Dryad arbor is not an elf - I dont think its a good idea. you cannot go off Turn 2 if you have arbor!
You also need your tutors for the turn 3 regal force...
Beeing more streamlined for a turn 2 win (if you have the optimal hand) is high variance and still not enough to win versus other combo decks, since they are either still faster (more consistent Turn2) and/or pack a bunch of blue/black disruption.
...anyway your list is very slow: arbor / missing pact, lack of tutors,... If you want to we can play some mirrors and I'll demonstrate it...
I love elves and it's certainly my pet deck. However your arguments that you have a good game versus the current meta are wrong!
@catmint: I wasn't arguing for a streamlined list simply to increase the consistency of a turn 2 win. Being more dedicated to the combo allows one to use that avenue of victory through the added disruption of mental misstep and light spot removal. (Think UW Stoneforge) In many metagames this type of consistency is quite valuable, and necessary if one is going to attempt to race other combo decks. (Decks such as Hive Mind and Painter don't consistently win on turn 2 either, so a consistent turn 3 gives one solid game in the matchup)
About Dryad Arbor: This card is simply fantastic. It allows one to save space on Llanowar/Fyndhorn slots, which are the worst elves to draw mid-combo but the best on turn 1 by giving the deck access to 8 of them. While drawing Arbor is not good, it's not unreasonable to play it on turn 2 and set up for the turn 3 win. He counts for cradle (and as a land while cradle in play it effectively has haste) and still retains synergy with the untap guys. Arbor doesn't even interrupt the elf mana engine of the deck since Heritage Druid effectively turns 3 guys into Llanowar Elves and Arbor already functions as one. Lastly, it is possible to win on turn 2 with a turn 1 Zenith-->Arbor. Something like Forest, Zenith, Glimpse, Heritage Druid, Nettle, Q Ranger, Symbiote can very easily win turn 2, or at least play a large volume of elves that will attack for the win in the coming turns. Obviously that hand is rather contrived, but it is merely there to provide an counterexample to your claim. With an effective 9 Regal Forces (2 copies, 3 Pact, 4 Zenith) and Zenith shuffling back, the deck is dense enough with Regal Force so as to not have to horde each tutor for the purposes of fetching Force. Providing Zenith with this type of versatility makes the card much more flexible, an invaluable trait for cards in a flexible combo deck that can take many roles.
No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
Ross, I must admit I am confused by your statement that it does not interrupt the mana engine of Heritage Druid. Could you please clarify that statement?
Could you please explain your dislike of Living Wish? It is useful at all stages of the combo, in setting up, going off, and finishing the opponent. It (similiar to Pact, or Zenith) can find any piece of the combo one happens to need, and furthermore, limits the number of dead draws in the maindeck.
Originally Posted by ktkenshinx
@Bakofried: Dryad Arbor produces one mana from one creature, which is the same efficiency Heritage Druid produces, although on a smaller scale. Also, taking the slot of a land does not reduce the density of elves in the deck, so it does not hinder the ability of Heritage Druid to function by reducing the number of elves you see in a given game. Lastly, Arbor is comparable to Llanowars in the context of synergy with untap effects.
On Living Wish: I would play wish if it weren't competing for slots with Pact and Zenith, which accomplish the same goal as Wish but at less of a cost. Zenith effectively costs 1, since the other mana is simply the cost of the creature you're finding, and Pact costs 0 so Wish is clearly the least mana efficient of the three. There is a gain in versatility with the wish board but when you account for the loss of sideboard space this is marginal. It is certainly not prudent to shave various core creatures (ie heritage/nettle/symbiote) to wish for them if necessary so the creatures in the standard wish board are those that are too narrow in application for Wish to warrant inclusion over Zenith and Pact, which are much more efficient and can find all the most important pieces of the combo. Wish may enable a more reliable game 1 aggro plan (Post-board Vengevine is far superior to War Caller or Ezuri) but this too is a very marginal gain, especially when most decks are not well set up to fight the combo game 1. (and if they are you should consider a new deck choice)
No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
True theross.
I forgot you can untap dryad arbor with quirion, so the turn 2 win is (nearly equally) possible.
Sorry for flaming that your list is bad. I thought your are Kich867 which postet a really bad list. :)
The only advantage I can see from dryad is that you can free up 2-3 slots mana elves by the price of using a tutor and having 1 dead slot. Dryad is dead in your oppening hand and drawing it... a land with summoning sicknes is practically a dead slot (cannot count it as land or creature)!
Not even sure if that advantag is already a real advantage but here a list of the disadvantages that come to my mind:
It is true that your elve count is still high, but all the tight situations where you have 1 heritage and 1 more elf it is so much better to have a mana-elf compared to a dryad arbor! It makes a difference of 2 mana and gives us the opportunity to max. exploit nettle sentinel to build up mana!
Heritage is useless if you only have 2 elves and 1 dryad!
Another factor is that priest/archdruid are less strong with dryad. If you untap 1-2 times that is 2-3 mana less you accumulate. For my turn 3 regal force with mana free to go for the win every mana counts!
You are also more vulnerable to wastelands, which are common and useless for our opponent in the first turn. If I play vs. you and you go turn 1 GSZ for 1 I save my misstep and my bolt/swords for later on and use my wasteland...
Dryad is not pumped by archdruid or warcaller for an aggro win.
Dryad, while lacking synergy with the tribal elements of the deck, only makes those elements worse if it would be otherwise taking the spot of an elf from the deck. I've been advocating 18 lands since I began posting on this thread, and will continue to do so. Thus, Arbor is really only taking the place of another land and not disrupting the tribal synergies of the deck. This was part of my earlier point, but I feel I did not adequately explain it then, so hopefully this provides clarity.
I agree that drawing Arbor naturally is pretty awful, but when setting up for a glimpse turn it is common for me to not use all of my mana so as to save creatures and draw more cards, so it is not always devastating to miss one mana early and the times when it is bad do not come up often since it is a singleton.
As for wasteland, I would be quite happy for my opponent to take the line that you mentioned, as if they are unable to put early pressure on, I can draw through most of their 1 for 1 removal and simply combo later in the game. With 3-4 basics, many fetch lands, and Quirion Ranger wasteland is rarely an issue. It's also not uncommon to try and bait a wasteland with arbor so cradle can land undisturbed.
I don't run any pump lords like Archdruid so that dis-synergy does not come up but I would imagine running a free 1/1 over some other land would only help the aggro-plan.
No worries on the accidental flame.
No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
I think there is a flaw in this logic, because since the most common play to get dryad arbor is by GSZ in Turn 1, you have it in play instead of the elf that you would otherwise play in T1. Altough arbor might take the place of a land when constructing the deck, in T2 and T3 arbor is effectively taking the place of an elf and is then lacking the premium synergy of heritage and priest.
I think 18 lands is too much. Too many dead draws/cards when comboing. I was increasing my land count from 13 (with 7 fetches) to 15 basic lands to be more stable, but I would not go much further for the non-vengevine Maindeck build. Of course it sucks to be stuck on 1 land if the first elf is countered/killed, however with 7 manaelfs and 4 quirion, I have effective 11 elfs that make me 2 mana if I am stuck on 1 forest.
Obviously when both a mana elf and GSZ are in your opening hand, it is typically optimal to play the mana elf first since GSZ is much more flexible. Furthermore, it can never be the case that one draws Dryad Arbor instead of a necessary elf (say for Heritage Druid to become live) unless it is taking the slot of an elf in deck construction. Having Arbor simply gives redundancy without requiring an overload on Fyndhorns/Llanowars which are very weak draws later in the game.
On 18 lands: I believe I ran some numbers on this issue earlier in the thread so I won't go into great detail with them here but I contend that your conclusion is drawn from a short-sighted analysis. With 13-15 lands it is very common to be stuck on one land and even if one many have an active mana elf or Quirion Ranger it is quite difficult to win with only 2 mana while setting up. Hitting 2-3 land drops in the early stages of the game mitigates these problems. With 15 lands the odds of making your first 2 land drops with a 7 card hand is about 65% on the play and 72% on the draw so you're leaving yourself with those one land hands a significant portion of the time, almost once per match. With 18 lands these numbers become 76% and 83%. Reducing one's creature density by 1/20 (3 lands v 3 dudes) cannot be as harmful as stunting the early mana development in a deck as mana hungry as this one.
No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
Really, you should make this more clear, so we don't argue pointlessly. The extra lands that you are adding are Gaea's Cradles x4 not Basic Forest. So, you should focus on that point. Where you take out 4 elves, for 4 cradles, or 3 for 3.
18 lands really seems like a lot if you don't explain this, and even so... I tend to mull any hand with 3 lands or more on it, because they are way too slow, simple as that.
I tested, again, the 4 Cradle list, but I'm very busy lately. I can't say I'm totally into it, but it would really help a maindeck Vengevine strategy.
Living Wish isn't comparable to Green Sun's Zenith or Summoner's Pact. It is much wider in scope. Unless you run an overrun lord main, those cards can't actually win you the game, which means you need to get the combo running at full throttle to reliably draw a one of maindeck Emrakul/Banefire/Mirror Entity to win otherwise. Neither can find a Gaea's Cradle. Neither can find any particularly useful answer outside of Zealot.
Living Wish is simply the most powerful tutor, not least because it lets you cut cards maindeck that are often bad to draw anyway. It's terrible on more than your budget to run 3-4 Gaea's Cradle. They're not actual lands early game and multiples are dead, and filling out your deck with more lands makes it harder to go off reliably. Ditto to the various win conditions. 4x Living Wish not only means never drawing a dead Emrakul, it means that without comboing, with mana lords you have a very high chance of randomly killing the opponent sans any Glimpses resolving. You also get a lot of cards that hose glass cannon decks like Dredge, and answers to Plague.
Furthermore, I think the loss in sideboard space is overstated. Elves is such a synergy-dependent deck that it's rare that you would want to side out more than four cards in any instance anyway. You really don't have too much leeway to abandon your main combo plan, nor is it even necessary or desirable to pursue an aggressive strategy. All you need is a few lords, and with 4x GSZ/Pact and 4x Wish, all you really need then is 2x Elvish Champion in the board to have access to 9 copies post-board.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Damn.
I'm so torn! Everybody sounds correct. Wish builds. Vengevines main or with transformational sideboards. Multiple Gaea's Cradles. Shit! I find myself utterly convinced in all directions. Is this just a difference in playstyle? How will we be able to arrive on an optimal build? Is there even such a thing? Are we chasing a white whale? I don't know what to do or even how to be. This shit is getting existential.
But I already bought these damn Vengevines so I guess I'll use them.
Somebody stop me before I buy these stupid Cradles.
Don't buy them, and wait for the goddamn bubble that is Starcity to burst. Grab some copies from the Fallout.
When you say 4x GSZ/Pact, are you saying 4 of one or the other, or 4 of each?
He runs 4 of each.
@NihilObstat: With 15 lands, the odds of hitting 0 lands or 3+ in your opener is 34 percent, do you actually mulligan 1/3 hands? If so, doesn't that seem like a problem? The fact that I'm adding cradles doesn't change the math that much. There is a 10 percent chance of hitting 2+ cradles in the top 9 cards (turn 2 on the draw, turn 3 on the play), certainly a risk I'm willing to take for a card as powerful as cradle. It's worth noting that 2x cradle is still far superior to 2 normal lands since cradle typically produces much more than 2 mana so simply having a "dead" card is worth it when the first copy does so much. Given the prevalence of wasteland in the metagame, the first 2 cradles are very often live and forcing them to waste on an early turn rather than developing their board only to drop a second cradle is devastating. Essentially, Cradle takes the place of extra Priests in my list, but with all the tutors in the deck having your excess lords cost 0 mana, have haste, add more mana, be uncounterable, and be untargetable by spot removal (which is more ubiquitous than wasteland) is a no-brainer. The only advantage Priests have is the synergy with Quirion Ranger and Wirewood Symbiote and in a draw heavy with these cards my combo list retains the ability to get out a Priests with 7 MD tutors for the 1 copy.
@BearAssassin: Living Wish is only wider in scope when you have more widely applicable targets. Pact/Zenith can get Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Priests of Titania, Viridian Shaman, Regal Force, Quirion Ranger, Elvish Visionary, Wirewood Symbiote, and occasionally Birchlore Rangers and Elvish Spirit Guide. Of these, I believe most wish lists can only find Shaman and Regal Force, but please correct me if I'm mis-informed. Having MD answers to sideboard cards like E Plague provides 0 value, you might as well just have regular SB answers. (and Vengevine is a sweet one) One may be tempted to shave some of the combo pieces to have them as possible wish targets but this is again reducing the number of copies of these cards in comparison to a list with GSZ and Summoner's Pact, assuming the total number of tutors remains the same. As far as answering glass canon decks, Dredge is resilient enough to fight through one piece of hate, especially when you must show it to them the turn before you cast it, so it is much more effective to try and race them by playing the most streamlined combo deck possible. Living Wish provides a tactical crutch for these matchups when you would be more well-served trying to adjust your game one strategy.
On the loss of sideboard space: With 7-8 spots devoted to the Vengevine plan and some number of cards for other combo decks I don't see much space for a wish board, and the marginal utility of the wish board is not worth losing these powerful SB options. Vengevine sidesteps plague and perish beautifully, as well as being excellent against UWr Stoneforge decks that have Plow, Bolt, Lavamancer, and the regular counter-suite backed by a strong clock from V. Clique and Batterskull. If one were not worried about other combo decks, 8 cards for the Vengevine plan and 7 for the wish plan gives enough space, but there is very little room for maneuvering in such a board.
There is little value is having a card to win that turn if you happen to fizzle since game 1 almost no decks have an answer to hordes of elves, even if they are 1/1s. If they do have sweepers post board, you should have Vengevines in so sandbagging a few dudes will protect you long enough to win. The 1 of Emrakul is worth it against other combo decks and the situations where you are combo-ing at the end of a long, grinding game and Emrakul's time walk gives you a way to win through a more advanced board position (More advanced here is relative to their board earlier in the game when you would typically combo, not relative to your own) .
@Danyul: If you can pick them up at a good price, I would definitely invest in cradles. They are the best card in the deck, not close.
No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
I run 4 GSZ and 4 Wish because I think Pact is going to get you fucking killed.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
You are misinformed.
I advocate a list that can grab via Wish Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Shaman, Regal Force, and Symbiote, and also Gaea's Cradle, Emrakul, and Eternal Witness in the event that Glimpse has been countered.
The difference between running 11 copies of Heritage Druid (assuming 4 Wish and 4 GSZ) and 12 copies isn't much. Having reliable access to Emrakul/Cradle and other answer cards while not having to run them main where they can clog your actual combo is certainly worth that small difference.Having MD answers to sideboard cards like E Plague provides 0 value, you might as well just have regular SB answers. (and Vengevine is a sweet one) One may be tempted to shave some of the combo pieces to have them as possible wish targets but this is again reducing the number of copies of these cards in comparison to a list with GSZ and Summoner's Pact, assuming the total number of tutors remains the same.
[qutoe]As far as answering glass canon decks, Dredge is resilient enough to fight through one piece of hate, especially when you must show it to them the turn before you cast it, so it is much more effective to try and race them by playing the most streamlined combo deck possible. Living Wish provides a tactical crutch for these matchups when you would be more well-served trying to adjust your game one strategy.[/quote]
You can reliably wish for and drop Bojuka Bog turn 2, and you don't have to cast Faerie Macabre, which are the main Wish targets to deal with Dredge/Reanimator.
And Dredge isn't much slower than Elves, so having that crutch is much more important than you give it credit for.
Between diminishing the strength of Living Wish and diluting your manabase- and being able to run a very low land count because of running all basics is a pretty big edge- I don't really think the Vengevine plan wins out, at lest not in a combo-oriented build.On the loss of sideboard space: With 7-8 spots devoted to the Vengevine plan and some number of cards for other combo decks I don't see much space for a wish board, and the marginal utility of the wish board is not worth losing these powerful SB options. Vengevine sidesteps plague and perish beautifully, as well as being excellent against UWr Stoneforge decks that have Plow, Bolt, Lavamancer, and the regular counter-suite backed by a strong clock from V. Clique and Batterskull. If one were not worried about other combo decks, 8 cards for the Vengevine plan and 7 for the wish plan gives enough space, but there is very little room for maneuvering in such a board.
You say this as if the easy part were resolving Glimpse and churning out guys. It's not. Most games you will not resolve a Glimpse of Nature. In those games, having mana lords and Living Wish gives you a very viable alternative plan of simply Wishing for and casting either Regal Force or Emrakul (sometimes Terastadon, mainly against High Tide).There is little value is having a card to win that turn if you happen to fizzle since game 1 almost no decks have an answer to hordes of elves, even if they are 1/1s.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Ok, yeah, I was pretty sure that was the case with you and I'm definitely in agreement with that idea. I recall a rather heated argument going on about that earlier in the thread, and given that Elves doesn't always win the turn it goes off, GSZ seems much more safe and resilient to counters (avoiding mental misstep like a boss).
Also, in response to an earlier criticism of my deck--it was just a deck that I was experimenting with on essentialmagic, however I'm rather dubious about their goldfishing system, it seems unrealistic when you compare it to actually sitting down and shuffling which obviously makes sense. I don't really see the hate towards a Banefire though (the list was streamlined to drop it and be able to pay for it). There are less answers to it than Emrakul and aggro strategies in general, it wins the turn you drop it, and elves can easily produce the mana necessary to use it without even putting a Taiga in.
I also wasn't asking for criticism of the list, just showing that with the generic core cards there seemed to be a lot of hands where you want to say "this is good", but when examining the upcoming cards you would surely lose just from draws. Even with that list, it would consistently goldfish a Banefire win, but the number of hands that were fantastic that would just lose because of the upcoming draws was still somewhat alarming.
I found it to be less problematic in actual testing--I also found the overreaction by catmint to be a little ridiculous (I'm not new to this thread and have been following it). The post was explicitly to ask "What happens when you have a nice looking hand, but with no tutors / glimpses / win conditions in the opening 7, what do you do?" Or I guess to clarify the question, "When you draw a hand with no glimpses or win conditions in them, or ways to find them, should you just mulligan?" Granted it seems unlikely, but it's something to consider--is it safe to keep a hand of something like, Land / Land / Llanowar / Symbiote / Priest / Quirion Ranger / Heritage?
That hand could produce absurd mana, and in the event you top deck a tutor or a glimpse you'll most likely win by turn 3 or 4, but that's asking the top 3-4 cards of your deck to be a tutor or a glimpse or a wish, when you still have 41 non-those cards left.
-----------------
Vengevines swarm out and are difficult to deal with (I may be running this style next week, I don't have intuitions however, so I'll most likely be using Buried Alive instead), but they occupy a ton of slots. I just don't think devoting 7 cards to a win condition interaction to be possible and I feel like you'd have to cut a lot of things that would make the combo work more consistently.
The upside is that it costs a lot less mana to get 2-3 Vengevines in play and swing out in 2 turns than it does to pull off a Banefire, so we'll see what happens (My list is looking almost exactly like Theross' just with black duals and buried alives, not dropping 75$ on 3 intuitions haha)
@Bear: So I take it your list is very close to the following:
3 Heritage Druid
3 Nettle Sentinel
3 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Priests of Titania
4 Elvish Archdruid
6 Mana Elves
1 Regal Force
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 GSZ
4 Living Wish
1 Birchlore Rangers
8 Fetches
6 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
SB:
1 Heritage Druid
1 Nettle Sentinel
1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Eternal Witness
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot
4 Combo Hate cards
The only cards you truly have more access to in this list than a list with 4 GSZ and 3 Pact are Emrakul, Regal Force, Cradle, and the dredge hate cards. The extra access here is only 1 extra copy in the main, so very little difference, and this is in a list with 4 wish, where most I see only run 3. Witness provides some versatility but I hardly think that is worth running 4 copies of a card as slow as Living Wish. The backup plan of wishing for emrakul/regal force after a failed attempt to combo exists in a list with tutors since you can find regal force anyway so I still fail to see the substantial gain this list has while devoting 4 MD and 11 SB slots to Living Wish.
Also, it's not Vengevine that necessitates my robust mana base, I would run 18 lands regardless of my SB plan since reliable access to mana, which mana lords do not provide, is necessary for a consistent combo plan. I run 12 Fetches+Basics, which is only slightly below the norm of 14-15. (and I've seen lists in the 12-13 range so it's not far outside the box)
On Summoner's Pact: This card only kills you if you play it incorrectly or you're already in a bad spot and they have an unlikely combination of removal spells, in which case you were almost assuredly losing anyway. Costing 0 as opposed to 2 makes is far superior to Wish mid-combo, and while it's worse when setting up, every other card in the deck can be used in this capacity, so I find the former point to be more relevant than the latter.
@Kich867: I would mull hands that lack some sort of action unless it can reliably assemble Symbiote-Visionary to find something to combo.
No Excuses, Play Like a Champion
I run 13 lands, so that math wouldn't apply, and I don't always mull a 3 land hand, but quite likely. How do you the math anyway? I would really like to know how to calculate the % of drawing lands, and everything, if you could enlighten me, I'd be very thankful.
I also haven't gone completely against your 4 Cradle idea, I said I need to test it further, but why not play Living Wish in your list??? Specially since you are supposed to have a lot more mana than us with Cradle, the extra mana from Wish shouldn't matter.
If you expect a lot of the current control, go ahead and play the Vengevine + B.A./Int. option. They won't let you combo easily so having this 2nd strong aggro win is highly positive. This tech is actually amazing, since I believe that we can land the Vengevines a few turns faster and easier than Survival used to do some months ago.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
