might be asking, well how could enchantments ever go away? It's literally Magic, by definition, in it's most classical form. Whimsical and mysterious! The workings of the beanstalk and giant gingerbread houses, weapons like the treasures of Britain. So why would enchantments go away? Am I just being an alarmist to change?

Well, to answer this, we need to go back to the beginning, yes, back in '93. In those days, each card type had a purpose, and Enchantments fell into two categories. The first were big boosts and game changing effects, which were Global Enchantments. These include such famous cards as Underworld Dreams, Land Tax, Crusade/Bad Moon, Blood Moon. As well as old favorites like Castle, Night Soil, Goblin War Drums. Local Enchantments were much smaller, localized effects, most popular and common in the form of enchant creatures, but enchant permanents for every type of permanent existed.

Enchantments from the start were murky, even when working with the types. Global Enchantments could reflect an abstract action or idea (exp: Crusade/Jihad, Karma, Underworld Dreams, Invoke Prejudice, Gloom), represent a physical location (Exp: Castle, Elven Fortress, Spiritual Sanctuary, Magnetic Mountain, landwalk cycle from Legends), actual changes in the Terrain/Weather (Exp: Blood Moon, Bad Moon, Raging River, Flood, Tidal Influence, Night Soil, Conversion), even things that should be physical items (like Goblin War Drums and Orcish Oriflame). This excludes some oddball cards like Chains of Mephistopheles.

                                                  

Local Enchantments, mainly enchant creature spells, were all over the place, representing armor and clothes, physical strength, magical wards, among others. However, they all worked surprisingly well.

Transformations weren't uncommon either.

                                                 

World Enchantments were suppose to represent actual planes, and as such, won't be talked about in great deal here.

Local Enchantments always had a common issue of card disadvantage, after all, if someone killed (or worse bounced) your creature/land/artifact, it would be destroyed as well. However, I know in the first few years, creature enchantments were somewhat popular, since they could allow someone locally on a budget to customize their creatures for a bigger threat. However, by the late 90's, playing any form of creature enchantment outside of limited was considered haram, and even inside limited was discouraged. I remember, during the Betrayers prerelease, one older player chastised a much younger version of me who just boosted about being the Magic guy, since I insisted on running red (with a fair amount of creature enchantments) in my limited deck. Insisting I must have no idea over the fine points of card advantage/disadvantage. If memory serves me right, I burned him out game three.

However around the first time cards started encroaching on enchantment design space. This would be equipments. Now the concept isn't new, I'd actually argue the likes of Tawnos Weaponry and Sandalls are proper "proto-Equipment",  but equipments were an entirely different beast.



Equipments (some of which were extremely powerful) weren't beheld to a particular color, and could go into any deck, it also hung around when the creature leaves play. This basically raised the question to why run creature enchantments at all. A similar card type for lands called fortifications has been experimented with as well.

It was around this time Enchantments started to become asymmetrical, with only upsides. However, this would be another slow process that could deserve it's own article.

Over the years, WotC has attempted to get around the 'card disadvantage' offered by local enchantments, and a small archtype has even evolved around it. In Theros, they instead just slapped Enchantment on Creatures, and made things that basically worked like Licids. They've also attempted to make much larger and flashier creature enchantments, all which are exampled below.

Umbra's or Totem armor, allowed said creature to survive at the cost of the enchantment.



Bestow was an attempt, at aura's that can be creatures
(or vice versa)




The sad thing is, creature enchantments didn't need this, but I guess it's what some people wanted?

However, this wouldn't be the final death of enchantments, no I present to you these:

                               

Yeah, that isn't touching on enchantment design territory like in the past they've been accused of. That's outright replacing it. The full set hasn't been spoiled yet, but currently (as of 4/12) only two enchantments has been spoiled, but numerous Walkers. It might be a knee jerk reaction, but it might be prophetic about the future of enchantments. Only time will tell.