Eriette of the Charmed Apple

Overview

This is an enchantment control deck that wins on inevitability, not on a fast kill. The identity is buffs for me, debuffs for you: every Aura in the deck is one of the two, and Eriette pays you for both. She turns your Auras into a table-wide pillowfort, and she turns the count of those Auras into a drain that ticks every single end step. You spend the game gluing Auras onto everything — your creatures, their creatures, the players themselves — and each one you add makes the drain bigger and the board safer at the same time.

That split is the deck's whole decision tree. When an Aura is in hand, the only real question is which side of the table it belongs on: on your creature it's a buff and a body building toward a kill, on theirs it's removal or a redirect that also walls you off. Both answers add one to X. There is no wrong side, only a better one this turn.

The deck runs three gears at once:

• The fort. Auras on your opponents' creatures shut them off from you (Eriette's first line) — and several of those Auras are removal-grade: Planar Disruption and Darksteel Mutation shut a threat off entirely, the "-Impetus" goad Auras turn their best creature against another opponent, and Ossification and Sheltered by Ghosts exile a problem outright while sitting on your side (Ossification on a basic land, Sheltered by Ghosts on one of your creatures — both still count toward the drain). You're not just walling up; you're dismantling boards and getting paid in drain count for it.
• The drain. Every end step, each opponent loses life equal to the number of Auras you control and you gain that much. With a handful of Auras out that's a real clock — and it's multiplied by Bloodletter of Aclazotz (opponents lose double) and Enduring Tenacity (your gain becomes another opponent's loss). The life you gain also keeps you comfortably out of range of the rest of the table.
• The voltron half. This is not a backup plan — it is the other half of the kill, and it uses the same cards. A lifelink, hard-to-block threat stacked with All That Glitters / Ethereal Armor / Angelic Destiny gets enormous in a deck this enchantment-dense, and every one of those pump Auras is also a point of drain. The flying lifelink swarm from Archon of Sun's Grace is the wide version of the same idea. In most games you don't pick: the drain takes one opponent from 40 to about 20 and a single connected swing finishes them.
• The engine underneath both. A dense Aura-payoff package (Sram, Pearl-Ear, Light-Paws, Hateful Eidolon) refills your hand as you deploy, while cost reducers and Serra's Sanctum let you dump multiple Auras a turn. This is the part that actually has to survive — see Common Pitfalls.

The through-line: the same Auras that keep you safe are the ones that win the game. You are never forced to choose between defense and offense — you develop one pile of permanents and it does both. Buffs on your side, debuffs on theirs, and one drain counting all of it.

A mana note from the brief: white is under-sourced against demand (most of your Auras, tutors, and cost reducers are white) while black is over-sourced. Prioritize white sources when you keep — the black you need is mostly single pips (Eriette, the removal, Bloodletter's triple-black being the one exception).

Mulligan Guide

The keep question is "can you fix white, and do you have both a way to deploy Auras and a reason they pay off?"

Keep a hand that has:

1. Lands with white — white carries the Auras, tutors, cost reducers, and removal; the brief flags it as under-sourced, so a hand that can't reliably make will stall. A dual or fixer plus a Plains is ideal.
2. A payoff or an engine you can reach — Eriette on curve, or a draw engine (Sram, Pearl-Ear, Light-Paws), or a cost reducer, or an early interaction Aura you can point at an aggressive table. A pile of Auras with nothing that draws off them or counts them just durdles.

Snap-keep hands that fix mana, land an Aura engine early, and have Eriette or Bloodletter/Enduring Tenacity to convert the pile into damage — that's the deck draining the table on schedule.

Mulligan all-lands, no-white, and hands that are all Auras with no engine and no Eriette (they play fair, and this deck doesn't want to). Against a fast table, a removal Aura or pillowfort piece in the opener is a strong reason to keep; a hand whose only plan is "cast Eriette and hope" is not — she needs Auras following her to do anything.

Game Plan

Early (turns 1–3): fix mana, land a payoff, start suiting up.

• Keep your white sources online — the deck's engine and Auras lean white. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Serra's Sanctum accelerate you into casting two things a turn.
• The best turn-2/3 plays are the Aura-draw engines: Sram (draw on every Aura/Equipment cast), Pearl-Ear (Aura affinity cost reduction and a draw when you Aura a modified permanent), and Light-Paws (each Aura you cast tutors an equal-or-cheaper, differently-named Aura straight onto Light-Paws — a self-snowball). With one of these down, every Aura afterward replaces itself.
• Eriette herself is a turn-3 play, but she does nothing until you have Auras to count and creatures to fence off — so if you have an engine piece or early interaction instead, lead with that and cast her when she'll immediately matter.
• Early cheap Auras (Ethereal Armor, Spirit Link, All That Glitters) can go on a lifelinker to start gaining life and building X, or be held for a threat you need to answer.

Midgame: neutralize, stack, and pull ahead on cards.

• Point your removal Auras at the scariest attackers: Darksteel Mutation and Planar Disruption turn a bomb into nothing; Nowhere to Run (-3/-3, and strips hexproof/ward — note the synergy with your targeted removal) kills something on the spot, though it's a plain enchantment, not an Aura, so it adds nothing to the drain; the goad Auras redirect their beaters into your other opponents. Every Aura among these also raises your drain.
• Deploy your draw multipliers — Hateful Eidolon (draw when enchanted creatures die), Sage's Reverie (on ETB, draw a card per Aura you control attached to any creature — your fence Auras on opponents' creatures count too), Lord Skitter's Blessing (bonus draw each turn), Black Market Connections, Well of Lost Dreams, and Esper Sentinel taxing every opponent's first noncreature spell — and let the hand refill faster than you empty it.
• Serra's Sanctum scales with your enchantment count; on a developed board it dumps two or three more Auras in a turn. Use the flood to over-commit safely behind your fort.
• Start counting your drain each end step. Once X is 5–6 with Bloodletter or Enduring Tenacity in play, the table is on a hard clock even if you never attack.

Closing: three finishes, all already on the table.

• Drain inevitability. Keep adding Auras; keep draining. With Bloodletter it's 2X per opponent per turn, plus Enduring Tenacity's redirect, plus incidental lifegain triggers. You don't set this up — it accrues.
• Voltron. All That Glitters (+1/+1 per artifact/enchantment), Ethereal Armor (+1/+1 per enchantment, first strike), Sage's Reverie, and Angelic Destiny make one creature enormous fast in a deck this enchantment-dense. Put them on Killian, Ink Duelist (menace + lifelink, and he makes your targeted Auras/removal cost less) or an evasive lifelinker, protect it, and swing. Lifelink damage gains you life → Enduring Tenacity drains → Well draws. Unquestioned Authority (cantrip + protection from creatures) makes the beater unblockable-and-unchumpable, and Tempest Technique is the haymaker: it has storm, so cast it after two or three cheap Auras and you get that many token copies — each granting +1/+1 per enchantment you control, and each token copy is itself an Aura that raises the drain X. Trap: every copy still reads "enchant creature you control" — the storm copies can only pile onto your own creatures, so Tempest Technique is a voltron/drain burst, never a way to fence off their board. With Pearl-Ear's Aura affinity paying most of its cost, you can spend the turn casting cheap Auras first and still land it — a storm count of five or more is normal on a developed board.
• The air force. Archon of Sun's Grace makes a lifelink Pegasus on every enchantment ETB. During a Serra's Sanctum turn that's a fistful of evasive lifelinkers — which also feed the drain-and-draw lifegain loop.

You almost never have to force a line. Wall the table, run the engine, and take whichever finish the board hands you.

How Eriette actually works

Her two lines each hide a rule that reshapes how you play:

• "Enchanted by an Aura you control" — the Aura is yours, the creature can be anyone's. The intended play is to put Auras on your opponents' creatures so those creatures can't attack you or your planeswalkers (they can still attack other players and still block). That's why the deck runs Auras that are secretly removal — Planar Disruption, Darksteel Mutation — and why the goad Auras go on their creatures, not yours.
• Goad + Eriette is a lock, not a gamble. Parasitic Impetus, Ghoulish Impetus, Eye of Nidhogg, and Redemption Arc goad the enchanted creature (it must attack, and must attack someone other than you). Because Eriette also forbids it from attacking you, the two rules stack cleanly: a goaded, your-Aura'd opponent creature is forced to swing at another opponent. Parasitic Impetus even drains its controller 2 and gains you 2 every time it attacks (confirmed by ruling — the life goes to you, Eriette's controller, not the creature's controller). You're weaponizing their board.
• X counts Auras — not all enchantments — and counts them on resolution. The drain's X is "the number of Auras you control," tallied as the trigger resolves. That includes Auras stapled to opponents' creatures, Auras on players, and token copies of Auras (Ondu Spiritdancer). It does not include your non-Aura enchantments — Black Market Connections, Greater Auramancy, Nowhere to Run, Hateful Eidolon, Enduring Tenacity, etc. all pump other parts of the deck but add zero to the drain. When you're counting your clock, count Auras, not enchantments.
• The trigger is on your end step — so hold your flash Auras. Anything you can flash in before the end step bumps X for that drain: Changing Loyalty, Timely Ward (on a commander), Swift Reconfiguration, and any Aura once Sigarda's Aid is out. If you're about to drain, resolving one more Aura first is free extra damage across the whole table.
• Bloodletter doubles their loss, not your gain. With Bloodletter of Aclazotz out, an X-Aura drain makes each opponent lose 2X while you still gain only X (per its ruling). It doubles every bit of opponent life-loss on your turn — Eriette's drain, the Wicked Role's death trigger — so it's a huge force multiplier. Reminder: Bloodletter strictly requires it to be your turn, so it will not double combat damage from goaded creatures (like those enchanted by Parasitic Impetus) since they attack on your opponents' turns.
• Eriette + Enduring Tenacity is strong but not a loop. Eriette gains you X, which Enduring Tenacity turns into another opponent losing X. It stops there — nothing in the deck gives you life when an opponent loses it, so there's no infinite (which is why the brief lists no combos). Don't go hunting for a loop that isn't here.

Key Loops & Interactions

• The drain stack (your core clock). Eriette drains X = Auras you control every end step. Bloodletter of Aclazotz doubles each opponent's loss (they lose 2X; you still gain X). Enduring Tenacity turns the X life you gain into another opponent losing X. Sanguine Bond mirrors that same life-to-damage conversion on every life you gain. Both are separate triggers on the same lifegain event and both target, so a single Eriette drain with all three out reads: each opponent loses X (2X under Bloodletter), then you gain X, then Tenacity and Bond each fire and can be pointed at two different opponents for X more each. Spread them — killing one player faster rarely helps you as much as keeping three clocks ticking. Hold flash Auras (or any Aura under Sigarda's Aid) to slip one more onto the battlefield right before the trigger for a bigger drain.
• Weaponizing their board. A goad Aura (Parasitic / Ghoulish Impetus, Redemption Arc) on an opponent's creature forces it to attack — and Eriette forbids it from attacking you — so it hits another opponent. Parasitic Impetus drains its controller 2 and gains you 2 each time it swings (that life is yours). Redemption Arc also gives you a "exile it" valve later. Darksteel Mutation and Planar Disruption are the "just turn it off" options. Eye of Nidhogg is the strangest one: it shrinks their creature to a base 4/2 and goads it, so a 9/9 trampler becomes a manageable flyer that has to swing at someone else — and it returns to your hand when it hits the graveyard, so it re-deploys onto the next problem. Grasp of Fate exiles a permanent from each opponent at once (it's a plain enchantment, not an Aura — no drain count), buying you breathing room across the whole table. Ossification answers a creature or planeswalker while adding another Aura to the drain count — note it enchants a basic land you control, so it survives creature removal and wraths that would knock a normal fence Aura loose.
• Killian, Decisive Mentor is a second Eriette engine. Every enchantment you control entering taps and goads a creature — so each Aura you deploy is also a free tap-down on the scariest untapped blocker or attacker, and it turns your opponents' board against them without spending an Aura on it. His second line draws you a card whenever one or more creatures enchanted by an Aura you control attack — and that counts their goaded, your-Aura'd creatures swinging at each other, not just your own attackers. Between the two Killians, keep them straight: Decisive Mentor (, 2/3) is the goad-and-draw engine; Ink Duelist (, 2/2 menace lifelink) is the cost reducer and voltron body.
• The Aura-cast draw chain. Sram draws on every Aura cast; Pearl-Ear draws when you Aura a modified permanent (and makes your enchantments cheaper via Aura affinity); Light-Paws tutors an equal-or-cheaper Aura onto itself on each cast. Cost reducers (Starfield Mystic, Transcendent Envoy, Danitha, and Killian, Ink Duelist for anything targeting a creature) make Auras nearly free, so you chain several a turn — each one draws and raises the drain. Two sequencing rules inside the chain: Pearl-Ear only draws if the target is already modified, so lead with a cheap Aura and let the second one cash in; and the Aura Light-Paws fetches is put onto the battlefield, not cast, so it doesn't re-trigger Light-Paws or Sram — it does trigger Archon and Ondu Spiritdancer. Underworld Connections and Greed provide steady black-pip card draw to keep the hand full when the Aura chain runs dry, and both spend life you're printing every end step anyway.
• The tutor toolbox. Idyllic Tutor, Open the Armory, and Heliod's Pilgrim fetch the exact Aura the board demands — Darksteel Mutation for the problem commander, Greater Auramancy when removal is flying, All That Glitters to close, or the setup piece for a Winds of Rath turn. Treat the Aura suite as a toolbox, not just a pile: with these tutors, you usually can go get the answer.
• Songbirds' Blessing is free deployment. Every attack by the enchanted creature digs to an Aura and can put it straight onto the battlefield — a free Aura and another drain count every combat. Note it's put into play, not cast, so it lights up Archon and the ETB payoffs but not Sram (same rule as Replenish/Retether).
• Un-cast Auras ignore hexproof and ward. An Aura put onto the battlefield rather than cast — off Songbirds' Blessing, Replenish/Retether, or an Ondu Spiritdancer token copy — doesn't target, so it can legally land on a hexproof or warded creature (only the Aura's own "enchant" line restricts it). That's how you fence the untouchable commander at the table. When you have to do it the fair way instead, Nowhere to Run and Detection Tower both strip hexproof (Nowhere to Run also shuts off ward triggers) so a hard-cast Darksteel Mutation or Planar Disruption can connect.
• Lifegain → drain → draw. Every point of life you gain (Eriette's end step, the many lifelinkers, Spirit Link / Spirit Loop / Vampiric Link, Parasitic Impetus) triggers Enduring Tenacity (an opponent loses that much) and Well of Lost Dreams (pay X, draw X). Your lifegain is simultaneously a damage source and a card source, not just stabilization. Bolas's Citadel lets you cast cards off the top of your library at the cost of life — and in a deck with this much lifegain, that's a resource you can afford to spend. It is a genuine engine here rather than a gamble: the average card costs under 3, and the Auras you flip off the top are cast, so they still trigger Sram, Pearl-Ear, and Light-Paws. Fire it on a turn where the end-step drain will refund the life, and stop before you're inside anyone's burn range.
• Death is card advantage. Hateful Eidolon draws you a card for each Aura that was on a creature that dies — so when a removal spell 2-for-1s your enchanted creature, or a wrath sweeps your suited-up board, you refill instead of falling behind. Pair it with the steal Auras: put Changing Loyalty on a creature, let it die, and you get the creature back under your control (Kaya's Ghostform does the same for your own permanents; Enduring Tenacity returns itself as an enchantment).
• Near one-sided wrath — if you sequence it right. Winds of Rath destroys creatures that aren't enchanted. Keep an Aura on your key creatures (easy here) and they survive while everything unenchanted dies. Two catches: opponents' creatures wearing your Auras (goaded, Mutated, Disrupted) survive too, and because it only kills unenchanted creatures, it never triggers Hateful Eidolon. That first catch is a real sequencing rule: sweep before you fence. A goaded fatty survives your Winds and is still a fatty once the goad wears off — so cast Winds before spreading fence Auras, or fence only with removal-grade Auras (Darksteel Mutation-class) you're happy to leave standing on a corpse of a creature. Damn (single-target or overloaded) and the exile-removal round out the sweeper suite.
• Copy and recur the Aura pile. Ondu Spiritdancer makes a token copy of an enchantment on ETB (once/turn) — copy an Aura and you double the enchant, the triggers, and the drain count. Archon of Sun's Grace turns every enchantment into flyers. When the pile gets broken up, Replenish (all enchantments back), Retether (all Auras back onto creatures), and Hall of Heliod's Generosity (recur one to the top) rebuild it — note these return Auras rather than cast them, so they light up ETB payoffs (Archon, Sage's Reverie, Hateful Eidolon) but not the cast-triggered draws (Sram).
• Protecting the engine (the aura-removal problem). Auras invite 2-for-1s — kill the creature and the Aura falls to the graveyard. Your answers: Greater Auramancy gives your other enchantments shroud and shrouds your enchanted creatures (the single best protection piece); Sheltered by Ghosts grants ward 2 and lifelink; Timely Ward and Redemption Arc grant indestructible; Swiftfoot Boots give hexproof + haste; and Teferi's Protection is your reset against a wrath or an alpha strike. When you put Auras on opponents' creatures, the risk flips — they can sacrifice or bounce the creature to shed your Aura — so hold recursion for those and don't over-invest a fragile creature you don't control.
• Pariah goes on someone else's biggest creature. This is the deck's signature use, not a cute alternative: Pariah redirects all damage that would be dealt to you onto the enchanted creature, and "enchant creature" means any creature. Hang it on the table's largest body — an opposing commander, the Eldrazi, whatever the scariest thing is — and three things happen at once. You stop taking damage from every source at the table; that creature can no longer attack you (it's wearing your Aura, so Eriette's fence applies); and you're up one on the drain count. Their own beater becomes your liferaft, and the bigger it is, the better it works. The self-side version — Pariah on something you've made indestructible (Timely Ward, or a Darksteel-Mutation'd 0/1) — is the fallback when nothing on their board is worth the Aura, not the default.
• Buff their goaded creature on purpose. The spice line: All That Glitters or Ethereal Armor on a creature you've goaded turns an opponent's body into a genuine threat that must attack someone other than you. You've built a beater that the rest of the table has to spend removal on, it can't come back at you, and the pump Aura is still a point of drain. Best against the player with the emptiest board — you're not just redirecting an attack, you're creating one.
• Ardenn as an Aura crane. Ardenn (here a 99, not a partner) can re-attach any number of your Auras at the start of combat — all to a single target per trigger — so consolidate voltron Auras onto one attacker, or move a pacifism Aura onto a fresh threat each turn as priorities shift. (Auras that read "enchant creature you control" can't legally move onto an opponent's creature.)

Combos

No two-card infinite combos — this deck wins on engine and inevitability. The Eriette + Enduring Tenacity interaction looks combo-shaped but doesn't loop (see "How Eriette actually works"). The real synergies live under Key Loops & Interactions.

Common Pitfalls

• Protect the engine, not the pile. When you have one protection effect and two things to point it at, it goes on the card that draws, not the card that's biggest. Greater Auramancy shrouding Sram is worth more than Timely Ward on a voltron threat. A suited-up creature that eats removal costs you one turn; a dead Sram costs you the rest of the game.
• Don't sink the whole suit into one creature you don't control. Auras on opponents' permanents are a 2-for-1 waiting to happen — they can sacrifice, bounce, or blink the creature to shed your Aura. Fence with the cheap ones, and hold Replenish/Retether as insurance if you've committed something real.
• Sweep before you fence. Winds of Rath only kills unenchanted creatures, so any opponent creature wearing your goad or fence Aura survives it. Cast Winds first, then fence what's left — or accept that the Darksteel-Mutation'd 0/1 you leave standing is fine, but the goaded 8/8 is not.
• Count Auras, not enchantments. Black Market Connections, Greater Auramancy, Nowhere to Run, Sanguine Bond, Enduring Tenacity, and Hateful Eidolon are all doing work — and all contribute zero to X. Miscounting your clock by four is the easiest way to misplay a lethal end step.
• Remember the end step exists. The drain is a trigger on your end step, so anything you want counted has to resolve before you pass. Flash Auras, Sigarda's Aid, and a spare mana are all worth holding when the extra point matters — and once Bloodletter is out, that one Aura is two damage per opponent, not one.
• Bloodletter only works on your turn. It doubles Eriette's drain and the Wicked Role trigger; it does nothing for your goaded creatures swinging on opponents' turns, and nothing on anyone else's turn at all. Don't plan a kill around damage it won't double.
• Keep the two Killians apart. Ink Duelist is the -off cost reducer and the menace lifelink voltron body. Decisive Mentor is the goad-on-every-enchantment engine that draws off Aura'd attackers. Reaching for the wrong one at the wrong time wastes a turn.