[Article] Unlocking Legacy - Elf Survival

[Nightmare]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/16947_Unlocking_Legacy_Elf_Survival.html

Who's that dashing figure writing articles again?

[Skeggi]

Nice approach on Survival. What were Di's match-ups?

[rockout]

I was hoping to read about match up results for the survival build not tes.

[Nightmare]

I was hoping to read about match up results for the survival build not tes.

I'm more than willing to give them to you, as soon as I play the deck in a tournament. I was hoping to write the article on how I beat the hell out of the tournament with TES, but sometimes a plan doesn't come together.

[Jaiminho]

I wasn't interested in the TES report, so I didn't actually read that, but I thought it was a really nice article regarding the TEES part.

[Bryant Cook]

<- Name dropped. Sorry man, bad beats happen. Nice article discussing two of our team's decks, you're one hell of a spokesman. ;-p

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I thought it was pretty good.

[Nightmare]

I probably should have mentioned it in the article, but you can read Di's report here (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12374).

[Anusien]

It's obvious you have a hard-on for your team's decks, and understandably so.

Still I'd like to see more from the section on the Elf deck more than just, you know, you reading the decklist to me and gushing as you look at each card. I feel like there's no analysis in the article that isn't readily apparent from just reading the decklist. Something like "Why no Glimpse" or "These are the Conflux cards that make it better" or "This is how I don't flat-out lose to Counterbalance/Top on turn 2". Otherwise I'm sort of left thinking "Oh ho hum, another deck that beats some decks with Islands and creatures but loses to combo decks" (the history of Legacy is probably the history of our board control decks).
For example, you say, "The combo matchup is bad, so we sideboard X, Y and Z." Okay, for what replacements? How good does that make the post-board matchup? Is it merely difficult or actually unwinnable.
ESG is a hotly contested card; what other cards were considered? What about Gaea's Cradle?

Edit: If you need an Elf to kill Counterbalance it's Elf Replica.

[Nightmare]

It's obvious you have a hard-on for your team's decks, and understandably so.

Still I'd like to see more from the section on the Elf deck more than just, you know, you reading the decklist to me and gushing as you look at each card. I feel like there's no analysis in the article that isn't readily apparent from just reading the decklist. Something like "Why no Glimpse" or "These are the Conflux cards that make it better" or "This is how I don't flat-out lose to Counterbalance/Top on turn 2". Otherwise I'm sort of left thinking "Oh ho hum, another deck that beats some decks with Islands and creatures but loses to combo decks" (the history of Legacy is probably the history of our board control decks).
For example, you say, "The combo matchup is bad, so we sideboard X, Y and Z." Okay, for what replacements? How good does that make the post-board matchup? Is it merely difficult or actually unwinnable.
ESG is a hotly contested card; what other cards were considered? What about Gaea's Cradle?

Edit: If you need an Elf to kill Counterbalance it's Elf Replica.

This is fair critique. I'll be playing with the deck a bit more leading up to Chicago, so perhaps I'll go much more in-depth in my next article.

By the way, it's strange for me to be writing about, let alone playing, a deck that uses the attack step every turn.

[Pinder]

The analysis on Elf Survival (have we thought of a better name for that yet?) was just fine, in my opinion, but the whole beginning about TES just seemed out of place. It's fine that you planned to write about smashing face with TES, but when that didn't happen, I think it would probably have been a better idea just to skip the TES section altogether. It felt like I was reading two seperate and really short articles, the first of which wasn't really necessary.

That said, I've always enjoyed the way you write, so even the useless parts weren't arduous to read, at least.

[raharu]

Edit: If you need an Elf to kill Counterbalance it's Elf Replica.

Viridian Shaman???

[Pinder]

Viridian Shaman???

Kills artifacts???

You were probably thinking Zealot. But Zealot costs 2, and therefore has about a 99/100 chance of getting countered by CB, especially with Top.

[kirdape3]

Viridian Shaman
2G
Creature - Elf
2/2

When Viridian Shaman comes into play, destroy target artifact.

Also, the deck that you propose can only beat combo game 1 if the combo player's retarded or you win yourself on turn 3 on the play against a slow combo draw. With the slowly increasing combo presence, how much longer will this deck be really playable?

[Di]

Colin Chilbert - 1
David Gearheart - 0


Anyway, you should've told me you were going to write the article on this, I could've helped.


Also, the deck that you propose can only beat combo game 1 if the combo player's retarded or you win yourself on turn 3 on the play against a slow combo draw. With the slowly increasing combo presence, how much longer will this deck be really playable?

Can't you put in that same argument for every other non-Island deck? There aren't really any decks without Force of Will that can reliably beat the storm decks, so that could be said for a lot of decks (but won't bring me to end up choosing between storm v. force of will deck). I admit the deck punts it hard to combo, that can't be denied. I personally don't know what to do to really give me an edge to the point where it's probably better off just focusing on other matchups. Honestly, through testing and tournament experience, storm is the only matchup I'm not comfortable in (ok Landstill can be bothersome, and Ichorid too, but meh, it's numbers are really down). That just gives this deck the option of either stockpiling on combo hate even more, or improving on already favorable matchups that take up the rest of the metagame.

Also, I beat Bryant game 1 of the top8 with a turn 4 combo on my part, but that was also due to him getting bad draws.

[mercenarybdu]

I thought you said that you would write no more articles for SCG. What up this time? Chicago?

[Bardo]

He's filling in for Anwar who's busy with college.

[Atwa]

Damn, I was hoping on keeping this deck off the radar for at least a week, but I guess it can't be helped. It's not like anyone is going to know how to play against the deck anyway :)

Nice article Adam, I really miss your articles.

[herbig]

Nice article Adam, I really miss you

fixed