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SpeedOfDark
04-13-2010, 08:03 PM
ELVES COMBO


http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=152556&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=75241&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=151095&type=card


Introduction
Elves combo is an interesting legacy specimen, and it has been ever since it was ported from extended. Just to be precise, by "elves combo" (which should probably be renamed to "glimpse elves" to avoid ambiguity) I'm reffering to the archetype containing the following cards: glimpse of nature, nettle sentinel and heritage druid. Most elves archetypes, including this one, lie under the legacy radar at the moment, but they appear on top 8-32 lists once in a while and have drawn their share of attention. I believe the archetype is still underdeveloped compared to many other mainstream decks, and I’d like to see the lists get tighter and more competitive.

[NOTE: a few more updates to come shortly]


Contents
1. Popular Decklists
2. Gameplan
a The Main Plan
b Tutoring
c The backup Plan
3. Card Choices
a Engine Cards
b Toolbox Cards
c Tutor Cards
d Win Condition Cards
e Unconventional Cards
4. Personal Decklist (in progress)



1. POPULAR DECK LISTS

***COMBO ELVES by Menendian & Durand, 02-22-2010***
Note: this is an old list that was released before NO/prog was being used, but it still contains most of the essentials.

---1cc Creatures (28)
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore rangers
4 quirion ranger
4 wirewood symbiote
4 Llanowar elves
4 fyndhorn elves

---2-3cc Creatures (6)
4 elvish visionary
1 eternal witness
1 viridian shaman

---4+cc Creatures (1)
1 regal force

---Spells (9)
4 summoner's pact
4 glimpse of nature
1 grapeshot

---Mana Base (16)
1 elvish spirit guide
15 forests

---Sideboard (15)
4 tormod's crypt
2 Viridian Shaman
1 Brain Freeze
4 Krosan Grip
4 umezawa's jitte


***COMBO ELVES by SpeedofDark***
Note: this is not my personal decklist, but rather my modern interpretation of the above list with NO/prog added.

---1cc creatures (28)
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore ranger
4 Quirion Ranger
4 wirewood symbiote
4 fyndhorn elves
4 llanowar elves

---2-3cc creatures (4)
4 elvish visionary
1 mirror entity

---Fatties (2)
1 regal force
1 progenitus

---Spells (12)
3 summoner's pact
4 natural order
4 glimpse of nature

---Mana Base (15)
15 forests

---Sideboard (15)
*4 graveyard hate
*4-8 countertop/chalice hate
*0-4 combo hate
*0-4 aggro hate

graveyard hate: relic of progenitus, tormod's crypt, leyline of the void, faerie macabre
countertop/chalice hate: krosan grip, viridian shaman, vexing shusher
combo hate: mindbreak trap, thorn of amethyst
aggro hate: elf lords, umezawa's jitte



2. GAMEPLAN

2.a THE MAIN PLAN
Have 3 elves in play, including heritage and nettle, play glimpse, play a bunch of 1 mana creatures. Draw cards, play more creatures, etc. As you combo, the nettle sentinels will produce more mana than you are spending, and any additional symbiote/elvish visionary/glimpse you play will ensure that even if you get several stale draws in a row your combo will keep going. Another option for fueling the combo is using a tutor to play regal force. Most decks include a kill card to finish the game on the same turn such as grapeshot (which can be played with birchlore rangers).

The deck generally combos between turn 2-5, and has the option of falling back on aggro if the combo fails. Turn 2 wins are not extremely common, but they happen most often in one of two ways:

turn 1: forest, any elf
turn 2: forest, nettle, heriage
tap for 3 mana, glimpse (untap nettle), 2 elves, draw 2 cards, tap for 3 mana, etc.

turn 1: forest, nettle
turn 2: forest, birchlore, glimpse
tap both for 1 mana, play an elf (draw a card), tap that elf and nettle for 1 mana, etc.

Comboing turn 2 with birchlore is much more risky, but it’s reasonable to attempt if you have more than one nettle to work with. Note that in both cases, you don’t necessarily need 2 forests as long as you have something to compensate for it, such as quirion (bounce and replay forest) or more than one nettle and birchlore. Example:
turn 1: forest, nettle
turn 2: birchlore, tap both for 1 mana, nettle, tap both for 1 mana, play heritage, tap for 3 mana, glimpse, etc.


2.b TUTORING
The main tutor used in most combo elves decks is summoner’s pact, and for good reason. The idea is that you cast it on the same turn you combo off in order to avoid the drawback (upkeep cost). If it’s used this way, it’s essentially a 0 mana tutor. Once the combo is under way, pacts are usually used to fetch creatures which help fuel card draw (visionary, symbiote, regal force). Also note that casting pact adds to storm count and untaps all sentinels.

Usually 4 tutors is not enough for the deck to run smoothly, so there is a small list of acceptable tutors to accompany them. The most common ones are chord of calling, natural order, survival of the fittest and weird harvest, although there might be other options available such as a wishboard. Each of these tutors offer different advantages and disadvantages, which are often reflected in some of the card choices in the decks. For example, natural order can play giant green creatures for cheap (progenitus, regal force), chord of calling can play non-green creatures with birchlore (mirror entity), survival can combo (anger, masked admirers, iona/retainer, etc.) and weird harvest can go crazy if a lot of mana is available.


2.c BACKUP PLAN
The first backup plan is an additional way to draw cards and is usually accomplished with symbiote+visionary (sometimes a few copies of messenger as well).

The second backup plan is aggro. Naturally most of the deck consists of creatures, so that’s somewhat already taken care of. However, if you are facing off against another aggro deck and can’t combo off for whatever reason, you’ll probably need extra support. For this reason some decks play some of hivemaster, messenger, mirror entity, or elf lords either maindeck or in the sideboard.

The final backup plan is an alternate win condition. The most common one (and probably most potent) is natural order+progenitus. Other acceptable options include survival shenanigans, staff of domination, or mana sinking into weird harvest.



3. CARD CHOICES

3.a ENGINE CARD CHOICES
nettle sentinel: the main mana engine of the deck when combined with birchlore ranger or heritage druid.

heritage druid: the second most important card in the deck after nettle sentinel.

birchlore rangers: an overall lesser version of heritage druid, but still strong and necessary for consistency.

quirion ranger: the untap effect helps to produce extra mana, and extra mana can be produced when you don’t hit your land drops. Most notably, you can produce 2 mana with 1 forest or 4 mana with 1 forest and 1 llanowar.

wirewood symbiote: excellent fuel for the glimpse combo, because it effectively plays 2 creatures, and even moreso if you can bounce and replay elvish visionary. Can also be used to dodge removal on key creatures.

llanowar elves/ fyndhorn elves: The next best 1cc elves after the ones already on the list. Accelerates your mana and synergizes nicely with quirion and symbiote.

arbor elf: Another (marginally inferior) llanowar clone. If you wanted more than 8 llanowar clones, this would be a good option.

elvish visionary: another excellent way to fuel the glimpse combo, and forms a secondary draw engine with symbiote.

glimpse of nature: Without this card, the deck would not exist.


3.b TOOL BOX CARDS
eternal witness: mid combo it can be used as fuel (summoner’s pact, glimpse, regal force, etc.), before combo it can be used to return key creatures which were hit by removal (heritage, nettle, etc.).

viridian shaman: considering this deck’s weaknesses and the shape of the current meta, it’s very reasonable to play artifact hate mainboard.

vexing shusher: the application of the shusher against counter spells is fairly obvious, but the most potent effect is to force creatures through chalice and countertop.

elvish archdruid/ joraga warcaller/ elvish champion: aggro backup for when it’s needed.

regal force: The card to guarantee your combo Is going all the way. Since most decks play a few tutors, its highly recommended to play a copy.


3.c TUTOR CARDS
summoner's pact: this card works extremely well in this deck. The general idea is to use it on the same turn you combo, effectively making it an incredible 0 mana tutor. Before you go off it can be used to fetch missing pieces, and during the combo it will usually be used on nettle or regal force. If you need to use it and pass the turn, it’s still acceptable since this deck has no problem paying the upkeep mana.

natural order: often one of the preferred turors for combo elves. First, it can put regal force into play without actually having to pay its cost, and the second the NO/prog (natural order/progenitus) combo is a formidable backup win condition.

weird harvest: the idea with weird harvest is often to use it similarly as summoner’s pact, that is to cast it on the same turn you combo (to ignore the drawback). It has the disadvantage of costing 3 mana for 1 creature, however if you can produce large x, it can quickly turn from an innocent tutor into a win condition of its own. The more mana you can produce, the better it becomes, so it probably fits best in versions which play priest of titania, or gaea’s cradle.

chord of calling: If you tap a non-elf creature or don't have a heritage in play, it effectively costs 1 less mana than weird harvest. It also offers additional benefits such as instant speed and no drawbacks. However, the main advantage provided by chord of calling is the ability to play non-green creatures without the help of birchlore. This is especially effective when combined with mirror entity, predator dragon, or sneaky sideboard creatures (gaddock teeg, burrenton forge-tender, magus of the moon, etc.)

survival of the fittest: the engine card already stands on its own merits, and synergizes with elves in a variety of ways. It gives more value to your toolbox creatures, as they can more reliably come to your hand when you need them, its probably the best card to help you recover from sweepers, and it can often support you as you're combo, by fetching creatures you need for additional fuel. And finally, if your board set up is strong enough, you can combo off with survival itself.


3.d WIN CONDITION CARDS
It is important to have 1 card dedicated to winning the game the same turn you combo, because this effectively speeds up your average goldfish by almost a full turn. A good kill card should be almost impossible to stop.

grapeshot: quick and easy to deploy: only requires 1 mana and 2 tapped elves. Since a successful combo usually lets you play most of your deck, any storm card will essentially do the trick. The reason grapeshot is preferred over others is because it is likely to be the most helpful if you cannot combo (at least not fully). The idea is that if you hit your opponent with a weak grapeshot, you can finish them off by simply attacking next turn.

brain freeze: requires 1 mana and 4 tapped elves. Brainfreeze usually requires less storm count (16-17), but this is not relevant since comboing off as far as 16-17 storm count usually implies you can play your whole deck (thus reach 20 no problem). On the other hand, if you cannot combo fully and get a small storm count on brainfreeze, it does not help you towards winning. Also, cards like gaea’s blessing or emrakul trump the win condition. The advantage provided by brainfreeze is that it can still kill a player using glacial chasm.

progenitus: Combos with natural order for a near-unstoppable alternate win condition. Since its slower than your main combo, it won’t help against other fast decks, but it works extremely well against most forms of aggro.

mirror entity: By bouncing symbiote repeatedly, you can: 1. make an arbitrary amount of mana, 2. make your elves arbitrarily large, and 3. untap an arbitrary amount of creatures. By itself it is 1 turn slower than other win conditions in a full combo, however you can include surival/anger or concordant crossroads to fix this problem. Note that chord of calling can play mirror entity without relying on nonbasic lands or birchlore.


3.e UNCONVENTIONAL CARDS

wirewood hivemaster: this is in many lists, partly because it was played in the extended deck from which combo elves was ported. During a full combo, it is unecessary since your win condition will end the game anyways. During play or failed combos, it does generate an acceptable amount of aggro potential, however many players prefer to use these slots for toolbox options or cards that improve the consistency of the combo goldfish.

priest of titania: She works well with quirion and symbiote, and can help in accelerating certain hands, but in general she is a lot less useful in this deck than more traditional elf decks. She probably shouldn’t be included unless there are extra incentives to do so, such as a backup win condition requiring mana.

gaea's cradle: Often in combo elves, this land actually ends up being less useful than you would intuitively think. And from my experience its occasional usefulness is overshadowed by its occasional inconvenience (aka 1 land hands that could go off turn 2-3, but unfortunately that 1 land is gaea). It might barely make the cut by its own merits, but in a format with a lot of nonbasic land hate, it's often better to drop it. If it is included, it will often be 1-2 copies, with an acceptable land count (15-17) and crop rotation.

crop rotation: Has obvious synergy with gaea's cradle, but is probably not warranted unless there are other nonbasic lands (if the deck is not mono-green for example).

staff of domination: The rules text reads as follows: "if you control an elf that can tap for at least 5 mana, you win the game." It's used with titania and archdruid as a backup win condition. Although its a rather cheap 2 card combo, titania/archdruid can be a bit clunky for the main combo and staff of domination is not very useful by itself.

banefire: Another decent win condition. A full combo will always produce the 20 mana necessary, so that’s no problem. For nonexistent or failed combos, the question is: will it be more useful than grapeshot? Overall, I think grapeshot will surpass it, but banefire might be an acceptable substitution in a build which produces more mana.

predator dragon: Works acceptably well as a win condition, both with the main combo and with chord of calling+8 creatures. However, due to the large amount of cheap instant removal, it is a very fragile and all-in win condition, to which others are usually preferred.

tendrils of agony: To be honest, I’ve never seen this card run instead of grapeshot (and probably for good reason), but let’s consider it nonetheless. In a full combo, it will do the same thing. It requires more mana and tapped elves, but that shouldn’t be a problem. If the combo doesn’t go well, it might be able to kill where grapeshot would fail but this will only happen in the window of 10-19 storm count. However, any storm count above 10-13 is likely to do a full combo and render the choice of storm card irrelevant. If the storm count is small (<10), it could make a better storm card, but in this scenario it’s too likely that you won’t have enough mana/untapped elves to play it. The conclusion is that it has some situational advantages over grapeshot, but grapeshot probably has more.

emrakul, the aeons torn: This might look like jank, but there is actually no problem with this win condition per se. A full combo will always produce 15 mana and be able to play it. When it does, you will have a full turn to swing with 20+ elves and a 15/15 flyer, and this will always work except in the most extreme circumstances (moat + humility?). However, unlike other win conditions, the card might not be helpful at all if you do not combo off.


4. PERSONAL DECKLIST (in progress)

***COMBO ELVES by SpeedOfDark***

---1cc Creatures (27)
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore ranger
4 Quirion Ranger
4 wirewood symbiote
3 fyndhorn elves
4 llanowar elves

---2cc Creatures (6)
3 elvish visionary
3 priest of titania

---4+cc Creatures (2)
1 regal force
1 emrakul, the aeons torn

---Spells (12)
4 glimpse of nature
4 summoner's pact
4 weird harvest

---Mana Base (13)
13 forests

---Sideboard (15)
*3 relic of progenitus
*2 vexing shusher
*4 viridian shaman
*2 joraga warcaller
*4 elvish archdruid


***GOLDFISH SPEED***
Out of 50 goldfish (all playing first), these are the results:
turn 5+: 2%
turn 4: 16%
turn 3: 70%
turn 2: 12%
turn 1: impossible.
average turn: 3.08

Not quite on par with the fastest combo decks, but still pretty damn fast.


***CARD CHOICES***

1cc Creatures:
Most of these I consider givens. The only I would honestly consider tweaking in numbers are birchlore and llanowar/fyndhorn.

priest of titania: My reasoning to include her was for a secondary win condition that's almost just as fast as the main combo. With 1 titania and 1 weird harvest, you essentially garuntee a turn 3 win (no glimpse necessary). It works as follows: you produce 7-10 mana turn 3, then play weird harvest with large x and fetch something like:
1 heritage
3-4 nettle
1-4 symbiote
1 regal force
OR
1-3 quirion
1-3 symbiote
1 regal force
OR
1-3 quirion
1-3 symbiote
1 emrakul, the aeons torn

There's a ton of combinations that will work depending on what you have, but the main idea is to ramp up to regal force, draw 10-20 cards, and then combo as you usually would, or just to ramp up to emrakul and skip the regal force altogether.

regal force: This guy is nothing short of awesome. He has saved me from fizzling mid combo through pact on countless occasions. Without him, the titania+weird harvest combo would not work most of the time, and often if you have regal+titania in your hand, you can hard cast him on turn 3.

emrakul, the aeons torn: At first this was just a silly idea for shits and giggles, but it actually speeds up the deck (my version) by a little bit. When I was testing with grapeshot, it almost never happened for me to use it without the full combo, but it happened more than once that I was able to hard cast emrakul for the win where I couldn't combo off.

weird harvest: Has worked extremely well so far. First, no other tutor can give you such a fuel boost mid combo, it works almost just as well as regal force in this respect. And its nature as a tutor helps with consistency in general. If x is large enough (with or without titania), its possible to use it as a win condition.


---

***Comments on NO/prog***
I’ll admit my main reasons for omitting the combo revolve mostly around personal taste and budgetary concerns, however there are some challenges with the concept that don’t sit well with me. Of course its main strength is inevitability, namely the semi-impossible challenge of dealing with prog, however it does have several weaknesses:
-10-15% chance that prog will end up in your hand before you can cast NO.
-fairly slow: turn 4-5 win at best
-circle of protection: red, perish
-since you have no disruption, wasted card slots against combo or any decent player with FoW.

---


Anyways, let me know what cards have worked well for you and why, post a decklist if you have one, and feel free to criticize my card choices. Elves ftw! :D

Koby
04-13-2010, 08:49 PM
1) Wierd Harvest is overkill. You're paying 4 mana to find 2 creatures. Sylvan Messenger can more elf cards, is a creature that triggers Glimpse, and is tutorable with Summoner's Pact.

2) Replace forests with Land Grant - yes yes, it's possible that you can lose when your opponent counters it on the first turn, but in practice they're more worried about Glimpse than countering Land Grant. This effectively lets you play 4 less Forests, and is a spell in case you need more storm.

3) Elvish Spirit Guide might be useful here as a 2-of, to help fuel your combo out faster. It's still an Elf.

4) I run my list with an Archdruid in the maindeck, and 4 Elvish Champions in the board to bring in against Goyf decks with counters; which allows me to go into beatdown mode. These are superior to Joruga War Caller in that he gives Forest walk.

5) Vexing Shusher is a good call for either maindeck and/or SB. This allows you to win in corner cases against Chalice/CB-top.

SpeedOfDark
04-13-2010, 09:30 PM
1) Wierd Harvest is overkill. You're paying 4 mana to find 2 creatures. Sylvan Messenger can more elf cards, is a creature that triggers Glimpse, and is tutorable with Summoner's Pact.
The problem I find with sylvan messenger is this: he is good IF you have glimpse, but when you have glimpse, you usually don't need a lot of help. If you don't have glimpse, he's not helping you, whereas weird harvest could make you win the game if you can get x large enough (often you can).



2) Replace forests with Land Grant - yes yes, it's possible that you can lose when your opponent counters it on the first turn, but in practice they're more worried about Glimpse than countering Land Grant. This effectively lets you play 4 less Forests, and is a spell in case you need more storm.
Interesting, I might try that.



3) Elvish Spirit Guide might be useful here as a 2-of, to help fuel your combo out faster. It's still an Elf.
Yeah, I considered this before. When I tested it, I didn't have much luck with it, but I'll admit I didn't test it much.



4) I run my list with an Archdruid in the maindeck, and 4 Elvish Champions in the board to bring in against Goyf decks with counters; which allows me to go into beatdown mode. These are superior to Joruga War Caller in that he gives Forest walk.
I like this idea a lot, I hadn't considered forest walk. And since zoo is so present in most metas, this is probably a good call.



5) Vexing Shusher is a good call for either maindeck and/or SB. This allows you to win in corner cases against Chalice/CB-top.
Intersting. Yeah, I think this beats my sideboard tools as well. Viridian zealot looks pretty meek compared to the shusher.

Vacrix
04-13-2010, 09:53 PM
I'd figure you would want to play a few Gaea's Cradle in this, but I guess not. My argument was going to be.. why not add Trops since your opponent is going to Waste your Cradles anyway but you don't run cradles. Why not?

I'm suggesting Trops because it allows you to run Mystical Tutor, which allows you to find Glimpse. I've played some Glimpse.dec in my day and its an amazing card. It works the best when you play 5-8 via Mystical Tutor. It can also find you Summoner's Pact, or your Win Condition.

Eldariel
04-13-2010, 10:48 PM
If you start a thread, might at least bother with a write-up about the most relevant options not included and such. And assessments as to why what works works. And overall, useful contents. Anyways, my take on Combo Elves (or rather, some sort of unholy combination of combo elves and aggro elves and jank):

// Lands
5 [U] Forest (1)
4 [A] Taiga
4 [GP] Stomping Ground
1 [LG] Pendelhaven

// Creatures
3 [AL] Elvish Spirit Guide
2 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
2 [ON] Birchlore Rangers
1 [EVE] Regal Force
4 [A] Llanowar Elves
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
1 [JU] Anger
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
3 [M10] Elvish Visionary
2 [US] Priest of Titania
1 [10E] Elvish Champion
1 [FD] Eternal Witness
1 [CFX] Progenitus
1 [DS] Wiridian Zealot
3 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
1 [LRW] Masked Admirers

// Spells
2 [FUT] Summoner's Pact
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
3 [VI] Natural Order

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
SB: 2 [10E] Elvish Champion
SB: 1 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
SB: 1 [VI] Natural Order
SB: 1 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 4 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 1 [PT] Fire Imp
SB: 1 [MR] Viridian Shaman
SB: 1 [SHM] Vexing Shusher
SB: 2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte


Few words: Forest-count was simply too high to go off with any more than 14, so ESGs are a necessary evil. Summoner's Pacts are meh, but they're good for what they do. Natural Order fuels the combo-kill just fine by just NO -> Regal Forceing, and having access to Priest/Druid and Nettle/Druid means you have multiple ways to threaten going nuts.

Progenitus is by far the most important tool I found though since many decks are quite able to keep you from going off (discard, removal, counters, etc.), but this usually means they spend their turns stopping you as opposed to advancing their own gameplan so a quick 10/10 Pro-You is just what you want. Dodges Counterbalance nicely too. Side it out vs. e.g. Storm, of course, but whenever you are dealing with resistance, it's good (Zoo, Black Disruption, Countertop, etc.). Survival allows discarding it, which means that's not really a problem, and Survival also allows comboing after a fashion, though if you want to, you can add white for Mirror Entity to enable true combo with it. Requires fetches tho.

Basically, you have Glimpse-engine for speedy combo, Survival for combo support (particularly, Haste) and grinding, and Natural Order for win or Draw Lots. Solid pack of engines with secondary beatdown plan with Summoner's -> Elvish Champion. As a bonus, Survival removes the need for a kill card as you can just discard Anger and swing for the win. Masked Admirers was chosen over Squee as it's much better whenever you don't have Survival (acting as expensive Visionary for card grinding) and enables one-turn comboing with Survival. Oh, and the manabase? I avoided fetches to ignore Stifle. It can be annoying in such a landlight deck. Waste isn't so bad since your plays usually produce mana so Waste tends to put the opponent behind.

1maarten1
04-14-2010, 09:41 AM
My advise: Go play the NO + Progenitus engine, works great when i used it. Also try substituting grapeshot with banefire ;).

rufus
04-14-2010, 10:26 AM
There's a pretty large number of possible wincons for elves that might be discussed in a primer.
Mirror Entity+Wirewood Symbiote+Heritage Druid
Grapeshot or Brain Freeze
Predator Dragon
Natural Order/Progenitus

And some crazier ones:
Umbral Mantle/Staff of Domination+Priest of Titania/Rofellos
Wild Pair
Shared Animosity

Have you considered Chrome Mox? No Summoning Trap in a deck full of creatures that could plausibly hardcast it?

Cabal_chan
04-14-2010, 11:04 AM
How does Mirror Entity+Wirewood Symbiote+Hermitage Druid work? It can't go infinite on its own (unless you're implying you have at least a Nettle Sentinel in that pile. I think you can go infinite with that. I know Mirror Entity+Wirewood Sybiote+Priest of Titania is self sufficient, giving you infinite storm If you toss another elf in there, you can go inifinite).

Also: Tendrils of Agony over Grapeshot. I'm going to be giving that a shot. The reason being it halves the storm count you need for lethal. It also gives you a little bit of a breather; fire off a Tendrils for 4-6 and swing. If that doesn't kill them, you could have enough life to survive their counter and swing for the win next turn(aggro/aggro-control. Obviously control/combo would work a bit differently, though the life gain could be relevant against some combo decks).

rufus
04-14-2010, 11:11 AM
How does Mirror Entity+Wirewood Symbiote+Hermitage Druid work?

You're right - you'd need a Nettle Sentinel, another Wirewood Symbiote, or a creature that taps for 2 or more.

If you can activate the Mirror Entity before you tap the priest, then it counts the Symbiote, and you net +1 mana per cycle.

Grumpollion
04-14-2010, 07:17 PM
I think that a good starting point for any thread on combo elves in legacy should begin with the elves list found in the following article, and then explain what different choices should be made, and why:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/17097_So_Many_Insane_Plays_A_Birds_Eye_View_of_Legacy_The_Tribes_of_Legacy.html

SpeedOfDark
04-14-2010, 07:26 PM
Hey guys,

I'm getting the impression from many of you that you would like to see an OP reflecting a broader view of the archetype (and not just my personal deck-building idiosyncracies :P). The reason its not shaped like a primer is partly because I mostly made the post to learn about the archetype, opposed to share knowledge I claimed to have, and partly because I lost my OP to an IE error so I had to write the whole thing twice.

However, I agree to expand it into a bigger primer-ish OP, but you guys will have to give me at least until tomorrow (after my exam) before I add some more generic content ;p

@Grumpollion: thx for the decklist, I will add it to the OP shortly. If anyone else has similar sources of popular or well preforming decklists, feel free to post them :)

EDIT: random comments:
-trops + mystical tutor is interesting, had never thought of that. Seems like a fairly clean way to play extra glimpses.
-gaea's cradle actually ends up being a lot less useful than you would intuitively think in this deck. And from my experience its occasional usefulness is overshadowed by its occasional inconvenience (aka 1 land hands that could go off turn 3, but unfortunately that 1 land is gaea). It might barely make the cut by its own merits, but in a format with a lot of nonbasic land hate, it's probably better to drop it.
-imo the win cons are betwen the 3 storm spells mentioned (and I find brainfreeze to be the weakest). Most of the other ones strike me as cuteness. Although banefire might be worth something in a deck that uses cradles or titania (since when you get 20 storm count, you often can make 20+ mana anyways).
-staff+titania is neat, but personally I've found that in this deck (and others), titania+weird harvest can win faster and weird harvest by itself has a lot more versatility than staff.

Eldariel
04-14-2010, 09:36 PM
It's mostly that if you're going to open a generic "Elves Combo"-thread, it's expected to discuss "Elves Combo" in general, not just a specific build.

SpeedOfDark
04-14-2010, 09:46 PM
It's mostly that if you're going to open a generic "Elves Combo"-thread, it's expected to discuss "Elves Combo" in general, not just a specific build.

Well, the title was mostly a "for lack of a better title" thing. But I do see your point, and it does make sense (I'm relatively new to mtgthesource). I will update the OP tomorrow ;)

rufus
04-14-2010, 10:46 PM
Part of the issue is that the search function has (apparently) gone to pot so its much harder to find old stuff.

SpeedOfDark
04-16-2010, 07:06 AM
Ok, so I redid the OP entirely. There is still more content I'd like to add, for example another popular list more recent than the one posted. But I'll get to that later.

:D

frenchy-man
04-16-2010, 07:31 AM
Elfball is the deck woth whom I played the most in legacy. In France, we used to consider elfball as a DTB, in the tier one. Some French players brought it to GP Madrid. I think that this reveals the potential of the deck for thoses who would remain sceptic.

Here is a link to a french site where you'll be able to find some optimized lists :
http://www.legacy-france.com/Elves-Combo-Aggro-t2023.html
Please don't take into account the first lists, that were created before elfball (and the nettle/heritage combo was known), and are therefore obsolete.

First, there is at first view a huge error in your deck : the kill. Mirror entity is far away better than grapeshot. There is even no debate. The aggro game plan which is how you'll win at least 50% of your games is so much improved by this card.

Also : titania is very bad... I mean, it don't have haste and costs two... test without, you'll see.

We still argue on the mana base : some play fetchs adn/or duals, others (like me) only forest. Craddle is also very played with crop rotation.
In my opinion, running only forests is enough, and don't expose you don't mana denial.

Here is the list I play (sideboard not optimized) :
-5 llanowar elves
-4 Birchlore
-4 Symbiote
-4 Sentinelle
-4 Heritage druid
-3 Quirion ranger
-4 Hivemaster
-4 Visionnary
-1 Mirror entity
-1 Regal force

-4 Glimpse
-4 Pact
-3 Chord

-15 forest

Side :
3 choke
1 magus of the moon
1 Imperious perfect
1 lord
3 natural order
1 proge
1 dauntless escort
3 relic/tormod

SpeedOfDark
04-16-2010, 07:54 AM
Hi frenchy-man,

Fortunately for me, french is actually my first language, so when I have time I will go through the thread carefully. I'm sure there is a lot of information I have yet to learn about the archetype, since I'm fairly new to it.

Merci beaucoup ;)

frenchy-man
04-16-2010, 08:15 AM
de rien ;)

xsockmonkeyx
04-16-2010, 07:37 PM
The Menendian list from 2009 in the OP is nearly optimal and almost my exact list card for card. However, I would recommend some number of Horizon Canopy and a Pedelhaven in some of the Forest spots . Horizon Canopy is an excellent way to squeeze extra utility out the deck for a reasonable disadvantage. Pedelhaven is to mise you out against Grim Lavamancer which absolutely owns your ass hands down no questions asked gg. Other than that the list is immaculate. I would maybe like another Regal Force or some other mass card draw, but there is hardly room. Ive tried a single Sylvan Messenger to bounce around with Symbiotes with moderate success, but I cant say anything conclusive. A 1 of Vexing SHusher in the main is also interesting, but I havent tried it yet.

My current thoughts have been how to properly sideboard with this thing. What can you afford to sideboard out and what do you need to survive a legacy metagame? I see problems with countermagic because green hardly has ways to deal with disruption, Countertop and Chalice at 1 ruining your day, and getting bombed on by Firespout/Pyroclasm, and EE for 1. Umezawa's Jitte is also a huge pain in the ass. I guess Plague would be bad too, but Plague is waning in popularity so we have that going for us.

Options to fight countermagic:
Vexing Shusher: Tutorable, uncounterable, makes all your dudes and spells uncounterable, mana intensive but this deck has mana.
Leyline of Lifeforce-uncounterable, costs 0 if you have it in your opening, blanks all Force of Will/Daze action on your mana critters and Regal Force. Does not help resolve Pact or Glimpse which kinda sucks. At 4cc its still realistic to hardcast with the amount of mana this deck has.
Summoner's Trap-Ameliorates a single piece countermagic for 0. Not completely unreasonable to hardcast at 6cc.
Gaea's Herald-Tutorable way to fight countermagic on your dudes.
Guttoreal Response-Negates a piece of countermagic for G. Does help resolve Pact/Glimpse in the face of FoW.

Options to fight counterbalance/Chalice
Vexing Shusher-same as before
Krosan Grip-derp
Leyline of Lifeforce-Costs 0 and blanks chalice/counterbalance on your dudes. Glimpse and Pact are still sad.
Summoner's Trap-Costs 0 and makes a one time way around Chalice/Balance. With enough disenchant dudes (Zealot/Shaman) in your deck this may be a solid way to find and play your removal.
Gaea's Herald-Tutorable, counterable, negates Chalice at 1, still vulnerable to Counterbalance, less mana intensive than Shusher.
Viridian Shaman/Zealot-Tutorable, count as creatures, have bodies, is a creature, can be found with Pact, etc.

Options against Firespout/Pyroclasm:
Multiple Lords - you have to play lords and still get owned by firespout
Gempalm Strider - only gets pyroclasm, costs friggin 4, uncounterable, tutorable.
Bubble Matrix- one of my favorites from back when Snake Basket was type 2 legal. Stops clasms and burn, and gives you dominating board position against conventional aggro decks. Its really a pet card of mine so its hard to know if its actually playable.
????-seriously there has to be better options. Some kind of green instant spell that prevents damage to all creatures for the turn idk.

Options against EE:
Krosan Grip
Pithing Needle
Viridian Shaman/Zealot (sorta)

Options against Jitte:
Grip
Needle
Viridian Shaman

Options against Grim Lavamancer:
Pithing Needle-die in hell stupid red wizard please dont have pridemage
Bubble Matrix?
More Pendelhavens

If I were to start my sideboard I think I would include: Vexing Shusher/Leyline/Trap, and some number of Pithing Needles and Krosan Grips because those cover multiple things which are bad for you. Id also maybe look at 1 ofs of Gaea's Herald, Strider, and Zealot should they prove worthy and take a non joking look at Bubble Matrix as an option against Burn and Earthquakes.

I know Im probably missing some good cards but gatherer is nearly unsearchable now and its hard to find tech.

SpeedOfDark
04-16-2010, 08:12 PM
hmm, interesting ideas sockmonkey. I'm especially intrigued by the leyline of lifeforce and bubble matrix, both of which I had not considered and wasn't really aware of their existance ;p

Pendelhaven too should probably be added in the common cards section as a 1-2 of. The only actual drawback is that it doesn't synergize with quirion and gets hit by nonbasic land hate, but I think it more than makes up for it.

Btw, just as an fyi there is a recent (but off color) rehash of bubble matrix: mark of asylum.

interesting cards for clasm/spout effects:
Wrap in Vigor
caller of the claw

I think I will update my OP and add a sideboard section soon, because there is a lot of stuff to consider, and it might actually prove to be more difficult than the building of the actual deck.

Eldariel
04-16-2010, 09:03 PM
Honestly, I prefer the Natural Order-build greatly specifically because of all the hatecards. Grim Lavamancer? Meet Progenitus. Jitte? Meet Progenitus. Firespout? Meet Progenitus. Counterbalance/Chalice? Meet Progenitus. Something like Weird Harvest or Chord is going to be relatively useless on a semi-empty board when you cast them with only 1-2 Elves in play and no access to the engine (Weird Harvest will, of course, assemble the engine but if opponent has active Countertop, active Chalice, active Grim or such, that's not going to do you any good). The only thing it doesn't deal with is countermagic, which isn't exactly a problem since when they're Forcing your Glimpses/Survivals/whatever, they're behind on cards and you just beat them down. Being able to combo off properly against Countertop or Zoo or such is hard (which is what I think keeps the deck from truly being on the top), but just resolving Natural Order is easy enough.

I'm of the opinion that Natural Order is just plain better than Weird Harvest or Chord of Calling. No, it does not put together all the basic combo pieces like Harvest and yes, it requires sacrifice unlike Chord, but sacrificing one (tapped) Elf is generally affordable enough and being able to get 4-mana Regal Forces really lowers the threshold for comboing out fast. And when you really need to, it can find Sentinel/Heritage Druid/Symbiote/Visionary/Elvish Archdruid (or pump)/whatever; usually though, I find that role is adequately filled in for with Summoner's Pacts and auxillary search effects.


And Mirror Entity certainly looks to be 100 times the kill Grapeshot or Predator Dragon is; it's got great out-of-combo use, it enables truly infinite combo for when you need to kill that pesky Life-player or whatever, it's an Elf which for all intents and purposes is a great thing and overall, unlike Grapeshot, you aren't gonna go "Shit, Mirror Entity in my opener; guess I might as well take my free mulligan". Also, Mirror Entity means you can easily kill through Stifle, while "Stifle your Grapeshot, Pyroclasm" or a variation there-of can otherwise be quite devastating.

I have to point out that Survival presents another kill. That's the reason I opted for it over the other engine cards; Survival with Anger means you need no other kill condition. Of course, the other reason is that I have Progenitus in the deck which means two normally-dead cards (kill and Proge). Survival converts them into engine cards and can, indeed, act as a combo engine on its own right with Priests of Titania/Archdruids, Anger and Symbiotes (or Nettle Sentinels+Druid); with Masked Admirers, you can just play any number of Elves given the mana production, and win (no Glimpse or NO needed). If the deck also ran Mirror Entity, this would enable for a rather speedy infinite combo with Survival alone, but I didn't find that necessary, though it's certainly something to consider.


Point I'm making is that I don't think the applications of Legacy-legal engine cards have been sufficiently explored to default to the Extended engines; Survival, for example, while being a bit cumbersome acts as combo engine, piece assembler and win condition all in one card.

Oh, and my favorite answer to Jitte is Jittes of your own; in those matches you often find yourself in the aggro-role anyways as they tend to be quite good at keeping you off the combo, so your Jittes have great offensive and defensive merit.

Vacrix
04-16-2010, 10:35 PM
I think this deck is good in a vacuum. It can convert to aggro against hate, and can combo out to race other aggro and other combo. The combo itself, though, requires 3 pieces. If Glimpse eats countermagic and/or a creature eats STP, the combo isn't going anywhere. How does it actually perform against hate?

Forbiddian
04-16-2010, 11:58 PM
I think this deck is good in a vacuum. It can convert to aggro against hate, and can combo out to race other aggro and other combo. The combo itself, though, requires 3 pieces. If Glimpse eats countermagic and/or a creature eats STP, the combo isn't going anywhere. How does it actually perform against hate?

I think it's the most resilient combo deck to Countermagic and spot removal.

I mean, UW Tempo had all the standard answers, full sets of Swords/Forces/Dazes, and Jitte coming up asap, but it wasn't nearly enough, I won almost every game on Elves (though I was more of a combo-hybrid, the lists in this thread seem more vulnerable to Force on the Glimpse, but it still looks like they could survive). There are so many targets (plus Wirewood is the magnet) and Force doesn't do much because Elves invests approximately nothing in its combo pieces.

Glimpse? Force.
Whatever. That doesn't even slow me down by one turn. Glimpse again? Force.
Ok, your hand is raped, pass the turn and wait to die to infi Sylvan Messengers and Wirewood Symbiotes.

The problem is that 1) It's really slow, so you don't beat Aggro very easily, 2) You die to random hate so much, like Pyrokinesis, Firespout, Engineered Plague, etc. The stuff that normally plagues combo, like Silence, Force, Mindbreak Trap, is not remotely problematic.

frenchy-man
04-17-2010, 04:01 AM
Ok few things to say. First why isn't it in etablished decks section ? This deck deserves at least to be there.

Then I recommend to people that have doubts about the deck to really test. First exemple : the fow. You are all afraid of fow on glimpse. Hey dudes, that's exactly what we want 50% of the time. In fact I often try to glimpse, perfectly knowing that I cannot combo this turn, in order to get it fowed to play other threats. Wirewood symbiote is very very good. It is probably the best card of the pack.

Against CB : I also don't think that you tested really much, because CB is not that problematic (I mean, for a combo deck). Indeed, it is quite slow : I mean if they are lucky they get top turn 1, CB turn 2. That's fine. That let you at least 3 elves on the board. With hivemaster this will be game. CB means that they need to say open in order to counter us. That's perfect ! Because we are combo but we are also aggro. CB is not as much frightening when we play elfball than when we play ANT.

I quite agree with you Forbiddian, excepted on the last part. Aggro is a bye. Really. I mean, don't be stupid and don't overextend against gob or zoo, but slow him down. You can easily go into combo against these decks.

Oh, and the deck is very quick. I mean, it sometimes kills on turn 2, and often turn 3 when there are no counters in the opponent's hand...

Infinitium
04-17-2010, 07:37 AM
Point I'm making is that I don't think the applications of Legacy-legal engine cards have been sufficiently explored to default to the Extended engines; Survival, for example, while being a bit cumbersome acts as combo engine, piece assembler and win condition all in one card.


Quoted for emphasis. The number of viable (elven) cards and engines in green means that the deck can be built to abuse a number of different tactics whilst retaining the same general strategy (draw your library courtesy of small green dudes). This is also a problem since determing what constitutes the "best" direction for the deck probably hinges as much on knowledge of the local beta as personal preferences.

For an instance I usually run a monogreen list without survival/NO and no Nettle Sentinels, instead relying on PoT and Archdruid with untappers for mana generation supported by Heritage Druid. Concordant Crossroads and Joraga Warcaller act as general win conditions. The benefit of this approach is that each piece is much less reliant on the engine in order to perform (Sentinel really needs both Druid and Glimpse in order to actually anything more productive than being a measly 2/2), and since it typically generates a -lot- more mana in bursts it suddenly makes both Warcaller and Messenger must-answers in themselves. It also opens up for the extremely powerful alternative CA-engine of Wirewood Symbiote/Sylvan Messener paired with mana elves which along with the 8 lord effects reduces reliance on glimpse to nil. My previously posted list for reference:

Elf Combo

13 Forest
3 Gaea's Cradle

4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Quirion Ranger
3 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Sylvan Messenger
4 Priest of Titania
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
1 Viridian Zealot

4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Concordant Crossroads
2 Summoner's Pact

Sideboard

4 Krosan Grip
3 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Gaea's Herald
1 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid
1 Reverent Silence

SpeedOfDark
04-19-2010, 12:39 AM
@Eldariel:
yeah, I agree that NO/prog is strong and so is NO/regal, and I admit I haven't tested it much. However, since NO/prog becoming more and more popular in green decks (like BANT for example), I fear the decks who can afford it might sideboard a few cards against it, making it weaker. However this hasn't really happened yet, and the combo still has a strong prescence.

survival does seem intriguing as an engine card, and definitely stands on its own merits. It gives you a nice tool against disruption and all sorts of sneaky situations which would be impossible to recover from otherwise. On the other hand, I don't think it really combos as fast as chord and weird harvest can. Chord can put entity or something like magus of the moon in play for auto-win, and weird harvest can win on turn 3 if you have enough mana available. But survival does look like a stronger card in non-combo mathcups.

@ mirror entity vs grapeshot:

I'll admit mirror entity is strong, but I don't think it really replaces a storm kill in any way. If anything, if I played mirror entity I would probably play both it and a kill card.

The whole point of the kill card is to win the SAME turn you combo off, thus avoiding sweepers and the off chance that your opponent can kill you before you swing (burn you out, combo off himself, etc.) If there is a way to do this with mirror entity, then please point it out to me because I don't see it.

If you do omit a same-turn kill card, you slow down your combo goldfish by 1 whole turn, and probably your average goldfish by 0.5-0.8 turns or so. This is a lot of sacrifice for 1 extra card slot to play with. Granted if you have something like grapeshot in your oppening hand, its usually useless, however this will happen 10-15% of the time if you don't mulligan, nowhere near enough to compensate for the huge goldfish boost you get.

The main problem I see with not having at lest 1 kill card is that you are too slow to compete with other combo decks.

@ frenchy-man:
"Ok few things to say. First why isn't it in etablished decks section ? This deck deserves at least to be there."
yeah I agree :D

magicplaya10
04-19-2010, 12:40 AM
Here is my list.

Elf Combo

4 Nettle Sentinal
4 Heritage Druid
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Llanowar Elf
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 ESG
3 Birchlore Ranger
2 Quirion Ranger
1 Eternal Witness
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Zealot

4 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Grapeshot/Brainfreeze/Storm Card

13 Forest


This deck is SUPER consistant. I playtested against a few decks already, and got pretty into most of those games. The main decks I tested against were Ugw Counterbalance and Goblins.

It is like my friend, Vaughn, said after the 4th game we were testing(he was playing Counterbalance/Top)
"You can't beat this deck. It can switch roles so easily. I am so focused on disrupting the combo and then I have a bunch of elves turning sideways. When I try and stop the onslaught, you find something dumb like double glimpse, GG."

The reason this deck is so consistant is that it can do just that. Most decks can't deal with it.

Against Ugw Thresh, I went 8 wins 2 losses. My losses were from early counterbalance and top, etc.

Against goblins, I went 5 and 0. I was surprised. This deck is just faster. There was one point where my opponent could have tutored for Sharpshooter and mowed my team ftw, but he went for piledriver. I don't know why. But I won because I had Glimpse in hand.


Some card choices.

Elvish Archdruid - he's better than Priest by far. The ability to just drop a few of him and smash skull is pretty good. Also, he is hard to counter.

4 Visionary- Draw. This deck has a good draw engine when Symbiote + Visionary is online.

Regal Force- Many people have cut this, why? This guy is BOSS. He can't really be stopped by counterbalance. He is hard to Pyroclasm away. lol. and he is a 5/5 that turns sideways. He draws A BUNCH of cards.

Eternal Witness- For insurance against counters. Its great to be able to chain some elves together and then Grapeshot/Freeze them, witness, and do it again.

Elvish Spirit Guide- Allows for faster wins, pays for Spell Pierce and Daze, is a creature, can be tutored for.

My sideboard is as follows:

SIDEBOARD:
3 Imperious Perfect
4 Krosan Grip
2 Faerie Macabre
3 Relic of Prog
3 xxx

The Imperious Perfects come in against mostly red control decks (Canadian Thresh) it is hard for control to beat this guy once he is in play. Not to mention it is hard to Pyroclasm multiple lords away.

Grips come in for obv reasons.

Macabre/Relic come in against reanimator and Ichorid.

And there are three open spots.


Thanks, any suggestions?

I can go ahead and tell you how the testing games have gone in more detail if you would like. Though most is from Memory.

SpeedOfDark
04-19-2010, 02:24 AM
@magicplaya10: maybe its something obvious and I'm too tired to think of it, but what's 3 ESG? :P

Yeah, archdruid is probably a strong card. My version which runs 3 titania might be better with the substitution, especially considering that archdruid often comes out on turn 2 anyways (llanowar/fyndhorn turn 1).

Infinitium
04-19-2010, 10:39 AM
The whole point of the kill card is to win the SAME turn you combo off, thus avoiding sweepers and the off chance that your opponent can kill you before you swing (burn you out, combo off himself, etc.) If there is a way to do this with mirror entity, then please point it out to me because I don't see it.


Mirror Entity will eventually make an arbitrary amount of mana by having Symbiote bounce itself and by extension make all your creatures arbitrarily large as well as being a pretty decent lord on its otherwise. And decks that play enough creatures to block whatever you had in play at that upkeep shouldn't be able to burn you out anyhow. Still, why insisting on an off color "kill" card when both Concordant Crossroads and Survival/Anger can make your mana engine win for you whilst not being generally awkward prior to that point?

SpeedOfDark
04-19-2010, 12:52 PM
Mirror Entity will eventually make an arbitrary amount of mana by having Symbiote bounce itself and by extension make all your creatures arbitrarily large as well as being a pretty decent lord on its otherwise. And decks that play enough creatures to block whatever you had in play at that upkeep shouldn't be able to burn you out anyhow.

Well I know the basic workings of the mirror entity combo, except one thing I noticed just now: the ability to untap an arbitrary amount of creatures.


Still, why insisting on an off color "kill" card when both Concordant Crossroads and Survival/Anger can make your mana engine win for you whilst not being generally awkward prior to that point?

Just to make sure I understood your question, you mean "why insist on grapeshot/mirror, when both crossroads/mirror and survival/anger/mirror can work less akwardly?", right?

Well since you can untap everything (which I hadn't considered), then I agree with you that either of those would be superior to what I proposed: grapeshot/mirror. It can still fail ofc, but the scenarios where it would are just as unlikely as those where a storm card would fail so that they can be ignored.

However, I would argue that crossroads and anger are not as "less akward" than grapeshot as one might think. Crossroads often won't be that useful in this deck (the main play consists of tapping most of your creatures all the time), and anger is an empty card until you get survival, and even then its probably not doing much until you combo off. Of course there are specific scenarios where either might come in handy without comboing, but I think they are too rare to carry any weight.

If you do play mirror, then I think you definitely should have survival/anger or at least 1 crossroads to speed up your goldfish. However, now that you are using 2 cards for a same-turn kill condition (crossroads/mirror or anger/mirror), you have to make sure that one of them (mirror) is useful enough to make this choice better than a 1 card kill condition. Relying solely on birchlore ranger is obviously mediocre at best, so you probably want either some nonbasic lands (splash white) or chord of calling to play your mirror.

If you play nonbasic lands, you clash with legacy's nonbasic landhate, but I think this deck can probably handle it fairly well since it can run on low lands. And if you play chords of calling, then you're losing out on the benifits of stronger tutors, but you do have the option of using other off color creatures maindeck or postboard (magnus of the moon for example).

Overall what I think it boils down to is that mirror builds are stronger against slower decks and 1 kill card builds are better against faster decks.

magicplaya10
04-19-2010, 03:14 PM
@magicplaya10: maybe its something obvious and I'm too tired to think of it, but what's 3 ESG? :P

Yeah, archdruid is probably a strong card. My version which runs 3 titania might be better with the substitution, especially considering that archdruid often comes out on turn 2 anyways (llanowar/fyndhorn turn 1).


Well, it did have 4 and only 3 summoners pact, but I decided that pact was great. Also I run it because sometimes dropping two dudes on turn 1 or 2 is great. It really accelerates the deck. Also, it allows you to play around daze. =P

ESG has been great to me. I run three also because I have such a low land count. I really do like the 3 ESG 13 forest configuration. You only really need 1 land to accelerate. With 7 one mana producers it isn't hard. I have actually went off by Dropping two Llanowars into play on turn one, no lands, and then turn 2 I drew glimpse and had pact and double sentinal. I ended up pulling that one out on turn 3 without any lands.

Not saying that will happen. But ESG is great acceleration, good against cards such as daze and spell pierce. Also, he is a dude that untaps Sentinals.

@Archdruid, yea it is great. The +1/+1 makes it amazing. I have found archdruid against sharpshooter and was able to win. Double archdruid is nuts. I love this card. If all else fails, he produces a but load of mana, which can help go off or drop your hand.


@Mirror Entity/Grapshot, I just like winning with the storm mechanic. It could be Grapeshot or Brainfreeze or even Tendrils. It just seems harder to disrupt. And, in case they do disrupt it, you have a hoard of Elves ready to turn sideways. In the end, I just enjoy playing a bunch of guys and then killing them with storm. But thats just me.

Thanks, thoughts?
I really enjoy the deck. Keep up the good work.

drawer
04-19-2010, 03:32 PM
I 4-0'd a daily online with this today:

4 Misty Rainforest
12 Forest

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Heritage Druid
2 Joraga Warcaller
3 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Priest of Titania
1 Elvish Harbinger
4 Elvish Archdruid
3 Sylvan Messenger

1 Banefire
2 Staff of Domination
1 Concordant Crossroads
4 Glimpse of Nature


SB:
1 Bond of Agony
4 Faerie Macabre
4 Krosan Grip
3 Imperious Perfect
2 Ground Seal
1 Viridian Zealot

Obviously it's a different route than most of the previous decks in the thread with the same basic ideas. I got the base list off Deckcheck. I was told that reanimator was popular so I packed the 6 cards for it, the Gound Seals could easily change to something else in the future. Also, the Harbinger in the main should be changed to a Viridian Zealot for added utility game 1.
I played against Zoo, Imperial Painter, Enchantress, and Bant.
Concordant Crossroads is completely unfair with 8 priest effects. The deck works very well and the win conditions are very hard to beat. I was especially impressed with Bond of Agony against Enchantress. I had Mirror Entities originally but decided I liked Warcaller more because of the amount of mana I was generating and the permanence of his effect, also the option of casting him as another 1-drop elf anytime in the game was a noticable bonus.

Here's a short run down of my games:
Round 1: Zoo
G1: I keep Forest, Llanowar, Birchlore, Warcaller, Archdruid, Staff, Priest on the draw.
He opens on Nacatl into Lavamancer missing his second land drop.
I open on Llanowar into Archdruid.
He bolts my Bolts my Archdruid and Lavamancers my Llanowar.
I play 2x Birchlore and Priest.
He plays Tarmogoyf missing his 3rd land and screwed on white.
I play Fyndhorn and Warcaller kicked 3 times.
He plays Kird Ape.
I play Staff and he concedes.
G2: I keep a sketchy hand of 2x Glimpse, Staff, Llanowar, Archdruid, 2x Forest.
He kills my Archdruid and plays a Lavamancer and I can't recover fast enough.
G3: I keep Misty Rainforest, Forest, Fyndhorn, Nettle, Glimpse, Staff, Messenger on the play.
He kills my first 5 creatures but only has a 1/1 Kird Ape for pressure. Two Paths got me up to 4 mana.
He taps out to kill my Messenger and drop a Goyf while my hand is: Staff, Llanowar, Nettle, Fyndhorn, Perfect, Glimpse.
I draw Priest and play Glimpse into Nettle drawing Heritage Druid. My next 3 draws are Fyndhorn, Glimpse, Forest. I get double Glimpse going and draw into a second Nettle. He concedes before I kill him.

Round 2: Imperial Painter
G1: I mull into Misty Rainforest, Nettle, Warcaller, Archdruid, Messenger, Crossroads on the draw.
I play Crossroads first sicne he opens on Mountain and I guess I thought it was important to not have it Dazed.
He plays turn 2 Blood Moon, which is basically a time walk for me.
I eventually draw lands while he is screwed on blue with just a Painter's Servant in play.
I land a Messenger and attack with some hasty guys.
G2: I keep 2x Forest, Llanowar, 2x Birchlore, Heritage, Glimpse on the draw.
He kills all my guys after I Glimpse for a few cards. We end up in a draw go situation with him having recurring EExplosives and me with Staff and 5 mana so I'm drawing 2 a turn. I eventually get him to tap low to kill 3 of my guys while my hand is stacked.
I start going off on my turn and he doesn't have removal or a counter.

Round 3: Enchantress
G1: I keep Misty, 2x Forest, Priest, Messenger, Fyndhorn, Symbiote on the draw.
He lands Solitary Confinement before I can kill him. The list I was playing was running Elvish Harbinger over Zealot in the main so I had no outs.
G2: I keep Misty Rainforest, 2x Glimpse, Fyndhorn, Archdruid, Symbiote, Priest on the play.
I open on Fyndhorn into Priest while he has nothing relevant. Turn 3 I draw Heritage Druid and get double Glimpse going. I win with Bond of Agony.
G3: I keep 2x Forest, Nettle, Fyndhorn, Staff, Grip, Glimpse on the draw.
He plays Sprawl into Words of War, I play Fyndhorn into KGrip.
He plays Presence, I play Glimpse, Nettle, Birchlore, Fyndhorn, Priest and pass with Staff, KGrip and 2 Lands in hand hoping he doesn't have removal. He just plays Moat and Sterling Grove so I go off with Staff the next turn.

Round 4: Bant
G1: I mull into Forest, Birchlore, Heritage, Archdruid, Staff, Glimpse on the draw.
I draw a Priest and a Forest. He plays a Goyf.
I Glimpse, he Forces, so I just drop Heritage, Archdruid, and Staff since he would have played Daze any number of times before this turn.
He plays EExplosives on 1 and busts it.
I draw and play Warcaller as a 1/1 and Messenger drawing Harbinger and Nettle. I go off with Staff/Archdruid.
G2: I keep 3x Archdruid, Llanowar, Perfect, Crossroads, Forest on the draw.
He plays a land, I draw and play Nettle Sentinel to see if he wants to Daze my first play.
He plays Goyf, I draw a Forest and play Llanowar.
He plays Knight of the Reliquary. I draw Priest and play Crossroads, Priest, 3x Archdruid, Perfect. I attack with Nettle and he blocks with Knight, activates and plays Swords on Perfect. I make a dude, but his Knight is a 6/6 now so my Nettle dies as only a 5/5.
He misses a land drop and plays a second Knight and activates to have Tundra open. I draw Messenger and play it, he Stifles the trigger but doesn't have enough blockers for my army of 4/4's.

Koby
04-19-2010, 03:40 PM
Against CB : I also don't think that you tested really much, because CB is not that problematic (I mean, for a combo deck). Indeed, it is quite slow : I mean if they are lucky they get top turn 1, CB turn 2. That's fine. That let you at least 3 elves on the board. With hivemaster this will be game. CB means that they need to say open in order to counter us. That's perfect ! Because we are combo but we are also aggro. CB is not as much frightening when we play elfball than when we play ANT.


Against CB and Chalice you simply bring in Vexing Shusher (or draw it, or Pact for it, etc). While yes it requires +1 mana for each spell, but it allows you to cast all your dudes. The only thing to watch out for is an EE, Deed, or Firespout the following turn. That very situation happened to me and I lost to my own Pact payment. But it's very easy to beat an active CB.

magicplaya10
04-19-2010, 03:41 PM
Grats on the finish. How was Warcaller for you?

Why no summoner's pacts? It makes the deck go so much faster. But I guess that my version is more of a storm combo version, and yours seems super aggro. Pact just seems more versitile than Sylvan Messengers.
How was Concordant Crossroads?
Also, Zealot is great for getting out of dumb sticky situations, especially with Summoner's Pact, you can just tutor for it.


@ Rukcus, wouldn't it be easier to run Krosan Grip instead of Shusher? Grip takes care of Counterbalance + Top and Chalice and Trinisphere and Explosives, etc.

Eldariel
04-19-2010, 03:49 PM
Since it might be relevant to the thread at question, here's a quick report I already posted in an earlier thread on Elf Combo ("post-Worldwake") with a bit older list:

Small report from Magic-League Masters 28.2.2010 [1st]


Elf Combo Survival - A One-Day Brew (thrown together the night before)

// Lands
5 [U] Forest
4 [A] Taiga
4 [GP] Stomping Ground
1 [LG] Pendelhaven

// Creatures
3 [AL] Elvish Spirit Guide
2 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
2 [ON] Birchlore Rangers
1 [EVE] Regal Force
4 [A] Llanowar Elves
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
1 [10E] Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 [JU] Anger
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
3 [M10] Elvish Visionary
3 [US] Priest of Titania
1 [10E] Elvish Champion
1 [FD] Eternal Witness
1 [CFX] Progenitus
1 [DS] Viridian Zealot
2 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote

// Spells
2 [FUT] Summoner's Pact
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
3 [VI] Natural Order

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
SB: 2 [10E] Elvish Champion
SB: 1 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
SB: 1 [VI] Natural Order
SB: 1 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 4 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 1 [PT] Fire Imp
SB: 1 [MR] Viridian Shaman
SB: 1 [SHM] Vexing Shusher
SB: 2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte


My match-ups in order:

Round 1: Bye

Round 2: Ironicus with BW Pox.

G1 I get Thoughtseized for my only other creature after turn 1 ESG > Priest, blanking the Glimpse in my hand. I proceed to draw nothing of relevance, he plays Smallpox and we're done.

G2 I instead open with two creatures. He does nothing of relevance, I land Elvish Archdruid and begin the beats. He plays Tabernacle, but Druid conveniently blanks that, I drop Survival and second Druid takes it home.

G3 I again open with two creatures; he doesn't have immediate disruption. He Seizes Natural Order while I rip Archdruid, do some Elf shenanigans to drop it and swing. He has nothing relevant, I Druid some crap into play, replay a Visionary, swing and put him a turn from death. A meek Ghostly Prison is all she wrote.

2-0 (2-1 games)


Round 3: DH with ANT.

G1 he's one turn too fast for me.

G2 I begin to combo on turn 3 and run into Chant, but beat him with multiple Druids anyways. He tries to go off next turn and runs into my 3 Mindbreak Traps.

G3 he never really does much what with 3 Chants and few Rituals in hand, while I pummel him with Survival.

3-0 (4-2 games)


Round 4: Foxy with Zoo.

G1 he manages to keep me off the board with Grim Lavamancers, Paths and burn while beating with Qasali, Goyf and Nacatl. Somewhat helped by me flooding with 7 lands (half of my entire deck's lands!) in play by the end.

G2 I Glimpse for some cards, drop Elvish Archdruid around turn 3 (with some aid from two Pathed Symbiotes providing mana), upgrade into Progenitus, chump with Elves and win.

G3 is more of the same, except the Natural Order happens already on turn 3.

4-0 (6-3 games)


Round 5: meagel with ANT

G1 he wins turn 2 when I missed only Glimpse from my own turn 2 win. I look at the top card; there it is.

G2 I lay some Elves and he Duresses me, but is forced to take Glimpse to stop me from winning next turn leaving Mindbreak Trap in hand. I lay some Elves and beat, he's forced to go off but can't with Trap and I take it.

G3 he lays two Petals and land to my Pendelhaven > Dude; I've got turn 2 combo with Mindbreak Trap in hand, but he only plays Ritual > Ad Nauseam next turn and my Trap is powerless to stop him.

4-1 (7-5 games)


Round 6: Tird_Ape with UW Fish

G1 I drop few Elves, he plays Serra Avenger into Standstill which I immediately break, using Symbiote and tons of mana elves to play and replay Elvish Visionary. He plays second Standstill which I again break drawing some cards of my own, but failing to find anything but lands. I do land Priest of Titania and Elvish Archdruid giving me tons of mana, followed by Summoning Pact to get the second Symbiote, start drawing some more cards and get some lords in play to swing. His board is composed of Serra Avenger, 2 Grunts, Mutavault, Factory and Silver Knight. He tries to kill me with my own Elvish Champion's effect, but Symbiote to the rescue and my team takes G1, with help from hardcast Anger and Squee as Survival never showed up (literally went through over 30 cards there; no, no NO or Glimpse either).

G2 he keeps a 2-card hand, but Sprites my two plays after the initial Nettle Sentinel. However, Sentinel is fine on beatdown and Pendelhaven doesn't hurt either. He's stuck on two mana and I play stuff. I get some other things to resolve like Heritage Druid and Elvish Visionary, and he's finally forced to trade his Mutavault and Sprites for crap. This is his cue to draw a Mishra's. I hardcast Anger and swing him to 3, and his Tundra next turn is way too late. Totally dysfunctional game on both sides with neither really doing much, but 1-drops are better at doing nothing than 2-drops.

5-1 (9-5)


Round 7: ID

5-1-1 (9-5) going into Top 8.


Quarterfinals: Capoeira with Eva Green

G1 he Thoughtseizes me for a Glimpse, I drop Llany, he double rits into Gatekeeper+Tarmogoyf. I drop a second Elf, he swings, I drop Nettle Sentinel and it takes one for greater good, taking out Keeper. He Seizes again, taking Regal Force from my hand. At this point I'm just playing into Topdeck Natural Order or Survival with double ESG+Anger in hand and Land+Llany in play. Natural Order it is and my Progenitus takes it in two swings with Wirewood Symbiote joining in to pre-empt any future Gatekeepers.

G2 he mulligans to 6 but doesn't find Plague. He seizes me taking Glimpse over Natural Order. Then I play some mana elves (Druid/Sentinel/Llany I think) while he drops Nantuko Shade, I build up board and he Hymns trying to hit Natural Order but getting Druid and Visionary instead. Natural Order resolves and he scoops 'em up as he can't exactly gatekeeper all the Elves away and Sentinel survives a Plague, even.

6-1-1 (11-5)


Semifinals: Malakai with Countertop

G1 he Islands, I Symbiote, he plays Top, I drop Llany+Priest, he StPs Priest which jumps to my hand. Then he drops Goyf, I drop Visionary and use Symbiote to gain mana to Priest again. He Trinkets for EE, drops it at 1 and swings with Goyf. I drop Survival, get Anger into the grave before dropping Elvish Archdruid and Pacting for second Symbiote, and then playing two Visionaries twice for cards. Hit only lands tho. After that, Visionaries swing, one trades with Trinket while other hits.

Opp pops EE for 1 in resp to Top-activation to get rid of it (return Llany and Visionary to hand), plays his second Top and cheats a bit. I pay Pact, redrop Llany and Sentinel, play second Archdruid (pitching Visionary), swing and he scoops it up in face of the Elf horde.

G2 he has Top > Counterbalance against my turn 1 Sentinel/Druid into turn 2 Viridian Zealot (swung before thinking it'd be countered, it wasn't but it sat around). Moot point as opp drops second Counterbalance, flips StP on top to counter Glimpse and dies to Natural Order.

7-1-1 (13-5)


Finals: Alakai with UR Dreadstill

G1 he has turn 1 Top turn 2 Balance on the play, blind-hits my Priest and uses Top to stop my Glimpses. I Witness Priest back and resolve it, but he drops Trinket for Dread, Dread+Stifle and as my deck continues to provide me with no solution, I succumb two turns later.

G2 I have Vexing Shusher + Llany and he drops Standstill with a Mishran in play. We play draw-go for a while with my hand being relatively light on gas so I welcome this chance to restock. I get to discard my Progenitus back in the library and he ends up breaking his own Still with Bolt on my Shusher. He Trinkets for Dread and passes. On my turn, I combo off, meet no real resistance, get Survival in play and it's G3.

G3...well, sufficient to say, we trade beats (Symbiote for Factory) under Standstill as I'm building up on gas again, I break it at 6 with Druid+Sentinel, having another Sentinel, a Natural Order, a Shaman, a Survival and Druid in hand. At this point, he uses his only open mana to fetch responding to my first Sentinel. Then he disconnects and we get a very anti-climatic end to a tight series. He most likely would've forced me to return Druid to my hand, forcing me to settle for Survival for this turn; might get countered. Either way, he prolly either sweeps the board or drops Dread. Either way, I'm looking great next turn with still some mana elves and lots of lands along with NO and possible Survival online. But disconnect means I'll never find out.

8-1-1 (14-5)



Surprisingly solid finish; I was expecting to Top 8, but not win. I'll definitely want to reconsider anti-combo SB options; Null Rod came up as did Gaddock Teeg and I most certainly want few more slots for that MU as it's quite winnable (due to our clock), but still unfavorable, especially with Duresses acting as disruption too. It's also a MU where you can't really outplay the opponent meaning it just comes down to who has the better draw/deck for the match-up.

magicplaya10
04-19-2010, 04:01 PM
Congrats on your finish as well. I really like the Survival/NO build you got going. Seems interesting and obviously performs well. Grats again!

Koby
04-19-2010, 04:27 PM
@ Rukcus, wouldn't it be easier to run Krosan Grip instead of Shusher? Grip takes care of Counterbalance + Top and Chalice and Trinisphere and Explosives, etc.

Counterbalance can still counter Krosan Grip. My Elves board looks like:
2 Krosan Grip
3 Naturalize
1 Vexing Shusher (1 Main)
3 Elvish Champion
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Relix of Progenitus

drawer
04-19-2010, 04:41 PM
Grats on the finish. How was Warcaller for you?

Why no summoner's pacts? It makes the deck go so much faster. But I guess that my version is more of a storm combo version, and yours seems super aggro. Pact just seems more versitile than Sylvan Messengers.
How was Concordant Crossroads?
Also, Zealot is great for getting out of dumb sticky situations, especially with Summoner's Pact, you can just tutor for it.


Warcaller was very good. He's anti-Firespout, and he also makes your beatdown plan happen very quickly.

I'm not playing Pact mostly because they cost more than I wanted to spend on the deck, and they weren't in the original list I picked out. I think Pact is good, but sometimes Messenger is as good or better. I don't like that you basically have to win the turn you play Pact because it's fairly easy for your opponent to take advantage of the upkeep trigger since the deck is so land light. I'm also not playing Regal Force so Pact, although good, would usually just find another elf, where Messenger usually finds 2-3, and mana cost isn't much of an issue.

Crossroads was very good, it's insane with 8 Priest effects and I'm considering running a second Crossroads in the deck, not sure what I'd cut though.

Infinitium
04-19-2010, 06:37 PM
Then again Pact into Viridian Zealot is pretty much the only out to certain nasties such as CotV/Moat/whathaveyou, and playing around with a virtual 5 Messengers is a good way to fight through removal (along with Symbiote). No Visionary? I'd consider it an automatic 4-of, probably instead of Birchlore Rangers; half a mana returned per elf played is pretty horrible in comparison to everything else in the deck.

Otherwise if you want to cut things I'd start with Staff and Banefire. Staff is cute and all but 4 elves and a unsick priest effect on the table is already a winning enough board position not to clog the maindeck with untutorable artifacts; and Banefire.. well, lets just say if you can't win with some 20-odd untapped hasted 20+ power elves on the table with Zealot backup it probably wouldn't help you otherwise.

Any particular reason you play fetchlands btw? Opening yourself up to Stifle and Submerge shenanigans is just unneedlessly mucking up the tempo matchup, and those lifepoints is far more significant in the aggro mu than the minute amount of thinning it provides.

@Eldariel: Still think that list is mighty interesting, albeit slightly bloated what with 3 different engines in the same deck and all. I did some testing with Survival but swapped back pretty soon because it didn't really fit the shell/playstyle I was using otherwise, and I felt that without the kind of commitment the card generally gets otherwise all I could really use it for was for haste, mana and card advantage which is already plenty available without committing the manabase and the 6+ Survival, Squee, Anger slots. Have you made any further changes to the list? If so I'd love to see it if I may.

drawer
04-19-2010, 07:27 PM
Then again Pact into Viridian Zealot is pretty much the only out to certain nasties such as CotV/Moat/whathaveyou, and playing around with a virtual 5 Messengers is a good way to fight through removal (along with Symbiote). No Visionary? I'd consider it an automatic 4-of, probably instead of Birchlore Rangers; half a mana returned per elf played is pretty horrible in comparison to everything else in the deck.

Otherwise if you want to cut things I'd start with Staff and Banefire. Staff is cute and all but 4 elves and a unsick priest effect on the table is already a winning enough board position not to clog the maindeck with untutorable artifacts; and Banefire.. well, lets just say if you can't win with some 20-odd untapped hasted 20+ power elves on the table with Zealot backup it probably wouldn't help you otherwise.

Any particular reason you play fetchlands btw? Opening yourself up to Stifle and Submerge shenanigans is just unneedlessly mucking up the tempo matchup, and those lifepoints is far more significant in the aggro mu than the minute amount of thinning it provides.


Most of the card choices in my list came from the original list. I was surprised that there was no Visionary but I went with it and haven't felt the need to include them yet. Staff is absolutely staying in the deck, a majority of my games were won with it, it's versatile and if you cut Staff you might as well cut the Priests as well. Birchlore is the only way to cast Banefire/Bond of Agony.
Fetchlands were just in the original list, I'm not sure if they're needed, but I think in this deck more than most others the thinning aspect does become relevant because you're drawing so many cards.

4 Elves and an unsick Priest is definitely not a winning board position.

Eldariel
04-19-2010, 08:09 PM
@Eldariel: Still think that list is mighty interesting, albeit slightly bloated what with 3 different engines in the same deck and all. I did some testing with Survival but swapped back pretty soon because it didn't really fit the shell/playstyle I was using otherwise, and I felt that without the kind of commitment the card generally gets otherwise all I could really use it for was for haste, mana and card advantage which is already plenty available without committing the manabase and the 6+ Survival, Squee, Anger slots. Have you made any further changes to the list? If so I'd love to see it if I may.

The list I posted on the first page is an update, actually. This was an older tournament, I just hadn't posted the report in anything but a random thread that died long ago before now (hence the rationale of reposting it). And yeah, the rationale behind Masked Admirers over Squee was to broadly cover the same task with Survival, but to actually function as a combo piece. This cuts me down to 2 cards I don't want to draw off the top, Progenitus and Anger, both of which Survival can convert to anything I want. Mind, I'm not happy to hardcast Masked Admirers, but it's still an expensive Elvish Visionary that can beat and such as necessary; when you aren't using any engines, chance are you're playing with suboptimal cards anyways, and it's a roleplayer.

The large number of engines is actually what I like about the deck; it replaces slots that traditionally are filled with do-nothing-alone cards (e.g. Concordant Crossroads) or search (extra Pacts, Weird Harvest, Chord of Calling, etc.) with cards that perform the search/haste functions as necessary, but also double as engines of their own both capable of winning the game alone. This means that instead of just winning off Glimpse when it goes off, they can Thoughtseize your Glimpse, land Countertop, counter your Survival and still just die to your Natural Order.


Most decks fight Elves by fighting the engines as there are simply too many Elves to kill in an expeditious manner without sweepers (which tend to be Sorcery). By playing more engines, the chance of just winning with one grow constantly higher. Opponent keeps board clear but then you start grinding survival and rebuilding and he'll simply run out of gas.

Opponent wipes you, and you drop Natural Order -> Proge and win. Opponent is confident on his turn 2 win until you, on the play, rip Glimpse off the top and just kill them. Survival is, by far, the slowest engine as it takes so much mana to assemble a board that enables you to play your deck (basically, you need the ability to produce 4-5-6 mana on each play), but it is great for grinding to reach such a board, and it more importantly gives Haste without being a dead card alone (while practically all non-Mirror Entity wincons are dead alone), and enables you to play Progenitus without having such fear of drawing it. In other words, I feel it synergises so well with the rest of the deck that it's worth including. That and it often eats answers and such.

And it makes comboing off with 1 Glimpse more consistent as you can convert your first creature into an Elvish Visionary and all subsequents into Wirewood Symbiotes until you run out, thus drawing 2 cards on the first play and 3 on every subsequent one with Symbiotes untapping Elves for mana. Drawing it midway in combo definitely improves the chances of going all the way.

SpeedOfDark
04-19-2010, 09:42 PM
That's an impressive tournament result eldariel. Have you had the chance to test your newest version (on page 1 of thread) in a competitive environment as well?

I initially assumed your build would run into problems versus ANT and other fast combo decks, but it seems the mindbreak trap sb helped fight those matchups more or less on par. Out of curiosity, what do you board out when you bring in the traps?

Eldariel
04-19-2010, 10:10 PM
That's an impressive tournament result eldariel. Have you had the chance to test your newest version (on page 1 of thread) in a competitive environment as well?

I initially assumed your build would run into problems versus ANT and other fast combo decks, but it seems the mindbreak trap sb helped fight those matchups more or less on par. Out of curiosity, what do you board out when you bring in the traps?

ANT is definitely not a match-up you want to see. They're a bit faster and tend to have disruptive elements in the mix. However, game 1 racing IS possible and many of the worse builds eschew non-Ad Nauseam kills (or those aren't as fast) meaning it's enough to just drop a bunch of things on the table and swing one to put them below the critical Ad Nauseam life value. And Games 2 and 3, they tend to make their decks less consistent to deal with hate meaning you may actually be slightly faster, though their disruption/anti-disruption means you likely won't win off your first Glimpse anymore.

And yeah, Mindbreak Traps help. A friend of mine convinced me to play 4 (I initially had 3) and I'm definitely happy I did that. Was also thinking of some other hate like Teeg to fetch with Summoner's Pact/Survival, but that felt subpar. As for siding out? Progenitus is the first card to go, Squee the second. Survival, being the slowest of the engines, gets a copy cut too; I don't remember the 4th cut, it may have been a Natural Order (as you don't really care for multiples), a Viridian Zealot or a land.


I tried to avoid cutting too many guys to maintain consistency of the combo so I'm inclined to believe I cut a land (especially since Natural Order is a key means to start off the combo when lacking Glimpse), but I can't say with 100% certainty; I had tested the list very little before the tournament and kinda came up with sideboarding on the fly so I'm merely piecing things together here.

And yeah, I frankly should've had some additional ANT hate since it turned out to be so popular; I kinda underestimated its presence, but I almost ended up playing against it again the Top 8 (Countertop took tight G3 with few lucky hits, got paired against me and yeah). While it's not a horrible match-up like for most aggro-decks, it's still not good by any stretch of imagination either. I went through the list:
Null Rod
Chalice (at 0; you only need a turn or two so Chalice at 0 should buy the time you need, though diluting your deck with too many hatecards can be bad)
Gaddock Teeg (problem being, he just isn't very problematic for them as hatebears are the most common thing they bring SB answers in for)
Ethersworn Canonist (except, y'know, it kills you too)

But that's only for extremely heavy ANT presence; I'm satisfied with a 45/55 match-up if I only expect to face it once as that gives me decent chance to pull it out and I can likely Top 8 even if I lose it. The principal issue in the match-up, of course, is that's it's fundamentally a combo match-up; there's very little interaction and it's very hard to outplay your opponent beyond psyches there.

It really comes down to players' builds, openers and technical competence in the match-up so it's really hard to impact the outcome of the match beyond just playing tight, which means you'd really want some more help there if possible.

SpeedOfDark
04-19-2010, 10:35 PM
yeah, I think the next best choice after trap would probably be chalice at 0, just to make sure you annoy them as fast as you possibly can. But like you said, 4 traps is probably sufficient if you're not expecting an over average prescence from the deck. One thing that's interesting is that most of the other builds in this thread can't board chalice because they rely more on pact than your deck does.

PS: you've convinced me experiment more with survival-glimpse. And also -- not that anyone is actually reading that fat post -- I moved survival of the fittest as a card choice from "unconvential cards" to "tutor cards" ;p

magicplaya10
04-20-2010, 01:12 AM
What about Thorn of Amethyst? That seems like it could be pretty good post board.

I really still like the non-Survival version, because I don't own Survivals =P
But I will proxy em up and try.

SpeedOfDark
04-20-2010, 02:19 AM
I just like winning with the storm mechanic. It could be Grapeshot or Brainfreeze or even Tendrils. It just seems harder to disrupt. And, in case they do disrupt it, you have a hoard of Elves ready to turn sideways. In the end, I just enjoy playing a bunch of guys and then killing them with storm. But thats just me.
You know what's way more exciting than a storm kill? This (http://marktedin.com/FullMagicJpegs/a35_EmrakulIAeonsTorn.jpg). ^^

:DDDDDDDDDDDD

Eldariel
04-20-2010, 02:47 AM
What about Thorn of Amethyst? That seems like it could be pretty good post board.

Thorn and Chalice are both decent (Thorn particularly with 3 ESGs), but carry the issue of only ever working well in one match-up. Null Rod was the option that intrigued me the most simply because it has lots of other uses too, from troublesome equipment to even some strange Countertop-versions (shutting off Top is good so if they play couple of other artifacts, it can actually be worth including).

And no, I haven't gotten to play a big tournament with the edited version; I might not either, since I have a bunch of other decks on the backburner so I'll have to end up picking this over Faerie Stompy, UGr Thrash, Zoo & Goblins for that to happen. That and I still have some difficulty finding big tournaments to play in. Overall, I simply haven't had the chance to iron out the numbers and figure the actual worth of each slot I'd like. That said, I definitely prefer it over the other version simply due to the brutality that is NO > Proge, and the fact that Survival is just much more elegant a means to gain Haste than Crossroads.

As you might notice in my report, a lot of tough MUs were won simply by NOing my last Elf into Proge and swinging twice while topdecking some dorks to chump. While Sylvan Messenger might have helped in those scenarios, it might simply not have been enough. E.g. overcoming a Lavamancer + Burn with Sylvan is far from a guarantee. Same with just racing a Goyf; Proge has no trouble, but Sylvan into couple of Elves may or may not be enough.

Infinitium
04-20-2010, 11:27 AM
As you might notice in my report, a lot of tough MUs were won simply by NOing my last Elf into Proge and swinging twice while topdecking some dorks to chump. While Sylvan Messenger might have helped in those scenarios, it might simply not have been enough. E.g. overcoming a Lavamancer + Burn with Sylvan is far from a guarantee. Same with just racing a Goyf; Proge has no trouble, but Sylvan into couple of Elves may or may not be enough.

Then again competent Zoo players will burn anything remotely mana producing on sight which makes getting 4 mana and a dork versus an active mancer a pretty sketchy proposal sometimes, and it's another 4-5 cards that doesn't promote the Glimpse plan a lot outside of Regal Force (another so-so topdeck). From my (MWS, granted) experience if you can actually get enough mana in play versus Zoo and still be out of burn range (ie outlast their removal) you're in pretty good shape anyway since they typically cannot keep up with your CA engines from there on.

Eldariel
04-20-2010, 04:35 PM
Then again competent Zoo players will burn anything remotely mana producing on sight which makes getting 4 mana and a dork versus an active mancer a pretty sketchy proposal sometimes, and it's another 4-5 cards that doesn't promote the Glimpse plan a lot outside of Regal Force (another so-so topdeck). From my (MWS, granted) experience if you can actually get enough mana in play versus Zoo and still be out of burn range (ie outlast their removal) you're in pretty good shape anyway since they typically cannot keep up with your CA engines from there on.

With Zoo's use of Path to Exile, I actually found getting enough mana in play quite easy. Indeed, you need 5 to go Dude -> NO, but between Pact -> ESG, ESGs themselves, lands and PtEs + your draw, I surprisingly enough found that quite doable.

magicplaya10
04-21-2010, 01:38 AM
Personally, it really isn't hard to hit a four mana threshold. My list doesn't even play Natural Order, and yet I can reach four mana. Plus, if they are aiming their burn at your little mana producers, they aren't aiming it at you or saving it for your big elves (ie Archdruid)

When you suggest that Chalice is a good sideboard card, I have come to conclude that it really isn't. When you play it for 0, it does slow down the opposing combo player. It turns your pacts off. You virtually can't play it for 1 or 2 unless you really want to lose. And setting Chalice for 1 or 2 really puts the nail on the coffin for combo.

I know it is kind of counter-productive, but I think I am going to test Thorn AND Mindbreak Trap in a 3/2 split. The reasoning is that we have mana producing elves and many ways to get mana (ie the entire deck.) that paying 1 or even 2 to Mindbreak trap my opponent wont be too hard.

here is my sideboard I am testing...

3 Krosan Grip
3 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Mindbreak Trap
3 Imerious Perfect
2 Relic of Prog
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Mirror Entity

Krosan Grip- Amazing. Simply Amazing. Most decks you board this in against runs counterbalance/top or other pesky enchantments(ie Enchantress.dec) Also Chalice and spheres.

Thorn + Mindbreak Trap- Against Combo, which seems to be our worst match-up. This should slow them down enough to race.

Ravenous Trap- Ichorid. If Reanimator becomes big, may become Faerie Macabre. The one-of randomly blows out Ichorid.

Relic Of Prog- Ichorid. Was thinking of Leyline of the Void, because it is my favorite, but it is hard to cast.

Mirror Entity- If you suspect your opponent is bringing in storm hate, such as Mindbreak Trap, etc. This guy in the board could be a damper on that plan. Was thinking of turning it into Viridian Shaman. Shaman + Wirewood Symbiote is devastating against MWStax or MUD, etc. Till then, Boarding in Entity would be kind of good. Also can change your role from the combo to the straight beatdown...

Imperious Perfect- Against Control, I don't like to keep the combo in. I like to bring in Perfects and run the beats. It is hard for them to beat one or two Lords plus a bunch of elves. Not to mention Lord on turn 2 is hard to stop. If Perfect is the turn 2 Lord, you start pumping out 2/2's and eventually overrun your opponent.

unicoerner
04-21-2010, 11:48 AM
Emrakul is a very n1 wincondition and his shuffling effect is great aswell and being a creture makes him work better with survival aswell.
I think Symbiote should be a 4 of, because of their abiltiy to bounce Visionary and safe creatures in combat.

Imo survival is a good backup plan, but i am not sure how good Admirers and Anger are.

I still make a lot of mistakes while setting up the combo. Do you have any tips and good tricks which aren`t obvious?

I ran today in Perish and Plague. These 2 cards are really hard to beat.

Yesterday i liked the deck a lot and today i get beat left and right.

Infinitium
04-21-2010, 01:17 PM
You beat Perish the same way you beat everything else that tries to react to you: find a card advantage engine, overextend the board and then outlast the shit out of the opponent. Board sweepers as a whole aren't too bad as long as you have enough lands in play to drop a few elves right back on it the next turn. Don't be afraid to use up early glimpses to overextend early and forcing the opponent to blow up the board (compare it to how competent dredge players work they way around crypt; you just play smartly into it and then proceed to trounce the opponent afterwards).

As for Emrakul.. I can see it beating Lands.dec or Enchantress with active locks if they don't pack Karakas/Oblivion Ring, but then again Gilt-Leaf Archdruid does that as well whilst simultaneously being castable outside of the combo turn. Maybe if your meta is ripe with Painter/Solidarity it could warrant the spot, but otherwise it's overkill.

magicplaya10
04-21-2010, 05:03 PM
Emerakul seems unneeded. It almost seems like overkill. True, I do like killing with storm. But the storm mechanic is also uncounterable and wins the game when it resolves. it is also dead when in your hand.

THOUGH, it would be funny to see someone hardcast Emerakul, turn it sideways, and win. Ha, Take that Natural Order and Sneak Attack!

The deck is still running consistantly for me. I still enjoy playing the deck.
Keep it up guys!

SpeedOfDark
04-21-2010, 05:55 PM
Emerakul seems unneeded. It almost seems like overkill. True, I do like killing with storm. But the storm mechanic is also uncounterable and wins the game when it resolves. it is also dead when in your hand.

In practice, emrakul ends the game the exact same way storm does, because he is also uncounterable and the opponent does not get an untap step before you kill him (which is the only significance of having a card kill the opponent when it resolves). The difference is that if your deck has titania or archdruid, it will happen once in a while that you can hardcast emrakul without glimpse (for example: 1 archdruid, 2 quirions, 2 any elves). Whereas it will essentially never happen to cast a reasonable storm card without glimpse. In 80 goldfish with storm, it never happened once that I could cast storm for an acceptable amount of damage without comboing off, while in 50 goldfish it happened 3-4 times that I could hardcast emrakul around turn 3-4 without combo.

I think in any deck like this running archdruid or titania, emrakul is not only a good alternative, but is actually better overall.

magicplaya10
04-22-2010, 01:11 AM
@SpeedOfDark, sorry I thought Emrakul was one of the other ones. Ya this guy seems NUTS. I would run him over storm. The only thing that I can see Grapshot having over this guy is shooting opposing creatures. But then again, this guy just ANNIHILATES them. Plus casting a 15 CC creature is dumb. Sorry about that. I will definetly test and play this guy. Thanks for pointing that out Speed, I guess reading is tech, and I am dumb. =P


Onto some other notes. The deck seems to have a solid goldfish around turn 3 and 4. I have goldfished it on turn 2 before. A few times actually. The things that really draws me to this deck is its ability to play around/through disruption. I have actually played through PTE, STP, EE, Ghostly Prison, Counterbalance/Top etc. This deck can do it all. I plan on bringing more testing and will probably be playing it at tournaments. Keep up the good work guys!

unicoerner
04-22-2010, 05:22 AM
Probably most of us are running the Survival engine right now. And some of us are even splashing the NO"s in. I just play SotF, becasue i don't want 3-4 more non elves in there, but they could be worth it.

Do you have any tips on comboing with survival or using it.

I really think that this is the hardest deck to play i ever had in hands.

My List is pretty much Eldariels list, without NO and added Elves (1 Symbiote, 1 Qurion, and 2 more)

alphastorm
04-23-2010, 01:28 AM
I don't think I am understanding the mirror entity combo? Isn't joraga Warcaller better? If you can produce large amounts of mana than all your creatures will get pumped the same way.

One card I have used in the past and works really well against control players is Biorhythm. If they have no creatures, it's an auto win and if they have a few, you can swing in for the win.

Also, this might sound crazy but I put 3x pact of negation in my sideboard. I use them to defend against countermagic right before I go off.

Eldariel
04-23-2010, 02:45 AM
I don't think I am understanding the mirror entity combo? Isn't joraga Warcaller better? If you can produce large amounts of mana than all your creatures will get pumped the same way.

Activate Mirror Entity for one, tap Symbiote, Sentinel and Heritage Druid for GGG, replay Symbiote, activate Entity for one, rince and repeat (it enters play as a new object each time so by returning it to hand, you sidestep the normal issue of once/turn). Each loop nets 1 mana. It's also doable with Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid and even Birchlore + 3 Sentinels. As examples. Then you make an arbitrarily large team and swing.

The key thing this abuses is Mirror Entity turning all your creatures to Elves. This also enables reusing Eternal Witness and Regal Force as desired, though those are fringe uses.


One card I have used in the past and works really well against control players is Biorhythm. If they have no creatures, it's an auto win and if they have a few, you can swing in for the win.

I find it's better to just resolve Natural Order, Survival or Glimpse. All of those tend to win all the same and unlike Bio, they don't really require anything in play to win (being cheap enough to rawdog).


Also, this might sound crazy but I put 3x pact of negation in my sideboard. I use them to defend against countermagic right before I go off.

You can do that, but honestly, that's just diluting your own gameplan. Why not instead just play 3 more engine cards? How does Pact improve any match-ups you have? It doesn't stop Counterbalance which is the only remotely worthwhile effect I can think of. No, I don't think Pact belongs on the SB here; one of the strengths of the deck is that you don't need Pacts to beat control and indeed, you aren't all-in on any plan; if you can't get any engine to stick, you still have an extremely efficient beatdown plan.


@Emrakul: Screams win-more to me. We might as well play some cheaper "I win"-card if we feel like it. I still don't like Storm as it feels plain unreliable; if wanting a dedicated win-card, Mirror Entity looks best still (Birchlore ensures you can play it even mono) as it's so good outside the combo unlike just about every other win condition. Emrakul can be cast occasionally, but in those games, Mirror Entity would just allow you to swing for 50 anyways (or close enough). Meh. I guess it does trump Glacial Chasm, but c'mon now... If you have Mirror Entity, you can actually take "infinite" turns with Emrakul ('til you deck), though if that isn't too cute, I don't know what is.

@Perish: Play from your hand, not the board *shrug* It's a sorcery and thus pretty bad against us. No reason to go all-in when something less will do, etc. It deals with Proge but that's only troublesome for lists playing Proge and all that means is you prolly want to combo off with Regal Force instead.

Eldariel
04-23-2010, 02:45 AM
I don't think I am understanding the mirror entity combo? Isn't joraga Warcaller better? If you can produce large amounts of mana than all your creatures will get pumped the same way.

Activate Mirror Entity for one, tap Symbiote, Sentinel and Heritage Druid for GGG, replay Symbiote, activate Entity for one, rince and repeat (it enters play as a new object each time so by returning it to hand, you sidestep the normal issue of once/turn). Each loop nets 1 mana. It's also doable with Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid and even Birchlore + 3 Sentinels. As examples. Then you make an arbitrarily large team and swing.

The key thing this abuses is Mirror Entity turning all your creatures to Elves. This also enables reusing Eternal Witness and Regal Force as desired, though those are fringe uses.


One card I have used in the past and works really well against control players is Biorhythm. If they have no creatures, it's an auto win and if they have a few, you can swing in for the win.

I find it's better to just resolve Natural Order, Survival or Glimpse. All of those tend to win all the same and unlike Bio, they don't really require anything in play to win (being cheap enough to rawdog).


Also, this might sound crazy but I put 3x pact of negation in my sideboard. I use them to defend against countermagic right before I go off.

You can do that, but honestly, that's just diluting your own gameplan. Why not instead just play 3 more engine cards? How does Pact improve any match-ups you have? It doesn't stop Counterbalance which is the only remotely worthwhile effect I can think of. No, I don't think Pact belongs on the SB here; one of the strengths of the deck is that you don't need Pacts to beat control and indeed, you aren't all-in on any plan; if you can't get any engine to stick, you still have an extremely efficient beatdown plan.


@Emrakul: Screams win-more to me. We might as well play some cheaper "I win"-card if we feel like it. I still don't like Storm as it feels plain unreliable; if wanting a dedicated win-card, Mirror Entity looks best still (Birchlore ensures you can play it even mono) as it's so good outside the combo unlike just about every other win condition. Emrakul can be cast occasionally, but in those games, Mirror Entity would just allow you to swing for 50 anyways (or close enough). Meh. I guess it does trump Glacial Chasm, but c'mon now... If you have Mirror Entity, you can actually take "infinite" turns with Emrakul ('til you deck), though if that isn't too cute, I don't know what is.

@Perish: Play from your hand, not the board *shrug* It's a sorcery and thus pretty bad against us. No reason to go all-in when something less will do, etc. It deals with Proge but that's only troublesome for lists playing Proge and all that means is you prolly want to combo off with Regal Force instead.

SpeedOfDark
04-23-2010, 05:20 AM
@Emrakul: Screams win-more to me. We might as well play some cheaper "I win"-card if we feel like it. I still don't like Storm as it feels plain unreliable; if wanting a dedicated win-card, Mirror Entity looks best still (Birchlore ensures you can play it even mono) as it's so good outside the combo unlike just about every other win condition. Emrakul can be cast occasionally, but in those games, Mirror Entity would just allow you to swing for 50 anyways (or close enough). Meh. I guess it does trump Glacial Chasm, but c'mon now... If you have Mirror Entity, you can actually take "infinite" turns with Emrakul ('til you deck), though if that isn't too cute, I don't know what is.


We might as well play some cheaper "I win"-card if we feel like it.
If there is a cheaper "I win" card that wins on the same turn it is cast and cannot be countered, please name it.


Emrakul can be cast occasionally, but in those games, Mirror Entity would just allow you to swing for 50 anyways (or close enough).
If you do NOT combo off:
Emrakul
requires: 15 mana (usually from 1 titania/archdruid, 1 quirion/symbiote +4-5 elves or 1 titania/archdruid, 2 quirion/symbiote + 2 elves)
effect: wins the same turn he is casted.
ways the opponent can mess you up: practically inexistant

Mirror entity
requires: birchlore (or non-basic lands), symbiote, and some acceptable heritage setup.
effect: wins the game the next turn.
ways the opponent can mess you up: counter entity, kill symbiote in response to playing entity, sweeper before you can attack, etc.

On the other hand, if you do combo off, the only way mirror entity is as fast as emrakul is with the help a second card, namely concordant crossroads. And needless to say, crossroads by itself is useless most of the time. So the problem of "an empty card" is essentially replaced by adding an okayish one (mirror entity) and adding another empty card (crossroads). Suppose that you don't play crossroads and are content with winning the next turn, in this case you don't even need entity... You have 30-40 elves in play, so you win next turn with or without the changeling.

---

Now don't get me wrong, I think entity is amazing with chord of calling or survival, and I would also be reluctant of playing a storm card or emrakul in these builds. However, for the reasons listed above, entity is not a great kill card for the more traditional builds that use grapeshot and don't use chord/survival. And in these circumstances, IF you play archdruid or titania, emrakul will be better than grapeshot or any other storm kill most of the time.

Overall, the survival/chord builds are more resilient to hate and better suited for longer games, while the more traditional builds have a faster goldfish but are more "glass-cannony." I think both approaches have merit, and would sideboard differently, but in the current (aggro-controlish) meta survival/chord builds will probably preform better.

Magicjake
04-23-2010, 06:46 AM
Hej

I play this deck some weeks..

Its not "Combo" elves.. But stabil aggro elves with Emrakul as the Winner. Usually i win with lord effects:

4 bloodraid Elf
1 rofelos
1 Elvish Champion
3 Elvish Archdruid
4 Fyndhorn Elf
4 Llanowar Elf
2 Quirion Ranger
3 Priest of Titania
1 Emrakul
2 Summoning Trap
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Symbiot
1 Anger
1 Squee
4 wooded foothill
3 Windswept
4 Taiga
3 Savannah
2 Gaia´s Cradle
4 forest


SB:

1 iona
1 loyal retainer
3 Absolute Law
3 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Gaddock Taeg
2 Faeri Maccabre
2 Summoning trap

there are hours of fun in this deck.. Nice beaters, and great combo mana bursts into Emrakul og Messenger chain with Survival...

The only thing better than Emrakul, is Emrakul with haste..:-)

Infinitium
04-23-2010, 06:48 AM
If there is a cheaper "I win" card that wins on the same turn it is cast and cannot be countered, please name it.

Nice strawman. In any case it is irrelevant since any remotely competent opponent holding countermagic will target your engines rather than the win condition. The point both Eldariel and I have been making is that you don't need further "I win" cards since snowballing off Glimpse means you've won already, and diluting your deck with such extremely narrow cards simply isn't beneficial. Just stick with Entity if you don't run Archdruid/Priest and a haste enabler (SoF + Anger, Concordant Crossroads) if you do.


If you do NOT combo off:
Emrakul
requires: 15 mana (usually from 1 titania/archdruid, 1 quirion/symbiote +4-5 elves or 1 titania/archdruid, 2 quirion/symbiote + 2 elves)
effect: wins the same turn he is casted.
ways the opponent can mess you up: practically inexistant

You're assuming the best possible scenario which in this case is a pretty much winning board position already. If you want a mana sink just go with Mirror Entity/Joraga Warcaller since again, they don't cost 15. fucking. mana. to actually do something beneficial.


Mirror entity
requires: birchlore (or non-basic lands), symbiote, and some acceptable heritage setup.
effect: wins the game the next turn.
ways the opponent can mess you up: counter entity, kill symbiote in response to playing entity, sweeper before you can attack, etc.

Whereas the opponent obviously wouldn't use that very same removal to kill your mana producers/symbiotes, thus making it impossible for you you to cast Emrakul? For the record Mirror Entity usually wins the game on the spot even without haste enablers since all of your preexisting creatures will be arbitrarily large.


On the other hand, if you do combo off, the only way mirror entity is as fast as emrakul is with the help a second card, namely concordant crossroads. And needless to say, crossroads by itself is useless most of the time. So the problem of "an empty card" is essentially replaced by adding an okayish one (mirror entity) and adding another empty card (crossroads). Suppose that you don't play crossroads and are content with winning the next turn, in this case you don't even need entity... You have 30-40 elves in play, so you win next turn with or without the changeling.

Not only doesn't Mirror Entity need a haste enabler to win (you conveniently forgot SotF + Anger btw), I also despise the notion that Crossroads is a useless card. Even in the worst case scenario, having every creature you play come with haste goes a long way in ensuring inevitability along with your card advantage engines (see: Goblins), and it's yet another way to circumvent removal targeting priest/archdruid.


ow don't get me wrong, I think entity is amazing with chord of calling or survival, and I would also be reluctant of playing a storm card or emrakul in these builds. However, for the reasons listed above, entity is not a great kill card for the more traditional builds that use grapeshot and don't use chord/survival. And in these circumstances, IF you play archdruid or titania, emrakul will be better than grapeshot or any other storm kill most of the time.

The problem here is that "being better than Grapeshot" is roughly as relevant as being better than Wood Elemental. Extended decks run it because it's the best option available to them. We can do far better than that.

alphastorm
04-24-2010, 12:18 AM
I find it's better to just resolve Natural Order, Survival or Glimpse. All of those tend to win all the same and unlike Bio, they don't really require anything in play to win (being cheap enough to rawdog).




The difference is that resolving a Bio is an instant win while the others give your opponent a chance to react.

Eldariel
04-24-2010, 12:26 AM
The difference is that resolving a Bio is an instant win while the others give your opponent a chance to react.

If their board is empty. And fact remains that it's still an 8 mana spell and thus requires a sizable board to win with already. I feel it's under the powerlevel we should be looking for in here.

alphastorm
04-24-2010, 12:38 AM
Ok then what do you sideboard against control decks? I feel 8 mana is very manageble in an elf deck. I play priest of titania and the archdruid along with cradle.

magicplaya10
04-24-2010, 04:25 AM
I run Emrakul because it is fun. That's all. And He does win the game randomly. =P

As for the big debate on the Win Condition, it really doesn't matter. Once you start to Glimpe Off, and amass a board full of elves that are big, who cares how you kill them? I like Emrakul because its funny. Not the best, but funny. And You can't really counterbalance Emrakul.

They all have their ups and downs. I don't run Survival of the Fittest + Anger, or Concordant Crossroads(juss dont wanna get them right now. I know Crossroads isn't very much either), I run good ole Pact still. I like to think that my version is faster, though probably not.

The list is still solid either way.

What do you guys play in the sideboard? Any new inovations?

Infinitium
04-24-2010, 04:48 AM
Krosan Grip to deal with assorted answers from their board (if you predict it, otherwise don't side at all), siding out Summoner's Pact and possibly a few Llanowar Elves/Heritage Druids. I consider most control decks a good matchup since they typically don't contain a clock and we run far more threats than they do answers. The fact that we draw more cards than them once any engine is on the board is pretty disconcerning for them as well. They will bring any mass removal they've got as well as hold counters for Glimpse meaning that it could be hard to assemble the resources to combo proper, but they will still have trouble answering the combo, the beatdown and the card advantage all at once so the elven advantage beatdown fallback plan should still work here. Just focus on bringing down their life total asap so that they'll have trouble stabilizing should they stall you long enough.

Decks that stabilize through Glacial Chasm can be dealt with by a singleton Gilt-Leaf Archdruid, and a singleton Reverent Silence can both wreck Enchantress confinement/moat plan as well as remvoving lands pesky enchantments.

Typical plans:

Landstill: +4 Krosan Grip, -2 Summoner's Pact -2 Heritage Druid (the aggro plan is key here, so eschewing 3+ dmg to overextend is bad)

Enchantress: +2 Gaea's Herald +1 Reverent Silence -3 Joraga Waracaller (they can't interact whatsoever with our combo and is way slower. Herald is for CotV should they side it; you might want a few extra Grips for that as well but why interact with their gameplan when you can just overrun?)

Lands/Eternal Garden: +1 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid +1 Reverent Silence +2 Gaea's Herald +2 Krosan Grip +2 Relic of Progenitus -4 Joraga Warcaller -4 Heritage Druid (Again they can't really interact with the combo outside of CotV, so bring in a few hatecards for that and go to town. Sub Reverent Silence for another Grip if playing Garden).

The Rock: Side nothing unless you predict Engineered Plaue, in which case bring in +Krosan Grip -Heritage Druid.

Survival: Tricky. +4 Grip +3 Needles +2 Relic -2 Summoner's Pact -4 Heritage Druid -1 Quirion Ranger -1 Llanowar Elves -1 Sylvan Messenger.

Stax: +4 Krosan Grip +2 Gaea's Herald -2 Summoner's Pact -1 Sylvan Messenger -1 Joraga Warcaller -2 Heritage Druid (You don't want to cut mana producers, but at the same time you don't want to overextend in case of WoG and Warcaller is boss versus Trinisphere if you have mana available)

Chaff: +4 Krosan Grip -4 Heritage Druid

Chaff with Counters: +4 Krosan Grip -2 Heritage Druid -2 Summoner's Pact

SpeedOfDark
04-24-2010, 11:47 AM
@infinitium:
After reconsiering, I concede to your mirror entity kill card thesis.

I still think entity+crossroads is a bad idea, but I conclude that entity alone is superior to entity+crossroads, emrakul, grapeshot, etc. The thing is, "winning right now" is important, but only relevantly so against combo. And since combo will almost never have any blockers, 1 or 2 arbitrarily large elves will end the game (as you pointed out). You could still hypothetically lose to a bant deck with enough chumpers and a prog if you have <11 life, but thats too far fetched to be considered. Emrakul is a tiny bit safer than mirror entity as a kill card, but entity more than compensates for it with its superior out-of-combo utility, making it the overall better choice. Plus, there are many decent nonbasic white sources that can be used in your mana base, such as horizon canopy.

On an unrelated matter, whats a "strawman"? I'm not familiar with this expression. I'm guessing it loosely translates to "poor argument" or something. If that's the case, it doesn't apply here. When I said "If there is a cheaper "I win" card that wins on the same turn it is cast and cannot be countered, please name it.", I wasn't using the popular rhetorical/sacastic argueing style of this website, it was an honest request. If there is a similar and almost-strictly better card that exists that I'm not aware of, I would like to know.



@everyone:
Since the only popular decklist I have in the OP is a fairly old one, I thought I would add a modernized version of it (that is, a modernized non-survival elves combo list, I will try to add one that uses survival later). The idea is not to create a perfectly optimized list, but rather a cookie-cutter draft list that contains all the essentials and can be modified for a specific player/meta/etc. This is the list I came up with:

***COMBO ELVES by SpeedofDark***
Note: this is not my personal decklist, but rather my modern interpretation of the above [smmenen's] list with NO/prog added.

---1cc creatures (28)
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore ranger
4 Quirion Ranger
4 wirewood symbiote
4 fyndhorn elves
4 llanowar elves

---2-3cc creatures (4)
4 elvish visionary
1 mirror entity

---Fatties (2)
1 regal force
1 progenitus

---Spells (12)
3 summoner's pact
4 natural order
4 glimpse of nature

---Mana Base (15)
15 forests

---Sideboard (15)
*4 graveyard hate
*4-8 countertop/chalice hate
*0-4 combo hate
*0-4 aggro hate

graveyard hate: relic of progenitus, tormod's crypt, leyline of the void, faerie macabre
countertop/chalice hate: krosan grip, viridian shaman, vexing shusher
combo hate: mindbreak trap, thorn of amethyst
aggro hate: elf lords, umezawa's jitte

---

let me know what you think of this list :)

PS: btw, if any of you know of other combo elves lists using glimpse that have ranked acceptably in decently sized legacy events, plz don't hesitate to post lists/links.

alphastorm
04-24-2010, 12:37 PM
I run Emrakul because it is fun. That's all. And He does win the game randomly. =P

As for the big debate on the Win Condition, it really doesn't matter. Once you start to Glimpe Off, and amass a board full of elves that are big, who cares how you kill them? I like Emrakul because its funny. Not the best, but funny. And You can't really counterbalance Emrakul.

They all have their ups and downs. I don't run Survival of the Fittest + Anger, or Concordant Crossroads(juss dont wanna get them right now. I know Crossroads isn't very much either), I run good ole Pact still. I like to think that my version is faster, though probably not.

The list is still solid either way.

What do you guys play in the sideboard? Any new inovations?

The win condition does matter. Wouldn't you want to win this turn instead of waiting to win next turn? Survival + anger? That just seems silly when all you need is concordant crossroads. Survival should be played in a different deck. It's too slow in combo elves.

Infinitium
04-24-2010, 12:41 PM
On an unrelated matter, whats a "strawman"? I'm not familiar with this expression. I'm guessing it loosely translates to "poor argument" or something. If that's the case, it doesn't apply here. When I said "If there is a cheaper "I win" card that wins on the same turn it is cast and cannot be countered, please name it.", I wasn't using the popular rhetorical/sacastic argueing style of this website, it was an honest request. If there is a similar and almost-strictly better card that exists that I'm not aware of, I would like to know.

It means that you create an argument for the other party of a debate in order to refute it. In this case what i was arguing that there is no need for a dedicated kill card whereas you aluded that I couldn't name one batter than the big E. It's not deragatory, just considered poor rhethorics by most.

As for the list I guess it looks ok? I still maintain that PoT/Archdruid are generally a better mana engine than Heritage Druid/Sentinel but it's more of a personal preference than anything. 3 Summoner's Pact looks a bit excessive as you'll have trouble paying the upkeep without big mana producers, and they tend to clog your hand real quick-like. Might want to swap one for the MD Viridian Zealot (or Gaea's Herald if you find Zealot too mana intensive).

As for the sideboard, it should always start with 4 Krosan Grip. The only decks you actually need to side against is those that bring an excessive number of hate cards postiside (ie board control) and linear strategies faster than our own (ie combo/graveyard based decks).

SpeedOfDark
04-25-2010, 10:25 AM
whereas you aluded that I couldn't name one batter than the big E.

Thanks for the definition ;)

What I ment in my last post is that I wasn't trying to alude anything (even though it might seem like it), and I don't use this style of argueing in general. When I asked if he could name one, it was as an aside unrelated to the main argument, in response to his "We might as well play some cheaper "I win"-card if we feel like it." And if this is the case (I don't know, I'm new-ish at magic), I would like to know about these cards (whether or not they are better than entity or relevant to this deck in any way). Although admitedly, its half impossible to tell when someone is being sarcastic or serious on the internet ;p



3 Summoner's Pact looks a bit excessive as you'll have trouble paying the upkeep without big mana producers, and they tend to clog your hand real quick-like.

Well I have found them to be invaluable when comboing off, by using it as a wild card to fill whatever creature gap you're missing (usually heritage). And I think with 3 its fairly unlikely you will get more than 1 in your hand in most games, to be more specific: chances of having 2-3 in your hand in the first 7 cards = 3%; chances of having 2-3 in the top 1/4 of your deck = 15%. But I haven't really tested with NO, so I couldn't say for sure.



Might want to swap one for the MD Viridian Zealot (or Gaea's Herald if you find Zealot too mana intensive).

Yeah, 1 card slot for countertop/chalice protection MD is probably a good call. What do you think of viridian shaman versus viridian zealot? If you use them for their intended use, shaman costs 1 less, leaves a 2/2 behind, and can be bounced if necessary. But if you don't need the effect (or are comboing off), zealot will be more helpful. Not to mention zealot has a few extra uses: oblivion ring, counterbalance, moat, enchantress shenanigans, etc.



As for the sideboard, it should always start with 4 Krosan Grip. The only decks you actually need to side against is those that bring an excessive number of hate cards postiside (ie board control) and linear strategies faster than our own (ie combo/graveyard based decks)

How does combo elves fare against aggro/control, like merfolk for example?

slylie
04-25-2010, 10:41 AM
I built the deck for fun last week when the thread came up, I had most of the cards for extended. Was playtesting vs. my friends Merfolk deck and you should have seen the look on his face when I built up my mana and cast Emrakul.. he was sitting on force of will and stifle thinking he had me... was funny.


maybe you had to be there.

magicplaya10
04-25-2010, 02:58 PM
The win condition does matter. Wouldn't you want to win this turn instead of waiting to win next turn? Survival + anger? That just seems silly when all you need is concordant crossroads. Survival should be played in a different deck. It's too slow in combo elves.

Emrakul does win the turn you cast it. It can't be countered and has protection from colors. Not to mention you take another turn after you cast it. So you untap AND your elves have haste. =P It's just fun to me.

And I agree on the Survival thing. That's why I run pact. It is faster, although you do lose the game if you can't win/pay the upkeep. The thing that draws people to survival is that it can tutor for any creature in your deck.

The reason I don't like it is...
You can run Anger and turn all your elves hasty, but you have to run non-basics and such.

Survival cost 2 to cast, 1 to activate. Not that much, but on turn two when you only have access to three mana all you do is tutor and say go. Not to mention, your first target will probably be Anger, and then it is in your hand for another turn. Whereas in non-survival versions you can drop more elves. maybe even push through the combo. I think I would also like to cast Archdruid or Priest on this turn.

I think it is more playstyle, though. Cuz I can see the reasons why you would run Survival. It makes bad hands better. A lot better. You can have lands, random elves, and Survival and push through your combo.

SO I think it is a playstyle type of thing.

Eldariel
04-25-2010, 03:07 PM
The win condition does matter. Wouldn't you want to win this turn instead of waiting to win next turn? Survival + anger? That just seems silly when all you need is concordant crossroads. Survival should be played in a different deck. It's too slow in combo elves.

Survival also ensures consistency in going off, can combo off without Glimpse itself, acts as a super-tutor to compile all the cards you need and can grind games out when you can't combo off. It's not just Haste, that's just one of the dozen beneficial abilities it provides. Combo Elves should aim to win against real opponents, not just goldfish ASAP. Concordant Crossroads is cheaper to gain Haste with, yes, but does so much less on all other points that I can't see why you'd ever play it over Survival.

Random, quite common scenario for you losing: You're a bit land-heavy and opp killed some of your Elves dealing with Glimpse in the process (discard, counters or even just stymi'ing your combo attempt); you're topdecking creatures and instead find Crossroads. Sucks to be you, I guess. Opp killed some of your Elves, you find Survival and start recurring Admirers and gets you an extra card each turn. Or maybe you need second Nettle Sentinel for sustained ability to combo off and find Crossroads midcombo instead; Survival would just get you Nettle. Or maybe your opener lacks Heritage Druids or Nettle Sentinels.


Survival's individual abilities aren't all that powerful, but being a threat in and of itself while also acting as a combo assembler, win condition and insurance for consistent combo along with answer to whatever hate your opponent manages makes it strong as a whole. And no, Belcher isn't better than ANT; speed isn't better than consistency.


Ok then what do you sideboard against control decks? I feel 8 mana is very manageble in an elf deck. I play priest of titania and the archdruid along with cradle.

You don't need any new win conditions, that's for sure. If you feel the match-up is somehow problematic, account for what makes it difficult; deal with the EE, the Counterbalance, the Chalice, the Humility. If they have none of such, just combo off after they've extended their protection keeping them under enough pressure to prevent them from resolving Fact-type effects; should be pretty damn easy a win as you are under no real threat in such MUs; no matter what they do, you'll win eventually and they're too slow to assemble an impregnable wall of counters.

frenchy-man
04-25-2010, 03:26 PM
just won another local tournament. Went 4-0 against life, ichorid, WUG control, and S&T/deck.

Grollub
04-25-2010, 03:31 PM
@Eldariel: How's the Pacts been treating you? Reading over your report it looks like they might be better off as Survival and Natural Order #4.

Eldariel
04-25-2010, 03:45 PM
@Eldariel: How's the Pacts been treating you? Reading over your report it looks like they might be better off as Survival and Natural Order #4.

I like the extra free Druids/Sentinels. That said, I could definitely get behind the argument that they might just be better off as other spells. That said, Natural Order costs a creature and Survival isn't in itself a creature so too many of those may give the deck some consistency issues when comboing off. Pact was definitely the worst card when I wasn't able to combo (which was quite often; most good Legacy-decks have the ability to prevent you from comboing off easily), but to combo it's quite important.


just won another local tournament. Went 4-0 against life, ichorid, WUG control, and S&T/deck.

What list were you running? Any changes? Anything you'd consider changing? What manner of deck was the WUG, and how much disruption did the S&T one have? Did you have any trouble actually comboing off in any MU?

Infinitium
04-26-2010, 08:35 AM
Survival also ensures consistency in going off, can combo off without Glimpse itself, acts as a super-tutor to compile all the cards you need and can grind games out when you can't combo off. It's not just Haste, that's just one of the dozen beneficial abilities it provides. Combo Elves should aim to win against real opponents, not just goldfish ASAP. Concordant Crossroads is cheaper to gain Haste with, yes, but does so much less on all other points that I can't see why you'd ever play it over Survival.

A few reasons in no particular order:

Crossroads doesn't force you to splash Taigas/Stomping Grounds, which is actually kind of huge what with wasteland being ubiquitous and Anger requiring them to function properly. It makes Gaea's Cradle slightly less viable which is just sadpanda overall.

Crossroads requires G as opposed to 1GGG and in order to provide haste, which is sometimes relevant midcombo and often relevant in order to quickly enable the big mana producers against spot removal against removal (eg turn 1 llanowar elves turn two Crossroads - Titania - Archdruid - regurgigate hand).

Crossroads requires 2-3 dedicated spots in the deck as opposed to the 6+ required by Survival. This adds up if you want to include other non-elf engines, especially as you never actually want to draw the second survival unless the opponent removed the first one.

Certain matchups requires you to put constant pressure on the opponent, eg against Zoo you want to force them to continously burn your mana producers to keep them from playing beaters. The tempo boost and additional creature count from Crossroads is more important here as we already have inevitability in the mid-late game against them.

The tutoring power of Survival is somewhat diluted in a deck as redundant as elves (containing naught but draw and mana producers with few silver bullets available), and the squee engine is more of an added perk in a deck that already runs Glimpse, Sylvan Messenger and Visionary with Symbiote shenanigans.

It's easier to hate on survival since it relies on the graveyard and nonbasics in order to function and constitutes a much larger tempo and card (as in spots in the deck) investment overall.

My general impression is that whilst Survival certainly is a strong card and very much playable in elf variants it's not required for the deck to function, and I'm reluctant to jump through the additional hoops to enable it as opposed to just go with the best option available in-color. For the record, a 1-mana card that makes all your creatures (all 32+ of them) better by an order of magnitude isn't exactly what I'd consider a bad topdeck either.

frenchy-man
04-26-2010, 10:33 AM
I was running the same list I already posted. My sideboard was something like 3 NO 1 proge, whiwh I never played, 3 gleeful sabotage (which gave me the win against S&T), two wheel of the sun and of the moon, 2 lords like, one magus of the moon, one dauntless escort, one chord of calling, one caller of the claw.

I would not change anything, excepted -1 viridian shaman md for +1 magus of the moon in some metagames.
The WUG played mass and spots removals (wrath, path etc) and some counters. It played some things like kitchen, mystic snake etc.
The S&T.deck played 4 fow, 4 daze, 4 spell pierce and 4 spell snare. I killed him very quickly for the first game. He "show and tell"ed a form of the dragon at the second game. Same thing for the last one with fow in backup, but gleeful sabotage >>> fow and just won the game.

magicplaya10
04-26-2010, 03:10 PM
I was running the same list I already posted. My sideboard was something like 3 NO 1 proge, whiwh I never played, 3 gleeful sabotage (which gave me the win against S&T), two wheel of the sun and of the moon, 2 lords like, one magus of the moon, one dauntless escort, one chord of calling, one caller of the claw.

I would not change anything, excepted -1 viridian shaman md for +1 magus of the moon in some metagames.
The WUG played mass and spots removals (wrath, path etc) and some counters. It played some things like kitchen, mystic snake etc.
The S&T.deck played 4 fow, 4 daze, 4 spell pierce and 4 spell snare. I killed him very quickly for the first game. He "show and tell"ed a form of the dragon at the second game. Same thing for the last one with fow in backup, but gleeful sabotage >>> fow and just won the game.

Great list. Choke in the sideboard, didn't even think about that one. Grats on the finish.

I had a suggestion about the combo match up....
Why not bring in Essence Warden?

It is unlikely that combo will go off on turn 1 or 2..so you drop Essence Warden on Turn 1, and play afew elves turn 2 and then more on 3, it makes them have to push more spells and make more mana to tendrils you out. Again it was athought I had last night before bed, so it also seems terrible. I might test it.

Eldariel
04-26-2010, 03:58 PM
A few reasons in no particular order:

Crossroads doesn't force you to splash Taigas/Stomping Grounds, which is actually kind of huge what with wasteland being ubiquitous and Anger requiring them to function properly. It makes Gaea's Cradle slightly less viable which is just sadpanda overall.

Crossroads requires G as opposed to 1GGG and in order to provide haste, which is sometimes relevant midcombo and often relevant in order to quickly enable the big mana producers against spot removal against removal (eg turn 1 llanowar elves turn two Crossroads - Titania - Archdruid - regurgigate hand).

Crossroads requires 2-3 dedicated spots in the deck as opposed to the 6+ required by Survival. This adds up if you want to include other non-elf engines, especially as you never actually want to draw the second survival unless the opponent removed the first one.

Certain matchups requires you to put constant pressure on the opponent, eg against Zoo you want to force them to continously burn your mana producers to keep them from playing beaters. The tempo boost and additional creature count from Crossroads is more important here as we already have inevitability in the mid-late game against them.

The tutoring power of Survival is somewhat diluted in a deck as redundant as elves (containing naught but draw and mana producers with few silver bullets available), and the squee engine is more of an added perk in a deck that already runs Glimpse, Sylvan Messenger and Visionary with Symbiote shenanigans.

It's easier to hate on survival since it relies on the graveyard and nonbasics in order to function and constitutes a much larger tempo and card (as in spots in the deck) investment overall.

My general impression is that whilst Survival certainly is a strong card and very much playable in elf variants it's not required for the deck to function, and I'm reluctant to jump through the additional hoops to enable it as opposed to just go with the best option available in-color. For the record, a 1-mana card that makes all your creatures (all 32+ of them) better by an order of magnitude isn't exactly what I'd consider a bad topdeck either.

Well, it's dead in the sense that it's not a threat nor an answer. That is, if opponent is trading 1-for-1 with you and winning, it's something they can just let resolve with a shrug and keep hitting your other cards, while Survival requires them to deal with it too or you'll pull ahead fast. It's true that Waste is bothersome, but at the same time, the deck is quite capable of functioning off the mana elves and Wasteland means you got mana out of that land while they didn't, putting them behind in a strange way. Everyone who has Wasted after opponent has cast Noble Hierarch knows what I'm talking about; the position just sucks for you and yet you don't want to wait or your Waste will lose its meaning.

Other than that, I'd actually just want to find an answer other than Crossroads if staying mono-green specifically for the 1-for-1 trade scenario. The graveyard hate isn't really relevant since so small part of your plan is based on the graveyard so if they spend resources attacking it, it's generally in your advantage. And I play Masked Admirers specifically to avoid the dead card from Survival; it's still an expensive Visionary without Survival. Not strong by any stretch of imagination, but it still acts as a roleplayer when grinding for a win, and that's all that counts - winning. And the recursion engine is a key specifically when opponent is attacking your engine; having redundant engines is all good, but many decks pack lots of counter-effects that can stop the engines and in such MUs, getting any engine through needs to take you all the way, which is where the Survival-engine shines.

And the tutoring power...well, the deck generally still wants a specific combination of Elves for optimum results, and particularly "T: Lots Of G" and Nettle Sentinel (depending on exact build) tend to be at a premium, and occasionally Regal Force or Wirewood Symbiote is just what you need, and that's where Survival shines; putting all those cards together. Oh, and getting you Visionaries when you need extra cards.

But yeah, I can see where Crossroads can be amazing; I've just had poor experiences myself against decks focusing on keeping you off your combo.


Great list. Choke in the sideboard, didn't even think about that one. Grats on the finish.

I had a suggestion about the combo match up....
Why not bring in Essence Warden?

It is unlikely that combo will go off on turn 1 or 2..so you drop Essence Warden on Turn 1, and play afew elves turn 2 and then more on 3, it makes them have to push more spells and make more mana to tendrils you out. Again it was athought I had last night before bed, so it also seems terrible. I might test it.

If they resolve Ad Nauseam, it won't be even hard for them to cast enough spells to Tendrils you out. Honestly, starting from 40 could help a bit. But that's it. Anything less than that isn't gonna 'cause them to fizzle in a statistically relevant number of matches.

Few rules of the thumb:
1) Sideboard space is precious. Don't spend it where not needed. In a format as open as Legacy, you almost need a slot for each MATCH-UP you want to prepare for.
2) Sideboarding should improve your deck. It's not just a matter of seeing what card could be useful in a match-up, it's a matter of thinking which card in my maindeck is worse in this MU than a given sideboard card.
3) Most of your games are played sideboarded (at least one each match, often two). As such, the payoffs for focusing on sideboarded matches and sideboarding are great compared to just practicing the mainboard games.


Essence Warden fails #1 hard and #2 somewhat. As such, I don't think it should really be a consideration. Unfortunately Storm-combo is hard enough that it does require a notable amounts of dedicated cards (equally annoyingly, cards good against Storm are rarely good against other decks) to give us a fighting chance, and Elf Combo doesn't really want to dilute its own gameplan if possible, but our MD gameplan is just strategically slightly weaker in the match-up; we go off on average a bit more slowly and lack MD interaction effects.

So, we want as many hate-cards as we can afford without giving up our ability to combo off reliably, and ones that do attack them in a way that doesn't simply get negated by their sideboard. I've found Mindbreak Trap and Chalice to be somewhat effective. Null Rod is something that hates them while also working in various other match-ups against equally obnoxious cards. Something to think about.

magicplaya10
04-27-2010, 12:40 AM
Thanks for that explanation about Essence Warden. I do understand the the merits of the sideboard. lol.
So what draws you to Chalice? doesn't it kind of wreck you too? I do like Mindbreak Trap though. it has been good.

Eldariel
04-27-2010, 02:43 AM
Thanks for that explanation about Essence Warden. I do understand the the merits of the sideboard. lol.
So what draws you to Chalice? doesn't it kind of wreck you too? I do like Mindbreak Trap though. it has been good.

Mostly that it's a 0-drop so you can play it when it still matters and it does tend to slow them down by a turn or two. Yeah, the Pact-synergies are annoying, but meh. Spending your turn 2 dropping hate instead of developing your gameplan is a recipe for disaster as that play gives them precisely as much time as it takes away from them in my experience; it takes exactly one turn for them to tutor for bounce, bounce it and go off so all you buy is one extra landdrop, which frankly isn't much in a ~15-land deck. It's not that I like Chalice but that I don't find the alternatives all that useful.

unicoerner
04-27-2010, 12:55 PM
This is my current list

// Lands
15 [IN] Forest (1)

// Creatures
1 [LE] Wirewood Hivemaster
1 [IN] Elvish Champion
4 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
1 [EVE] Regal Force
2 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
1 [DS] Viridian Zealot
4 [ALA] Elvish Visionary
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
3 [AT] Llanowar Elves
3 [IA] Fyndhorn Elves
1 [CFX] Progenitus
1 [FNM] Quirion Ranger
3 [ON] Birchlore Rangers
1 [LRW] Mirror Entity
1 [AP] Sylvan Messenger

// Spells
3 [FUT] Summoner's Pact
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [VI] Natural Order

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 3 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 3 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [MR] Chalice of the Void

I am not that happy with the Ranger, but he sometimes can do a cute trick, perhaps he should be another Messanger/Pact/Elf

I played some time with SotF and yes SotF is good mid and Late game. It`s hard to combo off with Survival, becasue it`s soo mana intensive.
Perhaps i lack the skill for survvival, becasue imo it<`s very hard to go off with it.

By cutting Survival, we can go back to just basics, which leaves our opponent with a lot of dead cards (Wastes and answers to Artefacts and Enchantments).
We can add up to 5 elves, which is a huge upside.
NO was amazing to me.

Having said that...
If we run survival we could/should add a Stingscrougher in our side or even main.

I am quite unhappy with my combo MU and another MU i played today is just plain bad, unfortunatley i don`t know his name.
It runs Trinis, Chalice and big red dudes. A first round chalice even on the draw just wrecks us. I even managed to combo through a 3sphere... but then lost g3 again vs chalice @1

Eldariel
04-27-2010, 03:45 PM
I am quite unhappy with my combo MU and another MU i played today is just plain bad, unfortunatley i don`t know his name.
It runs Trinis, Chalice and big red dudes. A first round chalice even on the draw just wrecks us. I even managed to combo through a 3sphere... but then lost g3 again vs chalice @1

That's Dragon Stompy. But it's not bad, in the end. All you need is Viridian Shaman/Viridian Zealot/Vexing Shusher to play through Chalice and blow up Trini. Also, Natural Order is game vs. them. Basically, you need a mana elf in play to win; after that, all they do is pretty inconsequential as you blow up/play through chalices, drop NO and win. Also, their deck is very inconsistent, which does help us (and everyone) out quite a bit. But yeah, as long as you blow up their Chalice or they don't have it, the match-up is mostly a cakewalk.

alphastorm
04-30-2010, 10:45 AM
Activate Mirror Entity for one, tap Symbiote, Sentinel and Heritage Druid for GGG, replay Symbiote, activate Entity for one, rince and repeat (it enters play as a new object each time so by returning it to hand, you sidestep the normal issue of once/turn). Each loop nets 1 mana. It's also doable with Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid and even Birchlore + 3 Sentinels. As examples. Then you make an arbitrarily large team and swing.

4 combo pieces? I feel that is too much. It could easily get disrupted. It can't win that same turn unless you have anger or concordant crossroads which will add more pieces to the combo. I'd rather just go for natural order combo.

Eldariel
04-30-2010, 11:24 AM
4 combo pieces? I feel that is too much. It could easily get disrupted. It can't win that same turn unless you have anger or concordant crossroads which will add more pieces to the combo. I'd rather just go for natural order combo.

2 combo pieces, a bunch of Elves. Also, you get to swing FTW with any of the Elves you started in play with even without Haste, as you can make them arbitrarily large. The biggest advantages of this wincon are that Mirror Entity is a fine card on its own outside combo, and that it can go infinite making some otherwise problematic MUs cakewalks.

alphastorm
04-30-2010, 11:57 AM
yes but not just any elves. You need to have those 3 specific elves in play otherwise your combo is dead. Also, you need yet another elf(Birchlore Rangers) or land to get you white mana for mirror entity. With all the removal in legacy, I very much doubt I can keep them on board for that long. I rather just grapeshot them on turn two or three and if that fails then I attack with whatever is left.

All I am saying is that a combo requiring Mirror Entity, Symbiote, Sentinel, Birchlore Rangers and Heritage Druid is too complicated, requires a good draw and requires all of them to stay in play just doesn't make it seem viable.

Have you considered staff of domination? All you need is a druid or priest and a few elves(doesn't matter which ones) and you can combo off for a kill same turn.

Anusien
04-30-2010, 12:24 PM
To grapeshot them for the win you also need red mana (instead of white), and good luck comboing them off without Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel.

The thing I found interesting about Mirror Entity is sometimes you try to go off and get stopped, but you have 4 random mana elves, Mirror Entity, and Cradle. That's probably a kill, but if you're playing Grapeshot, that's not.

Eldariel
04-30-2010, 04:58 PM
To grapeshot them for the win you also need red mana (instead of white), and good luck comboing them off without Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel.

The thing I found interesting about Mirror Entity is sometimes you try to go off and get stopped, but you have 4 random mana elves, Mirror Entity, and Cradle. That's probably a kill, but if you're playing Grapeshot, that's not.

Overall, the deck wins a lot with beatdown. If you just play Mirror Entity with Nettledruid in play or even just rawdog it with couple of lands, you're looking at an army of 4/4+s. And it's even better in the builds with Priests of Titania or Archdruids; any of those with Mirror Entity is an "Oops, I win"

And if you do play Priests/Druids, Mirror Entity can combo off with those too. Generally, you use it as a kill thus meaning you'll draw naturally into the combo pieces, but even when you don't, there's a bunch of ways to go infinite with it and if you happen to have Survival, it'll be crazy easy.

Forbiddian
05-01-2010, 02:12 AM
If you already have Heritage/Nettle Druid, then you should be able to win. I mean, that's the basic combo. With a symbiote that combos almost as well with a half-dozen other elves.

I don't see why you'd really need that combo, since you can probably win through other routes, but it's worth pointing out that the combo parts can help find each other. Like if you get Heritage/Nettle, you can probably draw into specific other Elves without too much trouble.


This is a little different. Probably not as good as the stuff that's been posted, but budget and 14 lands. I've found it's pretty consistent and with two MD Zealots it can survive a lot of random hate.

// Lands
14 [ALA] Forest (1)

// Creatures
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [EVG] Sylvan Messenger
4 [ALA] Elvish Visionary
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [IA] Fyndhorn Elves
4 [B] Llanowar Elves
3 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
4 [EVG] Wirewood Symbiote
2 [DS] Viridian Zealot

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
1 [LG] Concordant Crossroads

You're not going for a combo kill as much, but recurring Visionaries/Sylvan Messengers with Wirewood Symbiotes will also get you there. It also runs 8 Lords, so the beatdown plan is actually a legitimate backup plan, so you really have three different options.

Eldariel
05-01-2010, 12:06 PM
If you already have Heritage/Nettle Druid, then you should be able to win. I mean, that's the basic combo. With a symbiote that combos almost as well with a half-dozen other elves.

Without a source of draw, the combo is just a mana engine. When all your Glimpses are in the bottom 10, but you draw Mirror Entity, it'll win anyways. As for your list, if you want a beatdown version, you need 4 Elvish Champions. Forestwalk is the tool that bypasses blockers like Lord of Atlantis does for Merfolk and that's the key to making tribal aggro a threat; Joraga Warcaller is nowhere near the same level until you cast it for at least 7 mana and can run over Goyfs (or have multiples at 1 and 2 multikickers).

Also, Joraga dies to Counterbalance, which is a problem since the beatdown plan is the primary MD out to Counterbalance and works specifically because you can play the Lord-game without 1-2 drops. So, I'd probably leave one Joraga for combo win and replace the rest with Elvish Champions if building a list like that. I'd also use 4th Champ over Elvish Archdruid.


Just about every creature deck in the format plays Forests and the few that don't generally don't have big enough creatures for that to be a problem so Champs tend to work quite perfectly.

Koby
05-02-2010, 12:15 AM
@ Eldariel:

I've been playing your list, but I can't seem to get the use of a few cards:
1. Regal Force - this seems like win-more in almost all occasions I've played. With Survival out, you win. With Glimpse, you go ballistic. With Regal Force, I can't fathom how you would get spare 7 mana to go off.

2. Viridian Zealot - most of the ways to stop Elves are artifacts (Chalice, Canonist, Trinisphere, etc). Wouldn't Viridian Shaman be better maindeck? What benefit does Zealot give over Shaman?

My list runs:
-1 Viridian Zealot
-3 NO
-1 Proggy

+2 Priest of Titania
+1 Wirewood Symbiote
+1 Viridian Shaman
+1 Birchlore Rangers

Which probably hurts my backup-plan, but I have more experience with Glimpse combo, and having Survival be the backup seems much more natural for me than NO. This is definitely a preference call for me, so YMMV.

Eldariel
05-02-2010, 04:55 AM
@ruckus: How often have you tried to go off when you just NO for ~5 cards? In those cases, I find Regal Force to be a great option; when all you need is Glimpse and few Elves to win. Especially in combo mirrors and when your setup put you turn from death against whatever and you don't have the time to pass the turn; or if opp has a sweeper and you get a clean shot to going off or so.

As for Zealot, well, isn't it obvious? Counterbalance. That card is pretty good against us, but if they rawdog CB, chances of being able to Zealot it are actually relatively good (their Top can't put a 2 on top so it's often like 1/4 chances of them having the 2 without manipulation). Also, some other annoyances like Moat, Solitary Confinement, etc. The existence of Zealot+Witness guarantees that e.g. Enchantress won't randomly do you hard.

Augustas
05-02-2010, 01:42 PM
Well, I kinda want to return to Magic, and I'm looking forward to build this deck. Natural Order obviously costs too much for me, so I've been trying this decklist of my own on MWS.

12 Forest

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
3 Birchlore Rangers
3 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Joraga Warcaller
1 Eternal Witness
1 Regal Force

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Grapeshot
1 Weird Harvest

Elvish Spirit guide gives a free spell, mostly Glimpse, and can make a win on turn 2 easily. Anyway, i still seem to fail on the combo plan quite often. So I nned you guys to help me to improve THIS decklsit, not the other ones. There must be some minor card changes in quantinity or something. I don't know, perhaps because of my lack of knowlage of the legacy format, because I'm playing it exactly one month bwhaha. Thanks!

magicplaya10
05-04-2010, 02:06 AM
How is Jorga Warcaller for you guys?

For me it seems win more, though it might be the style of the deck I play. I run Emrakul as well, so if I were to go off, I will win the next turn anyways.

And can someone explain how Mirror Entity works again? It is confusing to me.

Thanks.

unicoerner
05-04-2010, 02:43 AM
Entity was described in the thread before!

Koby
05-04-2010, 05:46 AM
Joruga Warcaller is nice in the Survival build in that he allows you to just attack FTW whereas Archdruid + Champion aren't enough at times. I like him as a singleton, along with the aforementioned cards.

KBH
05-06-2010, 01:59 AM
If you're playing online, I highly recommend not relying on the Mirror Entity kill. Just the amount of clicking alone is a deterrent..your games will take forever

Infinitium
05-06-2010, 07:36 AM
Just demonstrate the loop once and state that it goes arbitrary. Also most sensible opponents tend to fold once it's apparent you aren't fizzling anyway. Joraga Warcaller >>> Elvish Champion btw; the 1cc is very much relevant in a deck in which all cards on the table are indirect mana accelerants (thanks to cradle and priest effects) and helps tremendously in comboing out, and it's effectively another combo piece with enouh mana on the table. Being able to actually block Zoo creatures is also much better than forestwalk since you tend to be the control player anyway, and it's way better in the mirror (especially with the priest synergy; the mirror is all about priest of titania).

alphastorm
05-06-2010, 11:01 AM
No one said Joraga Warcaller isn't better but he falls to counter balance, EE and chalice. We play elvish champion to avoid being hosed.

KBH
05-06-2010, 01:37 PM
Just demonstrate the loop once and state that it goes arbitrary. Also most sensible opponents tend to fold once it's apparent you aren't fizzling anyway. Joraga Warcaller >>> Elvish Champion btw; the 1cc is very much relevant in a deck in which all cards on the table are indirect mana accelerants (thanks to cradle and priest effects) and helps tremendously in comboing out, and it's effectively another combo piece with enouh mana on the table. Being able to actually block Zoo creatures is also much better than forestwalk since you tend to be the control player anyway, and it's way better in the mirror (especially with the priest synergy; the mirror is all about priest of titania).

I haven't had much luck convincing people to concede when its clearly going to take 10 minutes for me to go off

Koby
05-06-2010, 02:18 PM
I haven't had much luck convincing people to concede when its clearly going to take 10 minutes for me to go off

This is precisely why running Joruga War-caller is better. He's an awesome mana sink that lets you win RIGHT NOW with attackers rather than click ad infinitum until your finger falls off. I run the Survival build, so I have access to Anger to be able to attack same turn.

The biggest challenge is to assemble a repeatable 4 mana engine to abuse Masked Admirers + Survival (which is freakin awesome when I discovered how it works!). I've found that it's better to go for Nettle Sentinel + Heritage Druid until you get about 5 elves out, then grab Priest of Titania and Wirewood Symbiotes to get to the large mana phase of the combo.

What are some other ways to get into the 2nd phase of the combo?

KBH
05-06-2010, 03:17 PM
This is precisely why running Joruga War-caller is better. He's an awesome mana sink that lets you win RIGHT NOW with attackers rather than click ad infinitum until your finger falls off. I run the Survival build, so I have access to Anger to be able to attack same turn.

The biggest challenge is to assemble a repeatable 4 mana engine to abuse Masked Admirers + Survival (which is freakin awesome when I discovered how it works!). I've found that it's better to go for Nettle Sentinel + Heritage Druid until you get about 5 elves out, then grab Priest of Titania and Wirewood Symbiotes to get to the large mana phase of the combo.

What are some other ways to get into the 2nd phase of the combo?

Yes, I totally agree with you

I timed out with triple glimpse going and tons of insects because I couldn't find my only Crossroads in time

arebennian
05-06-2010, 10:03 PM
The biggest challenge is to assemble a repeatable 4 mana engine to abuse Masked Admirers + Survival (which is freakin awesome when I discovered how it works!).

Am I missing something here?
Or is it just the fact you discard Admirers and search for something with CMC1, play it, grab Admirers back, discard it and repeat the process?

Eldariel
05-07-2010, 12:00 AM
Am I missing something here?
Or is it just the fact you discard Admirers and search for something with CMC1, play it, grab Admirers back, discard it and repeat the process?

You're missing nothing. Having Admirers in your 60 means that you can play every Elf in your deck with only Survival in play, given the ability to produce 4+ mana per Elf (which you will of course, also, achieve with Survival). The idea of playing Sentinels and then starting to drop Priests/Druids and tapping them for tons works very well.

Augustas
05-08-2010, 03:07 PM
duuuudes

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/tp/117.jpg

what do you think?

frenchy-man
05-08-2010, 03:12 PM
I'll play the deck tomorrow at side event of gp Lyon. Same list as I already posted, excepted -1 pact MD + 1 magus of the moon MD. I hope not to face too many ANT... but as many zoo and CB.deck as I can !

Eldariel
05-08-2010, 03:32 PM
duuuudes

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/tp/117.jpg

what do you think?

It used to be good when he affected himself. Now? Not so much. Not being able to target your own guys with untap abilities sucks, Wirewood Symbiote offers better protection, your anti-removal creature being killable makes it sorta worthless, etc.

danyul
05-13-2010, 07:31 AM
Yesterday I brought this to a tourney for the first time and went 3-2 and just tonight went undefeated (kinda) to win a local tourney. My list was a budget version (similar to frenchy-man's list) with no new tricks so I won't bother posting it unless somebody asks but I'll give a quick rundown of the matchups just for posterity.

Slivers - 2-1
I got a terrible draw that first game and lost to Muscle Slivers and whatever. Leyline of Lifeforce and the deck doing what it was meant to do allowed me to easily win the next two. I don't think Slivers can keep up if the elves are doing their jobs.

ANT variant - 2-0
I was just faster than he was. I haven't played against ANT much before so I dont know if the pilot was inexperienced or if the deck just isn't that fast.

Enchantress- 2-1
I just overran him first game with dudes and enough mana to pay my way through Elephant Grass. My Glimpses just gave me a bunch of forests the second game and he got a lock out, although I was one (1!) mana away from a lethal Bond of Agony (SB tech) before he finished me off. Game three went as planned.

Reanimator - 0-2
Iona on green on turn two. Blazing Archon followed the next turn. What could I do? The next game was a repeat.

Reanimator (again!) - 1-2
Game one went Iona, Blazing Archon, Elf tears. The next game he had to mull to five and that was enough for me to win. I actually won with Bond of Agony the turn after he dropped an Archon while I had lethal damage on the board. Funny stuff. Game three I saw a Tormod's Crypt in my opening hand and got a bit too excited. I went Forest, Llanowar, Crypt, go. He showed me a Daze and I felt like a fat loser. Then he dropped Iona on his second turn. I think I remember him having a FoW anyway so I can't feel too bad about that one. Still, lesson learned.

So I went 3-2 and ended the day with a burning hatred for Reanimator, a deck I'll never be able to build unless this silly elf deck can win me some store credit.

After this tourney I felt pretty good about the deck but realized that I needed more graveyard hate than three Tormod's Crypt. I would have been running Relic of Progenitus and Faerie Macabre if I had owned any, but I had sold off all my cards awhile back and I've been a bit slow to reassemble my collection. Anyhow, a few minutes before tonight's tourney I snagged four Faeries and I was good to go.

The second tourney was four rounds and I got a bye to start. I was kinda pissed because I had left work early and rushed through traffic to make it on time but oh well. Life happens.

5c NO Bant - 1-1 Draw
The first game he dropped a Progenitus on me and I couldn't race it. That game took five minutes. The second game I dropped about a dozen elves (with no lord effects) and then my Glimpses fizzled as I drew six forests in a row. He had two Qasali Pridemages and an Umezawa's Jitte. I had to do some tricky stuff with Wirewood Symbiote to keep him from stacking counters on the Jitte but I was able to overrun him the turn after he dropped and swung with a Progenitus, putting me at 1. That game left us with four minutes on the clock. I maybe spent a little too much time shuffling out of fear of drawing six forests in a row again, but neither one of us was doing much to end that third game before the five turn rule kicked in.

Tendrils - 2-0
I guess Glimpse combo is just faster than Tendrils/ANT because I beat him pretty easily without having to do too much. Maybe he hit some bad draws. Who knows?

Dredge - 2-0
He was running the Non-LED version and I kind of half went off on turn two. I had about eight elves on the board and a lord effect and his lone imp couldn't do too much. In the second game I boarded in my sexy new Faerie Macabres but never needed them as I comboed out and dropped an Emrakul on turn three.

I took first and left with enough store credit to grab three Pithing Needles and some boosters. The Summoner's Pacts, Elvish Archdruids, and Mirror Entity are all in the mail. Soon I'll be running the full, sexy version of the deck.

The deck is extremely consistent and very fun to play in a tournament setting. People get a kick out of seeing the absurd things the deck can do and I have yet to tire of seeing all those little green men poop out an Emrakul. I hope development can continue on this archetype, with the versions running Survival and those without both earning equal favor.

MMogg
05-13-2010, 08:29 AM
Tendrils - 2-0
I guess Glimpse combo is just faster than Tendrils/ANT because I beat him pretty easily without having to do too much. Maybe he hit some bad draws. Who knows?

You've piqued my interest . . . exactly how many turns did ANT get without going off? Usually, against aggro decks (that is, without worrying about being disrupted), an aggressive ANT player (i.e., mulligan aggressively and go off without Duress/Chant/other protection) can easily go off consistently by turn 2 or 3. Sometimes 4, but in my brief experience, that's rare (again, if undisrupted). However, if you attack strongly and get their life total down to 10 or thereabouts, Ad Nauseam is not going to be the path to victory and they'll probably need Ill-Gotten Gains, which isn't as easy to win with as AdN.

Just look at the second quote in my signature to see how it's supposed to happen. :laugh:

danyul
05-13-2010, 02:43 PM
I believe in game one I had like 9 power on the board by turn two and he just scooped to that. In game two I dropped Emrakul on turn three. I remember him using a Duress on me once but I had only creature spells in my hand. Now that I think about it, playing first might have made a bit of a difference in game one.

MMogg
05-13-2010, 04:55 PM
I believe in game one I had like 9 power on the board by turn two and he just scooped to that. In game two I dropped Emrakul on turn three. I remember him using a Duress on me once but I had only creature spells in my hand. Now that I think about it, playing first might have made a bit of a difference in game one.

But having creatures on the board and attacking are two different things. By looking at the list, it seems like your first substantial attack is turn three, which should give ANT enough time/life to make a consistent Ad Nauseam kill. But like you said, yes, going first means ANT has only two turns before you attack. Still, if they maindeck IGG, they should be able to pull out a victory. Anyway, congrats on beating them. Not many non-blue aggro decks can. :smile:

KBH
05-14-2010, 12:11 AM
Yeah, in my experience vs ANT you are just a turn too slow most of the time

Infinitium
05-14-2010, 07:45 AM
Not to mention Orim's Chant essentially might timewalk you even if you're in a position to race. Ugh, horrible matchup.

MMogg
05-14-2010, 08:49 AM
Not to mention Orim's Chant essentially might timewalk you even if you're in a position to race. Ugh, horrible matchup.

Yes and no. First of all, that assumes they're even playing Chants main deck. What's more, that would mean that they usually have to use their fetchland to fetch for a Tundra (it would be a huge mistake to use a Lotus Petal), which is usually a bad move because normally you want access to black mana for your ritual effects. Also, that assumes they draw a Chant. It would be a mistake to Mystical for a Chant in this match uo. So, what I'm getting at is you're right that Chant is a possibility, but it's a pretty low probability all things considered.

1maarten1
05-18-2010, 01:49 PM
I have always liked Elfball, and before i stopped playing it I ran a list that contained 3 NO + Prog, which worked great for me. But now that I see some lists running Emrakul... Coolness :D! I guess there are some choices to make: I dropped storm kills pretty soon when I played the deck since I found Mirror entity/NO-Prog a better kill.

Mirror entity or something else as a kill?

Emrakul or NO-Prog?

Someone can give me a nice list to test with? I'll start testing with the list from the opening post.

I agree on the part where if you want to play the Entity kill, Priest becomes worse. But with Emrakul it might be worth it.

on this moment I think the NO-prog combo is better then Emrakul since it doesnt require you to go off, and you can have it as soon as turn 2. But my testing will show what i like best :)

1maarten1
05-23-2010, 02:32 PM
Ok heres what im testing:

// lands 15
14 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle

// spells 12
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner's Pact
3 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation

// creatures 33
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Netlle Sentinel
4 Birchlore Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Quirrion Ranger
3 Wirewood Hivemaster
1 Regal Force
1 Mirror Entity
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

I dont have a solid SB yet. Seems fun to me, Cradle + Crop for mana excel to enable you to cast a big chord along with Hivemaster for Emrakul, or pump all your units huge with Entity etc...

Thoughts? Im not sure if Emrakul is the way to go yet, but it seems to be an awfull lot of fun to me. I'll try to do some testing with the list asap.

~Maarten

Infinitium
05-23-2010, 03:57 PM
Don't play crop rotation if you only have 1 cradle to tutor for it, it has fringe benefits if you play multiple cradles to circumvent the legend rule but it's still fairly underwhelming all things considered.

danyul
05-23-2010, 04:48 PM
I would drop Gaea's Cradle altogether. There are too many times where you draw your initial seven and see only one land. If that one land is the Cradle then you're screwed. I don't like to run that risk when the deck can create tons of mana with the creatures alone. But to each his own.

I've dropped Emrakul in favor of Banefire. Both typically win you the game when you cast them but Banefire seems like a better topdeck and is still useful when you aren't able to generate a ton of mana. Also, your maindeck has no outs to random stuff like an Ensnaring Bridge or Blazing Archon or even Iona. However, Emrakul draws alot more attention from other tables when you drop him. For me it's a decision between fun versus function and I went with function. Actually, they are both fun. You know you've got it good when you have to decide between killing your opponent with a 15/15 monster or torching them with a gigantic fireball. Follow your heart.

Somebody PMed me asking for my list so I guess I'll post it here. It changes frequently as I hit up alot of local tournaments and I tweak the list after each one. This list won me three Underground Seas just yesterday.

//Lands
15 Forest

//Creatures
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Regal Force
1 Mirror Entity
1 Elvish Champion
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Viridian Shaman

//Spells
4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Primal Command
1 Summoner's Pact
1 Banefire

//Sideboard
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Krosan Grip
2 Imperious Perfect
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus

The Primal Commands are golden. I was originally trying them out in place of two Summoner's Pacts but I might just drop Pact altogether in favor of Command. I'm not sure yet. Primal Command does all the shiz you want out of Summoner's Pact but it also allows you to shuffle that Engineered Explosives set at 1 back into your opponent's library. It timewalks control decks by making them redraw lands. It sets back Dredge and Reanimator while simultaneously pushing your game plan forward. It's just great and I always am happy to draw it.

The sideboard was built to handle all the control/Counterbalance and Reanimator/Dredge decks I see in my area. I kind of hope never to see ANT as I've realized I can only beat them when they miscount mana or something.

BUT - I don't think the deck has any optimal version that we all should be adhering to. As long as you have that frame of Nettle Sentinels and Heritage Druids, you can toss in all kinds of things and the deck will still perform.\

Edit - also, I would be running NO Prog if I had the cards. I just need two more Natural Orders and I'll fit that in somewhere.

1maarten1
05-24-2010, 04:11 AM
I would drop Gaea's Cradle altogether. There are too many times where you draw your initial seven and see only one land. If that one land is the Cradle then you're screwed. I don't like to run that risk when the deck can create tons of mana with the creatures alone. But to each his own.

I've dropped Emrakul in favor of Banefire. Both typically win you the game when you cast them but Banefire seems like a better topdeck and is still useful when you aren't able to generate a ton of mana. Also, your maindeck has no outs to random stuff like an Ensnaring Bridge or Blazing Archon or even Iona. However, Emrakul draws alot more attention from other tables when you drop him. For me it's a decision between fun versus function and I went with function. Actually, they are both fun. You know you've got it good when you have to decide between killing your opponent with a 15/15 monster or torching them with a gigantic fireball. Follow your heart.

Somebody PMed me asking for my list so I guess I'll post it here. It changes frequently as I hit up alot of local tournaments and I tweak the list after each one. This list won me three Underground Seas just yesterday.

//Lands
15 Forest

//Creatures
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Regal Force
1 Mirror Entity
1 Elvish Champion
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Viridian Shaman

//Spells
4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Primal Command
1 Summoner's Pact
1 Banefire

//Sideboard
4 Leyline of Lifeforce
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Krosan Grip
2 Imperious Perfect
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus

The Primal Commands are golden. I was originally trying them out in place of two Summoner's Pacts but I might just drop Pact altogether in favor of Command. I'm not sure yet. Primal Command does all the shiz you want out of Summoner's Pact but it also allows you to shuffle that Engineered Explosives set at 1 back into your opponent's library. It timewalks control decks by making them redraw lands. It sets back Dredge and Reanimator while simultaneously pushing your game plan forward. It's just great and I always am happy to draw it.

The sideboard was built to handle all the control/Counterbalance and Reanimator/Dredge decks I see in my area. I kind of hope never to see ANT as I've realized I can only beat them when they miscount mana or something.

BUT - I don't think the deck has any optimal version that we all should be adhering to. As long as you have that frame of Nettle Sentinels and Heritage Druids, you can toss in all kinds of things and the deck will still perform.\

Edit - also, I would be running NO Prog if I had the cards. I just need two more Natural Orders and I'll fit that in somewhere.

Hey! Thanks for posting! :D

Cool list, I guess I'm going to back to the list I played back in the days :)
// Lands 15
15 Forest

// Spells 12
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner's Pact
3 Natural Order
1 Banefire

// Creatures 33
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Quirrion Ranger
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Progenitus
1 Regal Force

Still looks nice to me. I understand your point on Banefire vs. Emrakul. Just a personal choice i guess, since they both win on the turn you play em.

Im not sure about dropping Entity from my list above, but it might seem a little overkill... I'll test with and without, changes to the MD would be -1 Quirrion, +1 Entity. But it seems to me that when you run NO+prog, you have a good alternative to going off so maybe you wont need Entity as a kill anymore, since Banefire/Emrakul is safer anyway IMO.

On the pact vs. Command issue:
I can see how Command can totally rock, but havent you found yourself in a situation where you for exemple need +1 Nettle sentinel or Heritage druid to go off, and you dont have 5 mana for Command? I dont think you should cut Pact at all, I would at least (and I doubt if its any good) play 2. Maybe 3 pacts, 1 command could work but I should test that.

Thoughts? :D

~Maarten

danyul
05-24-2010, 05:17 AM
I won another local tournament today. I only lost one game over four rounds. Just a note - I used a Banefire to zap a flying 6/6 which gave me enough breathing room to race for the win. If that Banefire was Emrakul then I would have lost that game for sure.

@ Pact vs Command
I typically dont like casting Pact unless I have enough mana to pay for it. Also, I lost one game that I had a guaranteed win on just because I forgot to pay the upkeep cost of Pact. That alone has left a real sour taste in my mouth. Anyway, I almost never draw Command wishing it was Pact. I try not to cast Pact with less than 5 mana available because I've lost games where people zap my dudes or Vindicate my lands, keeping me off the 4 needed to pay Pact and that makes me a little paranoid. So for me, the 5 mana for Command doesn't seem like that much of a difference.

Also, today I used Command to gain 7 life and find a combo piece against a Dredge player with a strong position, giving me time against his small army and crippling his growth enough for me to combo off the next turn. Command is pretty fancy. Just try running one and see what happens. I think I'll keep the 2/1 split until I get a few more games in.

1maarten1
05-24-2010, 01:09 PM
I won another local tournament today. I only lost one game over four rounds. Just a note - I used a Banefire to zap a flying 6/6 which gave me enough breathing room to race for the win. If that Banefire was Emrakul then I would have lost that game for sure.

@ Pact vs Command
I typically dont like casting Pact unless I have enough mana to pay for it. Also, I lost one game that I had a guaranteed win on just because I forgot to pay the upkeep cost of Pact. That alone has left a real sour taste in my mouth. Anyway, I almost never draw Command wishing it was Pact. I try not to cast Pact with less than 5 mana available because I've lost games where people zap my dudes or Vindicate my lands, keeping me off the 4 needed to pay Pact and that makes me a little paranoid. So for me, the 5 mana for Command doesn't seem like that much of a difference.

Also, today I used Command to gain 7 life and find a combo piece against a Dredge player with a strong position, giving me time against his small army and crippling his growth enough for me to combo off the next turn. Command is pretty fancy. Just try running one and see what happens. I think I'll keep the 2/1 split until I get a few more games in.

Gratz :)!

Ok, valid points on Pact vs Command. I'll test a 2/2 split.

Some funny stuff when testing today:
I played a mirror, game 1 I go off turn 2, he concedes.
Game 2: He feels all confident with 9 elves, which included 2 Titania, I have 3 elves. Next turn I drop a land, drop 3 Glimpses (lol) and go off of my Nettle sentinel I got from a pact :D.

I have experienced how hard it sucks to lose from your own pact :P, so I'll definately try out the Command.

And oh yea: NO+Prog is fucking insane. It won me 3 matches on itself today. Being able to NO for Regal force is also nice :D!

Havent missed Entity yet.

~Maarten

Augustas
05-24-2010, 03:50 PM
and what are your thoughts on elvish spirit guide?

danyul
05-24-2010, 03:52 PM
I really want to find room for at least two ESGs, but I'm terrible at making decisions about what to cut out for them. I think they are really good and can help you power through certain turns where having that one mana would let you go off earlier than expected. They also allow you to play without the fear of Daze. If I was brave enough to make cuts, I would play at least two.

1maarten1
05-24-2010, 04:11 PM
I really want to find room for at least two ESGs, but I'm terrible at making decisions about what to cut out for them. I think they are really good and can help you power through certain turns where having that one mana would let you go off earlier than expected. They also allow you to play without the fear of Daze. If I was brave enough to make cuts, I would play at least two.

Im playing 1 atm. Cutting 1 Quirion ranger from my decklist posted above. 1 Has been working fine for me, but 2 should be nice too. Maybe i'll try -1 fyndhorn + 1 ESG.

Going down to 3 Quirion ranger is fine. Also I dont think you need the full 8 Llanowars. 7,6 & even 5 is fine imo. Also 3 visionarys is good enough.

~Maarten

danyul
05-24-2010, 04:22 PM
Hmm. Good point. 1-2 Visionarys are usually the first thing I side out. And yeah, LLanowars are not really that fantastic after turn two or so. I could see living with less than 8. I'll try some of those changes.

Augustas
05-24-2010, 05:08 PM
I play less forests and four of them. Remember that it allows for a turn two Natural Order. But it's not a creature you want to see when the combo goes off (banefire/grapeshot). So I have mxied feelings about it..

1maarten1
05-25-2010, 01:48 AM
I play less forests and four of them. Remember that it allows for a turn two Natural Order. But it's not a creature you want to see when the combo goes off (banefire/grapeshot). So I have mxied feelings about it..

a 2 off works ;). Oh yea, and I think its very wrong to cut forests for them. Turn 2 NO makes you very vulnerable for daze, I rather wait 1 turn and even have anough mana to pay for spell pierce.

I editted my list above.

unicoerner
05-25-2010, 09:58 AM
I wonder that you guys dislike the Visionarys. For me they are gold. They are card advantage and combo so n1 with Wirewood. If our Glimpse gets countered this is our only way to draw cards. We really have to go with quantity here, becasue our creatures are outclasses in power. Therefore we need a way to get more creatures on the table...

How often are you guys playing a Glimpse, knowing that it will just draw you 2-3 cards?
Of course we only do this when we miss a lot of the combo...

Shabbaman
05-25-2010, 10:25 AM
It depends on the hand. If I have a Summoner's Pact in hand I know I can always get the Glimpse back. In that case playing a few creatures from hand and drawing replacements gives a better board position (blockers buy time) and make it more viable to go off next turn. No Pact and no chance? Why did you keep that hand in the first place?

danyul
05-25-2010, 12:58 PM
@ unicoerner - I don't dislike the Visionary per se. I just think they are one of the cards in the deck that I don't mind seeing only one of over the course of a game. Believe me, I've been in positions where I'm just bouncing Visionary back as many times as i can with Symbiote trying to draw something relevant, but those rare situations don't make me feel like I need to guarantee 4 slots for the card. Sometimes it's just win-more when I'm going off.

And when I resolve a Glimpse I almost always win that turn or swing for lethal the next turn. I think I can remember only one game where I just Glimpsed into a bunch of Forests and ran out of gas. I might have selective memory though. So I guess you could say that I'm pretty confident in drawing a bunch of cards when I resolve my Glimpses. I become a sad, broken man when things don't work out that way.

Also, I find it interesting that you mention that your creatures eventually become outclassed in power. I mean, I understand your point there but don't you run any lord effects? I only run two but that's been enough for me to go aggro when I need to. That's how I win most of my games anyhow. Are you guys focusing more on the combo and dropping lord effects entirely? Is that more consistent? I dunno. What are you guys running?

@Shabbaman - are you running a singleton Eternal Witness? Is that how you're getting your Glimpse back? How has that been working out?

unicoerner
05-26-2010, 12:27 PM
Obviously we win with glimpse a lot. But there are times when we are missing mana and elves in hand. Lets say we have:
2 Forests and Llanowarelf out. In hand we have Glimpse+NO, Llanowar, Forest, Wirewood and Birchlore.

There's no chance that we will have a good chance of going up the next 2-3 rounds, but we could get some cards with which we can work if we draw 2-3 cards. I hope you get the picture.
I run 3 Lord effects, but vs aggro decks they get removed pretty fast. Even if we play Lord effects we have to come over mass of creatures vs their goyfs and apes and so on...

I have no way of getting Glimpse back, becasue i play a build without Survival!

1maarten1
05-28-2010, 10:11 AM
Did anyone thought of/test out this guy yet?

{=Sages of the Anima}

Seems to me like it could get pretty nasty. Might be overkill tho, I have no idea.

blind
05-28-2010, 03:51 PM
Hello,

I am French so I do not pratice so well English.
I have played ElfBall since... lot of times in Legacy. I read the topic about this deck on TheSource and I have some objections to tell. I played ElfBall during GP Madrid (5-3-1) with this version :

1 Horizon Canopy
1 Pendelhaven
1 Savannah
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Gaea's Cradle
4 Windswept Heath
5 Forest
1 Mirror Entity
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Crop Rotation
3 Chord of Calling
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
SB: 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 1 Harmonic Sliver
SB: 1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
SB: 1 Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 Gaddock Teeg
SB: 1 Dauntless Escort
SB: 2 Reverent Silence
SB: 3 Choke
SB: 4 Orim's Chant

My actual version :

1 Horizon Canopy
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Savannah
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Gaea's Cradle
5 Forest
1 Mirror Entity
1 Regal Force
1 Vexing Shusher
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Crop Rotation
3 Chord of Calling
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
SB: 1 Harmonic Sliver
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
SB: 1 Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 Dauntless Escort
SB: 2 Reverent Silence
SB: 3 Choke
SB: 3 Path to Exile
SB: 1 Vexing Shusher
SB: 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender

Summoner's Pact Vs Primal Command : Because these to cards haven't got the same use, I find this comparaison very strong. I did not test Command so I can't speak about this card but I find it very slow. Pact is surely our better draw when you go to combo with Glimpse and Command surely the worst.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn : Why do you play a card which needs 15 manas before playing it. Generaly, if you can play Emrakul, you are near to win. This card is over kill.

Mirror Entity : Entity is the better kill in this deck and not to play this card is really the biggest fals to do with ElfBall.

Natural Order + Progenitus : I was not satisfayed by this option (in my SB) beacause you risk the same hate (Perish).

1maarten1
05-29-2010, 06:21 AM
Hello,

I am French so I do not pratice so well English.
I have played ElfBall since... lot of times in Legacy. I read the topic about this deck on TheSource and I have some objections to tell. I played ElfBall during GP Madrid (5-3-1) with this version :

1 Horizon Canopy
1 Pendelhaven
1 Savannah
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Gaea's Cradle
4 Windswept Heath
5 Forest
1 Mirror Entity
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Crop Rotation
3 Chord of Calling
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
SB: 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 1 Harmonic Sliver
SB: 1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
SB: 1 Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 Gaddock Teeg
SB: 1 Dauntless Escort
SB: 2 Reverent Silence
SB: 3 Choke
SB: 4 Orim's Chant

My actual version :

1 Horizon Canopy
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Savannah
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Gaea's Cradle
5 Forest
1 Mirror Entity
1 Regal Force
1 Vexing Shusher
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Crop Rotation
3 Chord of Calling
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
SB: 1 Harmonic Sliver
SB: 1 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
SB: 1 Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 Dauntless Escort
SB: 2 Reverent Silence
SB: 3 Choke
SB: 3 Path to Exile
SB: 1 Vexing Shusher
SB: 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender

Summoner's Pact Vs Primal Command : Because these to cards haven't got the same use, I find this comparaison very strong. I did not test Command so I can't speak about this card but I find it very slow. Pact is surely our better draw when you go to combo with Glimpse and Command surely the worst.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn : Why do you play a card which needs 15 manas before playing it. Generaly, if you can play Emrakul, you are near to win. This card is over kill.

Mirror Entity : Entity is the better kill in this deck and not to play this card is really the biggest fals to do with ElfBall.

Natural Order + Progenitus : I was not satisfayed by this option (in my SB) beacause you risk the same hate (Perish).

Thanks for joining the discussion here :)!

I agree and the first 2 points you make. Emrakul is overkill, and Command is slow.
But at the next point: I run NO+Prog MD because it wins game solo where you cant win by combo or whatever. (CB+Top etc.)
And in my meta, there arent much/no decks that run perish sb.
I find NO+prog the strongest backup plan I tested sofar. Also NO for regal force is really really good. I stopped playing entity because I cut the Chords for NO, and I just found Banefire a better kill.

The backup plan that Enitity gives is good, if you run Cradles etc. like your version does. But since I dont want to open myself up to stifle and wasteland, I play 15 forests. And with that, I am just more satisfied with Prog, Banefire.

I think that if you want to run Entity, you just have to run an other package maindeck just to optimalize it. Could be wrong tho, I havent tested Entity that much since I liked NO+Prog+Banefire from the start. My list is a few pages above.

~Maarten

AznSeal
06-01-2010, 04:38 AM
Please click one of the Quick Reply icons in the posts above to activate Quick Reply.

1maarten1
06-01-2010, 09:23 AM
Yea we know that? :D!

Moved to Established btw! Im going on vacation now, but Im taking the deck to some tournaments later this summer!

~Maarten

Augustas
06-01-2010, 04:31 PM
Hey! Thanks for posting! :D

Cool list, I guess I'm going to back to the list I played back in the days :)
// Lands 15
15 Forest

// Spells 12
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner's Pact
3 Natural Order
1 Banefire

// Creatures 33
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Quirrion Ranger
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Progenitus
1 Regal Force

Still looks nice to me. I understand your point on Banefire vs. Emrakul. Just a personal choice i guess, since they both win on the turn you play em.

Im not sure about dropping Entity from my list above, but it might seem a little overkill... I'll test with and without, changes to the MD would be -1 Quirrion, +1 Entity. But it seems to me that when you run NO+prog, you have a good alternative to going off so maybe you wont need Entity as a kill anymore, since Banefire/Emrakul is safer anyway IMO.

On the pact vs. Command issue:
I can see how Command can totally rock, but havent you found yourself in a situation where you for exemple need +1 Nettle sentinel or Heritage druid to go off, and you dont have 5 mana for Command? I dont think you should cut Pact at all, I would at least (and I doubt if its any good) play 2. Maybe 3 pacts, 1 command could work but I should test that.

Thoughts? :D

~Maarten

I play similar buld to this. It's good, but I find it harder to win with the glimpse for some reason. Anyway, this version can sideboard very nicely. I run 3 Jittes along with 3 Elvish Champions, so alongside the combo/NO part, it can rally on some aggresive plays. I play it alot on mws, sometimes I get owned, but the good thing is that I win more than I lose. Obv there's lots of bad matchups,especially anything with blue, but they are not unwinnible, because you can just outplay them with your threats. And everything else, as long as your every creature doens't get StPed, they are very favorable matchups. I propably never have lost to zoo. So yeah, Elvish Champion is kinda udnerrated, I think that he's still the best lord effect for elves, because he gets through most of the duals and can help you to win lots of games.

AznSeal
06-01-2010, 05:20 PM
whats the difference between elf aggro and elf combo? They seem to be almost the same deck

Eldariel
06-01-2010, 06:30 PM
whats the difference between elf aggro and elf combo? They seem to be almost the same deck

Elf Aggro wins first and foremost by utilizing Elves' natural mana production to quickly lay down a formidable army, pumping it with various tribal, and not-so-tribal effects, keeping a constant stream of threats going and overwhelming the opponent. Much like Vial Goblins, in fact, sans the control- and anti-countertop effects (but with a somewhat wider array of card advantage and acceleration).

Elf Combo wins first and foremost by utilizing the Heritage Druid/Nettle Sentinel combo to generate more mana than you spend on each spell and drawing library with e.g. Glimpse of Nature, Regal Forces and company (it's been discussed adequately in this thread). An Elf-deck with the combo engine(s) falls under Elf Combo while a traditional beatdownish Elf-deck falls under Elf Aggro. Elf Aggro tends to be able to drop a handful of Elves in a turn, while Elf Combo tends to be able to drop a deckful of Elves in the same amount of time.


Biggest differences you can find in cards like:
Elvish Visionary (only combo)
Heritage Druid (only combo)
Birchlore Rangers (only combo)
Wirewood Hivemaster (only combo)
Wren's Run Vanquisher (only aggro)
Wren's Run Packmaster (only aggro)
Wolf-Skull Shaman (only aggro)

While I could certainly see an aggro-list with Nettle Sentinel/Heritage and company, those tend to be inconsistent and don't really contribute to the beatdown plan. Likewise, Elf Combo doesn't really play creatures that only serve to beat down; everything produces mana (alone or as a part of an engine), draws cards, answers problems or wins the game (such as Mirror Entity).

Jon Stewart
06-02-2010, 02:02 AM
I have built and played both Aggro Elves and Combo Elves decks and I feel like a well built well tweaked Aggro Elf deck will run circles around a well tweaked Combo Elves deck in terms of consistency and resiliency, all while being able to goldfish almost just as fast as the combo variant.

Has anyone else had similar experience? Based on mine, I am almost convinced that a Aggro Elf variant with cards like Elvish Archdruid, Sylvan Messenger, Wirewood Symbiote, Quirion Ranger, Priest of Titania, and even Joraga Warcaller, is the better approach to take to the deck.

Has anyone played such a build and yet believes that Combo Elves is the better approach?

danyul
06-02-2010, 04:29 AM
I haven't played Aggro Elves per se but I run 2-3 lord effects in my combo build which allows me to take the aggro role when I need to. I know that may not sound like much compared to the 10-12 lords that the aggro lists run, but it does the job. I like the ability to win in a single turn that the combo route allows you to take. I cannot speak from direct experience, but I'd imagine that it takes several turns for the aggro builds to go nuts and drop all those lords on the field. The combo lists can win pretty consistently on turn 3 and definitely by turn 4. I"m not sure how fast the aggro builds are.

Also, and this is purely anecdotal, but I can recall pulling out wins against a turn 3 Progenitus, an opponent who was able to reliably keep zero cards in hand with an Ensnaring Bridge out, a Blazing Archon, a freshly cast Engineered Explosives set at one and ready to go off after my opponent's next untap step, and many Glacial Chasms, all because I was able to combo out and toss a lethal Banefire at my opponent's head.

Now I'm not saying that Aggro builds are less consistent or reliable or that they win less or whatever, but I appreciate the flexibility that the combo build allows me. Sometimes you really don't want to give your opponent that next untap or draw step.

Infinitium
06-02-2010, 06:13 AM
Has anyone else had similar experience? Based on mine, I am almost convinced that a Aggro Elf variant with cards like Elvish Archdruid, Sylvan Messenger, Wirewood Symbiote, Quirion Ranger, Priest of Titania, and even Joraga Warcaller, is the better approach to take to the deck.


I run all these cards in my combo variant since I firmly believe that the big mana elves/untappers engine > Nettle Sentinel by a long shot. It's more resilient since each piece (maybe sans Ranger) is a considerable threat on its own, with the easily accessible in legacy it's arguably about as fast through disruption and the fact that it generates insane as opposed to adequate amounts of mana without tapping everything you've got it not only means that you don't have to waste precious maindeck slots on Birchlore Rangers and superflous win spells but can also combo out manually with the secondary card advantage engines (eg drop Concordant Crossroads and draw 5-6 elves off Sylvan Messengers + Symbiotes, funnel the surplus mana into Warcaller and win on the spot).

Joraga Warcaller is also one of the most versatile cards in the deck even moreso than the aggro versions since it's a lord effect that additionally can be played for 1 to facilitate card/mana needs as well as act as a mana sink should you find yourself with a surplus but without mana engines. That said, the "I Win." factor of running Glimpse of Nature alongside the Wirewood/Visionary/Messenger/Survival/whathaveyou engines easily outstrips the advantage a few additional lords and 3/3's buys you.

(nameless one)
06-02-2010, 08:29 AM
Hi guys, I have an aggro deck that I want to turn into a 'convertible' elf deck.

My list looks like this:



11 Forest
1 Pendlehaven
4 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Priest of Titania
4 Wolk-Skull Shaman
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Sylvan Messanger
2 Elvish Champion
2 Tribal Forcemage


If I were to achieve this convertible aggro deck with combo sideboard, what should my sideboard look like? Obviously I would need Glimpse of Nature. Anything else on that?

Jon Stewart
06-02-2010, 10:56 AM
Nameless One, I'm attempting to do the same thing.


The combo lists can win pretty consistently on turn 3 and definitely by turn 4. I"m not sure how fast the aggro builds are.

My aggro build is surprisingly fast as well. I've won many games on turn 3 or 4, and at the very latest, by turn 5. I've noticed this happens on the backs of the following cards.

4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Priest of Titania
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Sylvan Messenger

The neat thing about this engine is that unlike the Nettle Sentinel engine, this doesn't require you to overextend so you can recover easily even if it fails, it doesn't require you to do everything on the same turn so it's more flexible and less prone to fizzling, and it actually feels more broken.

I run all these cards in my combo variant since I firmly believe that the big mana elves/untappers engine > Nettle Sentinel by a long shot. It's more resilient since each piece (maybe sans Ranger) is a considerable threat on its own, with the easily accessible in legacy it's arguably about as fast through disruption and the fact that it generates insane as opposed to adequate amounts of mana without tapping everything you've got it not only means that you don't have to waste precious maindeck slots on Birchlore Rangers and superflous win spells but can also combo out manually with the secondary card advantage engines (eg drop Concordant Crossroads and draw 5-6 elves off Sylvan Messengers + Symbiotes, funnel the surplus mana into Warcaller and win on the spot).

Joraga Warcaller is also one of the most versatile cards in the deck even moreso than the aggro versions since it's a lord effect that additionally can be played for 1 to facilitate card/mana needs as well as act as a mana sink should you find yourself with a surplus but without mana engines. That said, the "I Win." factor of running Glimpse of Nature alongside the Wirewood/Visionary/Messenger/Survival/whathaveyou engines easily outstrips the advantage a few additional lords and 3/3's buys you.

Infinitium, I really want to see your build because I agree with everything you just said.

This is why I think the 24 cards I listed above should be the shell of most any elf deck, but most of the other 20 cards (Thorn of Amethyst, Elvish Champion, Imperious Perfect, Wren's Run Vanquisher) can indeed be replaced as needed. The exception is of course

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
2-4 Arbor Elves (Very Underrated)

Those cards I think are also key, but the numbers of each is up for debate.

What I'm confused about is the rest of the cards. Should it play stuff like Concordant Crossroads/Lightning Greaves to be a turn faster? Should it play Summoner's Pact because Priest of Titania and stuff like Symbiote is so important to the engine so it's nice to find more if the first one gets killed or countered. Should it play Thorn of Amethyst since that really improves your combo and control matchups? Should it play Glimpse since it can be broken? Should it play Natural Order and Progenitus since it can usually let you win the next turn if you alpha strike with all your creatures along with Progenitus (although Joraga Warcaller lets you do the same thing and is an elf).

The tough part is, the deck itself cannot and should not play more than 6 or so non creatures because too many noncreatures screw up your ability to use Sylvan Messenger and Glimpse if you run that.

Infinitium
06-02-2010, 11:50 AM
Pretty sure I posted it on the first page, but here goes. Not much have changed since it's currently tight as.

// Lands
14 [TE] Forest (1)
2 [US] Gaea's Cradle

// Creatures
4 [ALA] Elvish Visionary
1 [DS] Viridian Zealot
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
3 [EVG] Sylvan Messenger
3 [10E] Llanowar Elves
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [FNM] Priest of Titania
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [EVG] Wirewood Symbiote
3 [DM] Fyndhorn Elves
2 [VI] Quirion Ranger

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
2 [LG] Concordant Crossroads
2 [FUT] Summoner's Pact

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 4 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 1 [MOR] Gilt-Leaf Archdruid
SB: 3 [10E] Pithing Needle
SB: 1 [NE] Reverent Silence
SB: 2 [10E] Gaea's Herald
SB: 2 [SHM] Faerie Macabre

danyul
06-02-2010, 12:08 PM
I'll sleeve up one of your big-mana elf lists and give it a shot at one of the local tourneys tonight. I'm not entirely convinced of your arguments but I am certainly fed up with getting hosed by Chalices and EEs set at 1. We'll see how it goes.

(nameless one)
06-02-2010, 12:13 PM
I have learned that Leyline of Lifeforce makes the deck work, even with Chalice on 1.

However, you better start on going off before you see that EE on 1.

Jon Stewart
06-02-2010, 12:28 PM
That list looks awesome Infinitum. I can't wait to throw it together and try it out. Thanks for posting it.

I am surprised at the only 2 Quirion Ranger though. That card is money imo. Sylvan Messenger grabs it unlike Wirewood Symbiote. And you can use it to untap a Priest the same turn you cast it like Wirewood Symbiote, but you do so without having to bounce back an elf that you will have to recast, so it nets you even more mana. And sometimes, you can replay the land you bounced back too for even more mana.

I can see why Symbiote is so good though, being able to bounce back both Sylvan Messenger AND Elvish Visionary must be awesome.

Have you been playing it a lot? Any particularly awful matchups you've run into?

Infinitium
06-02-2010, 12:45 PM
More or less exclusively for the last few months. It's an MWS build though so go figure what the input is actually worth..

As for matchups, I consider this a deck in the Ichorid vein where everything that cannot race it or somehow remove the card advantage engine is essentially a good matchup. In this case that makes combo and reanimator the chief culprits to look out for, albeit Zoo and certain Goblin builds (mainly the monored ones packing lots of spot removal) can race it off good hands (ie put down an early threat and burn everything remotely mana-producing on sight). Control and most Threshold-esque metagame decks (including counterbalance builds) usually gets steamrolled in the midgame once the card advantage engines sets in (they cannot counter them all). Mass removal sometimes gets sided and can slow it down for a turn or two, but unless it's followed by immediate pressure that is a moot point since unlike Goblins throwing down a few blockers isn't enough to stabilize in the face of glimpse and recurring messengers.

Oh, and Symbiote/Ranger where originally a 3/3 split, but with Ranger having diminishing returns in multiples and Symbiote being the best elf tribal card ever printed I quickly opted to go for the extra mana elves for consistency instead. Don't get me wrong, Ranger is awesome, but it's still dependent on the major interaction with Archdruid/Priest to live up to its full potential (the explosive starts with llanowar elves and interaction with Heritage Druid notwithstanding), and unlike Wirewood Symbiote you cannot use it to safely overextend the board versus sweepers. Postside you also really want to have a lot of forests on the board since land mana is the safest way to bounce back from sweepers and deal with assorted obnoxity such as Plague/Humility.

Jon Stewart
06-02-2010, 03:40 PM
Infitum, I've been playing the decklist you posted and I love everything about it with one exception... Summoner's Pact.

It's the definition of a win more card. If you cast it in the midst of your combo, you're going to win that same turn, it's fantastic since it has no draw back.

But in those situations where you are not already well on your way to victory that same turn, it sucks.

The function it serves, to get you a Priest of Titania or Heritage Druid or Zealot is an important one. But you most desperately need that Priest of Titania early in the game, you want to tutor it up on turn one and have it in hand ready to cast on turn 2.

You can't use Pact to get you that Priest of Titania early on, when you most desperately need it. You have to wait till you have four mana on the board. And then, paying that 4 mana for Pact hinders your ability to combo off that next turn.

So here is what I propose to your list...

-2 Summoner's Pact
+2 Worldly Tutor

it still serves the exact same function, if you Glimpsed or have a Sylvan Messenger or Elvish Visionary, you can even get that tutored up card that same turn.

But it has two main advantages...

You can use it turn 1/2 to get you that Priest of Titania you want.

It won't eat up the entirity of your mana the turn after you cast it, effectively speeding you up by a full turn compared to Summoner's Pact.

What do you think?

unicoerner
06-02-2010, 04:24 PM
Pact gets you Heritage and Sentinal! That`s what the combo needs.

That`s the difference between aggro and combo elves.

I just removed the NO-Prog for Warcallers and squeezed some Priests and Archdruids in aswell and i have to say, that i like it a lot.
We can smoothly change rolls now.

Infinitium
06-02-2010, 04:35 PM
It's an awkward card at times since, like you noted, does little to aid development in the early game and requires some worst case scenarios assesments in case you have to pass the turn again.

That said I seldom use it for mana producers but rather as extra Symbiote/Messengers. Common situations include:

Midcombo to fetch Symbiote/Ranger. The 0 cost here is relevant since balancing mana expenditure off a single Heritage Druid/PoT can be precarious if comboing out early.

Mid/lategame to set up the missing part of a Symbiote/Draw engine. The 0 cost is again rather relevant as it still constitutes a net gain in tempo (you get to turn whatever you cast this turn sideways the next).

Mid/lategame to recover after sweepers. Again, actually fetching and casting Messenger in the same turn allows you to maintain pressure on the control deck.

Midgame to remove stuff with Zealot. Again, Zealot is mana-intensive, and especially equipment can lose you the game quickly if not dealt with rapidly. The tutor costing 0 is also clutch in dealing with Chalice@1 and sometimes tapped out CB/Top locks (which is also the prime reason why I believe Worldly Tutor is a suboptimal choice in this regard).

Generally, you shouldn't worry about actually casting it until after you have played out the rest of your hand, at which time developing mana shouldn't be the first priority. The deck can slowroll perfectly fine without PoT/Archdruid as long as it can draw/play more cards than the opponent.

Jon Stewart
06-02-2010, 04:38 PM
Worldly Tutor gets you Heritage and Sentinal as well.

The problem with Pact is, it's only good if you are going to win the game that very same turn anyways. And while in the middle of your combo, Worldly Tutor can indeed serve the same function to get you the creature you need since you have a lot of ways to draw cards off the top of your library.

But what I end up needing the tutoring effect for, is to get me a Priest of Titania early on, to let me combo off and do ridiculous things, with or without Glimpse. And Pact is useless for that, because it will slow you down by a full turn or more. Worldly Tutor doesn't. Try the list...

// Lands
14 [UNH] Forest

// Creatures
4 [ALI] Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [10E] Llanowar Elves
4 [FNM] Priest of Titania
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
3 [EVG] Wirewood Symbiote
3 [DM] Fyndhorn Elves
3 [ALA] Elvish Visionary
3 [EVG] Sylvan Messenger

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
2 [LG] Concordant Crossroads

(Basically a heavily modified more comboesque take on Infinitum's build)

If you're playing Summoner's Pact (I no longer am), imagine that Worldly Tutor is a Pact every game you draw it and see how often you prefer Pact. I think you will find that Worldly Tutor is better, because it actually lets you combo off earlier, rather than simply helping you once you have already comboed off, but actually slowing down if you use it in most other situations.

unicoerner
06-03-2010, 07:21 AM
I tested today quite a bit with my List and this deck can be very explosive, but we have to include one suboptimal. I am not sure which one, but i lost soo many games vs some stupid lockpiece i couldn`t overcome:
Moat
Spore Frog lock

or i was one turn too slow ( not having enough attackers, because just 2 were in play when i started to combo)

Options:
Including the storm kill, which makes us play Birchlores again. But it serves vs all 3 cases and isn`t yalways a dead draw)
Concordant Crossroad, possibly helps in all 3 cases, but just if we had a good start ( comboing off in turn 3 vs an opponent without counter and Swords

Emrakul!! We play lots of mana elves now and he handles all 3 cases. He can sit in hand and do nothing early on, but he can win you otherwise unwinnable games.

My List:

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
15 [IN] Forest (1)

// Creatures
4 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [ALA] Elvish Visionary
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
3 [AT] Llanowar Elves
3 [IA] Fyndhorn Elves
4 [AP] Sylvan Messenger
1 [DS] Viridian Zealot
1 [VI] Quirion Ranger
3 [US] Priest of Titania
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

// Spells
1 [FUT] Summoner's Pact
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 4 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 4 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of Lifeforce
SB: 1 [TSP] Krosan Grip

I am not longer that happy with Pact, but i won`t play Tutor in this spot, because it`s just inferior. Perhaps i could add IMperfect or another Ranger.

I`ll probably will remove the 1 Grip in the side, perhaps the Jitties,too . Not sure what i will include. Thorns could be worth a consideration

Jon Stewart
06-03-2010, 11:11 AM
I like and understand your list except for the nettle sentinel. It can synergize with a grand total of 4 cards in your whole deck, the Heritage Druid. Without Birchlore etc, I don't think Sentinel is worth it. Why not play more Priests, Rangers (I really feel like you should play 3 of these minimum), Llanowar Elves in it's place.

I'm glad you cut the Pact, I don't like that card at all, it's almost always a dead draw except for the turn you combo off. I cut my two Worldly Tutor too for the 4th Ranger and a Viridian Zealot.

Don't you already have Zealot to deal with Moat and Spore Frog? Emrakul is the definition of win more. A 15 mana Warcalller will win you the game right then and there rather than making you wait a turn. I would rather play a second Zealot, the 4th Priest or make room for a Concordant Crossroads or two.

Augustas
06-03-2010, 12:10 PM
I like and understand your list except for the nettle sentinel. It can synergize with a grand total of 4 cards in your whole deck, the Heritage Druid. Without Birchlore etc, I don't think Sentinel is worth it. Why not play more Priests, Rangers (I really feel like you should play 3 of these minimum), Llanowar Elves in it's place.

I'm glad you cut the Pact, I don't like that card at all, it's almost always a dead draw except for the turn you combo off. I cut my two Worldly Tutor too for the 4th Ranger and a Viridian Zealot.

Don't you already have Zealot to deal with Moat and Spore Frog? Emrakul is the definition of win more. A 15 mana Warcalller will win you the game right then and there rather than making you wait a turn. I would rather play a second Zealot, the 4th Priest or make room for a Concordant Crossroads or two.

Dude, you're in the wrong thread. You don't understand the uses of Nettle? It's propably the second most important card in the deck next to Glimpse. It wins you games. Go play some aggro elves if the combo is not consistent or is bad for you. You people completely forgott what the purpose of the deck is. It wants to COMBO., not to aggro down your opponent. And do it AS FAST AS possible. I just really don't understand what you people are trying to do the deck. Don't even try to fuse it with aggro stuff. It's either combo or aggro. And saying that Summoner's Pact is bad is ignorant as saying that Nettle is bad. So, if you want to re-invent the deck, as what you're trying to do these last pages, consider what you really want from the deck.

But anyway, I jsut can't believe how dumb Jon Stewart's post is. Nettle Sentinel is bad because it synergises with only 4 cards is like saying that Counterbalance sucks because it synergises with only two cards (brainstorm and ct). And same for Pact. it's bad on it's own, like Glimpse is bad without elves. It gets Regal Force in the middle of the combo, LIKE WHAT YOU SHOULD DO WITH THE DECK, YES - C O M B O OUT, it gets you missing Senintels. it's awesome. Don't complain when it sucks in your slow-mo decklists.

Sorry dudes, I'm not harsh, it's cool that you're trying out new things and stuff, but don't become ignorant and don't lie to yourself. Unicoerner decklist is slow, try to play with it against a true elf combo deck, it will get outraced in a matter of a turn, Jon Stewart's build just will loose even worse, the same goes for Infinitium decklist. I'll combo out on turn three, while you'll be angry on your 3 drop elves with summoning sickness. Guess why LSV won the PT Berlin. Because he was faster than anyone. That's what I want to say with this whole post.

And obviously, I might be wrong, that's just my point of view to the deck. If these decklists actually work against other decks, then good for you.

Jon Stewart
06-03-2010, 09:06 PM
If your decklist is really faster and more consistent than Unicorner's, Infinitum's and my list, why not post it and explain why or how you believe it's more consistent rather than spout off about how much better you think your build is? Have you actually even played any thing similar to these lists that you are criticizing?

I much prefer to play any of their lists over traditional lists like Mendinian's since they can actually win the game by turn 4-5 even if they don't manage to draw a Glimpse and combo off undisrupted, where as traditional combo lists are inconsistent, very prone to disruption or fizzling on their own and are too singleminded with no adequate back up plan when they do fizzle.

But if you want to post your list and defend your choices like Unicorner and Infinitum have been doing, then by all means, please do so instead of just railing on them.

Nettle Sentinel is obviously an auto four of in a list with both 4 Birchlore and 4 Heritage Druid. But that's clearly not the list I was referencing. I was referencing a list where Heritage Druid was the only card in the whole list that could take advantage of Sentinel's ability. Likewise, Summoner's Pact may well be worth it in a list that plays Regal Force, but again, that's not the list I was referencing.

Augustas
06-04-2010, 03:45 AM
If your decklist is really faster and more consistent than Unicorner's, Infinitum's and my list, why not post it and explain why or how you believe it's more consistent rather than spout off about how much better you think your build is? Have you actually even played any thing similar to these lists that you are criticizing?

I much prefer to play any of their lists over traditional lists like Mendinian's since they can actually win the game by turn 4-5 even if they don't manage to draw a Glimpse and combo off undisrupted, where as traditional combo lists are inconsistent, very prone to disruption or fizzling on their own and are too singleminded with no adequate back up plan when they do fizzle.

But if you want to post your list and defend your choices like Unicorner and Infinitum have been doing, then by all means, please do so instead of just railing on them.

Nettle Sentinel is obviously an auto four of in a list with both 4 Birchlore and 4 Heritage Druid. But that's clearly not the list I was referencing. I was referencing a list where Heritage Druid was the only card in the whole list that could take advantage of Sentinel's ability. Likewise, Summoner's Pact may well be worth it in a list that plays Regal Force, but again, that's not the list I was referencing.

... I just can't believe how dumb I am. I haven't paid attention to Concordant Crossroads, which makes my whole post pointless and stupid. My apologies :/

It's a very cool twist on the deck, I but I still don't like the lack of Nettle Sentinel. It allows to play out as many elves as you have in your hand, leaving other untapped and ready to attack. And I wonder does this decklist eliminate the main problems that Grapeshot suffers.



I wrote some obviousness about my version, so here it goes....

11x Forest

Llanowar Elves 4x
Fyndhorn Elves 4x
Nettle Sentinel 4x
Heritage Druid 4x
Birchlore Rangers 4x
Quirion Ranger 4x
Wirewood Symbiote 4x
Elvish Spirit Guide 4x
Elvish Visionary 2x
Eternal Witness 1x
Regal Force 1x
Progenitus 1x

Glimpse of Nature 4x
Summoner's Pact 4x
Natural Order 3x
Grapeshot 1x

Sideboard (I'm currently experimenting with with it) :

Elvish Champion 3x
Umezawa's Jitte 3x
Viridian Shaman 3x
Leyline of Lifeforce 3x
Pendlehaven 2x
Mycoloth 1x


It looks like any other combo elves deck, I just play Guides instead of Forests. The reason I play it like that is because one Forest is enough in the opening hand, with mana elf and Quirion, you have 2 two mana floating along wiith two untapped elves.

Most of the decks in legacy is either fast as hell or shuts you down with every card in their hand. I want to outrace them before they can put any threats of their own.

Speaking of consistency, guess why this deck doesn't show up anywhere in the top 8s? Because it's inconsistent from the beginning. It can't tutor for the Glimpse, it rallies only on the Glimpse, which is way too easy to disrupt. Other combo decks can use Orim's Chants, Silences and whatever, and we are forbidden from using such cards. None of the decklists play any disruption cards at all, and I can't think of a reason why everybody does that. Propably because the only option of disruption we have is some discard cards, which are not very powerful against all the control madness blue has. So that's why this deck is inconsistent. that's why other combo decks are better, that's why you're upset when you don't combo out and think that Pacts sucks or something. And obviously, Chalice, Engineered Plague, counterspells, the insane amount of creature removal is also a knife in our chest. And we are always going all in, and the sad thing is that there's a high possibility to not actually comboing out. Man, it has a lot more problems than any other deck, lol

After poitning out the obvious, I'll say why this deck is good. If they let through the Glimpse, you're on. Of course, there's lots of possibilities that you'll be StPd and whatever, which means that they allowed you to waste two of your combo cards, but otherwise, while playing on MWS, I noticed that many players tend to tap out on their first turns, which actually allows us to go off andnot be afraid of card removal.
If the combo plan fails, there's always Natural Order ready to help you out. Some games it will take the win of it's own, sometimes it will help you out in the middle of the combo. It's our own Demonic Tutor haha.
And the most important thing, it can win on turn 2 and turn 3, which is quite early. They obviously will have more options
on their turn 3 to disrupt you, but it's still possible to win right there. And there was many times when those pesky 1/1's took a win for me.

So, to sum up everything, it's good because it has a chance to compete in Legacy environment, and it's bad because it's way too easy to disrupt.

Augustas
06-04-2010, 03:45 AM
If your decklist is really faster and more consistent than Unicorner's, Infinitum's and my list, why not post it and explain why or how you believe it's more consistent rather than spout off about how much better you think your build is? Have you actually even played any thing similar to these lists that you are criticizing?

I much prefer to play any of their lists over traditional lists like Mendinian's since they can actually win the game by turn 4-5 even if they don't manage to draw a Glimpse and combo off undisrupted, where as traditional combo lists are inconsistent, very prone to disruption or fizzling on their own and are too singleminded with no adequate back up plan when they do fizzle.

But if you want to post your list and defend your choices like Unicorner and Infinitum have been doing, then by all means, please do so instead of just railing on them.

Nettle Sentinel is obviously an auto four of in a list with both 4 Birchlore and 4 Heritage Druid. But that's clearly not the list I was referencing. I was referencing a list where Heritage Druid was the only card in the whole list that could take advantage of Sentinel's ability. Likewise, Summoner's Pact may well be worth it in a list that plays Regal Force, but again, that's not the list I was referencing.

... I just can't believe how dumb I am. I haven't paid attention to Concordant Crossroads, which makes my whole post pointless and stupid. My apologies :/

It's a very cool twist on the deck, I but I still don't like the lack of Nettle Sentinel. It allows to play out as many elves as you have in your hand, leaving other untapped and ready to attack. And I wonder does this decklist eliminate the main problems that Grapeshot suffers.



I wrote some obviousness about my version, so here it goes....

11x Forest

Llanowar Elves 4x
Fyndhorn Elves 4x
Nettle Sentinel 4x
Heritage Druid 4x
Birchlore Rangers 4x
Quirion Ranger 4x
Wirewood Symbiote 4x
Elvish Spirit Guide 4x
Elvish Visionary 2x
Eternal Witness 1x
Regal Force 1x
Progenitus 1x

Glimpse of Nature 4x
Summoner's Pact 4x
Natural Order 3x
Grapeshot 1x

Sideboard (I'm currently experimenting with with it) :

Elvish Champion 3x
Umezawa's Jitte 3x
Viridian Shaman 3x
Leyline of Lifeforce 3x
Pendlehaven 2x
Mycoloth 1x


It looks like any other combo elves deck, I just play Guides instead of Forests. The reason I play it like that is because one Forest is enough in the opening hand, with mana elf and Quirion, you have 2 two mana floating along wiith two untapped elves.

Most of the decks in legacy is either fast as hell or shuts you down with every card in their hand. I want to outrace them before they can put any threats of their own.

Speaking of consistency, guess why this deck doesn't show up anywhere in the top 8s? Because it's inconsistent from the beginning. It can't tutor for the Glimpse, it rallies only on the Glimpse, which is way too easy to disrupt. Other combo decks can use Orim's Chants, Silences and whatever, and we are forbidden from using such cards. None of the decklists play any disruption cards at all, and I can't think of a reason why everybody does that. Propably because the only option of disruption we have is some discard cards, which are not very powerful against all the control madness blue has. So that's why this deck is inconsistent. that's why other combo decks are better, that's why you're upset when you don't combo out and think that Pacts sucks or something. And obviously, Chalice, Engineered Plague, counterspells, the insane amount of creature removal is also a knife in our chest. And we are always going all in, and the sad thing is that there's a high possibility to not actually comboing out. Man, it has a lot more problems than any other deck, lol

After poitning out the obvious, I'll say why this deck is good. If they let through the Glimpse, you're on. Of course, there's lots of possibilities that you'll be StPd and whatever, which means that they allowed you to waste two of your combo cards, but otherwise, while playing on MWS, I noticed that many players tend to tap out on their first turns, which actually allows us to go off andnot be afraid of card removal.
If the combo plan fails, there's always Natural Order ready to help you out. Some games it will take the win of it's own, sometimes it will help you out in the middle of the combo. It's our own Demonic Tutor haha.
And the most important thing, it can win on turn 2 and turn 3, which is quite early. They obviously will have more options
on their turn 3 to disrupt you, but it's still possible to win right there. And there was many times when those pesky 1/1's took a win for me.

So, to sum up everything, it's good because it has a chance to compete in Legacy environment, and it's bad because it's way too easy to disrupt.

Shabbaman
06-04-2010, 05:52 AM
Jon, I agree with your arguments for swapping Pact for W.tutor and maybe even Sentinel (in a deck without birchlore rangers). But I have the feeling you are underestimating Pact. I like pact because it's so awesome with Sentinel, and because it gets me the card I want now. The one green mana is a huge difference. It suits my playing style. I wouldn't cut these cards, because that is what appeals to me in this deck. A build without it could be more consistent (4 mana in my upkeep next turn, hm, nice volcanic fallout you have there) and about as fast, which would make "your" deck the better deck. I would try Chord instead of worldy tutor though.

What I am trying to do is to make it less dependent on large numbers of elves on the board. I don't like Priest/Archdruid that much tbh. Sentinel/birchlore ranger/pact let you vomit out the whole deck if you want.

Jon Stewart
06-04-2010, 10:12 AM
Yes, I realize that if there is some assurance that you draw and resolve a Glimpse of Nature every game, then the pure combo route is probably better.

But seeing as there is no such assurance, you only play 4 Glimpse, and you have no means to even tutor for it, much less ensure that it resolves, I think focusing the whole deck towads maximizing Glimpse and nothing more is a dead end route to take for the deck.

The good thing about the Priest of Titania + Elvish Archdruid + Joraga Warcaller + Sylvan Messenger plan I posted...

// Lands
14 [UNH] Forest

// Creatures
4 [ALI] Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [DM] Fyndhorn Elves
4 [10E] Llanowar Elves
4 [FNM] Priest of Titania
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
4 [EVG] Sylvan Messenger
3 [EVG] Wirewood Symbiote

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [LG] Concordant Crossroads

is that those cards also let you combo off on turn 1-3 with a Glimpse very consistently (you often Glimpse/Messenger/Visionary into Quirion Rangers or Wirewood Symbiotes to keep the combo going and going until you can drop a huge Warcaller), but the bonus is that even without the Glimpse, the deck still lets you simply tap your Priest or Archdruid, untap it with Ranger/Symbiote to tap it again for even more mana, drop a truly massive Joraga Warcaller (or Sylvan Messenger till you get a hold of the Warcaller and more Rangers), and win the game that same turn, or the very next turn anyways. Likewise, simply topdecking or having a Concordant Crossroads in your opening hand can make for some obscene turns that win you the game either that turn or the very next turn.

It's perhaps optimal to make room for 3 Elvish Visionary in the deck as thus, I keep going back and forth on whether doing so is worthwhile...

-1 Forest
-1 Sylvan Messenger
-1 Concordant Crossroads/Fyndhorn Elves/Quirion Ranger
+3 Elvish Visionary


This route is a lot more consistent and resilient because it can get multiple cards countered or killed and still combo off, in a variety of different ways.

Anyone who is curious how this deck works, I encourage you to read this report of three games I played last night...

Game One:

Turn 1: Forest - Tap, Concordant Crossroads, Discard ESG, Fyndhorn Elves - Tap, Llanowar Elves - Tap, Quirion Ranger
Turn 2: Tap Forest, Fyndhorn and Llanowar, Cast Elvish Archdruid (It would have worked similarly with Priest of Titania) - Tap it for 4 mana, Bounce Forest to Hand with Quirion Ranger to untap Archdruid, Recast Forest, Tap it and Tap Archdruid - 9 mana, Cast Joraga Warcaller with 4 +1/+1 counters, Swing with 6/6 Llanowar Elves, Quirion Ranger, Fyndhorn Elves and Joraga Warcaller for the win on turn 2. (This turn would have actually been a lot more ridiculous if I had either a second forest in hand or a Wirewood Symbiote to cast my Warcaller for 1 mana, tap Archdruid, then bounce back Warcaller to untap Archdruid and cast an even bigger Archdruid).

Game Two:

Turn 1: Forest - Tap, Discard ESG, Cast Priest of Titania
Turn 2: Tap my forest cast Quirion Ranger, Tap Priest for 2 mana, Untap Priest with Ranger bouncing back the forest (I only had one forest in my opening hand, otherwise this turn would have been a lot more ridiculous), recast Forest - Tap, cast Glimpse of Nature, play Fyndhorn Elves, draw a card, tap Priest for 3 mana, cast more elves and draw more elves (don't remember which ones, top deck into Concordant Crossroads, cast that, tap my elves for more mana to play more elves including a Sylvan Messenger, eventually top deck into a second Glimpse, the rest of the game is hazy but long story short, I won that same turn with a giant Joraga Warcaller (for 20+ mana) with 2 Quirion Rangers, a Sylvan Messenger, and Joraga Warcaller all swinging in as 12/12s.

Game Three:

Turn 1: Forest - Tap, Cast Heritage Druid, Discard ESG, Cast Fyndhorn Elves, Discard 2nd ESG, Cast Joraga Warcaller (it could have been any of the many one cc elves in my deck). Tap all three elves to Heritage Druid to make GGG and cast Elvish Archdruid.
Turn 2: Tap Forest - play Wirewood Symbiote, Tap Archdruid for 4 mana, Bounce Warcaller untapping Achdruid with Symbiote, Tap Archdruid for 3 mana, Recast Warcaller for 7 mana, swing with 5/5 Heritage Druid, Fyndhorn Elves. My opponent immediately conceded as he had no way to kill off 5/5 creatures (he wasn't playing white). This game would have been likewise ridiculous and a guarenteed turn 3 win if I had a Sylvan Messenger in hand as my 7th card instead of Wirewood Symbiote.

So there's three seperate games where I won on turn two using three completely different methods (game one via comboing off with Crossroads, game two via comboing off with Glimpse, game three via going the normal aggro route).

This is also why if you're going the Archdruid/Priest of Titania route, the benefit you get from cards like Birchlore Ranger is minimal and Grapeshot/Mirror Entity are wholly unneccesary.

Of course, the real pro with going this route is not the ability to combo off, it's the ability to win the game by turn 3-4, even without comboing off, on the back of cards like Sylvan Messenger drawing into the elves needed to fuel a huge Joraga Warcaller that lets you win the same turn you cast it.

Lastly, I'm really interested in trying out 2 Umbral Mantle in the deck somewhere. That card is an automatic win in lots of situations too and gives the deck yet another path to victory. The problem is being able to squeeze 2 Mantle into the deck without dropping the elf count below 35 (for Sylvan Messenger/Glimpse/Priest/Archdruid/Heritage). I don't see how that can be done and that remains the reason why I'm not playing it.

magicplaya10
06-04-2010, 03:36 PM
Hey guy, I am back again. Elves combo won a tournament up here in Washington.

Here is my current decklist.

ELVEs Combo

4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle sentinal
4 Llanowar Elf
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Wirewood symbiote
4 Elvhish Archdruid
3 Birchlore Ranger
2 Quirion Ranger
3 Elvish spirit guide
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul/Win Condition
1 Eternal Witness
1 Viridian Zealot

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Leyling of Lifeforce
2 summoner's pact

6 Fetch
8 Forest

Yes its 61 cards.

The list that won the tournament won it with Banefire as a win condition. I perosonally think that is a great win condition because it can also be used as a removal spell. I still like Emrakul because he is awesome. I was also looking into Grapeshot or Brainfreeze as a win condition.



sideboard:
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Relic of Progenetis
3 Choke
3 Imperious Perfect
1 Elvish Champion
3 Mindbreak Trap

Combo is the worst match up hands down. Macabre and Relic are good againt reanimator. Macabre always catches them off guard. Imperiou Perfect/ Champion could be K-Grip, but they come in against control and other aggro decks (Non Goblins). They could be something else. If you have any ideas please let me know. Choke wrecks blue decks. Also looking for a way to beat Firespout, though it is hard.

Thoughts???

Jon Stewart
06-04-2010, 09:47 PM
List looks pretty good. How have Birchlore been, I'm personally not a fan of the card esp given how many great options we have. Take a moment to try out the list I posted above on MWS to see what I mean.

Can you perhaps post the decklist that won the tournament, also how many people were playing in the tournament. Thanks.

magicplaya10
06-05-2010, 04:35 PM
I don't have any lists for the tournament, but I will ask for them. I heard something around 30 people showed.
I didn't go to the tournament, but a few friends of mine did. I heard he played CB+Top decks all day, though. And he also beat an Ad Nas deck, and a New Horizon type deck. Leyline of Lifeforce= HOUSE aganst CB.

Birchlore is great because Birchlore + Nettle Sentinal is an engine, as long as you keep drawing the 1 CC elves.

Double Sentinal + Birchlore is good too. it's like a mini Heritage Druid.

I will take a look at your list, though. Thanks!

Jon Stewart
06-05-2010, 07:39 PM
Yes i know its an engine, i tried to make that deck with that engine competitive for months. Its a very weak engine. The Priest/Archdruid engine is much better, I promise.

Really, the list I posted above is close to perfect. Try it. Right now Im trying to figure out how to squeeze Elvish Visionary into the list but I dont think its better than any of the cards it could displace.

Combo Winter
06-06-2010, 12:58 AM
I totally disagree with the assertion that birchlore is usless i would consider him an auto 4 of and not run any archdruids or priest over the essence warden + birchlore combo. in a deck where you already have infi mana i dont want guys that need an untap step to work. Not to mention the fact that guys who don't cost one make comboing out turn 2 alot harder its just slowing the deck down for no reason, becuase it not like you have a tough time getting free mana and dropping your hand. Here is my friends list which i like:



4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Essence Warden
1 Eternal Witness
4 Heritage Druid
1 Joraga Warcaller
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
4 Wirewood Symbiote


3 Weird Harvest
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Tendrils of Agony


5 Forest
2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills


Sideboard:

3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 viridian shaman
4 crypt
4 Orim's Chant
3 Choke

Jon Stewart
06-06-2010, 01:54 AM
You do have a tough time, if and when you don't draw a Glimpse, or get all the right combo pieces to go off or when the combo fizzles.

Yes that list has the potential to be faster, but it's a hell of a lot more inconsistent. The advantage of the Archdruid/Priest/Warccaller approach is that you dont need to combo off to win the game, you can just as easily go the beatdown route and win the game on turn 4 anyways, with or without the combo pieces.

And yes, I frequently go off and win on turn 1 or turn 2 with the list I posted thanks to Crossroads or Elvish Spirit Guide, either card in my opening hand often lets me go off on turn 2, or turn 3 at the very latest.

frenchy-man
06-06-2010, 03:03 AM
Birchlore is too good not to play it.
I'll show the main ways to combo with this deck (sorry, it will be in french, I'll translate if I have the time, but it could be understandable, I mean I make an effort to write/read in English, you can do the same ;)) :


1 - La combo simple

situation de départ : mirror entity + symbiote + heritag druid + nettle sentinel en jeu, 0 manas
1- engage entity mirror, nettle sentinel et heritag druid : GGG
2 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : GG
3 - bounce symbiote, untap heritag druid : GG
4 - joue symbiote, untap nettle sentinel : G
5 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : 0
6 - engage symbiote, nettle et heritag : GGG
7 - bounce symbiote, untap heritag druid : GGG
8 - joue symbiote, untap nettle sentinel : GG
9 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : G
Résultat : à l'étape 9 nous sommes au même point que l'étape 5 mais avec 1 mana de plus. Et on peut répéter l'action autant de fois que l'on veut à chaque itération

*On remarquera que toute la partie en gras ne sert qu'a avoir le premier mana. Si on à donc un mana au début de la manipulation on peut commencer directement à l'étape 5.

Ca c'est la partie facile. Mais la combo est également possible sans heritag druid/druidesse de l'héritage et avec bichlore ranger à la place et 2 nettle sentinel. Il y à même 2 sortes de boucles et 3 combos possibles.

2 - Sans druidesse, avec 2 nettle sentinel et 2 symbiote

Situation de départ : mirror entity + symbioteX2 + nettleX2 + bichlore ranger, 0 manas
1 - tap nettle sentinelX2 et bichlore ranger+entity mirror : GG
2 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : G
3 - tap les deux symbiote : GG
4 - bounce les 2 symbiote, untap mirror entity et bichlore ranger : GG
5 - joue symbiote n°1, untap les 2 nettle : G
6 - tap les 2 nettle : GG
7 - joue symbiote n°2, untap les 2 nettle : G
Résultat : On arrive à la même situation qu'en 1/ mais avec un mana vert en plus.

Il y à aussi moyen de faire une combo avec plein de sentinelle.

3 - Sans druidesse avec 3 nettle sentinel

situation de départ : mirror entity + symbiote + nettleX3 + bichlore ranger, 0 manas
1 - tap les 2 sentinelle : G
2 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : 0
3 - tap sentinel+symbiote et bichlore + entity : GG
4 - renvoie symbiote en main, untap bichlore : GG
5 - joue symbiote, untap les 3 nettle : G
6 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : 0
7 - tap nettleX2 et nettle+symbiote : GG
8 - renvoie symbiote en main, untap mirror entity : GG
9 - joue symbiote, untap les 3 nettle : G
Résultat : Je vous ai ici montré en réalité deux itérations de la boucle. En effet l'effet d'une boucle est de dégager une créature, on gagne donc un mana tous les 2 passages.

Ensuite nous allons voir un moyen de faire une boucle uniquement stable : on ne gagne ni perd de mana et on peut la répéter autant de fois que l'on veut. En soit ça à pas l'air utile mais quand on se rend compte que le deck joue aperçu de la nature/glimpse of the nature ça prend tout son sens .

4 - Sans druidesse, avec 2 nettle sentinel, un symbiote et un glimpse of nature

situation de départ : mirror entity + symbiote + nettleX2 + bichlore ranger, glimpse résolu dans le tour
1 - tap les 2 sentinelle : G
2 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : 0
3 - tap symbiote+bichlore ranger : G
4 - renvoie symbiote en main, untap bichlore : G
5 - joue symbiote, untap les 2 nettle, pioche une carte : 0
Résultat : on arrive exactement à la même situation qu'en 1 mais avec une carte en paluche. Il faut juste veiller à ne pas mourir au deck .

Puis vient la combo un peu plus compliquée : celle sans nettle sentinel.
On peut, comme la 3, la voir de plusieurs façons selon qu'on étudie la boucle qui à pour effet de dégager une créature ou celle qui à pour effet de produire du mana. Sauf qu'ici la grosse boucle équivaut à 3 petits boucle.

5 - Sans nettle sentinel, avec 2 symbiote, petit boucle

situation de départ : mirror entity + symbioteX2 + heritag druid + 1 autre elfe (nommé Y pour l'occasion) + 1 mana en pool
1 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : 0
2 - engage symbioteX2 et heritag : GGG
3 - bounce symbiote1, dégage druidesse
4 - engage druidesse, mirror et Y : 6XG
5 - bounce symbiote2, dégage druidesse
6 - joue les 2 symbiote : 4XG
7 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : GGG
8 - engage symbioteX2 et heritag druid : 6XG
9 - bounce symbiote1&2, untap heritag druid et mirror entity : 6XG
10 - joue les 2 symbiote : 4XG
Résultat : A l'étape 10 on arrive à la même situation que l'étape 6 mais avec une bête dégagée de plus. La partie en gras sert donc d'initialisation. Comme dit plus haut on arrive seulement à dégager une créatures à chaque passage mais au bout de 3 passages on peut prendre du mana avec druidesse. Mais il y à un moment précis pour prendre le mana et c'est pour ça que je me suis ennuyé à vous montrer la grande boucle que voici :

5bis - Sans nettle sentinel, avec 2 symbiote, grande boucle

situation de départ : mirror entity + symbioteX2 + heritag druid + 1 autre elfe (nommé Y pour l'occasion) + 1 mana en pool
1 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : 0
2 - engage symbioteX2 et heritag : GGG
3 - bounce symbiote1, dégage druidesse
4 - engage druidesse, mirror et Y : 6XG
5 - bounce symbiote2, dégage druidesse
6 - joue les 2 symbiote : 4XG
7 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : GGG
8 - engage symbioteX2 et heritag druid : 6XG
9 - bounce symbiote1&2, untap heritag druid et mirror entity : 6XG
10 - joue les 2 symbiote : 4XG
11 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : GGG
12 - engage symbioteX2 et heritag druid : 6XG
13 - bounce symbiote1&2, untap heritag druid et Y : 6XG
14 - joue les 2 symbiote : 4XG
15 - transforme toutes les bêtes en 1/1 changelin : GGG
Résultat : On prend 3 manas en seulement 15 opérations ^^. Et pour pouvoir les avoir il faut bien faire comme au début, c'est à dire prendre du mana entre le moment ou on pose le premier et le deuxième symbiote.

Entity + Druidesse + Random elf (Y) + 2 Symbiote :

Tap Entity + Druidesse + Y : GGG
G pour Entity, reste GG
Bounce Symbiote 1, detap Druidesse, joue Symbiote 1 reste G
G pour Entity, reste 0
Tap Symbiote 1 et 2 et Druidesse : GGG
Bounce Symbiote 1 : detap Entity
Bounce Symbiote 2 : detap Druidesse
Play Symbiote 1 et 2, reste G
G pour Entity, reste 0
Tap Symbiote 1 et 2 et Entity pour GGG
Bounce Symbiote 1 et 2 et detap Entity et Y
Joue Symbiote 1 et 2, reste G

On est dans la même situation qu'au départ avec G en pool. Notez que ça marche aussi avec un land au lieu du random elf.


That's it.

Oh, and by the way, I am pimping the deck (in foil), mp me if you get some foil cards for elfball....

Neuad
06-06-2010, 10:21 PM
Are there any budget elf combo lists? Or could someone post one up real quick?

Looking to get into legacy and having some trouble finding affordable decks for me (IE 100 bucks ish. . .can't afford fetches and dual lands). I have a bunch of friends that play Legacy so I might be able to find some cards so if its a bit over 100 thats fine. Thanks <3

edgewalker
06-06-2010, 10:25 PM
Most elf combo decks are budget, I believe the most expensive card is Glimpse of Nature and that could probably replaced with more tutor effects or multani's acolyte. But as far as I know the list can be purchased for around $100 (I did it myself last summer)

I mean you don't have to run any duels or fetches since birchlore ranger produces any color and fetches and duels open you up to wasteland/stifle issues which a lot of decks seem to be into these days...

Neuad
06-06-2010, 11:23 PM
Is there any reason to play Nettle Sentinel, or any of the other :g: elves except Llanowar Elves, Heritage Druid or Fyndhorn Elves over

Taunting Elf
Elvish Lookout
Elvish Lyrist
Elvish Scout
Elvish Scrapper
or any other :g: elf cards?

I was looking through my ghetto collection of cards and saw a ton of :g: Elf cards that weren't on the list I quoted above. . .

Neuad
06-06-2010, 11:39 PM
// Lands
14 [UNH] Forest

// Creatures
4 [ALI] Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [DM] Fyndhorn Elves
4 [10E] Llanowar Elves
4 [FNM] Priest of Titania
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
4 [EVG] Sylvan Messenger
3 [EVG] Wirewood Symbiote

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [LG] Concordant Crossroads



I like this deck alot, and the price, but I would replace the Elvish Spirit Guide with Elvish Visionary. Visonary is only :1::g: vs :2::g:, and I can draw another card.. . .so its more budget for me and I can always upgrade to ESG later.

What does your SB look like?

Also I added it onto TCGplayer.com for ease of viewing cards and pricing as I don't know how to make the cards mouse-over-able yet. Here's a link for you Jon, I tried to not take credit. <3

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=604928

heroicraptor
06-07-2010, 01:11 AM
Is there any reason to play Nettle Sentinel, or any of the other :g: elves except Llanowar Elves, Heritage Druid or Fyndhorn Elves over

Taunting Elf
Elvish Lookout
Elvish Lyrist
Elvish Scout
Elvish Scrapper
or any other :g: elf cards?

I was looking through my ghetto collection of cards and saw a ton of :g: Elf cards that weren't on the list I quoted above. . .

Nettle Sentinel untaps when you play green spells. That's the entire backbone of the combo.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 01:44 AM
Pardon my magic newbness, understand it now and changed the deck I want a little to reflect that.

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger

4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Concordant Crossroads
2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Grapeshot

14 Forest

extremely budget, which fits what I want perfectly. Easily upgradable if I decide I like the deck alot, or get some money. Any other advice on changes?

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=604984

magicplaya10
06-07-2010, 02:08 AM
Pardon my magic newbness, understand it now and changed the deck I want a little to reflect that.

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger

4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Concordant Crossroads
2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Grapeshot

14 Forest

extremely budget, which fits what I want perfectly. Easily upgradable if I decide I like the deck alot, or get some money. Any other advice on changes?

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=604984


The Elvish Spirit Guide is a mana Accelerant. I wouldn't cut it. Everytime I can drop double Llanowar/Fyndhorn turn 1, or Drui + Sentinel turn 1, etc. I combo a lot faster. The card is awesome. I wouldn't cut it.

While I do like the list, I too think that Birchlore is too good to not run. I like it a lot more than concordant crossroads. Believe me, i am never worried about mana. =D I will try out the list though, see how it runs. Thanks!

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 08:27 AM
I like this deck alot, and the price, but I would replace the Elvish Spirit Guide with Elvish Visionary. Visonary is only :1::g: vs :2::g:, and I can draw another card.. . .so its more budget for me and I can always upgrade to ESG later.

What does your SB look like?

Also I added it onto TCGplayer.com for ease of viewing cards and pricing as I don't know how to make the cards mouse-over-able yet. Here's a link for you Jon, I tried to not take credit. <3

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=604928

Neuad, if you want to make room for Elvish Visionary, there's a lot of cards you can cut... a Sylvan Messenger, a Forest, a Quirion Ranger, a Fyndhorn Elves etc but Elvish Spirit Guide is definately not one of of them.

Here are three games that I played last night where ESG allowed me to combo off and win a full turn or two faster...

Anyone who is curious how this deck works, I encourage you to read this...

Game One:

Turn 1: Forest - Tap, Concordant Crossroads, Discard ESG, Fyndhorn Elves - Tap, Llanowar Elves - Tap, Quirion Ranger
Turn 2: Tap Forest, Fyndhorn and Llanowar, Cast Elvish Archdruid (It would have worked similarly with Priest of Titania) - Tap it for 4 mana, Bounce Forest to Hand with Quirion Ranger to untap Archdruid, Recast Forest, Tap it and Tap Archdruid - 9 mana, Cast Joraga Warcaller with 4 +1/+1 counters, Swing with 6/6 Llanowar Elves, Quirion Ranger, Fyndhorn Elves and Joraga Warcaller for the win on turn 2. (This turn would have actually been a lot more ridiculous if I had either a second forest in hand or a Wirewood Symbiote to cast my Warcaller for 1 mana, tap Archdruid, then bounce back Warcaller to untap Archdruid and cast an even bigger Archdruid).

Game Two:

Turn 1: Forest - Tap, Discard ESG, Cast Priest of Titania
Turn 2: Tap my forest cast Quirion Ranger, Tap Priest for 2 mana, Untap Priest with Ranger bouncing back the forest (I only had one forest in my opening hand, otherwise this turn would have been a lot more ridiculous), recast Forest - Tap, cast Glimpse of Nature, play Fyndhorn Elves, draw a card, tap Priest for 3 mana, cast more elves and draw more elves (don't remember which ones, top deck into Concordant Crossroads, cast that, tap my elves for more mana to play more elves including a Sylvan Messenger, eventually top deck into a second Glimpse, the rest of the game is hazy but long story short, I won that same turn with a giant Joraga Warcaller (for 20+ mana) with 2 Quirion Rangers, a Sylvan Messenger, and Joraga Warcaller all swinging in as 12/12s.

Game Three:

Turn 1: Forest - Tap, Cast Heritage Druid, Discard ESG, Cast Fyndhorn Elves, Discard 2nd ESG, Cast Joraga Warcaller (it could have been any of the many one cc elves in my deck). Tap all three elves to Heritage Druid to make GGG and cast Elvish Archdruid.
Turn 2: Tap Forest - play Wirewood Symbiote, Tap Archdruid for 4 mana, Bounce Warcaller untapping Achdruid with Symbiote, Tap Archdruid for 3 mana, Recast Warcaller for 7 mana, swing with 5/5 Heritage Druid, Fyndhorn Elves. My opponent immediately conceded as he had no way to kill off 5/5 creatures (he wasn't playing white). This game would have been likewise ridiculous and a guarenteed turn 3 win if I had a Sylvan Messenger in hand as my 7th card instead of Wirewood Symbiote.

So there's three seperate games where I won on turn two because of ESG using three completely different methods (game one via comboing off with Crossroads, game two via comboing off with Glimpse, game three via going the normal aggro route). And oddly enough, all three games, I only had one Forest in my hand rather than two.

If I didn't play ESG in the deck, all three games, I wouldn't have comboed off until turn three. That's why I would never cut ESG from my build. This is also why if you're going the Archdruid/Priest of Titania route, the benefit you get from cards like Birchlore Ranger is minimal and Grapeshot/Mirror Entity are wholly unneccesary.

Of course, the real pro with going this route is not the ability to combo off, it's the ability to win the game by turn 3-4, even without comboing off, on the back of cards like Sylvan Messenger drawing into the elves needed to fuel a huge Joraga Warcaller that lets you win the same turn you cast it.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 08:35 AM
Alright that makes sense, but like I said another reason I cut it from my final build that I think I'm going with for now (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?Deck_ID=604984) is to make it extremely budget for me, unless my friends have an ESG or Archdruid I can barrow till I can buy my own.

unicoerner
06-07-2010, 12:02 PM
This list is by Jon is interesting:

// Lands
14 [UNH] Forest

// Creatures
4 [ALI] Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [DM] Fyndhorn Elves
4 [10E] Llanowar Elves
4 [FNM] Priest of Titania
4 [M10] Elvish Archdruid
4 [WWK] Joraga Warcaller
4 [EVG] Sylvan Messenger
3 [EVG] Wirewood Symbiote

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [LG] Concordant Crossroads

Crossroads could be a 2 of. I will probably test it.
Wirewood is an auto 4 for me, because it`s such a good engine in this deck.
8 Llanawor`s are perhaps 1-2 too much.

And here is perhaps some tech:
If we play 2 Pacts, which is def not a bad card, we could perhaps throw 2 Nettles in, so we get them if we need them. Otherwise we can search for a better Elf. IF we include 2 Pacts, we could perhaps go down to 2 Quirion aswell.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 01:15 PM
Pardon my magic newbness, understand it now and changed the deck I want a little to reflect that.

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger

4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Concordant Crossroads
2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Grapeshot

14 Forest

extremely budget, which fits what I want perfectly. Easily upgradable if I decide I like the deck alot, or get some money. Any other advice on changes?

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=604984

I think I'm going to go with that, the changes I would make based off cards I could barrow from friends till I can get my own are

-X Forest
+X Taiga

-X Elvish Visionary
+X ESG

What would you remove to add in Elvish Archdruids? Would you? Or should I SB any I get?

And speaking of SB this is what I was thinking for my setup.

Something like

1 Emrakul
2 Regal
4 Elvish Champion
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Elvish Archdruid

??

unicoerner
06-07-2010, 02:15 PM
I just saw an amazing card
!Cloudstone Curio

Perhaps we could play 2 instead of 2 Wirewoods?

Neuad
06-07-2010, 02:48 PM
So let me try and understand Wirewood.

You tap Priest of Titania, get X mana. Use wirewood, untap Priest, return Llanowar. Re-cast Llanowar, and then you can retap Priest for a 2nd wave of a ton of mana?

Cloudstone Curio would be the same principle except Cast Priest of Titania, lay down a G elf, return Priest or similar card to hand. Recast priest/whatever, and tap for mana a 2nd time?

In both scenarios obviously you need Crossroads in play aswell.

Am I understand correctly?

Please pardon my magic newbness.

Augustas
06-07-2010, 03:29 PM
I just saw an amazing card
!Cloudstone Curio

Perhaps we could play 2 instead of 2 Wirewoods?

As you can see from the decklists through the internet, Cloudstone Curio is used in Extended Combo elves version. The format is obviously slower, so the deck has a lot more breathing space than it does in Legacy. And we have a lot faster stuff than Curio :) So i would say it doesn't have space and time down here.

Anyway, it's cool that Combo elves was able to win a GP Oakland.

Matt Nass

2 Arbor Elf
4 Boreal Druid
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Essence Warden
1 Eternal Witness
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Regal Force
Creatures [30]
4 Cloudstone Curio
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Primal Command
4 Summoner's Pact
Spells [13]
4 Forest
3 Horizon Canopy
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Pendelhaven
1 Temple Garden
4 Verdant Catacombs

interesting build

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 03:35 PM
I do not understand the people that opt to play

Birchlore Ranger
Nettle Sentinel
Grapeshot
Regal Force

over

Joraga Warcaller
Elvish Archdruid
Concordant Crossroads


What happens if the deck doesn't draw/resolve a Glimpse? The deck rolls over and dies, that's what.

With Joraga Warcaller and Archdruid, you can got the aggro route and still win by beating down your opponent with massive Warcallers atleast.

The odds of always having a Glimpse every game aren't that high.

The odds of always having either a Glimpse to combo off with, or a Joraga Warcaller or a Sylvan Messenger to draw into multiple Archdruids or a Warcaller to let you go the aggro route if you can't combo out on the other hand are much higher.

Augustas
06-07-2010, 03:54 PM
I do not understand the people that opt to play

Birchlore Ranger
Nettle Sentinel
Grapeshot
Regal Force

over

Joraga Warcaller
Elvish Archdruid
Concordant Crossroads


What happens if the deck doesn't draw/resolve a Glimpse? The deck rolls over and dies, that's what.

With Joraga Warcaller and Archdruid, you can got the aggro route and still win by beating down your opponent with massive Warcallers atleast.

The odds of always having a Glimpse every game aren't that high.

The odds of always having either a Glimpse to combo off with, or a Joraga Warcaller or a Sylvan Messenger to draw into multiple Archdruids or a Warcaller to let you go the aggro route if you can't combo out on the other hand are much higher.

You do not understand that your build isn't the perfect and ultimate one, what happens when your Warcaller also gets countered, what happens when Crossroads also gets countered and so on? What happens when you don't have Warcaller? I respect your imput to the deck, but seriously, stop acting like your build is the best and every other build sucks "because it's inconsistent". And seriously, stop bashing cards that actually wins games. It's cool that you don't like them, but you're pushing your opinion to others way too much.

And yeah, I would like to play some games with you on MWS, I want to see how good is your build against normal combo elves.

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 04:44 PM
No my point is.

If Glimpse gets countered, the Warcaller combo lists can still win via the Warcaller route, or the Sylvan Messenger route, or the multiple Archdruid route. There are several different paths to victory.

Whereas with traditional combo lists, if Glimpse gets countered, then what's the backup plan? Beat down with 1/1s? Play a Visionary and hope you topdeck into a Glimpse? Hope and pray that you can somehow generate 7 mana in one turn and tutor up Regal Force, which is actually pretty rare if you didn't combo off. It's a very all in one plan that is far too dependent on Glimpse. And without the card, the deck for the most part falls apart. I'm basing this on considerable time spent trying to play traditional Elf combo lists.

Glimpse is a fantastic win condition which is why I think every Elf deck should play 4. But I think it's a mistake to orient your build completely around Glimpse such that you are almost dependent on the card to have any hope of winning. But that's what so many people are opting to do. Why not play cards like Warcaller and Sylvan Messenger that offer viable backup plans, and still let you win with Glimpse regardless.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 04:47 PM
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=605401 - Deck I want to buy

As I said above
-X Elvish Visionary
-X Forest
+X Elvish Archdruid
+X Elvish Spirit Guide

Leading to my eventual deck goal of

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=604984

Is 10 Forests too little? What else would you guys recommend taking out to fit Archdruids and ESGs in other then Visionarys? Llanowars and Fyndhorns?

I would be playing this out on MWS but I can't find a download for it, the website is broke :(

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 04:55 PM
What else would you guys recommend taking out to fit Archdruids and ESGs in other then Visionarys?

I would recommend taking out 4 Birchlore Ranger, 4 Nettle Sentinal, the Grapeshot, a forest, a Sylvan Messenger and 2 Elvish Visionary to squeeze in 4 Elvish Archdruid, 4 ESG, the 3rd Wirewood Symbiote AND 4 Joraga Warcaller.

Try it out (on MWS if you must) and I pretty much guarentee you'll be very pleased with how the list runs.

If the site is broken, you can download MWS off of torrents from thepiratebay.org. As a bonus, by using the torrent, you will get all the card pictures too.

Exospaciac
06-07-2010, 05:19 PM
I do not understand the people that opt to play

Birchlore Ranger
Nettle Sentinel
Grapeshot
Regal Force

over

Joraga Warcaller
Elvish Archdruid
Concordant Crossroads.

Why can't you just play both the Nettle/Heritage combo AND the Joraga/Archdruids?

Grapeshot isn't necessary. Neither is Mirror Entity. Nettle Sentinel, however, is probably the most important creature in the deck, if not then he's definitely number two. Why do you think it should be Nettle Sentinel vs. Elvish Archdruid?

My friend just built Elves Combo, basing his list off of Forbiddian's list earlier in this thread, and it still works insanely good without needing to glimpse.

Personally I think the more hybridized approach is the way to go. Most lists in this thread seem to rely too much on the combo. Some decks will try to stop your beatdown plan while you combo off in their face, others will try to stop the creature flow while you set up the combo.

This is the list my friend plays:

14 Forest

4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Viridian Zealot

4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Concordant Crossroads

Neuad
06-07-2010, 05:25 PM
What about a slightly edited version of that list

4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger
3 Wirewood Symbiote

2 Concordant Crossroads
4 Glimpse of Nature

12 Forest

PS - Adding Elvish Spirit Guides to my deck became alot easier, I just found 4. Less money I have to spend!

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 07:07 PM
14 Forest

4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Viridian Zealot

4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Concordant Crossroads

That actually looks like a fairly interesting and resilient build. Thanks for posting it. I do think both Priest of Titania and Elvish Spirit Guide are quite important to the deck.

ESG regularly speeds the deck up by a full turn, and also works great with Archdruid and Priest (lets you play them a turn earlier), and lastly is a great card to draw off of Sylvan Messenger.

Priest really lets you abuse Warcaller. I wouldn't play 4 Warcaller without a full set of Priest and Archdruid, and Priest goes fantastically with Glimpse, Sylvan Messenger, Quirion Ranger, Symbiote, Crossroads and your ability to combo.

But I think I can play a similar list while making room for both cards.

What do you think of something like this...

13/12 Forest
3/4 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
4 Priest of Titania
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Sylvan Messenger
4 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Symbiote

4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Concordant Crossroads

Exospaciac
06-07-2010, 07:18 PM
Don't thank me, thank Forbiddian. He DID help build the best deck in the format after all. :)

Priest seems like a pretty obvious inclusion at first, but my only problem with it is that the deck already makes a ton of mana. Kicking Warcaller for 4 as opposed to Warcaller for 12 to end the game probably won't make the biggest difference in most cases. Plus, it doesn't help you dig. Visionary digs for dudes and can even help you generate mana.

But then again I could be completely wrong. I've never really piloted this deck in tournament so my experience with it is fairly limited.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 07:28 PM
The best part about this deck and the Glimpse-Nettle/Warcaller, Visionary vs ESG, etc etc arguments we are having is most of these cards are relatively cheap, and we could have all 3 decks (Glimpse, Warcaller, and the mix) without buying many diff cards, and play around with what suits you as a player.


Edit - Sideboards. This is the one thing you guys are kind of glossing over recently. Would building a Glimpse/Nettle/Grapeshot deck, with a Warcaller sideboard be a bad idea?

Or are there better cards to set in your sideboard.

Currently am thinking

1 ?
4 Elvish Archdruid
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Regal Force
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Thoughtseize


to support a grapeshot deck. But would

4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Regal Force
4 Elvish Champions

work? I could switch from a grapeshot win condition to a warcaller + champs, or Emrakul/Regal. . .

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 07:45 PM
I don't think the transformational board is worth it. You are better off playing...

Leyline of Lifeforce vs. Control
Thorn of Amethyst vs. Combo
Ground Seal/that G/W G/W Enchantment/Fairie Macabre/Leyline of the Void/Tormod's Crypt or some other grayeyard hate
and the remaining slots dictated by your meta, I actually like utility elves like Elvish Champion/Essence Warden/Wellwisher here against really fast aggro decks or green based decks. But if you face a lot of combo, you are better off with maybe Root Maze or something to supplement the Thorn of Amethyst.


Priest seems like a pretty obvious inclusion at first, but my only problem with it is that the deck already makes a ton of mana. Kicking Warcaller for 4 as opposed to Warcaller for 12 to end the game probably won't make the biggest difference in most cases.

But then again I could be completely wrong. I've never really piloted this deck in tournament so my experience with it is fairly limited.

Yes, the problem is, Priest and Archdruid are prime targets for all your opponent's removal and FoWs (which works out well in a way since your opponent many times won't have removal left for the Warcaller or counters for the Glimpses), but you can never have too many. Without fail, smart opponent do everything they can to stop Priest and Archdruid from losing summoning sickness, because the turn they lose Summoning Sickness is almost always the same turn you win the game. This is also why I love Crossroads and went up to 3 copies. With eight copies or Priest, you are assured that you can make enough mana to combo off, or to play Warcaller kicked for 4.

Playing 4 Archdruid and 4 Priest doesn't mean you get to kick Warcaller for 12, you need that many to consistently kick Warcaller for 4 to win the game. Afterall, with 8 copies of a card, you are likely to see around one 1.5 copies per game.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 08:03 PM
I don't think the transformational board is worth it. You are better off playing...

Leyline of Lifeforce vs. Control
Thorn of Amethyst vs. Combo
Ground Seal/that G/W G/W Enchantment/Fairie Macabre/Leyline of the Void/Tormod's Crypt or some other grayeyard hate
and the remaining slots dictated by your meta, I actually like utility elves like Elvish Champion/Essence Warden/Wellwisher here against really fast aggro decks or green based decks. But if you face a lot of combo, you are better off with maybe Root Maze or something to supplement the Thorn of Amethyst.


So something like

SB
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Vexing Shusher
4 Viridian Shaman
2 Joraga Warcaller
4 Elvish Archdruid

?

Thanks for all the input by the way!

Jon Stewart
06-07-2010, 08:43 PM
Play what you are comfortable with. If you do want to play the deck competitivly though, I wouldn't use up sideboard slots for cards like Archdruid or Warcaller, and I think 4 Shaman is a bit too many. You would be better off with Zealot since that can hit Humility, Oblivion Ring, Deed and cards of that nature as well.

Neuad
06-07-2010, 08:57 PM
With this deck I plan on playing at a local FNM type thing for legacy at a local card shop, getting used to magic and having some fun.

If I decide I like combo/legacy I can start upgrading towards something better.

alphastorm
06-07-2010, 11:31 PM
Jon Stewart: Why do you think everyone has a pure combo elf deck and only has one road to victory? My deck can win with mirror entity, staff of domination, grapeshot, glimpse, natural order for prog, sometimes natural order for regal force, and I run a single warcaller which can be tutored for with summoner's pact. Is that enough win conditions for you?

Jon Stewart
06-08-2010, 12:52 AM
Yes, I'm referring specifically to the decks that are built almost entirely around Glimpse (most of the lists in the thread).

The average undisrupted win turn for my list is turn 2.5 with glimpse and turn 3.5 without Glimpse. But even with significant disruption, it scrapes together a win on turn 4/5 without much difficulty.

Most of the standard lists in the thread (including the one in the OP) aren't capable of doing that without Glimpse. I know from past experience playing those same lists.

If you have a list that wins that consistently without Glimpse via multiple routes, I would be interested in seeing it. I'm particularly curious as to how you managed to squeeze so many different non elf win conditions into the deck while still being able to abuse Glimpse when you do happen to draw and resolve it.

Do you mind posting it? Thanks.

magicplaya10
06-08-2010, 01:16 AM
I do not understand the people that opt to play

Birchlore Ranger
Nettle Sentinel
Grapeshot
Regal Force

over

Joraga Warcaller
Elvish Archdruid
Concordant Crossroads


What happens if the deck doesn't draw/resolve a Glimpse? The deck rolls over and dies, that's what.

With Joraga Warcaller and Archdruid, you can got the aggro route and still win by beating down your opponent with massive Warcallers atleast.

The odds of always having a Glimpse every game aren't that high.

The odds of always having either a Glimpse to combo off with, or a Joraga Warcaller or a Sylvan Messenger to draw into multiple Archdruids or a Warcaller to let you go the aggro route if you can't combo out on the other hand are much higher.


That's where your wrong sir. You can go aggro as well. I have done it plenty of times. Although Joraga may be ran in my sideboard to bring in, I like the combo version because it is hard to disrupt and can just win. Your list looks like it rolls to Enchantress and counterbalance pretty hard.

I dont like Crossroads because it helps your opponent as well.

Also, I do go aggro with the deck. In fact today, I dropped my hand on turn two and he was dead in two turns. It may not be as fast, but it got me there. I had Leyline of Lifeforce back up.

I really like my list. The version I posted toped in an event here already. I am going to take it to an event this weekend and Ill let you know how I did.

PS, does anyone have any outs to Firespout? I have some more lords in my side, maybe Jorga?

thanks!

ccman
06-08-2010, 09:40 AM
hello im a longtime lurker to the forum and just joined i've been playing legacy for 2 yrs and have alot of expeirience with combo of alll sorts elves is currently my favorite:

5 forest
2 taiga
1 savannah
1 misty rainforest
1 verdant catacombe
2 windswept heath
2 wooded foothills

1 regal force
1 viridian zealot
1 mirror entity
1 vexing shusher
3 elvish visionary
3 quirrion ranger
4 wirewood simbiote
2 priest of titana
3 elvish archdruid
4 heritage druid
4 llanowar elves
4 nettle sentinel
1 eternal witness
1 anger
1 masked admirers
3 birchlore rangers

4 glimpse of nature
3 survival of the fittest
2 sumoner's pact


SB:
2 faerie marabre
1 tormod's crypt
1 magus of the moon
2 umezawas jitte
3 krosan grip
4 mindbreak trap
2 choke

so far the list has been destroying.
i can win with standard combo, priest/archdruid+mirror entity+wirewood simbiote combo, and the priest/archdruid combo+ survial+ masked retainers to play all my 1 mana elves for 4 mana right from my library

i think survival is a great addition to the deck and i couldn't be happier with it

Hawdes
06-08-2010, 10:27 AM
I hardly see any people playing Staff of Domination in their lists... Why not? It's a house and fits this deck perfectly in my opinion.
I'm running the Birchlore/Heritage/Nettle synergy aswell as mana ramping with Archdruid, Priest and Qurion/Wirewood. It works like a charm and does not rely on getting glimpse all that much. You can easily draw your library with the Staff and go off with a insanly large Banefire.
And I don't see the benefit of running Grapeshot when you can run Banefire, it must be harder to obtain a storm count of 19 than going for large amounts of mana.

I did run Crop Rotation in the list before to be able to tutor for Gaea's Cradle as well as for sideboard cards like Karakas, Maze of Ith, Bojuka Bog etc.

This is my list:


2 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Bayou
5 Forest
2 Taiga
2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Savannah

4 Priest of Titania
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Quirion Ranger
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers

1 Banefire
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Concordant Crossroads
2 Staff of Domination

Sideboard:
4 Krosan Grip
2 Absolute Law
3 Sylvan Messenger
3 Imperious Perfect
1 Bond of Agony
2 Joraga Warcaller


The sideboard isn't welltrimmed at the moment, it could need a fresh up. The only main problem I have playing the deck is when I face Zoo type decks with great amounts of burn.
How good is Leyline of Lifeforce? Does it pull it's weight to lock up 4 slots in the sideboard? And how do I tackle the problem against burn heavy decks?

@ magicplaya10
The best answer to Firespout in my opinion is Absolute Law since all your guys gain Protection from Red. I would opt for 3-4 in the board if you face sweepers that much.

alphastorm
06-08-2010, 12:02 PM
Yes, I'm referring specifically to the decks that are built almost entirely around Glimpse (most of the lists in the thread).

The average undisrupted win turn for my list is turn 2.5 with glimpse and turn 3.5 without Glimpse. But even with significant disruption, it scrapes together a win on turn 4/5 without much difficulty.

Most of the standard lists in the thread (including the one in the OP) aren't capable of doing that without Glimpse. I know from past experience playing those same lists.

If you have a list that wins that consistently without Glimpse via multiple routes, I would be interested in seeing it. I'm particularly curious as to how you managed to squeeze so many different non elf win conditions into the deck while still being able to abuse Glimpse when you do happen to draw and resolve it.

Do you mind posting it? Thanks.

Mana Source: 17
1x Wasteland
1x Gaea'sCradle
9x Forests
4x Land Grant
2x Crop Rotation

Creatures: 34
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Priest of Titania
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Eternal Witness
1 Mirror entity
1 Sylvan Messenger
1 Regal force
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Progenitus

Spells: 9
4 Glimpse of Nature
2 natural order
1 Grapeshot
1 concordant crossroads
1 staff of domination

Augustas
06-08-2010, 01:31 PM
Banefire vs. Grapeshot

Grapeshot is x times better than Banefire. They have to deal with other copies of it, it can clear your opponent's side if needed and you can always re-use it with Eternal Witness.

As for sideboard, Jdepends on the build really. I personally like Elvish Champion the most, so I keep three of them, and I also play three Jitte, which can bring home the Merfolk matchup home. Other cards.. Viridian Shaman is a must, and everything else depends on the meta. Other combo decks really doesn't expect Chalice of the Void to be played in elves, so I opt to play that one. Chalice on 0 wrecks :) You can side out Summoner's Pacts or some elves to fit it there, so it's really not a problem. Other cards.. Pendelhaven, to save Wirewoods, Mycoloth is an option too. Oh, and Faerie Macabres should be in the sideboard too. But really, depends on the meta..

Felidae
06-08-2010, 01:35 PM
@ccman: You might add a Taiga in order to get Anger working ;). (Please excuse my random trolling in this thread)

magicplaya10
06-08-2010, 01:41 PM
Banefire vs. Grapeshot

Grapeshot is x times better than Banefire. They have to deal with other copies of it, it can clear your opponent's side if needed and you can always re-use it with Eternal Witness.

As for sideboard, Jdepends on the build really. I personally like Elvish Champion the most, so I keep three of them, and I also play three Jitte, which can bring home the Merfolk matchup home. Other cards.. Viridian Shaman is a must, and everything else depends on the meta. Other combo decks really doesn't expect Chalice of the Void to be played in elves, so I opt to play that one. Chalice on 0 wrecks :) You can side out Summoner's Pacts or some elves to fit it there, so it's really not a problem. Other cards.. Pendelhaven, to save Wirewoods, Mycoloth is an option too. Oh, and Faerie Macabres should be in the sideboard too. But really, depends on the meta..

Thats why i use Emrakul in my list. Its uncounterable and kills my opponent. Banefire can be misdirected. And stifle is in the format, so grapeshot doesn't seem to good.

I do like 1 Elvish Champion and 3 Imperious Perfect. 1x Chalice seems hot. And mycoloth is a great answer to Firespout to! thanks guys!

Hawdes
06-08-2010, 01:43 PM
Banefire vs. Grapeshot

Grapeshot is x times better than Banefire. They have to deal with other copies of it, it can clear your opponent's side if needed and you can always re-use it with Eternal Witness.

As for sideboard, Jdepends on the build really. I personally like Elvish Champion the most, so I keep three of them, and I also play three Jitte, which can bring home the Merfolk matchup home. Other cards.. Viridian Shaman is a must, and everything else depends on the meta. Other combo decks really doesn't expect Chalice of the Void to be played in elves, so I opt to play that one. Chalice on 0 wrecks :) You can side out Summoner's Pacts or some elves to fit it there, so it's really not a problem. Other cards.. Pendelhaven, to save Wirewoods, Mycoloth is an option too. Oh, and Faerie Macabres should be in the sideboard too. But really, depends on the meta..

I can't see how you would reach a storm count of 19 that easy... And the rest of the reply doesn't actually respond to my post that much since it's not a breakdown of the list I'm running. I'm not running EW or any other of the cards. Would be glad if ppl actually gives more valuable input than "It's better, run it", I wanna know... Why.

SpeedOfDark
06-08-2010, 02:26 PM
Hey guys, I just recently played a tournament with the list below, so I thought I would post about it. It was a 45 man legacy tournament with the first prize as a mox pearl. I ranked 15th, so did not make the top 8 :(

DECK I used (note that certain card choices are budget restraints):

---1cc Creatures (27)
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore ranger
4 Quirion Ranger
4 wirewood symbiote
3 fyndhorn elves
4 llanowar elves

---2cc Creatures (6)
3 elvish visionary
3 priest of titania

---4+cc Creatures (2)
1 regal force
1 emrakul, the aeons torn

---Spells (12)
4 glimpse of nature
4 summoner's pact
4 weird harvest

---Mana Base (13)
13 forests

---Sideboard (15)
*3 relic of progenitus
*2 tormod's crypt
*3 viridian zealot
*1 viridian shaman
*1 leyline of lifeforce
*1 reverent silence
*2 umezawa's jitte
*2 elvish champion


---


ROUND 1
opponent: aggro elves
game 1 and game 2: combo turn 3 and 4 ftw.
result: 2-0

ROUND 2
opponent: midrange zoo (a roguish RGB deck, but similar to zoo)
game 1: combo turn 3.
game 2: he plays engineered plague turn 2 with birds of paradise and I don't draw any solutions.
game 3: I keep a non-combo hand because it has a lord and a jitte in it. He plays engineered plague again, but my lord is already out, and I'm hitting with jitte+forest walk every turn and wreaking his creatures. Eventually he pulls out a second engineered plague, but I had tutored and played my second lord the turn just before.
result: 2-1

ROUND 3
opponent: RB goblins
game 1: attempt to combo turn 2, fizzle after about 10 draws. pact for regal force turn 3, play him, draw into a glimpse and combo ftw.
game 2: mulligan down to six, attempt to combo by ramping up to regal force, but its 1 turn too slow and he runs me over with goblin crazyness.
game 3: mulligan down to 5, he has a hand loaded with removal from his sideboard and keeps all my key creatures in the graveyard, then beats me down.
1-2

ROUND 4
opponent: high tide
game 1: I combo'd faster than him.
game 2: he got mana screwed.
2-0

ROUND 5
opponent: stax
game 1: turn 1 chalice for 1, gg.
game 2: lasted about 20 minutes, but he finally locked me down and killed me with a mishra :(
0-2

Based on what I experienced and tested (and some lists posted here), this is the next list I'd like to try (once I get the money cards like NO and survival):

***GLIMPSE ELVES***

***1 mana*** 25
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore ranger
4 Quirion Ranger
4 wirewood symbiote
2 fyndhorn elves
3 lanawar elves

***2 mana*** 3
3 elvish visionary

***3-4 mana*** 3
1 viridian shaman
1 mirror entity
1 masked admirers

***fatties*** 2
1 regal force
1 progenitus

***spells*** 12
2 summoner's pact
3 natural order
4 glimpse of nature
3 survival of the fittest

***mana base*** 15
1 horizon canopy
1 pendelhaven
4 Windswept Heath
2 savannah
7 forest

***sideboard*** 15
*2 relic of progenitus
*2 tormod's crypt
*4 krosan grip
*2 reverent silence
*1 viridian shaman
*1 natural order
*1 elvish champion
*2 umezawa's jitte

Augustas
06-08-2010, 02:35 PM
I can't see how you would reach a storm count of 19 that easy... And the rest of the reply doesn't actually respond to my post that much since it's not a breakdown of the list I'm running. I'm not running EW or any other of the cards. Would be glad if ppl actually gives more valuable input than "It's better, run it", I wanna know... Why.

Seriously, have you played with the deck? They can't Stifle you every time, and Eternal Witness is there for a reason. Let's say, you have a gold hand, a turn 2 kill. Any FoWs or Dazes will stop you if you don't have Guide or something in your hand, so let's say they don't have it.

you play Llanowar, a forest, he playes whatever one drop (depends on the match)

You don't have a second land drop, but it doesn't matter.

Llanowar and a Forest is already two floating mana.

You play a Glimpse and let's say a Quirion.

You draw a card, and have two floating mana again. Storm count is two. You play something like Birchlore, Heritage with your land, you have three untapped elves. Tap them for 3 mana. You play another three or two cards which consumes your mana, but still adds the storm count. So, every Heritage tap will give you at least three or two Storm, and you still need your mana to keep playing creatures. And remember that there's many games when you actually get only one Nettle or something, and eventually can run out of gas. And yet again, Grapeshot doesn't need three Nettles to get you that 20. That's an example how my deck works, and why I prefer Grapeshot. But, if you like that "can't be countered" line, it's up to you what your win condition will be.

Speaking of Emrakul, I don't think that's a brilliant idea to play it with 4 Summoner's Pacts, that's why I try to avoid it.

magicplaya10
06-08-2010, 03:16 PM
Seriously, have you played with the deck? They can't Stifle you every time, and Eternal Witness is there for a reason. Let's say, you have a gold hand, a turn 2 kill. Any FoWs or Dazes will stop you if you don't have Guide or something in your hand, so let's say they don't have it.

you play Llanowar, a forest, he playes whatever one drop (depends on the match)

You don't have a second land drop, but it doesn't matter.

Llanowar and a Forest is already two floating mana.

You play a Glimpse and let's say a Quirion.

You draw a card, and have two floating mana again. Storm count is two. You play something like Birchlore, Heritage with your land, you have three untapped elves. Tap them for 3 mana. You play another three or two cards which consumes your mana, but still adds the storm count. So, every Heritage tap will give you at least three or two Storm, and you still need your mana to keep playing creatures. And remember that there's many games when you actually get only one Nettle or something, and eventually can run out of gas. And yet again, Grapeshot doesn't need three Nettles to get you that 20. That's an example how my deck works, and why I prefer Grapeshot. But, if you like that "can't be countered" line, it's up to you what your win condition will be.

Speaking of Emrakul, I don't think that's a brilliant idea to play it with 4 Summoner's Pacts, that's why I try to avoid it.

I run Emrakul over grapeshot because Emrakul gets around cards like Moat, Solitary Confinement, and Stifle, where Grapeshot really doesn't. You can't duress Emrakul out, and if you thoughtsieze/ brainfreeze it away, it shuffles everything back in.

Also, I notice that you randomly have 15 mana on board to just cast Emrakul. The Lords and other mana elves help greatly. If you draw Grapeshot without any combo pieces (ie Glimpse) its almost dead. If you draw Emrakul, you can push mana out to cast it.

The good thing about grapeshot is that it is damn near impossible to counter, twice. Also, it can be used as removal by going elf, elf ,elf, etc., grapeshot your team, attack. You can also aim a small grapeshot at your opponent, and then attack for game.

I prefer Emrakul be cause it IS uncounterable. It has Annihilator 6, and so it wrecks boards. You don't even need to deal damage, just declare it as an attacker. And it doesn't require you to combo to play ftw, you can just make 15 mana and then cast him.

So I can see the goods in both. Also, casting Emrakul ftw is just bad ass. It gets around Chalice, etc. haha. I have been dead in the water, against goblins, with two archdruids and elves in play. My opponent just tutored for and cast sharpshooter, and i know he had double Gempalm incinerator in hand for my lords (He showed me assuming I would scoop.) I draw Emrakul, cast it, untap and just crush his dreams.

I have also been locked out of the board against enchantress, he had moat, solitary confinement, and multiple draw engines going with his enchantments. I draw go for ever, while he tried to find his win con (Words of War). He finds it, drops it, and passes. I draw glimpse, return an elf, replay it, draw emrakul, cast him (Tapping out), untap attack with emrakul, he sacs most of his board. I pass, he draws shoots my elfs for 2, and passes. I go to combat, and he scoops.

A lot of decks can't deal with Annihilator, flying, protection from colored spells, 15/15, timewalking monsters.

How is he bad with multiple Summoner's Pacts? If you have 15 mana to cast Emrakul, then you have 4,8, or 12 mana to pay for the Pact triggers.
I only run 2 pacts, so therefore it isn't hard. I think my list is *almost* perfect, for me at least. I might cut a land for another Fyndhorn Elf.

Hawdes
06-08-2010, 03:16 PM
Seriously, have you played with the deck? They can't Stifle you every time, and Eternal Witness is there for a reason. Let's say, you have a gold hand, a turn 2 kill. Any FoWs or Dazes will stop you if you don't have Guide or something in your hand, so let's say they don't have it.

you play Llanowar, a forest, he playes whatever one drop (depends on the match)

You don't have a second land drop, but it doesn't matter.

Llanowar and a Forest is already two floating mana.

You play a Glimpse and let's say a Quirion.

You draw a card, and have two floating mana again. Storm count is two. You play something like Birchlore, Heritage with your land, you have three untapped elves. Tap them for 3 mana. You play another three or two cards which consumes your mana, but still adds the storm count. So, every Heritage tap will give you at least three or two Storm, and you still need your mana to keep playing creatures. And remember that there's many games when you actually get only one Nettle or something, and eventually can run out of gas. And yet again, Grapeshot doesn't need three Nettles to get you that 20. That's an example how my deck works, and why I prefer Grapeshot. But, if you like that "can't be countered" line, it's up to you what your win condition will be.

Speaking of Emrakul, I don't think that's a brilliant idea to play it with 4 Summoner's Pacts, that's why I try to avoid it.

I never said that I wouldn't play Grapeshot cause of stifle. But I might add Grapeshot along side Banefire aswell. Could be good to have 2 routes to go.

Augustas
06-08-2010, 04:05 PM
I've already stated earlier in this thread that when it comes to deckbuilding, it really depends on the way you look at it. Elves have a lot of possibilities, every deck posted here is different, and this fact is awesome. Every card can make a difference, so play whatever suits your playstyle the best.

None of us can find the "perfect build", this deck absolutely different from stuff like Belcher or ANT. We actually have to adapt our builds to the metagame in order to succeed. That's why I really don't like Jon Stewart's continious bawling how he doesn't understand how people can actually play Nettle Sentinel and Regal Force. It's just plain stupid.

So, I suggest everyone to calm down and don't push your opinion to others too much. As long as you are able to draw large amaount of cards, have tons of mana and a horde of elves, you're going to right direction.

And yeah, my build is the best, you definitely should play it over the others.

magicplaya10
06-08-2010, 04:14 PM
I've already stated earlier in this thread that when it comes to deckbuilding, it really depends on the way you look at it. Elves have a lot of possibilities, every deck posted here is different, and this fact is awesome. Every card can make a difference, so play whatever suits your playstyle the best.

None of us can find the "perfect build", this deck absolutely different from stuff like Belcher or ANT. We actually have to adapt our builds to the metagame in order to succeed. That's why I really don't like Jon Stewart's continious bawling how he doesn't understand how people can actually play Nettle Sentinel and Regal Force. It's just plain stupid.

So, I suggest everyone to calm down and don't push your opinion to others too much. As long as you are able to draw large amaount of cards, have tons of mana and a horde of elves, you're going to right direction.

And yeah, my build is the best, you definitely should play it over the others.

Agreed. I too don't understand how Jon Stewart runs his list without the backbone of the deck. But you are right, as long as they do the same basic thing, the deck is going in the right direction.
I'm pretty sure the win condition doesn't matter either. If you get another turn, you still untap and win right? Most decks can't deal with a horde of angry elves.

Lol, a friend of mine asked me what my back up win condition is, if I get Sadistic Saced or something, I said....The deck IS a back up win con. We both had a laugh.

Your deck sucks btw. Mine is definetly the best.


EMRAKUL FTW!

Neuad
06-08-2010, 05:10 PM
MAIN DECK

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger
2 Wirewood Symbiote
Creatures [38]

3 Concordant Crossroads
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Grapeshot
Spells [8]

10 Forest
4 Pendelhaven
Lands [14]

is the deck I think I'm going to settle with for now, its cheap, and I can upgrade/tweek it as I play it a little more and learn my meta. If there are any SMALL tweeks I should make please point it out.

Thanks for all the advice throughout the thread <3

Augustas
06-08-2010, 05:26 PM
MAIN DECK

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger
2 Wirewood Symbiote
Creatures [38]

3 Concordant Crossroads
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Grapeshot
Spells [8]

10 Forest
4 Pendelhaven
Lands [14]

is the deck I think I'm going to settle with for now, its cheap, and I can upgrade/tweek it as I play it a little more and learn my meta. If there are any SMALL tweeks I should make please point it out.

Thanks for all the advice throughout the thread <3

It's cool, but Pendelhaven is a Legendary land, so I suggest to cut them for fetches or cut three for three forests.

Neuad
06-08-2010, 05:29 PM
If I can get ahold of Fetches, or possibly a couple Taigas I'm putting them in, but those are a little expensive. Thanks for pointing out that Pendelhaven is legendary. . .missed that!


Sylvan Messenger. Are they worth keeping in at 4cc over Visionarys at 2cc?

Or better yet, bounce 1 Forest (bringing the total in my deck to 12 Forests, 1 Pendelhaven) and adding in a Gaea's Cradle, and 4 Arbor Elves. . . . ?

ccman
06-08-2010, 07:51 PM
@ccman: You might add a Taiga in order to get Anger working ;). (Please excuse my random trolling in this thread)

lol my list got messed up just -2 forest +2 taiga

fetches help

thorin_the_king
06-08-2010, 08:03 PM
@ccman and others playing survival in combo elves:

why masked admirers is better than squee?

i understand that if we can make the mana it let us roll over our deck, but there are more times when we're slowplaying with survival online and i miss squee in those situations.

in fact my testing is not as developed than yours, so i only want to understand it a little better.

thx.

thorin

ccman
06-08-2010, 09:36 PM
@thorin-

the main reason for admirers is this, when your slow rolling you can make a ton of mana even when not comboing and it works the same then except it comes back when you cast the creature which you probably want to do anyway. also what if you need to combo this turn but because of squee's disadvantage you can't get heritage and nettle? well your screwed i guress. i guess if you don't have mana thats a rpoblem but that doesnt happen very often and if it does you've lost anyway

end of the line is that because of all our mana admirer's lets us just dump combo pieces, protection, and win conditions way faster than squee

(also masked admirers is easier to protect from grave hate)

unicoerner
06-09-2010, 05:40 AM
Hey guys,
we are right now arguing about 3 different styles of the deck. I now try to give a summary about all the secondary engines. Imho playing NO and Survival will result in playing not enough elves and weaken our Glimpses.

There we go:
Natural Order Progenitus:
Pros: 1) It won`t die to spot removal and is immune to Maze
2) Engine just needs 4 slots and we can also get Regal Force
3) It pretty much dodges Counterbalance
4) Strong vs Engineered Plague and red Mass Burn

Cons: 1) We need 4 Mana and a creature to sac
2) It doesn`t impact the game right now and gives the opponent atleast one if not 2 turns
3) Adds 4-5 non Elves to the deck
4) Still vulnerable to Wrtah/Humilty/Perish/Moat

Survival Engine (Anger, Witness, Masked Admirers):
Pros: 1) It`s the most flexible engine
2) While comboing we can cycle unneeded elves in Card advantage elves like Visionary/Wirewood/Messanger
3) We can add some sideboard utility creatures to hate some decks (Macabre)

Cons: 1) It`s the slowest engine
2) Is an enchantment (Qasali, Grip)
3) Adds 6 non elves to the deck
4) We have to splash Taiga, which makes us vulnerable to Wastes and we have to play Fetches (atleast we are not blanking opposing wastes and open us up to wastes)

Messanger Engine (Priest and Warchiefs/Joraga Warcallers):
Pros: 1) We can switch rolls between aggro and Combo quite smoothly
2) It is card advantage
3) It offers most synergies inside the deck

Cons: 1) It dies horrible to pretty much all kinds of Mass removal
2) It has a hard time vs CB, because we only have one way to destroy CB and our Casting Cost are 1-3 (exluding Messanger)


PS:Perhaps someone who has better point and more accurate in spelling can then update this and put it perhaps on the first page.
I am open to new arguments and will update this List.

alphastorm
06-09-2010, 11:45 AM
Survival is too slow and it rolls over to storm/ant/dredge decks. If we can find a way for survival to deal with those decks effectively then I'll play it. Any ideas? One of the reasons I play crop rotation is to have an instant way of playing Bojuka Bog/glacial chasm/wasteland to slow down combo.

1maarten1
06-09-2010, 01:40 PM
Hey guys,
we are right now arguing about 3 different styles of the deck. I now try to give a summary about all the secondary engines. Imho playing NO and Survival will result in playing not enough elves and weaken our Glimpses.

There we go:
Natural Order Progenitus:
Pros: 1) It won`t die to spot removal and is immune to Maze
2) Engine just needs 4 slots and we can also get Regal Force
3) It pretty much dodges Counterbalance
4) Strong vs Engineered Plague and red Mass Burn

Cons: 1) We need 4 Mana and a creature to sac
2) It doesn`t impact the game right now and gives the opponent atleast one if not 2 turns
3) Adds 4-5 non Elves to the deck
4) Still vulnerable to Wrtah/Humilty/Perish/Moat

Survival Engine (Anger, Witness, Masked Admirers):
Pros: 1) It`s the most flexible engine
2) While comboing we can cycle unneeded elves in Card advantage elves like Visionary/Wirewood/Messanger
3) We can add some sideboard utility creatures to hate some decks (Macabre)

Cons: 1) It`s the slowest engine
2) Is an enchantment (Qasali, Grip)
3) Adds 6 non elves to the deck
4) We have to splash Taiga, which makes us vulnerable to Wastes and we have to play Fetches (atleast we are not blanking opposing wastes and open us up to wastes)

Messanger Engine (Priest and Warchiefs/Joraga Warcallers):
Pros: 1) We can switch rolls between aggro and Combo quite smoothly
2) It is card advantage
3) It offers most synergies inside the deck

Cons: 1) It dies horrible to pretty much all kinds of Mass removal
2) It has a hard time vs CB, because we only have one way to destroy CB and our Casting Cost are 1-3 (exluding Messanger)


PS:Perhaps someone who has better point and more accurate in spelling can then update this and put it perhaps on the first page.
I am open to new arguments and will update this List.

imo your leaving a very important option. The Mirror Entity engine, which gives you an alternate way of going off. I will post my list later, first Im getting some sleep, since I only got 3 hours last 2 days.

Btw, In my testing 4 Canpoy, and 1 Pendelhaven rocked my world... Does make you more vulnerable to wasteland tho.. not sure!

Infinitium
06-09-2010, 01:40 PM
The Survival Engine technically doesn't have to use fetchlands if going with Stomping Grounds, and since the Survivals/Angers usually takes the same spots as NO/Crossroads/Pact the space commitment is generally neglible (the shakier manabase and somewhat slower gameplan isn't, however).

The Big Mana/Draw Elves engine can in my experience handle mass removal just fine. The threat of combo means that the opposition has to react instantly to any big mana elf in play and Wirewood Symbiote generally allows for "safe" overextending in the early game, and once enough lands are in play in the midgame it can easily go Goblins on control decks simply by matching mass removal with mass card advantage and possibly haste effects. Counterbalance is a bigger problem, but since all sideboards should be starting with 4x Krosan Grip it still has a rather pleasant matchup game 2 unless the CB is followed by a very fast clock (especially as the ground will inevitably stall once the lock fall).

Mirror Entity isn't an engine in itself, it's a win condition that whilst in my opinion is superflous due to haste effects does have the most synergies with the deck if one for whatever reason insist to eschew the big mana elves for the Nettle engine.

Neuad
06-09-2010, 01:46 PM
MAIN DECK

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Sylvan Messenger
2 Wirewood Symbiote
Creatures [38]

3 Concordant Crossroads
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Grapeshot
Spells [8]


10 Forest
4 Pendelhaven
Lands [14]

is the deck I think I'm going to settle with for now, its cheap, and I can upgrade/tweek it as I play it a little more and learn my meta. If there are any SMALL tweeks I should make please point it out.

Thanks for all the advice throughout the thread <3

I think I'm going to change my mana base, and 2 creatures around a smidge.

If I can get ahold of a Gaea's Cradel.

-3 Forest
+1 Gaea's Cradel
+2 Crop Rotation

-2 Sylvan Messanger
+2 Arbor Elf

Gaea's is obvious. . .ton of mana if tapped at the right time. Arbor Elf as another 1cc Elf. . .plus it can untap a forest. . . or Gaea's? It says specificly 'a Forest'. Crop Rotation to find Gaea's hopefully on 2nd turn.


SB I think I'm going to go

4 Krosan Grip
4 Relic of Progenitus
2 Vexing Shusher
2 Viridian Shaman
2 Viridian Zealot
1 ??

magicplaya10
06-09-2010, 03:54 PM
I dont like Cradle because it isn't good in your opening hand. i only run 12 lands, 3 ESG's. The reasoning is because the deck only needs 1 or 2 mana to do well. I still draw into multiple lands, don't ask how.

It is also crappy to draw a lands when comboing off.

I was thinking about Arbor Elf as well. Its another one drop, but it makes mana.

I run 1 Jorga, Warcaller, and it is nuts. I wouldn't want more because drawing multiples seems bad to me. But as a 1-of, and dropping it on turn 2-3 with 2-3 counters makes your elves all threats.

I really like the maindeck Leyline of Lifeforce, it is amazing.

Thoughts?

Neuad
06-09-2010, 04:04 PM
I dont like Cradle because it isn't good in your opening hand. i only run 12 lands, 3 ESG's. The reasoning is because the deck only needs 1 or 2 mana to do well. I still draw into multiple lands, don't ask how.

It is also crappy to draw a lands when comboing off.

I was thinking about Arbor Elf as well. Its another one drop, but it makes mana.

I run 1 Jorga, Warcaller, and it is nuts. I wouldn't want more because drawing multiples seems bad to me. But as a 1-of, and dropping it on turn 2-3 with 2-3 counters makes your elves all threats.

I really like the maindeck Leyline of Lifeforce, it is amazing.

Thoughts?

So instead of 14 lands, run 11 lands and my 4 ESGs. . .freeing up 3 slots. . . add 1 Joraga Warcaller, 1 Leyline (I like the look of it too. . .stops control decks from fucking with my shit. . .) and 1 Elven Visionary? or possibly just 2 Visionarys and 1 Leyline. . .

I just think Sylvan Messenger is too expensive and don't really want to run 4 of them.

Augustas
06-09-2010, 04:28 PM
I'm really confused sometimes. Just played a match against UW tempo, and actually a resolved NO wrecks so hard. At first game he was able to FoW it twice, and I had an Eternal Witness to resolve the third. Second game, it's just insane.. My opening was two Viosnarys, two Sentinels, a Heritage, a NO and verdant Catacombs. Turn two Progenitus and another possiblr 6-7 damage ftw haha. I don't know, for me, Discard is the worst, second worst thing is removal. Anything else.. Maybe Spell Snare can be bad, but we can play around it.

Wasteland is used basiclly everywhere, so my suggestion is try to avoid cards that gets destroyed by it. I'm using 11 lands and 4 ESG from the beginning, sometimes I have to mull to get at least one land, but along with 8 mana elves and 4 Quirions it works kinda well. And I really like the fetches, they really help to thin the deck and allow Glimpse to actually go off.

Neuad, play as many games as you can, experiment with card slots until you'll feel what works the best. There's no need to post every fix you make on your build :)

Shabbaman
06-10-2010, 09:50 AM
I think focusing the whole deck towads maximizing Glimpse and nothing more is a dead end route to take for the deck.

Well, I agree with you on that part at least :)

Running tap elves together with Crossroads and untappers/bouncers does just that. Perhaps. It's not that I'm conservative, but I like how Birchlore rangers/Sentinel/Heritage druid gets you around the lack of haste. It's a way to be less dependent on Crossroads, a card I don't like (see, I'm biased, heh). From what I grasp is that Crossroads is "a sort of" Glimpse; it's a card that lets you win. So with running Crossroads and Glimpse you have twice the number of Glimpses.

magicplaya10
06-10-2010, 03:09 PM
So instead of 14 lands, run 11 lands and my 4 ESGs. . .freeing up 3 slots. . . add 1 Joraga Warcaller, 1 Leyline (I like the look of it too. . .stops control decks from fucking with my shit. . .) and 1 Elven Visionary? or possibly just 2 Visionarys and 1 Leyline. . .

I just think Sylvan Messenger is too expensive and don't really want to run 4 of them.
This is my current list, and it is great.
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle sentinal
4 Llanowar Elf
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Wirewood symbiote
4 Elvhish Archdruid
3 Birchlore Ranger
2 Quirion Ranger
3 Elvish spirit guide
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Arbor Elf
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul/Win Condition
1 Jorga Warcaller
1 Viridian Zealot

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Leyling of Lifeforce
2 summoner's pact

5 Fetch
7 Forest

With only 15 mana sources (Including ESG), you only need one mana and a 1 drop mana elf to make your hand work. I cut the lands so low because there are numerous times where I would combo, and then draw like 3 lands in a row and fizzle. It is great right now, and it works, I still draw lands. I cut the E-WItness for 1 Jorga the Warcaller. It is great when turn 3 rolls around and you drop him with 3 counters ans swing for lethal.

Anyone else have the land trouble? I am thinking of cutting a land for a 4th fyndhorn elf...

Augustas
06-10-2010, 03:10 PM
just recorded one random match.. i'll record more when i'll be not so lazy :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR18D3Eb8KQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0VuPY3hVNc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWuJGjm4KUo

1maarten1
06-11-2010, 06:04 AM
Mirror Entity isn't an engine in itself, it's a win condition that whilst in my opinion is superflous due to haste effects does have the most synergies with the deck if one for whatever reason insist to eschew the big mana elves for the Nettle engine.

I disagree here :)! The enitity version is IMO superior to others. It runs Wirewood Hivemaster, which is an incredibly strong card vs control decks and such. Its just another must counter. The enitity also opens up a stronger road to aggro, making you able to island walk over merfolk/ get the lord buffs when they got some lords down, is huge.

Also chord of calling is a pretty cool card, it opens up for some great sb options like Magus of the moon. I havent tested the ''new'' lists you guys come up with, so I cant say too much about those. Just that Elvish Archdruid is just as slow as Priest, and we never played that one either.. I know it gives +1/+1 but I think there are better elves for that spot.

~Maarten

Augustas
06-11-2010, 08:42 AM
I disagree here :)! The enitity version is IMO superior to others. It runs Wirewood Hivemaster, which is an incredibly strong card vs control decks and such. Its just another must counter. The enitity also opens up a stronger road to aggro, making you able to island walk over merfolk/ get the lord buffs when they got some lords down, is huge.

Also chord of calling is a pretty cool card, it opens up for some great sb options like Magus of the moon. I havent tested the ''new'' lists you guys come up with, so I cant say too much about those. Just that Elvish Archdruid is just as slow as Priest, and we never played that one either.. I know it gives +1/+1 but I think there are better elves for that spot.

~Maarten

Hm, I wonder why LSV was able to crush every other elf deck (all of them ran Entity) during PT Berlin. Entity isn't superior to others ;) There are simply many faster and better ways to pull the combo in Legacy, not Extended, from where Entity came.

1maarten1
06-11-2010, 10:09 AM
Hm, I wonder why LSV was able to crush every other elf deck (all of them ran Entity) during PT Berlin. Entity isn't superior to others ;) There are simply many faster and better ways to pull the combo in Legacy, not Extended, from where Entity came.

Im not talking about just Entity. Im talking about the entire package around it, hivemaster, chord etc. And I prefer that to other builds. It gives you an alternate way of going infinite which is huge, it does make the deck a little more complicated, but thats not a problem once you get used to playing it.

Oh and LSV was able to crush all others more due to his Thoughtseizes in his board then his win-cons ;). Also I recall (not 100% sure anymore) that in some vids after the PT he made some videos about the deck where he said he would run hivemaster etc.

Im just not a fan of the latest lists I saw here. I dont think running 4 Archdruid is good, since it can totally ruin your combo when your going off off a birchlore or smthn since it costs 3 mana. The only way I see it working is when you play multiple crossroads, but you dont want to see those too much either.

Maybe the word 'superior' was wrong, I ment that I prefer that version over others ;). I also play the NO+Prog version from time to time, with banefire as kill which also works fine. But I miss hivemaster alot in that version, and entity too. I would have to cut too much in order to combine those. So I just switch between both versions ;).

Anyway, since I didnt test your version, I can only talk about the priest of titania/elvish archdruid stuff since I did test that and I wasnt impressed.

Augustas
06-11-2010, 11:14 AM
It's cool that you like that version the most, but your post looked like one of Jon Stewart's posts, which aren't healthy for the thread.

Well, again, the decklist and playstyle depends on your point of view to the deck. For me, putting Entity, Hivemaster, Chord, possible splashes like Horizon Canopy is too much. I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Natural Order is propably one of the dumbest cards in the game. It's so simple, and that's why I like it. That's it :)

Anyway. guys, post decklists, post every interesting card you might find, post every tech which comes to your mind. But please, I know that everyone down here thinks that their build is the best, leave these thoughts to yourself.

And we should work on a sideboard too.

alphastorm
06-11-2010, 11:22 AM
It's cool that you like that version the most, but your post looked like one of Jon Stewart's posts, which aren't healthy for the thread.

Well, again, the decklist and playstyle depends on your point of view to the deck. For me, putting Entity, Hivemaster, Chord, possible splashes like Horizon Canopy is too much. I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Natural Order is propably one of the dumbest cards in the game. It's so simple, and that's why I like it. That's it :)


horizon canopy isn't needed when playing entity.

Hawdes
06-11-2010, 12:56 PM
It's cool that you like that version the most, but your post looked like one of Jon Stewart's posts, which aren't healthy for the thread.

Well, again, the decklist and playstyle depends on your point of view to the deck. For me, putting Entity, Hivemaster, Chord, possible splashes like Horizon Canopy is too much. I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Natural Order is propably one of the dumbest cards in the game. It's so simple, and that's why I like it. That's it :)

Anyway. guys, post decklists, post every interesting card you might find, post every tech which comes to your mind. But please, I know that everyone down here thinks that their build is the best, leave these thoughts to yourself.

And we should work on a sideboard too.

Try out Staff of Domination. Just wanted to mention it. Depending on the build, you could go infinite life or card draw. That's the main reason I have Priests and Archdruids in my build.
It works well as a control element, since you can tap down problem creatures.

Augustas
06-11-2010, 05:07 PM
There's one nice drawing card out there.. Harmonize. But propably it's 4cc a big let down for us.. Anyway, thoughts?

Hawdes
06-11-2010, 06:38 PM
There's one nice drawing card out there.. Harmonize. But propably it's 4cc a big let down for us.. Anyway, thoughts?

With two more mana you can draw infinite cards in an Elf deck... Just wanted to point that out.
Although I have to explain how.
Requiring a Archdruid or Priest, Wirewood or Ranger and x elves with a Staff of Domination. Don't forget that it actually have other uses than drawing cards.
But I've also thought of harmonize, but concentration isn't that widley played now is it?

1maarten1
06-12-2010, 06:40 AM
It's cool that you like that version the most, but your post looked like one of Jon Stewart's posts, which aren't healthy for the thread.

Well, again, the decklist and playstyle depends on your point of view to the deck. For me, putting Entity, Hivemaster, Chord, possible splashes like Horizon Canopy is too much. I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Natural Order is propably one of the dumbest cards in the game. It's so simple, and that's why I like it. That's it :)

Anyway. guys, post decklists, post every interesting card you might find, post every tech which comes to your mind. But please, I know that everyone down here thinks that their build is the best, leave these thoughts to yourself.

And we should work on a sideboard too.

Im sorry but you look more biased about your version then I am about mine. I play NO from time to time, and still I like the Entity version more. And no you dont have to play anything but basic forests. I am thinking about testing with some Canopy's yes, a ''cycle'' land seems nice to me. Oh and what happend to Pendelhaven? Are we that scared of wasteland? :)

And the talk about ''not healthy'' posts in the thread is b*llcr*p imo. Now you ask people to post their lists and crazy ideas, but when I talk about my list, or John does about his its suddenly ''unhealthy''.

Just try the entity version out, it works. I'll post my list and sb if you are interested, but if you still think its unhealthy I wont ;).

~Maarten

Augustas
06-12-2010, 01:58 PM
Well, let's not misinterpret my point. The thing is, there was many posts where it was alleging that this version is better than that and stuff. That's what I'm talking about. I never said that my build is the best or something, nothing like that, I just said that it suits my playstyle the most. Let's quit "my build is better than others" attitude and actually talk about the actual strategy.

And obviously post your decklist, it's not only for me, it's for everyone who's interested on building an elf deck.

Anyway, is there something that actually can stop stuff like Perish and Firespout?

Pastorofmuppets
06-12-2010, 02:05 PM
Well, let's not misinterpret my point. The thing is, there was many posts where it was alleging that this version is better than that and stuff. That's what I'm talking about. I never said that my build is the best or something, nothing like that, I just said that it suits my playstyle the most. Let's quit "my build is better than others" attitude and actually talk about the actual strategy.

And obviously post your decklist, it's not only for me, it's for everyone who's interested on building an elf deck.

Anyway, is there something that actually can stop stuff like Perish and Firespout?

Well, Warcaller...
or, if you have Birchlore Rangers, that super-Holy Day from M10... Or Mirror Entity.

magicplaya10
06-12-2010, 02:27 PM
Well, let's not misinterpret my point. The thing is, there was many posts where it was alleging that this version is better than that and stuff. That's what I'm talking about. I never said that my build is the best or something, nothing like that, I just said that it suits my playstyle the most. Let's quit "my build is better than others" attitude and actually talk about the actual strategy.

And obviously post your decklist, it's not only for me, it's for everyone who's interested on building an elf deck.

Anyway, is there something that actually can stop stuff like Perish and Firespout?


I am using the tech card, Fecundity. You drop your elves and fecundity, they firespout/perish, you draw a billion cards and combo off. Seems good to me.

Otherwise, no I don't feel like there is a real way without splashing.

My maindeck changes are:
-1 Jorga, Warcaller
-1 Emrakul (As much as I love this guy)
+1 Grapeshot
+1 Eternal Witness

Went back to the grapeshot kill because my meta is full of aggro. So grapeshotting their team away is good.

Also. my sideboard is...

4 Faerie Macabre
1 Relic of Prog
3 Mindbreak Trap
3 Fecundity
1 Mirror Entity
1 Umezewa's Jitte
1 Krosan Grip
1 Chord of Calling


You might be asking why the 1-ofs, well they are the aggro plan. Against aggro, I board out all 4 Leyline of Lifeforce, and bring in 1 K-grip, 1 Jitte, 1 Chord, 1 Entity. The I run the Entity plan alongside with grapeshot, because entity makes it so your creatures don't die to their burn and they can block. Chord is there to help find Entity, or another combo piece. Jitte is Jitte. K-Grip stops opposing Jitte's. Also stops Vials.

The plan works, if you can get Entity into play, you just beat aggro. Make sure you keep mana open on their turn, unless your going ftw. That is one thing I have noticed. Also, it is hard for zoo and gobbos to beat this sideboard.

Reanimator is extremely hard to beat. We almost always lose game 1. Game 2, we have to catch them with Faerie, or run Relic out there. They bring in 3 E-Truths and 3 K-Grip. Its rough.

Combo is another bad match. If its adnas, then we can get them to low enough life by going aggro...or even just beat them. Unless they can win on turn 1 or 2. Game 2 and 3, we bring in the traps and hope. It is hard.

Burn is unwinnable. Bring in Fecundity, and you have to sandbag your combo until you can win. But then again, you lose to bolt. Its our worst matchup by far. They bring in Clasm.

Enchantress...well they drop confinement, we tutor up our Zealot g1 and beat them. G2, they lose their confinement to K-Grip. Confinement is really the only enchantmenet we care about. Runed Halo on Grapeshot seems bad, but again Zealot takes care of it. They can't really stop us comboing. Seems like almost a goldfish.

So...we can beat combo , although its rough. We cant really beat Reanimator g1, but we can the other two games. And we lose to burn.

My version beats CB+Top and aggro decks. Its fair against everything else. Cept burn and Reanimator, which we beat reanimator g2 and 3. They can't deal with Macabre. =P

Thats my analysis. I have the 5k on Sunday here in Washington. I will be running this. So I will post my match ups, etc. when I can.

Thanks!
~magicplaya10

Infinitium
06-12-2010, 05:41 PM
Anyway, is there something that actually can stop stuff like Perish and Firespout?

Play into them, which means packing more lands and playing extra card advantage engines to recuperate from the losses faster. Assuming that they're smart enough to use their spot removal and counters for the combo enablers, any version of the deck relies on actively overextending the board in order to out pressure on the controling deck. Playing fewer threats because they might sweep the board usually just helps your opponent stabilize.

Compare it to Ichorid slowrolling its way through gravehate game two or three; you don't do silly things like trying to prevent Tormod's Crypt or whatever, you just put enough pressure on them to force a reaction but not enough to endanger the card advantage engine and proceed to win by atrition.

magicplaya10
06-13-2010, 12:06 AM
Play into them, which means packing more lands and playing extra card advantage engines to recuperate from the losses faster. Assuming that they're smart enough to use their spot removal and counters for the combo enablers, any version of the deck relies on actively overextending the board in order to out pressure on the controling deck. Playing fewer threats because they might sweep the board usually just helps your opponent stabilize.

Compare it to Ichorid slowrolling its way through gravehate game two or three; you don't do silly things like trying to prevent Tormod's Crypt or whatever, you just put enough pressure on them to force a reaction but not enough to endanger the card advantage engine and proceed to win by atrition.

Like I said, run Fecundity in the board. When you resolve it, it will make them think twice about sweeping your board. Again, I will tell you how it is during the 5k.

1maarten1
06-15-2010, 07:53 AM
Ok, I'll post my list :)! I'll give some explainations on some of the card choices. And by the way: Could the people who took the deck to some tournaments write a small report or something so we can all learn from your experiences? :D!

Maindeck: 60
// Lands
15 Snow-Covered Forest
// Spells
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Summoner's Pact
3 Chord of Calling
// Creatures
1 Mirror Entity
1 Vexing Shusher (This is a meta-dependent slot, I used to run Magus of the moon here, but Im testing shusher and uptill now he has been pretty good. Still looking for some nice alternatives tho.)
1 Regal Force
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Quirrion Ranger
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Llanowar Elves
1 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary

Sideboard: 15
4 Choke (these have been very good so far, obvious against which deck you use them.)
4 Faerie Macabre/Tormod's Crypt/Relic of Progenitus (Currently I use the fearies, because they are just better against Reanimator, which is one of our biggest enemy's. Ichorid is still ok, since you can use it to take the dredges early, and then just go off. Against Lands I havent tested it yet, but I figgure that along with Magus it's hard but doable.
3 Umezewa's Jitte (obviously against aggro and such.)
1 Dauntless Escort
1 Magus of the Moon (sometimes maindeck.)
1 Elvish Champion (obv.)
1 Imperious Perfect (obv.)

I might go -1 shusher main, +1 magus and then play 1 Burrenton-Forge tender in the SB for the zoo and goblins MU. BFT carrying Jitte is gg in those games.

Tell me what you think guys :)!

~Maarten

magicplaya10
06-15-2010, 03:23 PM
ok guys, I went a disappointing 3-5 at SCG 5k in seattle. Althought I do have some funny highlights, the deck I realized is very dependant on drawing Glimpse. Otherwise you become a bad aggro deck...Which i have won off of before. In fact, Glimpse is almost in there as counter-bait (JK)

Here are my match ups...

Round 1- Enchantress

G1- He gets his engine going and I don't draw glimpse. Confinement prevents me from attacking and I die to angels.

If you draw glimpse in this match, you win.

G2- I drew glimpse, and killed him through Runed Halo on Grapeshot and Confinement. Zealot + Witness is a bitch for them to deal with.
G3- Turn 2 win.

Round 2- Zaiem Beg with Zoo.
Now this normally an easy match, but I drew terrible and he had good draws.
G1- He mulls to 6, and gets triple Goyf to my elves. I rip glimpse and were off to g2.
G2- He gets turn 1 Loam Lion, TUrn 2 Jitte, Turn 2 Equip and my board dies. No Glimpse =(
G3- He gets turn 1 Grim Lavamancer, and turn 2 Cannonist. I am at tard speed, I eventually zealot the cannonist, but its too late and Lavamancer + Jitte eat my elves. If I were to draw glimpse at any point of that game, I would have won because I had Zealot in hand on turn 2.

Round 3- Counterbalance + Stifle Naught
G1- I keep a no land hand with ESG and Leyline. I proceed to wreck him on turn 4, eventhough he played 3 Standstills. Counterbalance doesn't do anything for him. And triple Elvish Archdruid eats him with my hoard of uncounterable elves. Who needs lands?
G2- Turn 2 Counterbalance + Top, no leyline from me. He turn 3 CB with top in play. I drew 9 of my 11 mana sources this game. Nice. Draw.
G3- Turn 1 Top, Turn 2 Stifle Naught, Turn 3 Standstill.....yup.

Round 4- Counterbalance
G1- Leyline + Elves = Dead opponent.
G2- I combo. It was funny. He didn't have counterspells. he discarded FoW's because I had Leyline in play. And then I cast Glimpse...


Round 5- Gobbos
This is an easy match.
G1- Glimpse + Dudes...he dies
G2- He got me with cycled Incinerator + Pyrokinesis
G3- i beat him with glimpse. He did Pyro my guys away once.


Round 6- New Horizons
G1- He beats me down with Terravore, I had the Leyline in hand, but he gets me with huge trampling monsters. Engineered Explosive wiped over half my board. It wasn't good.
G2- Fecundity is boss here. I make an awesome play...I have Fecundity in play...resolve glimpse, and play elf, elf ,elf...drawing 2 lands and fecundity. I play fecundity and attack for lethal unless he blocks. he blocks, I draw like 6 cards and proceed to combo with the glimpse I cast earlier.
G3- I decide that I can out aggro him this game, because I have a decent hand with leyline of lifeforce and dudes. No glimpse. He gets goyf down, and then another, and then knight. it looks grim. I dont draw glimpse or fecundity. He has 0 cards in hand. I attack, he blocks, hes at lethal next turn so he can't attack. he draws, casts ponder, into ponder, into brainstorm, into Engineered Explosive for 1. Pop it and attacks. I draw and say go. He Attacks, I block and lose some dudes...he plays Terravore. What a match breaker. =( I can't block a huge trampler and his other big guys and die.

Round 7- G/w/b Life combo (WTF)
This is the worst match in the history of man-kind. He apperently was 3-0 and lost to Cedric Phillips with Belcher, another belcher player, and High Tide Combo.

G1- He gains 3.5 Billion life on turn 2. I lose.
G2- He gainst 3.5 billion life on turn 3. I can infinitely grapeshot him because I boarded in Mirror Entity. He vials in Doran the Explorer, and makes his guy have a huge ass by targetting it a billion times again. Gives his guy Pro Green with Mom, and I die.

Finally last round is AdNas....

Yup. I lost this one.
G1- TUrn 1 Adnas AFTER he duresses me...wow this deck is NUTZ
G2- Turn 2 AdNas. Never stood a chance.

The deck is very fun to play. I wold probably play it again, it has a great control match up and a good aggro match. I lost to bad draws (9 lands straight!!! WTF!) and my opponent having good hands to my sub-par hands.

Thats one thing I notice with this deck, it has a lot of sub-par hands when you dont draw glimpse. Symbiote + Visionary is awesome though. I would run a 3rd Visionary if I could.

I Also picked up my 4th LED and 4 Chrome Mox and petals and stuff....so I might be wielding a combo deck next time...but this is still one of my favorite decks ever. I will continue to test and play it.

And Now...

Props-
SCG for putting on an awesome event
Evan Erwin for filming me...haha it was funny when he saw my deck in action
SCG for having the awesome playmat that I had Evan Erwin and LSV sign
Elves...for being rediculously fun.

Slops-
Lands. They need to be cut. lol
Lavamancer and Jitte
Nobody knowing how the combo works. I mean come on guys! Glimpse + Guys = Win!


Thanks for Reading guys!

P-AiR
06-16-2010, 01:43 AM
It's been a while since I've tooled up my elf list but this is what I've been running for months:

Summon Elves
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Rangers
4x Elvish Visionary
2x Viridian Zealot
3x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Llanowar Elves

Other Creatures
4x Elvish Spirit Guide (ironic huh?)
4x Wirewood Symbiote
1x Eternal Witness
1x Regal Force

Tutor
3x Weird Harvest
4x Summoner's Pact

Enchantments
Concordant Crossroads

Combo
1x Grapeshot
4x Glimpse of Nature

Lands
14 Forests
1x Gaea's Cradle

Have any suggestions on some changes to be made?

A couple of questions...
1) 15 Lands - right amount to have?
2) Would you suggest using Elvish Archdruid, leyline of the force, or Joraga Warcaller?

1maarten1
06-16-2010, 04:13 AM
It's been a while since I've tooled up my elf list but this is what I've been running for months:

Summon Elves
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Rangers
4x Elvish Visionary
2x Viridian Zealot
3x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Llanowar Elves

Other Creatures
4x Elvish Spirit Guide (ironic huh?)
4x Wirewood Symbiote
1x Eternal Witness
1x Regal Force

Tutor
3x Weird Harvest
4x Summoner's Pact

Enchantments
Concordant Crossroads

Combo
1x Grapeshot
4x Glimpse of Nature

Lands
14 Forests
1x Gaea's Cradle

Have any suggestions on some changes to be made?

A couple of questions...
1) 15 Lands - right amount to have?
2) Would you suggest using Elvish Archdruid, leyline of the force, or Joraga Warcaller?

1) yea. Only thing I would do if I ran Cradle is play a singleton Crop Rotation.
2) I wouldnt, but some others in this thread will ;) so let them explain it to you!

unicoerner
06-16-2010, 04:15 AM
@P-air: Your Llanowar count should be at 6 atleast.
I don`t like Cradle in Elves, becasue as our only land it`s a mulligan, can be wasted and doesn`t combo with Quririon.
Imo your Tutor count is too high