[Deck] Elves Combo

[Forgottenforce]

Hey guys, Long time lurker of the thread. I play a mono green list (similar to IBA's manalord version) that has been doing fairly well:

Lands: 14
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
7 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle

Creatures: 34
4 Llanowar Elves
1 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
2 Birchlore Rangers
3 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Priest of Titania
3 Elvish Archdruid
1 Regal Force

Other: 12
4 GSZ
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Living Wish

Sb: 15
1 Regal Force
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Emrakul
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Essence Warden
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Masticore
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Gaddock Teeg

I admit that this list is indeed slower than versions which run pact, but I want cards that are good at all stages of the game. Living wish provides utility without clogging the md full of bullets.

I've been struggling with tempo thresh/canadian thresh. I've tried a small white splash for a few absolute laws in the sb, but it was largely unsuccessful. Any advice from players who have positive or even mu's with tempo thresh would greatly be appreciated. I know some players argue the vengevine route. Players who splash black for the vengevine plan: How do you guys board in the VV package? What decks do you bring it in against?

[Godmode]

I'm not trying to be a dick, but why do you guys keep going for the Living Wish builds? Its a dead end.. Hasnt produced any significant results in comparison to the other builds (Nick Malatesta's, Ross', Samuel's...).
Go Online and test them, you'll have more fun :)

[Kich867]

I'm not trying to be a dick, but why do you guys keep going for the Living Wish builds? Its a dead end.. Hasnt produced any significant results in comparison to the other builds (Nick Malatesta's, Ross', Samuel's...).
Go Online and test them, you'll have more fun :)

I have to agree with this sentiment. The day I dropped the living wish mentality, my consistency, strength, and overall success with the deck has greatly improved. Living wish builds are clunky and sometimes actually difficult to win with because you remove your win condition (which is uncounterable) with a counterable substitute (this is relevant, even if you have a board full of elves, a host of cards can remove that position quickly).

I agree with the sentiment of wanting a way to fetch Emrakul, of which, some suggestions were made that I may be looking into (although, I believe I'll be building G/W Maverick in the near future, elves gives me too much of a rollercoaster of emotions when I play it haha).

Things like;
Primal Command
Time of Need
Chord of Calling
Fierce Empath

I'm of the opinion that 2 Fierce Empath's would be better than any of those cards, as he's entirely tutorable, relatively cheap to play on the combo turn, draws a card for glimpse, is an elf, and gets Emrakul OR regal force.

[Forgottenforce]

I'm not trying to be a dick, but why do you guys keep going for the Living Wish builds? Its a dead end.. Hasnt produced any significant results in comparison to the other builds (Nick Malatesta's, Ross', Samuel's...).
Go Online and test them, you'll have more fun :)

No offense taken. I've tested several standardized mono green lists and white splash variants which run md pact, shaman, and emrakul instead of wish. I found these lists to be faster but less consistent and I've been less successful with them. The only thing I really haven't had experience with is testing vengevines either in a U or B splash. As for wish builds not putting up results, I just assumed that was because it's not as common.

@Kich867: I don't think the counter argument is very valid. Most opponents never counter wish because they assume they will counter what you fetch with it. If you're in mid combo then you can guarantee that your opponent has already spent every counter they have trying to counter glimpse or regal force. I agree that wish can be clunky at times, but pact can be clunky and dangerous especially when your trying to set up the combo.

[Kich867]

No offense taken. I've tested several standardized mono green lists and white splash variants which run md pact, shaman, and emrakul instead of wish. I found these lists to be faster but less consistent and I've been less successful with them. The only thing I really haven't had experience with is testing vengevines either in a U or B splash. As for wish builds not putting up results, I just assumed that was because it's not as common.

It was the standard for awhile, no one really did anything with it, then Ross came along and blew some minds, so we stopped doing it because it's usually pretty bad. My problem was this, when do you even play Living Wish? What if you don't see another one, you can't use it as an effective tutor and as a tutor for combo pieces it's -far- and away the worst. It hurts your combo turn, it hurts your sideboard, it forces you to wait until you find a second one (if you even can) in order to play it during your combo turn, otherwise you want to use it to find emrakul when you CAN get that mana.

[Forgottenforce]

It was the standard for awhile, no one really did anything with it, then Ross came along and blew some minds, so we stopped doing it because it's usually pretty bad. My problem was this, when do you even play Living Wish? What if you don't see another one, you can't use it as an effective tutor and as a tutor for combo pieces it's -far- and away the worst. It hurts your combo turn, it hurts your sideboard, it forces you to wait until you find a second one (if you even can) in order to play it during your combo turn, otherwise you want to use it to find emrakul when you CAN get that mana.

Why can't you use it as an effective tutor? When you combo out, there's no way in the world you won't see another one unless your in the extremely unlikely scenario that you've played 2-3 copies and the last 1 or 2 are at the very bottom of your deck and let's face it with all these shuffle effects that's extremely rare. When do you play wish? At any point during the game which is more than I can say for pact. I completely agree with you that pact is better on your combo turn, but i've only had a few cases where the 2 mana for wish + the cost of whatever I fetch prevent me from the win and if I didn't win that turn then I most likely won the following turn. I feel that I've had more situations where I had pact in hand and was missing some piece of acceleration to go off but I lacked mana to safely pay its upkeep cost.

I know wish sbs seem more cute than effective, but having a g1 answer to reanimator and dredge in the form of bojuka bog or faerie macabre and being free from having to run bullets in the main seem worth it to me.

[Kich867]

Why can't you use it as an effective tutor? When you combo out, there's no way in the world you won't see another one unless your in the extremely unlikely scenario that you've played 2-3 copies and the last 1 or 2 are at the very bottom of your deck and let's face it with all these shuffle effects that's extremely rare. When do you play wish? At any point during the game which is more than I can say for pact. I completely agree with you that pact is better on your combo turn, but i've only had a few cases where the 2 mana for wish + the cost of whatever I fetch prevent me from the win and if I didn't win that turn then I most likely won the following turn. I feel that I've had more situations where I had pact in hand and was missing some piece of acceleration to go off but I lacked mana to safely pay its upkeep cost.

I know wish sbs seem more cute than effective, but having a g1 answer to reanimator and dredge in the form of bojuka bog or faerie macabre and being free from having to run bullets in the main seem worth it to me.

On paper, 2 mana doesn't sound like a lot to pay, but IF elves is going to fail to combo it is going to happen early, and you can't afford that two mana. If you combo, you'll likely win, Wish is deceptive because it's like, "Hey you can actually just not even put emrakul and other bullshit in the mainboard and focus just on elves!".. except you remove a ton of pieces from the main board to put in the sideboard to justify running wish..so it doesn't actually help you that much because it's just lowering your consistency.

This was originally a very long exhausting post explaining to why Living Wish is outclassed by Pact, but it's probably not worth going that in depth if you're set on it. I mean, your build is only actually running 4 searches.

In your build, Living Wish has 1 target during a combo, Emrakul. That's very inflexible.. (Obviously you have Archdruid and Ranger in there, but you didn't put any of the combo in there which is hurtful).

My deck has 12 ways to find Heritage, Nettle, and Symbiote. Yours has 8. Despite that you have 4 ways to find Emrakul, it doesn't actually matter, because the consistency of the combo is what finds Emrakul, not living wish. You don't have to rely on it to find him because if your combo turn is smooth and good, like Pact and GSZ make it, you'll almost always find him, I've only ever not found him once so far and it was just unlucky that all 15 of my lands were on the upper half of my deck.

That's why I asked, when do you actually play Wish if not for Emrakul during your combo turn? What does it get besides him that actually helps you win the combo turn?

In a super ideal world there's always the next turn to win, but the number of my games that go down to the wire are numerous and frequent, that next turn is often not there when you were trying to set your combo up through 2 delvers a goyf and daze / fow / bolts or back to back hymns.

[Koby]

The best argument I can see for Living Wish is to be able to find Gaea's Cradle consistently. Other than that, Living Wish is really weak for the deck. Smart opponents WILL counter Living Wish, and that will ruin your day very faster. Consider that too that Spell Snare is becoming ubiquitous rather quickly in all the Tempo decks, and that's the last card you want to have to resolve to keep going off when you can otherwise ignore it.

[Forgottenforce]

The best argument I can see for Living Wish is to be able to find Gaea's Cradle consistently. Other than that, Living Wish is really weak for the deck. Smart opponents WILL counter Living Wish, and that will ruin your day very faster. Consider that too that Spell Snare is becoming ubiquitous rather quickly in all the Tempo decks, and that's the last card you want to have to resolve to keep going off when you can otherwise ignore it.

Fair points rukcus. Cradle, Regal Force, emrakul, and shaman are my usual targets. I agree that spell snare is very popular at the moment and that is certainly bad for wish. Do you guys disagree then that wish>pact in almost all situations except the combo turn?

My matchup with tempo thresh seems to be about even if not slightly unfavorable. Anyone having solid success in this match up?

@kich: Wish is definitely lackluster during the combo turn. But when I reach the point of comboing off, it's pretty unlikely I don't win even if i have a wish in hand. The main purpose of wish is to help setup by grabbing regal force, quirion ranger, or cradle. I agree that during your combo turn grabbing emrakul with it is bad in comparison to just drawing out your deck and finding your 1 of and casting him but it doesn't matter because at that point you have the win. Usually, if I'm comboing off and all I have are wishes I'll fetch a one drop usually essence warden or ranger (which is bad I know) to keep the combo going. 90% of the time, I'm still able to combo off and win that turn. Also, keep in mind that my deck relies less on heritage druid and nettle sentinel because I run 4 priest and 3 archdruid. Untapping with either one of them usually enables me to combo off the following turn, or cast wish for regal force and then combo off. I apologize for bringing this topic up again if it's already been discussed in detail. I'll peruse the previous pages and look for that post explaining why pact is >wish.

On a separate note, could someone explain their vengevine sb strategy to me?

[Oiolosse]

@kich: ...The main purpose of wish is to help setup by grabbing regal force, quirion ranger, or cradle....

I think the point is that why would you pay 1G when you can pay 0? During the combo turn your mana production can either be just-not-enough or it blows up into all the mana you will certainly need. That extra two mana early on will very often cause your end game mana production to diverge to infinity. I know it won't grab Emrakul necessarily but the negative scenario of the probability that you don't draw into him is far compensated by the consistency and extra mana the other tutors offer.

If you want cradle then I swear by crop rotation. 3 cradle main, 2 crop rotation. Saccing cradle to find cradle is so clutch.

[Kich867]

@Kich867: I don't think the counter argument is very valid. Most opponents never counter wish because they assume they will counter what you fetch with it. If you're in mid combo then you can guarantee that your opponent has already spent every counter they have trying to counter glimpse or regal force. I agree that wish can be clunky at times, but pact can be clunky and dangerous especially when your trying to set up the combo.

Maybe if they're bad on game one? If you're running elves, which should be apparent when you get 17 mana to play Wish + Emrakul, under what condition would they not counter it? Pact is everything but clunky, that's why it's run over wish.

[resum]

Basically depending on matchup, whenever I board in BA/VV, I take out 3 summoning pacts( I always do this), and then normally 2 priest of titania, 1 regal force, and 1 emrakul. If you're boarding in 4 vengevines then I would take out another random non-1 drop elf, unless all your 2 drops left are visionaries, then I take out a heritage druid. I keep in the emrakul game 3 sometimes because if I smashed them with VV, they probably bring in GY hate and might overcomit to it so I can combo easier.

[Forgottenforce]

I think the point is that why would you pay 1G when you can pay 0? During the combo turn your mana production can either be just-not-enough or it blows up into all the mana you will certainly need. That extra two mana early on will very often cause your end game mana production to diverge to infinity. I know it won't grab Emrakul necessarily but the negative scenario of the probability that you don't draw into him is far compensated by the consistency and extra mana the other tutors offer.

If you want cradle then I swear by crop rotation. 3 cradle main, 2 crop rotation. Saccing cradle to find cradle is so clutch.

I really don't care about the combo turn because I almost always win regardless of having wish in my hand or not. I'm talking about those other times when you have pact and no glimpse and pact ends up dead in your hand. I do like the thought of crop rotation and admit that I haven't tested it but it sounds amazing on paper.

@Kich: Your opponent more than likely is going to counter everything before the point of reaching 17 mana, and if they do counter it you're more than likely going off so just draw out your deck and cast another one. Pact is clunky when your not going off and causes you to take risks when casted on a non combo turn.

@resum: Thanks a lot for the reply. What matches do you bring it in against?

[theross]

The Vengevine plan postboard is just another angle from which to attack, so it obviously comes in against decks where your first angle (glimpse combo) isn't effective enough. The best example is a deck like Bug-still that has a plethora of removal and counters, including Pernicious Deed but is largely unprepared to deal with recurring threat of Vengevine.

On Summoner's Pact: Since when is taking risks a necessarily bad thing? Pact is a much more mana-efficient card than Wish, and also doesn't necessitate 4+ SB slots be devoted to it. This does come with some downside of game loss risk, but this is mitigated by tight play.

[Darklingske]

I'm having problems with the VV SB plan against BUG. Maybe it is just my meta, but everyone seems to play Snapcaster + Churgical Extraction. And this little combo is really backbreaking for the VVplan. Anyone else that is having this problem?

[Koby]

I'm having problems with the VV SB plan against BUG. Maybe it is just my meta, but everyone seems to play Snapcaster + Churgical Extraction. And this little combo is really backbreaking for the VVplan. Anyone else that is having this problem?

That may cause some issues. You might have to write off this matchup as a Loss and consider a different plan or deck.

[Infinitium]

Pact is a much more mana-efficient card than Wish, and also doesn't necessitate 4+ SB slots be devoted to it. This does come with some downside of game loss risk, but this is mitigated by tight play.

No it isn't? Pact costs you 4 mana unless you're winning that turn - that is a giant liability even if you don't lose to it. Having to spend 4+ slots on Wish simulary isn't all that bad in elves since you rarely want to board more than 5-6 against any deck anyhow, exception being GY dependent decks, in whose cases cards like Faerie or Ooze can hardly be considered superflous.

On a similar note, Emrakul is a great sideboard card against milling strategies. Cradle is significantly better versus decks not running mass removal or wasteland. Hell, I used to side out my Wishes when I still ran those builds in favor of the same silver bullets they would otherwise tutor for in order to preserve combo spots in the MD.

It's true that pact is better with an active Glimpse, but having an unmolested Glimpse and mana engine to support it is already enough game over (if not that turn) that the deck gains more from being able to have game in the many, many instances of the opponent being able to disrupt the optimal turn of events.

[theross]

Pact only costs you 4 mana once you've already accrued significant value from it, a cost that is far smaller than the initial investment of 2 mana required for Living Wish. In a deck built upon cheap spells, Pact allows explosive plays that Wish does not. Wish is also a more narrow card, since it's versatility is limited by the SB space devoted to it. This commitment of SB space is incredibly relevant, as even if you only want to bring in a few cards (I rarely bring in even 5-6, save the times Vengevine comes in) you still must devote slots to various matchups, notably dredge and other combo decks.

It's obvious that Pact is better mid-combo (although not irrelevant) but Pact is simply better in nearly every situation, because it fits the explosive nature of the deck. Living Wish for some arbitrary bullet is not a line that will single-handedly win you games, except against the linear decks where Wish is often too slow to make a difference. It is thus not worth sacrificing the speed this deck is built to exploit.

[soiber2000]

I think that there are at this moment 2 different competitive strategies for elfball :
- combo MD (Emrakul, Ezuri or mirror entity) and VV (with intuition or buried alive) SB,
- fauna/VV MD and control SB (graveyard hate, combo hate, krosan grip).

I don't think one strategy is better than the other, it depends on the metagame.

Here is the list is will play this next WE in the final Legacy France championship :

2 verdant catacombs
2 windswepth heath
2 wooded foothills
5 forets
1 savannah
1 dryad arbor
3 gaea's cradle

2 fyndhorn elves
1 llanovar elves
3 quirion ranger
2 fauna shaman
1 priest of titania
3 elvish visionary
3 Vengevine
4 nettle sentinel
4 wirewood symbiot
3 birchlore rangers
4 heritage druid
1 regal force
1 mirror entity
1 viridian shaman

4 glimpse of nature
3 chord of calling
4 green sun's zenith
1 crop rotation

SB :
2 krosan grip (D&T, maverick, painter, MUD, affinity, landstill)
1 goblin sharpshooter (D&T, maverick, peacekeeper)
1 faerie macabre (combo tendrills, reanimator, dredge, punishing fire, loam)
2 surgical extraction (TT, reanimator, dredge, punishing fire, loam
1 scavenging ooze (reanimator, dredge, TT, tempo zoo, burn, sligh, punishing fire, loam)
1 tormod's crypt (dredge, reanimator)
1 gaddock teeg (combo tendrills)
1 sylvan safekeeper (combo tendrills)
1 children of korlis (combo tendrills, dredge)
1 caller of the claw (every deck playing mass removal, in particular pernicious deed ans perish)
1 vengevine (TA, TT, tempo zoo)
2 summoner's pact (every combo deck)

Your comments are welcome!

How was the championship for you? I read you lose first match in some report.

I will play a similar list this weekend but I am planning to play a single Ezuri in addition to Mirror entity, because it is my first experience with elves, and sometimes when I combo out I find a situation where a GSZ would solve my problem but I don't have nothing to keep going or to win, and have not so much mana, so Ezuri could be a good choice.

Also, I don't know when to go for Priest of Titania because my usual targets are Symbiote, heritage, nettle and Fauna if I choose the VV plan, so Priest with summoning sickness is feeling weak.

Finally I don't have time to get all sideboard, so I was thinking to put the natural order- progenitus combo in 4 slots for those matchups where you don't want to take out VV and the combo plan is not a good choice, and then fill the other slots with graveyard hate (5), artifact hate (2), and combo (3) and the last vengevine.

Well, your advice would be very welcome. Thanks!

[Forgottenforce]

Pact only costs you 4 mana once you've already accrued significant value from it, a cost that is far smaller than the initial investment of 2 mana required for Living Wish. In a deck built upon cheap spells, Pact allows explosive plays that Wish does not. Wish is also a more narrow card, since it's versatility is limited by the SB space devoted to it. This commitment of SB space is incredibly relevant, as even if you only want to bring in a few cards (I rarely bring in even 5-6, save the times Vengevine comes in) you still must devote slots to various matchups, notably dredge and other combo decks.

It's obvious that Pact is better mid-combo (although not irrelevant) but Pact is simply better in nearly every situation, because it fits the explosive nature of the deck. Living Wish for some arbitrary bullet is not a line that will single-handedly win you games, except against the linear decks where Wish is often too slow to make a difference. It is thus not worth sacrificing the speed this deck is built to exploit.

I disagree that Pact is better in nearly every situation. When you have the mana available to cast pact safely, living wish can do just about the same thing. Sure it's at an extra 2 mana and yes that can sometimes impact your whole turn. But what about those times that you have pact but not a reliable way to cast it and live through the next turn? Living wish is good in all these scenarios.

Dedicating 3-4 sb slots to living wish isn't that big of a deal at all. Keep in mind that your also saving a few slots in your md with not having to run emrakul or shaman in your 60. As for committing sb slots to battle gy decks and combo decks wish can actually strengthen your matchups vs these decks. Having 1 bojuka bog in the board with 4 wish md is very effective tech vs gy based decks.

Your argument that wish fetching an arbitrary bullet by itself does not win you games is very true. But the fact is I'm not fetching arbitrary bullets unless i'm in a pinch. I'm fetching cradle or regal force or emrakul--cards that will win you the game. And the cool thing is I can fetch these cards whenever I have 2 mana and not worry about losing the next turn if my mana production gets bolted.

[Kich867]

I disagree that Pact is better in nearly every situation. When you have the mana available to cast pact safely, living wish can do just about the same thing. Sure it's at an extra 2 mana and yes that can sometimes impact your whole turn. But what about those times that you have pact but not a reliable way to cast it and live through the next turn? Living wish is good in all these scenarios.

It's getting kind of useless to keep bringing this up, but the difference between having 4 mana available and casting pact VS living wish is on the scale of winning or losing most games. If you can produce 4 mana, I would want pact over living wish every time. Wish + Whatever you wished for is 3 mana, whereas Pact is 1. That extra 2 mana is two more elves, two more cards, and that many more untaps of nettle sentinels.

No one is telling you the living wish doesn't work, it's just that through months of experience testing the card and becoming better at playing pact, that there's just no reason for it. It's almost guaranteed to slow you down a turn and that's a hell of a lot more dangerous than having to pay 4 mana next upkeep, which is absurdly easy to do barring a random board wipe. There are nearly infinite ways of producing 4 mana in this deck even if you only hit one land drop and it's like turn 3..

And under what circumstance do your scenarios even happen? If you can pay for Pact, no, living wish doesn't do about the same thing, it does it a turn later, which is kind of the point. Your bullets VS artifacts and enchantments with a wish cost 5-6 mana, pact costs 3-4. That's the difference between doing it now or doing it next turn.

There's even been games where I combo'd off and ran out of steam before hitting 17 mana because I can't get multiples of the same thing with living wish <--- That is extremely relevant, sometimes it's not about having flexibility, it's about getting shit you actually need, and Wish can only do that once unless you wreck your mainboard for it. During a combo my targets are almost universally wirewood symbiotes. There's been plenty of games where I find one and need to fetch the rest to keep going, Wish can't do that, that's kind of a big deal.

And what decks does Living Wish even give you game against? Dredge? Reanimator? By the time you even figure out what you're playing against you're long since dead because Iona hit the table turn 2 and you're fucked before you can even cast living wish. Dredge, a faerie macabre -might- slow them down, it's no guarantee. It's a better game plan to just focus most of the sideboard towards graveyard shit because it's just about the only thing that kills us reliably (even down to Tarmogoyf's and Snapcasters).

This fear that you'll lose the game from pact is unwarranted and confusing, why would you ever pact before you cast glimpse, if glimpse resolves, you should win. This flexibility or setting up of your combo turn you think you get from living wish doesn't really happen that often because of how slow it is, if you're casting Wish just to find something, you're probably looking at a non-existent combo turn--hoping you'll top deck a glimpse. Because if you had a glimpse in hand, you'd rather have a pact with it...

At that point, you might as well just run 4 emrakuls maindeck because that's the only real reason you'd run wish, to have multiple ways to find him, but you'll find him anyways just comboing in a far more streamlined, faster, more consistent, better way. And if you lose to upkeep triggers, I dunno, find something to help you out with that, I've never lost to one, I just check my graveyard after I cast emrakul..

[bakofried]

Ross, I must ask, how often do you play Elves? Not out of any doubt, but tournament reports here are fairly low, and you presence in these boards is rather sporadic. I'd like to know if you're playing this deck in regular intervals, if you do, what are thoughts on the meta and how to combat it, and if you could put up some reports. And it'd be awesome if you could post a list.

Furthermore, is no one paying attention to the tournament report up for elves right now?

[Koby]

Furthermore, is no one paying attention to the tournament report up for elves right now?

I stopped paying attention after I noticed 3x GSZ 3x Wirewood Symbiote.......

My thoughts on Living Wish is that the slot would better be served by Green Sun Zenith. Prior to that card, Living Wish builds made sense as a versatile tutor. But now, GSZ is served as the "non-combo turn tutor". Therefore, I believe that the strongest tutor package to be:

4 GSZ
2-3 Summoner's Pact

After these, playing Living Wish is acceptable; but never before.

The Summoner's Pact is usually boarded out against decks that Vengevine would be coming in. This is to address the removal suite/sweepers that would normally kill you on a pass-the-turn Pact play.

[bakofried]

Do you play Elves at all on a regular basis, rukcus? If you do, I'd like to see your current list. My issue with this deck (and I may face some criticism for this) is that there is nowhere close to a "core" of the deck, especially with regards to Cradle and Wish. Furthermore, placement with the deck at high-level tournaments is so sporadic, it's hard to judge whether that build was correct, if it was pilot skill, if it was simple luck, or some combination of the three.

[Godmode]

Olivier Pamart placed 1st at 57 a player event - Magic Bazaar Mensuel

Here's the list: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2228

MD:
12 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dryad Arbor

4 Quirion Ranger
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Vengevine
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Regal Force

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith


SB:
3 Karakas
1 Progenitus
4 Natural Order
3 Dismember
2 Krosan Grip
2 Scavenging Ooze



and here's the Finale de la Coupe de France Legacy (76 players) top8 Decklist: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2226

Looking forward for a report Samuel!

[Koby]

Do you play Elves at all on a regular basis, rukcus? If you do, I'd like to see your current list. My issue with this deck (and I may face some criticism for this) is that there is nowhere close to a "core" of the deck, especially with regards to Cradle and Wish. Furthermore, placement with the deck at high-level tournaments is so sporadic, it's hard to judge whether that build was correct, if it was pilot skill, if it was simple luck, or some combination of the three.

This is my list (has not changed for several months)

2 Bayou
5 Forest
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Gaea's Cradle

2 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel

4 Elvish Visionary
2 Priest of Titania
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Quirion Ranger

4 Wirewood Symbiote

2 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Summoner's Pact

Sideboard
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Krosan Grip
2 Mortarpod
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Thoughtseize
3 Vengevine

The day that Survival is unbanned, I would make the following changes:
-4 GSZ
-2 Bayou
-1 Summoner's Pact
-1 Elvish Archdruid
-2 Birchlore Rangers
-1 Regal Force

+2 Taiga
+3 Survival of the Fittest
+1 Anger
+1 Masked Admirers
+2 Priest of Titania
+1 Elvish Spirit Guide
+1 Quirion Ranger
+1 Elvish Messenger

etc you get the point. It essentially turns into EPIC Survival Elves, and goes off everytime you untap with Survival.

[Forgottenforce]

It's getting kind of useless to keep bringing this up, but the difference between having 4 mana available and casting pact VS living wish is on the scale of winning or losing most games. If you can produce 4 mana, I would want pact over living wish every time. Wish + Whatever you wished for is 3 mana, whereas Pact is 1. That extra 2 mana is two more elves, two more cards, and that many more untaps of nettle sentinels.

No one is telling you the living wish doesn't work, it's just that through months of experience testing the card and becoming better at playing pact, that there's just no reason for it. It's almost guaranteed to slow you down a turn and that's a hell of a lot more dangerous than having to pay 4 mana next upkeep, which is absurdly easy to do barring a random board wipe. There are nearly infinite ways of producing 4 mana in this deck even if you only hit one land drop and it's like turn 3..

And under what circumstance do your scenarios even happen? If you can pay for Pact, no, living wish doesn't do about the same thing, it does it a turn later, which is kind of the point. Your bullets VS artifacts and enchantments with a wish cost 5-6 mana, pact costs 3-4. That's the difference between doing it now or doing it next turn.

There's even been games where I combo'd off and ran out of steam before hitting 17 mana because I can't get multiples of the same thing with living wish <--- That is extremely relevant, sometimes it's not about having flexibility, it's about getting shit you actually need, and Wish can only do that once unless you wreck your mainboard for it. During a combo my targets are almost universally wirewood symbiotes. There's been plenty of games where I find one and need to fetch the rest to keep going, Wish can't do that, that's kind of a big deal.

And what decks does Living Wish even give you game against? Dredge? Reanimator? By the time you even figure out what you're playing against you're long since dead because Iona hit the table turn 2 and you're fucked before you can even cast living wish. Dredge, a faerie macabre -might- slow them down, it's no guarantee. It's a better game plan to just focus most of the sideboard towards graveyard shit because it's just about the only thing that kills us reliably (even down to Tarmogoyf's and Snapcasters).

This fear that you'll lose the game from pact is unwarranted and confusing, why would you ever pact before you cast glimpse, if glimpse resolves, you should win. This flexibility or setting up of your combo turn you think you get from living wish doesn't really happen that often because of how slow it is, if you're casting Wish just to find something, you're probably looking at a non-existent combo turn--hoping you'll top deck a glimpse. Because if you had a glimpse in hand, you'd rather have a pact with it...

At that point, you might as well just run 4 emrakuls maindeck because that's the only real reason you'd run wish, to have multiple ways to find him, but you'll find him anyways just comboing in a far more streamlined, faster, more consistent, better way. And if you lose to upkeep triggers, I dunno, find something to help you out with that, I've never lost to one, I just check my graveyard after I cast emrakul..

Lots of stuff to address in this post, let me apologize ahead of time if i miss anything. This line is particular sums up the reason why i play wish over pact: "why would you ever pact before you cast glimpse, if glimpse resolves, you should win." This implies that you only really cast pact during the combo turn. So it sounds like you're saying pact is reliant on glimpse to be good. In fact most of your argument is based on pact just being better during the combo turn, but even then wish gets the job done well enough to win. You're right that when glimpse resolves, you pretty much win that's true in a deck running wish over pact as well. Wish just has the bonus of being useful every other time too.

So what happens when you just don't find a glimpse in your opening hand and you have a pact? In that situation the 4 mana next upkeep can get pretty significant so pact becomes much more risky. Wish doesnt rely on glimpse, it's good in almost all situations albeit a bit slow. Wish for cradle, ranger, regal force, or archdruid does indeed set up the combo for you and you dont have to resolve a glimpse or risk losing the game to do that.

It's pretty obvious when your facing dredge after turn 1. I've won games wishing for bog or macabre while i was on the play vs dredge and reanimate. On the draw winning g1 is harder, but possible. Game 2, i bring in 4 macabre and leave my bog in the board effectively giving me 8 cards vs dredge or reanimate that really only take up 5 slots of sb space.

[Kich867]

Lots of stuff to address in this post, let me apologize ahead of time if i miss anything. This line is particular sums up the reason why i play wish over pact: "why would you ever pact before you cast glimpse, if glimpse resolves, you should win." This implies that you only really cast pact during the combo turn. So it sounds like you're saying pact is reliant on glimpse to be good. In fact most of your argument is based on pact just being better during the combo turn, but even then wish gets the job done well enough to win. You're right that when glimpse resolves, you pretty much win that's true in a deck running wish over pact as well. Wish just has the bonus of being useful every other time too.

So what happens when you just don't find a glimpse in your opening hand and you have a pact? In that situation the 4 mana next upkeep can get pretty significant so pact becomes much more risky. Wish doesnt rely on glimpse, it's good in almost all situations albeit a bit slow. Wish for cradle, ranger, regal force, or archdruid does indeed set up the combo for you and you dont have to resolve a glimpse or risk losing the game to do that.

It's pretty obvious when your facing dredge after turn 1. I've won games wishing for bog or macabre while i was on the play vs dredge and reanimate. On the draw winning g1 is harder, but possible. Game 2, i bring in 4 macabre and leave my bog in the board effectively giving me 8 cards vs dredge or reanimate that really only take up 5 slots of sb space.

The knowledge of whether to keep a hand (sometimes due to there not being a glimpse in it) is something you get over time. If I have absolutely no business, I won't keep it, if I have no glimpse but a lot of dudes to beat with sometimes I'll keep it and just go aggro.

These "Well what if.." scenarios your throwing at Pact to try and point out how much better living wish is has been done, many pages ago, which resulted in a long period of people running wish, which was then stopped after people realized that it just slows the deck down too much.

What do you actually wish for, realistically, besides silver bullets to decks you'll probably lose against anyways game 1 that you could just sideboard in and probably beat game 2 and 3? Regal Force and Emrakul seem to be the two things you've brought up the most.

The likelihood that you could living wish for regal force and pass turn because you can produce -exactly- 7 mana and still be able to play it next turn (in the event your lord, because it's actually somewhat hard to frontload 7 mana without one / cradle, doesn't die and regal force doesn't get discarded) is low.

Furthermore, if you could produce exactly 7 mana, you could...pact for regal force and just play it this turn. Reanimator and Dredge aren't the only two decks in the format, we don't usually win slow tedious games, speed is very, very much of the essence.

They're functionally identical cards outside of being able to tutor lands and emrakul, which is almost largely irrelevant outside of Bojuka Bog, which is still a shitty way to deal with graveyards anyways.

Running 4x Cradles is better than running 4x wish for them (I believe earlier in the thread ross proved that it's statistically insignificant the amount of times you pull a cradle and no other mana producing land), and I'd honestly rather fit in a Fierce Empath or two into the maindeck and be able to pact/gsz for them when I hit that "I have 30 mana but still can't find emrakul" games.

[samman1]

Here is the list I played last WE in the French final Legacy tournament :
2 verdant catacombs
2 windswepth heath
2 wooded foothills
5 forets
1 savannah
1 dryad arbor
3 gaea's cradle

2 fyndhorn elves
1 llanovar elves
3 quirion ranger
2 fauna shaman
1 priest of titania
3 elvish visionary
3 Vengevine
4 nettle sentinel
4 wirewood symbiot
3 birchlore rangers
4 heritage druid
1 regal force
1 mirror entity
1 viridian shaman

4 glimpse of nature
3 chord of calling
4 green sun's zenith
1 crop rotation

SB :
2 krosan grip (D&T, maverick, painter, MUD, affinity, landstill)
1 goblin sharpshooter (D&T, maverick, peacekeeper)
1 faerie macabre (combo tendrills, reanimator, dredge, punishing fire, loam)
2 surgical extraction (TT, reanimator, dredge, punishing fire, loam
1 scavenging ooze (reanimator, dredge, TT, tempo zoo, burn, sligh, punishing fire, loam)
1 gaddock teeg (combo tendrills)
1 sylvan safekeeper (combo tendrills)
1 children of korlis (combo tendrills, dredge)
1 caller of the claw (every deck playing mass removal, in particular pernicious deed ans perish)
3 natural order (maverick, tempo thres, tempo Zoo)
1 Progenitus

Round 1 : berserk GRw (he will TOP8)
1st game : he wins the toss, he plays noble hierarch T1 and kavru predator T2. I play llanovar T1. Turn 2 : I play nettle, heritage druid, then cradle, quirion ranger, visionnaire, symbiot, visionnaire, symbiot, then crop rotation, GSZ@7 -> regal force -> glimpse FTW. Kill T2!!1/0
2nd game : I side in NO plan. I play NO T3. T4, I begin a glimpse combo then fizzle : I have at least 10 creatures on the battlefield (2 VV) and attack with progenitus.He has tarmogoyf and kavru on the board and 3 cards in hand. He attacks with a 5/6 tarmogoyf and I make an ugly, enormous missplay : I defend with only 2 VV (I could have defended with 4 other creatures). Double berserk on tarmogoyf FTW. 1/1
3rd game : I mulligan 4 with no lands in hand. 1/2
0/1/0

Round 2 : tempo thresold
game 1 : I mulligan 6. He controls me well but I make a combo glimpse T7 FTW. 1/0
Game 2 : I make a combo titania/symbiot/mirror T5. 2/0
1/1/0

round 3 : burn
game 1 : combo glimpse T4. 1/0
game 2 : combo glimpse T6. 2/0
2/1/0

round 4 : dredge
game 1 : He wins the toss and give me the first play (I understand he plays dredge). I mulligan 5. He doesn't have any dredge and he has to hardcast narcoamibe. He manages to make 4 tokens with cabal therapy then attack. I sacrifice an heritage druid by defending to remove his two bridge from below, then make a combo glimpse for the win. 1/0
game 2 : he decides to begin. T3 : he plays breakthrough@0 and has at least 20 cards in the graveyard (4 bridges). He flashbacks a creature to make tokens, I have 2 untapped creatures and an untapped forest. In response to bridge trigger ability and cabal therapy effect, I play crop rotation -> cradle, tap all my permanents to play chord@1 -> children of korlis -> sacrifice -> remove bridges.
two turns later, I begin a combo glimpse that fizzle rather late : I managed to put in play sharpshooter and many creatures (2 quirion ranger and 2 symbiot).
He plays dread return -> blazing archon.
At my turn, I manage to untap 5 times sharpshooter to kill blazing archon FTW. 2/0.
3/1/0

Round 5 : tempo thresold.
Game 1 : I mulligan 5. He kills my 2 first creatures with dismember (-8 life points), he plays FOW on glimpse (-1 life) and fetches 2 lands (-2 lives). I hardcast VV and easily finishes him. 1/0
Game 2 : he plays delver T1 then 2 other delvers T2, then flip the 3 delvers T3 and show me brainstorm and FOW : I concede. Brillant play! 1/1
Game 3 : I win with an aggro/VV plan. 2/1
4/1/0

I only need to win the 6th game to make TOP8.

round 6 : tempo zoo, my worst MU! What a pity!!! My opponent is Cyril Terroy, the master of this deck (20th at Amsterdam GP), he will make TOP4.

1st game : he controls me easily until I have 5 lives. I manage to put regal in play then draw 5 cards. No out for me, he finishes me with a lightning bolt and delver. 0/1
2nd game : I have 1 forest, 2 nettle, 1 heritage druid, 1 visionnaire and 2 glimpse in hand.
He played force of will when I played heritage druid. Very good choice! If he had not played that, I would have win this game with my two glimpses in hand. 0/2.
Bye Bye TOP8!
4/2/0

round 7 : tempo thresold
Game 1 : I mulligan 6, he wins the toss and play fetchland and grim lavamancer :frown:. He will blast a creature each turn then make me die slowly. 0/1
Game 2 : I make combo glimpse T4 for the win. 1/1.
Game 3 : the same as 1st game. grim T1 FTW. :frown:

He will explain me at the end of the round that he only plays 1 grim lavamancer. :frown::mad::eek::cry:
4/3/0.

Conclusion : it wasn't my tournament, I mulliganed too much and have drawn very few cradle. I think I didn't deserve to win because of my 1st round missplay. I feel guilty...

[samman1]

@soiber2000
I don't think Ezuri is a good slot in my list because in 95% of the cases, I have better cards to play. Between Ezuri and mirror entity, you have to choose.

during the GP, I didn't lose my first round.
I made :
bye : win
porcelaine stompy : win
mystic bant : win
maverick : lose
zoo : win
bant : win
UB aggro control : win
team america : win
Elfball (combo Emrakul) : win
painter RU : lose
cawblade UW : win
sneak show : win
ANT : win
merfolk : win
sneak show : lose
tempo thres : win.

I played last WE a list with NO plan in SB. You have to decide when you side in this plan.
It is a difficult choice :
maverick? I don't think it is a good solution because of aven mindcensor and gaddock teeg,
tempo thres? Good choice, I think.
Tempo zoo? it is very difficult to play NO because the opponents blasts us at least 1 creature each turn.
zoo, berserk? I think it is efficient.
team america? elfball doesn't need NO to win.
Esperblade? bad choice because of perish.
Like every SB plan, it is a question on metagame.

Last point : Titania.
Last WE, this card made me win only once. And 3 times, I would have prefered playing fauna shaman. I won't play titania next tournament.


I think my list is an hybrid concept between elfball and aggro elves. The interest is to switch easily between 3 main gameplans :
combo glimpse,
combo infinite mana,
aggro VV (in particular fauna/VV tricks).
It is difficult to play this deck and very easy to make missplays!!!
But I think it is very powerful because your opponent cannot know what threats we play. VV MD is awesome.

[soiber2000]

@samman1

I was referring to your lost in the first round in the French final Legacy tournament, I read it in a french forum (well, I imagined it because I don't speak french :wink:). Sorry if I haven't explained well.

A pity your tournament, almost always small details make the cut between top8 and top9.

I am glad you support my idea about Natural Order side. I think if you take the right choice for the sideboard plan it can be good to have in some matchups.

I agree in your two statements that your deck is an hybrid between elfball and aggro, and that it is difficult to play the deck right because you have to take a lot of decisions with a lot of possible options, but in the same way I think it has a good potential in my meta (lots of blue based agrocontrol) due to maindecking Vengevines.

I am hesitating with Titania. It is true that it is just 3 card combo to go infinite (mirror, titania and symbiote), but it is also true that with just a lone titania you are problably trying a glimpse combo without it in play, and can be useless if you draw her. I don't know.

Thank you for all.

[theross]

@Kich867: The chance of getting a hand with Cradle and no other land is certainly not insignificant, I just showed the math and asserted that the difference was not worth cutting down on Cradle. You may notice lists that don't play Cradle often play less land than I do (18), so Cradle acts more like a spell than a land in the deck. (akin to rituals in storm combo)

@bakofried: Honestly, I haven't played the deck in a tournament setting since PT Philly, where I scrubbed a side event, losing to back to back 4 outers from Hive Mind, a 10-12 outer from Reanimator, and 3-4 mulligans in two games against BUG. I actually played at the DHG event in Rhode Island this past Sunday, but chose Bant Blade since I wanted to try out a Brainstorm deck. I 4-2ed losing to two players who made top8, the first in the mirror match when my draws were simply too slow to compete games 2 and 3 and the 2nd to Pattern-Hulk Combo when I failed to draw any disruption (Literally 0, despite mulling to 6 each game and casting BS) over the course of 2 games. After the event I certainly regretted not playing elves as I still maintain it's the most underrated deck in Legacy an I think that field was fairly soft to it.

Getting back to the point, I don't find too much time to play Legacy since I'm often busy with Standard and the current PTQ season but I keep myself abreast of the Legacy metagame. Right now Legacy seems to be very similar to what it was pre-Misstep in that it is dominated by U aggro-control strategies. However, these decks are more focused on that strategy because of the power of Delver of Secrets. The great thing about this is that Elves is not a deck that can be out tempo-ed simply because of the critical mass of cheap spells and cards that produce mana. The deck is largely immune to wasteland/stifle and can safely ignore Delver given the presence of a legitimate combo-kill. It's also very difficult for blue decks to gain an advantage with their 1 for 1 removal spells because the guys they are killing only cost 1. Honestly I think any list of elves can succeed right now, and the choice to MD Vengevine depends solely on the density of other combo decks in your expected metagame. A combo-oriented list would look very similar to the one I ran in Providence, probably with an ESG cut for another Birchlore Rangers. I've always liked Intuition in Vengevine lists since it helps with both angles of attack, so I'd probably start with a U splash. In my testing with that list, Fauna Shaman was not very good, and I definitely do not like him in the current metagame of Lightning Bolts, Plows, and Snapcasters. The most I can see is 1 as a tutor target in games that look to be going long. A sample list would look something like this:

2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Fauna Shaman
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
1 Viridian Shaman
4 Vengevine
1 Regal Force
3 Birchlore Rangers

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Intuition

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Gaea's Cradle
7 G Fetch Lands
3 Tropical Island
3 Forest

Priest and ESG lose value as bullets without the combo kill and without Summoner's Pact so they get cut. Quirion Ranger is the weakest elf and with U cards in the main you want more Birchlore Rangers so that seems like an easy swap as well. The SB would start with some Krosan Grips for Counterbalance (and only Counterbalance) and some form of combo hate, but I have no idea what it would be. There isn't much to come out against RUG decks, probably just the Fauna Shaman and Viridian Shaman. I am wary of Surgical Extraction with the VV lists since Snapcaster has thrust that card into the metagame, so I will probably stick to a combo list for now but I wouldn't fault anyone for going with MD VVs since it gives the deck another line of attack. I do highly recommend Intuition in these builds though.

[Branches]

ruckus and ross what is your plan for the combo matchups(namely storm...)

i've tried everything from thoughtsieze/therapy to Probe/Meddling mage(what a test session that was x.x)

is sideboarding simply a wash and i should just pray i dont see them(which is possible considering all of the stifles in the metagame)?

only thing i havent tried is flusterstorm....but that seems terrible.

my current list im v. happy with outside of the combo mu

4 Elvish Visionary
1 Fauna Shaman
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
2 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
4 Vengevine
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Intuition
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Forest
1 Bayou
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Birchlore Rangers
SB: 3 Faerie Macabre
SB: 2 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 4 Cabal Therapy
SB: 2 Birchlore Rangers
SB: 1 Viridian Shaman
SB: 1 Sylvok Replica
SB: 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB: 1 Intuition

playing in the invitational next month so time to start figuring out what im doin.

[bakofried]

White splash offers Mirror Entity main, Absolute Law side, and a card that a quick search reveals has not caused any chatter here, Mentor of the Meek.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=244682

Sideboard material for grinding games of attrition? Covered in Adam Barnello's article from mid-october, again, don't know why no chatter was heard.
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/recurring-nightmares-elvish-pioneers/

[theross]

The combo matchups are just difficult. There isn't much you can do about that given that you can't fit much disruption into the deck and their clock is faster than yours. Storm combo is obviously the worst offender, and in this matchup you just have to pray. (Which I successfully did in Providence, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good) However, decks like Show and Tell and Hive Mind aren't terrible matchups since their average kill isn't much faster than yours (both can kill turn 2, but they are more consistent at going off on turn 3 than you are) and without Misstep they are down to FoW for disruption. I like 4 discard spells, although I'm not sure if Therapy or Thoughtseize is better. I am biased towards Therapy since I really like the card, but I suspect the consistency of seize gives it the edge.

[Koby]

Gaddock Teeg is also a halfway decent SB card against them (and UW control to be honest). It's merely the hope that you survive to turn 2 to be able to pop off GSZ for him, and then you should be in the clear.

[samman1]

In France, the metagame pre-misstep and post-misstep are very different.
Before misstep and during misstep period, there were a lot of SFM decks (mystic bant, esperblade, UW cawblade, maverick, team italia,...). Nowadays, only few decks (10% of the field) play SFM. Many people play tempo deck (canadian thres, tempo zoo) because of delver of secrets. Even maverick don't play SFM anymore (they prefere punishing fire/grove tricks) : punishing maverick is very powerful in our metagame (and it made TOP8 in Amsterdam GP).

With SFM, the main threat were jitte and SoFaF. Now, the main problems for elfball are the red blasts (lightning bolt, fire/ice, punishing fire, grim lavamancer).

I think that in the french metagame, VV is compulsory MD and scavenging ooze compulsory in SB).
I will put viridian shaman from MD to SB.

American metagame has not changed between premisstep period and post misstep period?

[bakofried]

Blade-based decks are still popular in the American metagame. Punishing Fires as a package does not see widespread play here in the states.

[theross]

The decks have changed somewhat, but I think the metagame is strategically very similar from the misstep era. Stoneblade decks with Misstep played an aggro-control, tempo-oriented game where they could answer your first few threats very efficiently while using Mystic-Batterskull to lock up a victory in the early-midgame. Delver decks do the same thing, albeit using the namesake card along with stifle/wasteland and red removal. The Blade decks now have become more controlling, trying to grind out games with Snapcaster Mage and spot removal since the tempo decks are so threat-light. Maverick still has not caught on in our metagame for whatever reason, so I'm not up-to-date on what that deck is doing. (although I did see the lists with Punishing Grove and it seems very potent) My point was that the most successful decks in Legacy are still trying to get ahead on tempo in the first 2 turns and that Elves is incredibly good at fighting these strategies since it is so explosive. Thus I believe this deck still has a strong strategic advantage over the metagame; it's just a matter of finding the right shell in which to exploit the glimpse-nettle-heritage engine. Perhaps I'm incorrect in thinking a combo-oriented list is still optimal. Vengevine is very good against red removal, but somewhat weak to the UW decks packing 8 plows in their 75 with 4 Snapcasters. It could be that Combo is correct for the American metagame while MD VVs is the right choice in Europe.

[Darklingske]

Hey guys, I just finished 4-3 in a local tournament with 103 people attendence.
R1 I started against a teammate who plays Maverick. G1 I comboed T7 into Emrakul. G2 was pretty broken for him. I opened with a Thoughtseize seeing: Enlightened Tutor, Cannonist, GSZ, Waste, Fetch, KotR. I took the cannonist & EoT he tutors for another one. He plays it and the fetch and passes. I try to dig deeper with Visionary to find my Shaman, but fail. Next turn he Zeniths for a Teeg and I scoop. At this time there is 15 min left on the clock and I don't want to draw. G3 I combo on turn 2. 1-0
R2 against Zoo. He has the plan of burning every elf and then just beating with Nacatl. Needless to say, it is a good plan. G2 the same happens. 1-1
R3 against some rockish build. G1 & G2 I combo T3. 2-1
R4 against Rock. G1 I just see a duress & a swamp on the other side. G2 I combo into Emrakul thanks to a topdecked Glimpse. Since I have no idea what he is playing I side +3 thoughtseize, -1 Archdruid -1 Priest -1 Quirion. G2 he opens with Cabal Therapy on Glimpse and hits. I put a Heritage in play. T2 he casts Veteran explorer and flashbacks Cabal naming Heritage and so he steals the second one out of my hand. I dump my elves on table thanx to a birchlore and Nettle. T3 he puts a Deed in play. Its a losing battle from then on. G3 I board in Needle, but a mulligan to 5 and a good hand for my opponent spells doom for me. The worst thing that could happen, happened. I had 2 Leylines on board wich he pulses, followed with a Hymn. Discard a glimpse and Emrakul. I pileshuffle and draw Leyline. Next turn I draw Leyline. Turn after: Leyline. And the turn after that one: yes, you guessed it: Leyline!!! What are the odds onthat one? Needless to say, I lost. 2-2
R5 against Burn. Easy win both games. I combo on T2 & T3. 3-2
R6 against HelmLine. G1 we both mull to 5, but my 5 are divine and his' are crap. T3 its Emrakul-time. G2 he mulls again to 5, I keep my 7. He duresses taking Glimpse, next T he Inquisitions taking Heritage. I topdeck another one and put that one into play. T3 he casts Helm of Obedience with a ritual. I combo T3. 4-2
R7 I'm paired against a teammate yet again. This time he plays TES. I win the dieroll which is crucial in this MU. I combo T2. G2 I board in +1 Teeg +3 Thoughtseize +2 Churgical extraction. He starts with Duress, T2 a Probe and in my turn a silence. T3 again the same and T4 is combotime for him. G3 follows the same sequence. 4-3
The only game I really hated loosing was against the Rockbuild. Had I drawn elves, things would have looked different. But no whining, shit happens sometime. I had lots of fun and that is important!

[Koby]

About a few months ago I suggested the blue splash to mirror the Intuition/VV build that Hatch/Nass put together from SCG San Jose. I would like to revisit that deck (minus the Brainstorm, this deck needs more creatures and less filtering). Specifically, Flusterstorm as a better addition than Spell Pierce against our weakest matchups.

Would Flusterstorm/Spell Pierce mix be good enough to combat Combo? Are Cabal Therapy/Duress/Thoughtseize still better?

[Mr. Safety]

The way I look at it is this: Flusterstorm is at worst a cheaper Mana Leak that doesn't hit anything non-instant non-sorcery, at best it can win the counter war even if your opponent has both Force of Will and another counterspell (Daze, Spell Pierce, Counterspell) to play. Spell Pierce on the other hand can be used proactively to prevent Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Engineered Explosives, and Liliana of the Veil. I think Flusterstorm has definately got the edge vs. combo...I think it's better than targeted discard because it essentially does the same as Stifle against a storm player. If you're playing Intuition, there really isn't any doubt that Flusterstorm is the go-to answer (in my opinion.)

In a nutshell, I think Flusterstorm is better at protecting your combo but Spell Pierce is still better at proactively keeping you in the game. I would consider a 4-2 split (if anyone decides to dedicate that many slots to it) of Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce respectively. Sideboarding to potentially have 8 slots could be good if you are facing a control-heavy metagame. If the metagame is rampant with combo, I would say bring your Flusterstorms at minimum and maybe bring a different hate other than Spell Pierce, maybe the old standby of Thorn of Amethyst.

[Branches]

After playing 300+ matches with varying lists here's what i've learned:

-Only 1 regal force you will never need more than one ever(Exception being Natural Order, perfectly acceptable to play 1 main 1 side)
-Vengevine/ Intuition improves your game 1 so greatly and forces your opponent to react diluting their deck to your raw power. In other words, PLAY VENGEVINE INTUITION
- Gitaxian Probe is a REAL card in this deck, still finalizing my deck but im 75% sure i'll be playing it
-All combo matchups are crossing your fingers, the only time i was able to make it positive was with 7 discard spells(4 ts 3 therapy) AND brainstorm post side.
- Submerge is better than any other "removal" spell. another reason to be playing islands.
- Summoner's pact is only good in good matchups, as of right now no reason to play it.
- 3 cradle is completely acceptable, 4 cradle caused some awkward 7's, this might be my refusal to mulligan though....
- You most likely want 19-20 land counting cradle leaning towards 19 tho
- You can stop maindecking viridian shaman now i promise.
- You want 1 fauna shaman in your deck SOMEWHERE, it finds emrakul/force if they churge your glimpses/ you draw infinity+1 elves and cradle
- 3 Zenith is fine too nothing below that though.
- Mentor of the meek blows chunks in the matchups you really want it to be good in.

Will post my deck when i finally figure it out but tbh i might play punishing fire NO RUG instead *shrug* sometimes testing tells you no.

edit: sick timing.

flusterstorm was awful btw, you never had it when you wanted it unless you were willing to mull to 5-6 for it, even then lolduressyou made you cringe =/

[Koby]

I can say this with 1000% confidence, Gitaxian Probe and Brainstorm have no business being in this deck. If you can't understand why, I suggest you playtest another 100 matches with and without.

The deck gains its consistency from being stocked to the gills with Elves. This allows it to successfully chain its Glimpe of Nature into the combo kill.

[Mr. Safety]

I can say this with 1000% confidence, Gitaxian Probe and Brainstorm have no business being in this deck. If you can't understand why, I suggest you playtest another 100 matches with and without.

The deck gains its consistency from being stocked to the gills with Elves. This allows it to successfully chain its Glimpe of Nature into the combo kill.

Beat me to it...what do you think about my views on Flusterstorm/Spell Pierce?

[Branches]

I can say this with 1000% confidence, Gitaxian Probe and Brainstorm have no business being in this deck. If you can't understand why, I suggest you playtest another 100 matches with and without.

The deck gains its consistency from being stocked to the gills with Elves. This allows it to successfully chain its Glimpe of Nature into the combo kill.

brainstorm is garbage im 10000% aware only played it to see how awful my deck had to be to beat combo but you really are undervaluing how good information is sometimes and probe is insane with therapy in the board. It's far from a commitment to your mana/turns and definitely needs another look before saying LOLNO.

It really comes down to playskill with the cards in your deck, probe cause those "well if i keep and my one of my top 3 cards is X..." mentalities but honestly if you think like that there are 8 cantrips in your deck anyways and you're going to lose with any elf list you pick up....

as i said still testing so i might be shooting my foot with a sawed-off but very close to maindecking it.

[Mr. Safety]

I think Gitaxian Probe has a place in storm-based combo lists, for sure. Brainstorm is classic in any combo deck that splashes blue for the purpose of library manipulation (Solidarity, Spiral Tide, and Reanimator are the ones I'm confident at mentioning.)

What we have here is a tribal-combo deck. The synergy and power of the deck comes from playing elves, and lots of them, to combine with Glimpse of Nature. We're not trying to hand-craft into a winning combination. We're trying to draw and play a shit-ton of elves via Glimpse so we can get Emrakul onto the board and win. If we don't get Glimpse, we just play more dudes that either: give a combat bonus or draw us cards (see Regal Force.) Intuition sets up beefy Vengevine attacks, easily enabled by all of the cheap elves.

Long story short (too late!): every non-elf card in the deck needs to justify it's existence a lot better than 'a decent option.' It has to defend it's place with it's life or die in the attempt. Honestly, most cards suggested are better off dead... (kudos to anyone who catches the John Cusack reference here...)

[Koby]

RE: Blue splash (counters) vs Black splash (discard)
I personally like the black splash better because Elves can take advantage of the flashback on Cabal Therapy to buy enough time. Against the combo decks, you're really worried about very few specific cards within the first 2 turns anyway, and this helps to buy enough time.

The blue splash feels more reactive, and for that reason seems to me like it's much weaker as it still can't beat a well timed Duress.

The only trouble with both is getting them in your opening hand and evaluating a decent hand that includes them (and contains the color source)

RE: Playing vs other Combo decks (and hence the issue of needing/wanting cantrips in the first place)
Branches states that he is including Brainstorm, et al. to dig deeper into disruption and avoid mulligans. While this makes sense in an aggro-control deck, it doesn't make sense for Combo Elves. The deck needs to maintain a certain concentration of Elves in order to effectively combo off given the opportunity. Diluting the deck with disruption makes the deck slower, but at the cost of providing disruption that will effectively buys you the needed time to go off. Between 6-8 pieces of disruption have been working for Elves that splash Black in the past for quite some time, and adding MORE cantrips further dilutes the deck.

Gitaxian Probe, while it has synergy with Cabal Therapy, doesn't work well for this deck because drawing 1 extra card does not shore up those inconsistencies that it introduces.

[Mr. Safety]

My thinking on Flusterstorm is that while it is reactive, it should give you all the time you need to combo out should you halt a storm player. Rather than taking a key piece you are hosing the combo once all their gas is spent. It also has the upside of not requiring you to sacrifice part of your engine (in Therapy's case) in order to stall.

I'm curious: isn't Mindbreak Trap a good option against combo? I've always used it with good success...sure it's reactive, but it's also free.

[Branches]

RE: Blue splash (counters) vs Black splash (discard)
I personally like the black splash better because Elves can take advantage of the flashback on Cabal Therapy to buy enough time. Against the combo decks, you're really worried about very few specific cards within the first 2 turns anyway, and this helps to buy enough time.

The blue splash feels more reactive, and for that reason seems to me like it's much weaker as it still can't beat a well timed Duress.

The only trouble with both is getting them in your opening hand and evaluating a decent hand that includes them (and contains the color source)

RE: Playing vs other Combo decks (and hence the issue of needing/wanting cantrips in the first place)
Branches states that he is including Brainstorm, et al. to dig deeper into disruption and avoid mulligans. While this makes sense in an aggro-control deck, it doesn't make sense for Combo Elves. The deck needs to maintain a certain concentration of Elves in order to effectively combo off given the opportunity. Diluting the deck with disruption makes the deck slower, but at the cost of providing disruption that will effectively buys you the needed time to go off. Between 6-8 pieces of disruption have been working for Elves that splash Black in the past for quite some time, and adding MORE cantrips further dilutes the deck.

Gitaxian Probe, while it has synergy with Cabal Therapy, doesn't work well for this deck because drawing 1 extra card does not shore up those inconsistencies that it introduces.

i promise im not talking out of my ass when i claim the combo mu was always miserable even with 6-8 and i could take 50%+ with the addition of brainstorm, but as i said i KNOW this is terrible but i was testing with a clear objective and the 12 cards i had POST side help me accomplish the positive/even matchup i was looking for. clearly this list is somewhere in last weeks garbage because its awful.

perhaps im playing incorrectly.

oh well back to the drawing board cuz i dont have time for another 200 games and i'll take your word for it.

[Koby]

I think that against combo matchups, we have to pray to be lucky and not lose before we could disrupt or win. The occurrence of combo decks that are faster than Elves is few in number, and fortunately are being pushed out of the metagame by Canadian Threshold and its ilk. This also has the side effect of improving Elves' matchups in the metagame since decks such as Tempo generally have a difficult time with both Glimpse combo and Vengevine beatdown.

I'm not trying to shoot down the idea of Brainstorm + disruption if it means improving some matchups, but when the said matchup is Combo, and we're still only able to get ~50% win rate against them with such drastic measures, then it's probably a lost cause.

An alternative could be to play Orim's Chant/Silence against such decks, which serves as a proactive measure and is on the same color as other available sideboard cards (Gaddock Teeg, Absolute Law).

[Mr. Safety]

An alternative could be to play Orim's Chant/Silence against such decks, which serves as a proactive measure and is on the same color as other available sideboard cards (Gaddock Teeg, Absolute Law).

It is also in the right color for anyone using Mirror Entity.

[NihilObstat]

Hi guys! Quick tournament-decklist summary.

I ran 3x Vengevine MD and 3x Buried Alive side. MD wincon Ezuri & Venges (I've dropped Entity since I don't have Chord...). I went with 6 grave-hate cards and 3 Absolute Law in the side. Didn't use any of them at all.

Spring Tide (2-0)
Merfolks (1-2) two mulligans to 5 but I left him at 2 life both games I lost. He topdecked a winner Dismember last game.
Affinity (2-0)
Hive Mind (0-2) I would have won both games in the next turn, awful pairing, didn't see any birchlore.
ANT Storm (2-1) He won game1, but surprisingly in game2 and 3 the Buried Vengevines bringing him down to 6 on turn 3 both games didn't let him combo- tried through Diminishing Returns, but wasn't able.

I am loving my list (if I do any better this weekend I'll post it). I played 20 games in a row against a very good Canadian player and only lost 2.


Answering to the thread discussion:
Storm combos which used to be our worse pairing are being played a lot less! Anyway, the best splash would be black over blue or white for quite simple reasons- Black doesn't require open mana at the end of turn and can be more versatile.
Grave combo can be dealt with, just pack more grave-hate. Faerie Macabre!!!
Hive Mine Is a real pain in the ass. What can we do other than pack 4x Birchlore? Play stifle? Play Sundial of the Infinite?


Good luck to you all and play hard in your tournaments! Now is the time for the Pointy Ears to ROCK!

[KobeBryan]

Hi guys! Quick tournament-decklist summary.

I ran 3x Vengevine MD and 3x Buried Alive side. MD wincon Ezuri & Venges (I've dropped Entity since I don't have Chord...). I went with 6 grave-hate cards and 3 Absolute Law in the side. Didn't use any of them at all.

Spring Tide (2-0)
Merfolks (1-2) two mulligans to 5 but I left him at 2 life both games I lost. He topdecked a winner Dismember last game.
Affinity (2-0)
Hive Mind (0-2) I would have won both games in the next turn, awful pairing, didn't see any birchlore.
ANT Storm (2-1) He won game1, but surprisingly in game2 and 3 the Buried Vengevines bringing him down to 6 on turn 3 both games didn't let him combo- tried through Diminishing Returns, but wasn't able.

I am loving my list (if I do any better this weekend I'll post it). I played 20 games in a row against a very good Canadian player and only lost 2.


Answering to the thread discussion:
Storm combos which used to be our worse pairing are being played a lot less! Anyway, the best splash would be black over blue or white for quite simple reasons- Black doesn't require open mana at the end of turn and can be more versatile.
Grave combo can be dealt with, just pack more grave-hate. Faerie Macabre!!!
Hive Mine Is a real pain in the ass. What can we do other than pack 4x Birchlore? Play stifle? Play Sundial of the Infinite?


Good luck to you all and play hard in your tournaments! Now is the time for the Pointy Ears to ROCK!

The story of magic is that you cannot prepare your deck for EVERY deck out there. Pick your poison and hope for good pairings.

[lord182]

Hi guys! Quick tournament-decklist summary.

I ran 3x Vengevine MD and 3x Buried Alive side. MD wincon Ezuri & Venges (I've dropped Entity since I don't have Chord...). I went with 6 grave-hate cards and 3 Absolute Law in the side. Didn't use any of them at all.

Spring Tide (2-0)
Merfolks (1-2) two mulligans to 5 but I left him at 2 life both games I lost. He topdecked a winner Dismember last game.
Affinity (2-0)
Hive Mind (0-2) I would have won both games in the next turn, awful pairing, didn't see any birchlore.
ANT Storm (2-1) He won game1, but surprisingly in game2 and 3 the Buried Vengevines bringing him down to 6 on turn 3 both games didn't let him combo- tried through Diminishing Returns, but wasn't able.

I am loving my list (if I do any better this weekend I'll post it). I played 20 games in a row against a very good Canadian player and only lost 2.


Answering to the thread discussion:
Storm combos which used to be our worse pairing are being played a lot less! Anyway, the best splash would be black over blue or white for quite simple reasons- Black doesn't require open mana at the end of turn and can be more versatile.
Grave combo can be dealt with, just pack more grave-hate. Faerie Macabre!!!
Hive Mine Is a real pain in the ass. What can we do other than pack 4x Birchlore? Play stifle? Play Sundial of the Infinite?


Good luck to you all and play hard in your tournaments! Now is the time for the Pointy Ears to ROCK!

Angel's Grace or Silence/Orim's Chant can help if you splash white maybe but the SB is to tight.

[Anfylion]

Hi, this is my first post in the forum.
I read a lot what you write but do not usually post, because I do not speak/write English very well.

The question that prompted me to post, is the inclusion of Absolute Law as a sideboard in this deck, in almost all the lists I saw.

Is it really useful?

A white Enchant, that helps us to deal only with a few cards (like lavamancer, Firespout, punishing fire, and other burn spells)

Are these cards so threatening to our strategy or frequent enough to warrant absolute law in the sideboard?

And if so, the fact to respond to those cards, with Absolute Law, really puts us in a better position? (like a Choke vs. blue decks, for example)

[oarsman]

The straight up answer is no, you do not need a crutch like absolute law against red. Of course it makes things easier, but it is a luxury that you can easily get by without. Personally I am 11-4 with regular combo elves against monored. I have not seen anything in those matches that would lead me to believe those results are a fluke. If you play careful, you will eventually win the game.

As far as red cards in other decks, again, if you play carefully you should not lose to a single firespout or devastating dreams type card. If they draw multiples then yes, you will probably die. That is a risk I happily take.

[NihilObstat]

The question that prompted me to post, is the inclusion of Absolute Law as a sideboard in this deck, in almost all the lists I saw.

Is it really useful?

Absolute Law is definitely worth considering as a side taking in account the recent rise of Tempo Threshold, and Punishing Maverick or Punishing "deck".

Mono-red decks are basically a "bye" for Elves because if they spend their cards on our creatures they won't be able to kill us because they run very few creatures, but if Canadian lands Delver of Secrets + Fire/Ice or LB and a turn 3 Firespout, we are as Dead as we can be.

Just as Maverick with a turn 2 Qasali/Reliquary and re-casting Punishing on combo pieces might also be enough to kill us.

I recommend it as a meta-game card, but if you are seeing lots of Canadian and Punishing. Test the card ;)

[Darklingske]

Hey guys, yesterday I went with the little elves to a tournament (56 attendence) and finished 9th, just missing top 8 by 3% MW. But anyway, here's how it went:
R1 & R2: byes
R3 against Merfolk
G1 I combo on T4 with Emrakul. G2 is his as he can stall me long enough to overwhelm me with the fishes. G3 is a long game were I eventually can resolve an Emrakul and he makes a mistake that costs him the game in response to the Emmie. (3-0)
R4 against Sneaky Show
I already know this is a pretty hard MU, but I'll try to outrace him. Unfortunatly he's able to get a T4 Emrakul & Progenitus in play through a Sneak Attack in G1 (he started also).
G2 I board in the Thoughtseizes and Gaddock Teeg. They both slow him down and I start the damage race. He resolves a S&T and I pact in response for Regal Force. Regal & Progenitus both enter play, but my draws are crap and I'm not able to combo teh next turn. He kills me while he is on 1 life. If only one of my cards was an elflord, I would have won. Oh well, can't win them all. (3-1)
R5 against RUGtempo
G1 is mine as I combo T4. G2 is a real grindfest and takes about 35 minutes. He eventually kills my board with Fire/Ice & Lavamancer. Were are the Absolute Laws when you need them? At this moment there are only 4 minutes remaining on the clock and I don't see him winning in that timeperiod, so I ask if he scoops. He refuses and we begin the battle. Needless to say that we run out of time and therefore draw. (3-1-1)
R6 against UWstoneblade
G1 is combotime @ T4. He countered the glimpse, but I had another one and just continued. His exact words: "That idiotic deck just doesn't die to several counters, does it?!" Gotta love the obvious :smile: G2 is almost the same, except my elves die T3 to a Wrath of God. Didn't expect that one! But no worries, 2 turns later its again clobbering time, with Teeg protecting my Elves. He reveals his hand and in it are an engineered explosives & a Wrath of God. Narrow escape from that one! (4-1-1)
As top 8 is annonced I'm the unlucky guy finishing 9th and just outside the prizes. But an overall fun tournament and the Elves are definitly a good choise in my meta.

[Branches]

Absolute Law is definitely worth considering as a side taking in account the recent rise of Tempo Threshold, and Punishing Maverick or Punishing "deck".

Mono-red decks are basically a "bye" for Elves because if they spend their cards on our creatures they won't be able to kill us because they run very few creatures, but if Canadian lands Delver of Secrets + Fire/Ice or LB and a turn 3 Firespout, we are as Dead as we can be.

Just as Maverick with a turn 2 Qasali/Reliquary and re-casting Punishing on combo pieces might also be enough to kill us.

I recommend it as a meta-game card, but if you are seeing lots of Canadian and Punishing. Test the card ;)

just another reason to play vengevine just saying........

[Darklingske]

just another reason to play vengevine just saying........

But in a meta that is flooded with churgical extraction (like mine), Vengevine is not that interesting. But if Extraction is not running wild, VV is a sure call.

[Koby]

Vengevine doesn't need to be recurred to win grind-fest games against U/B/x control decks. Just having one out and attacking is enough, with the threat of recursion.. If they waste the card-slot in bringing Extirpate effects that means less cards to deal with the combo cards.

Seems like a worthwhile risk, and as oarsman referred to, sometimes you just don't win against these decks. More often than not, you will however.

[Kich867]

Been testing a singleton Fierce Empath in the deck, been outrageously successful. Sometimes it feels like I'm running 10 emrakuls in the deck.

The beauty of it is in the simplicity of the fact that your opponent doesn't know how much mana you can produce unless they're quite good at playing elves themselves and have a decent estimation of your hand.

Several things about the card: when you combo you basically win outright--it's nearly impossible not to produce 18-19 mana when comboing off and any GSZ or Pact results in an immediate win. Elves isn't a deck that fizzles -that- often, but it happens. This basically removes that chance without interfering with the deck's natural flow.

More importantly however, games are faster. This goes back to tournament reports I've read (and felt first hand) of Solidarity, where..while the win is inevitable, sometimes actually accomplishing that win is tedious and long--anyone else been in those games where you're sitting on a mountain of mana and emrakul is the third card from the bottom? So instead of trying to find one card, I'm trying to find one of any ten cards that win me the game during the combo. Those long games are mentally draining and exhausting, keeping track of your mana, drawing, which untappers you've used, your pile of tapped elves, how many pacts you've used for the upkeep trigger.. it's a lot to remember and think about when you have to do it every game.

To elaborate on my first point-- if you generate four mana knowing full-well you can generate 15 at any given moment, and you open with a green sun for 3, it's easy to let that slide since they're focusing on dealing with glimpse or tutors for regal force.

[Setherial]

R6 against UWstoneblade
G1 is combotime @ T4. He countered the glimpse, but I had another one and just continued. His exact words: "That idiotic deck just doesn't die to several counters, does it?!" Gotta love the obvious :smile: G2 is almost the same, except my elves die T3 to a Wrath of God. Didn't expect that one! But no worries, 2 turns later its again clobbering time, with Teeg protecting my Elves. He reveals his hand and in it are an engineered explosives & a Wrath of God. Narrow escape from that one! (4-1-1)
As top 8 is annonced I'm the unlucky guy finishing 9th and just outside the prizes. But an overall fun tournament and the Elves are definitly a good choise in my meta.

Hey Mate. Seems like it was me you played round 6 and I doubt my exact words where "that idiotic deck" as I respect the deck a lot. There must have been something lost in translation there :) I'm sure my point was, how the f*** do you kill that deck playing UW :)
I agree that Elves seem to be quite good right now, there are not that many pernicious deeds around like there use to be a while back and Wrath of God, I admit, is just bad most of time (You helped me cut them once and for all :) ). Might be just our corner of the world but f you ask me you sure are playing the correct deck.

best of luck next time

cheers

[Mr. Safety]

Been testing a singleton Fierce Empath in the deck, been outrageously successful. Sometimes it feels like I'm running 10 emrakuls in the deck.

The beauty of it is in the simplicity of the fact that your opponent doesn't know how much mana you can produce unless they're quite good at playing elves themselves and have a decent estimation of your hand.

Several things about the card: when you combo you basically win outright--it's nearly impossible not to produce 18-19 mana when comboing off and any GSZ or Pact results in an immediate win. Elves isn't a deck that fizzles -that- often, but it happens. This basically removes that chance without interfering with the deck's natural flow.

More importantly however, games are faster. This goes back to tournament reports I've read (and felt first hand) of Solidarity, where..while the win is inevitable, sometimes actually accomplishing that win is tedious and long--anyone else been in those games where you're sitting on a mountain of mana and emrakul is the third card from the bottom? So instead of trying to find one card, I'm trying to find one of any ten cards that win me the game during the combo. Those long games are mentally draining and exhausting, keeping track of your mana, drawing, which untappers you've used, your pile of tapped elves, how many pacts you've used for the upkeep trigger.. it's a lot to remember and think about when you have to do it every game.

To elaborate on my first point-- if you generate four mana knowing full-well you can generate 15 at any given moment, and you open with a green sun for 3, it's easy to let that slide since they're focusing on dealing with glimpse or tutors for regal force.

I know I'm stating the obvious, but Empath grabs Regal Force, too...that's kind of hawt tech, my friend. I've been fiddling around with a singleton Weird Harvest lately, and this seems like a potential upgrade.

[Kich867]

I know I'm stating the obvious, but Empath grabs Regal Force, too...that's kind of hawt tech, my friend. I've been fiddling around with a singleton Weird Harvest lately, and this seems like a potential upgrade.

Interestingly enough, that was not obvious to me--I never thought of doing that. Pact / GSZ are better for it, but if shit hits the fan and you've got mana to burn and need to win and no pact/gsz in hand, he's an extra way to get there that, again, doesn't really impede the deck whatsoever.

I've never drawn him and been like, "Damnit." People look at him and regard him as Emrakul, if he resolves, they lose--I've had people scoop to a GSZ for 3 with enough shit on the board.

PS -- Shout outs to Maine, I grew up there, miss it every day. I was born in Augusta and lived in Yarmouth (Yuppieville*) for years haha.

[Mr. Safety]

I like Empath over Summoner's Pact for one very specific reason: he cantrips with Glimpse and avoids the 4 mana upkeep if shit goes south.

My reasoning for Weird Harvest was that I could nab a handfull of stuff like extra Nettles, RForce, and Emrakul. GSZ is great and all...but does not trigger Glimpse. Weird Harvest can enable the Glimpse chain. That's why I'm testing, and I like the idea of Empath quite a bit.

P.S. Nice...I was born in New Gloucester and still live there today... I lol'd at the Yuppieville line. :laugh:

[Darklingske]

Hey Mate. Seems like it was me you played round 6 and I doubt my exact words where "that idiotic deck" as I respect the deck a lot. There must have been something lost in translation there :) I'm sure my point was, how the f*** do you kill that deck playing UW :)

You're right. That was the sentence used :smile: Another player said that to me afterwards and I must have mixed the 2 phrases. BTW; I know he & you meant it in a respectful way.

[Godmode]

@Kich867

Usually when you go off, you can draw your whole deck and never get to 0 because you can use GSZ for 0 and keep allways them in the deck. But for streamlined combo versions, FE can be used in Viridian Shaman slot or something..

[Kich867]

@Kich867

Usually when you go off, you can draw your whole deck and never get to 0 because you can use GSZ for 0 and keep allways them in the deck. But for streamlined combo versions, FE can be used in Viridian Shaman slot or something..

That was the point. It's not that you don't win, it's that you need to draw your entire deck in order to win. This takes time, you need to keep track of your mana the entire time, you need to make sure you don't miss anything during the entire combo--FE greatly reduces that time.

While the card may not vastly improve consistency or apply some new strategy, what it does do is allow you to fetch emrakul so long as you have it or any of your 8 tutors--I frequently can't find a glimpse but have the mana to play Emrakul.

The time saved from having to combo means fewer draws and less stress on your mind for future games, this helps overall performance of the pilot by keeping the games shorter and quicker. I've played tons of games and just forgotten shit because the last game was so long I was stressed on time.

[Vandalize]

Hi there. I've bought an Elfball deck recently, and tested it with some great results. I'd like to hear some opinion from experts in this archtype and maybe some advices.

My list:

Lands [17]
14 Forest
2 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dryad Arbor

Spells [8]
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature

Dudes [35]
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Vengevine
4 Fauna Shaman
2 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Llanowar Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader

Sideboard [15]
4 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Choke
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Krosan Grip
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Phyrexian Metamorph

Some explanations:
-No Emrakul maindeck: This is a dead slot when you cannot combo, and Vengevines always get there.
-Viridian Shaman over Viridian Zealot: ETB ability, which can be abused with Symbiote.
-4 Vengevine and 4 Fauna Shaman maindeck: If Fauna Shaman lives until she can tap, you'll see that angry plants are coming with anger.
-No Natural Order/Progenitus sideboard: not really necessary in this metagame.
-Faerie Macabre/Gaddock Teeg/Phyrexian Metamorph: all fetchable with Fauna Shaman.
-Only 2 Gaea's Cradle maindeck: I've tested from 0-4 in numbers, 0 sucks, and 4 your mulligans are very common. So I've settled in 2, which seems to be a good number.

[Kich867]

I don't recall the last time Emrakul was a dead slot when I couldn't combo--in fact, with the list I'm using now it's either: a) combo and win, b) don't combo and aggro out, c) don't combo, produce 15 mana anyways and play him from my hand / produce 18 mana and pact for empath then play him / produce 19 mana and GSZ for empath and play him.

The last tournament I went to I tied for second going 3-1, only losing to flashless hulk combo (we meet every tournament, he was super prepared for me, I had shitty draws). The number of times I could just produce 15-20 mana and go off was many. I top decked Emrakul in at least 3 or 4 of the 9 games played and was able to hard cast him every time.

Fierce Empath is absurdly good.

In regards to your deck, you should fit Summoner's Pact in there, I suppose it's not quite as useful to you if you aren't trying to find combo pieces to ramp out on mana. However, pacting for a much needed symbiote can be game changing.

[bakofried]

What's your list looking like, Kich? I'm wondering.

[Kich867]

What's your list looking like, Kich? I'm wondering.

I'll have to look at it again, it's something like this though:

//Creatures:
4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Llanowar Elves
3x Birchlore Rangers
4x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Ranger
3x Elvish Visionary
3x Priest of Titania
1x Elvish Archdruid
2x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Fierce Empath
1x Regal Force
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

//Spells:
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Summoner's Pact

//Lands:
1x Gaea's Cradle
14x Forest


mm.. that should be 60, yeah. That's my list atm. I wouldn't mind going G/W for mirror entity, but, so far I don't see a super need to.

[NihilObstat]

Hi there. I've bought an Elfball deck recently, and tested it with some great results. I'd like to hear some opinion.

Your lists seems to have the ability to fall heavily on the aggro plan when the combo just won't happen, which is quite often in the current metagame.

I would definitely suggest you to fit in Mirror Entity. Taking in account that he's fetchable through your Faunas and that you are running 4x Vengevines which he can pump, and has the Symbiote infinite loop, he's the best pump you could run.
You would have to run Fetchlands and Savannah or Birchlore Rangers. If you aren't a Duals fan (with Canadian unleashed all over), I would take out 1Arbor, 1Quirion and 1Visionary or Fauna to make room for 3 Birchlore.

I must say that I can't see why people run Dryad. When I tested it, I always regretted having spend Zenith on it, becausef the sorcery is such an important piece to set the combo or to find an answer that wasting it on mana acceleration just seems absurd.




I don't recall the last time Emrakul was a dead slot when I couldn't combo.
Most lists don't have the ease that yours has in producing 15 mana. That's what we always mean by saying that it is a dead card, because if our lists have 15 mana floating in the pool then we've already comboed out anyway. So Emrakul becomes an win-more card, which is dead if we haven't already won.

[Branches]

I know I'm stating the obvious, but Empath grabs Regal Force, too...that's kind of hawt tech, my friend. I've been fiddling around with a singleton Weird Harvest lately, and this seems like a potential upgrade.

weird harvest creates awkward siutations where they get snapcaster mage and kill you. just stopping by to mention that.

[sdefreit8]

I'm finally going to be able to play again over this holiday break and I have a quick question. Is regal force optimally a one of now? Some months ago I remember him getting quite a bit of love as a 2 of because there were many times where you needed the second one. Has playtesting shown the costs outweigh the benefits of the second one?

[Koby]

I'm finally going to be able to play again over this holiday break and I have a quick question. Is regal force optimally a one of now? Some months ago I remember him getting quite a bit of love as a 2 of because there were many times where you needed the second one. Has playtesting shown the costs outweigh the benefits of the second one?

The deck definitely wants at least one, and sometimes wants two. It depends on the specific build. Versions that play more Archdruids and/or Mirror Entity and/or Vengevine maindeck can usually be OK with just one.

[sdefreit8]

The deck definitely wants at least one, and sometimes wants two. It depends on the specific build. Versions that play more Archdruids and/or Mirror Entity and/or Vengevine maindeck can usually be OK with just one.

Aww yes that makes sense. Well I'll probably stick with two since I'm running a more pre-VV list.

[Mr. Safety]

weird harvest creates awkward siutations where they get snapcaster mage and kill you. just stopping by to mention that.

Yeah...testing was abysmal!!:tongue:

Is anybody still using a 1-shot of Joraga Warcaller in their MD? I have gotten to the point of having 4 Archdruids and 3 Priest of Titania in the deck (I have already pushed out Birchlore Rangers...they went from 4 down to 3, down to 2, then gone) and I'm running out of space considering I want to keep the 1-mana elves at a premium to make sure Glimpse does its job. The Archdruids/Priests give you an incredible amount of consistency though...I've gotten Emrakul turn 3 many times with no Glimpse.

Current List:

4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Llanowar Elves
3x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Quirion Ranger
4x Wirewood Symbiote
4x Elvish Archdruid
3x Priest of Titania
4x Elvish Visionary
1x Regal Force
1x Joraga Warcaller
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Summoner's Pact
8x Forest
1x Overgrown Tomb
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Wirewood Lodge

Sideboard:
4x Buried Alive
3x Vengevine
4x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Viridan Zealot
2x Autumn's Veil





So for discussion's sake, understanding the budget nature of my list, here are my questions:

1) What is the appropriate number of Quirion Ranger?

2) Wirewood Symbiote?

3) Are Birchlore Rangers neccessary?

4) I will be upgrading the list to add in 3x Green Sun's Zenith. What should I cut to make room?

[Kich867]

Rangers, I say 2. Symbiotes, 4--this is unavoidable. They are too good. IMO--Birchlore's are necessary. A 3 of is fine. They allow you to squeeze extra mana out of dudes you normally wouldn't. I rarely get turn 2 wins, but I have, and they're amazing.

Lords I found to feel consistent but in actual practice make the deck highly prone to removal moreso than it already is. Lords are easy to target, they're frequently removed and if you rely on them it's too easy to get wrecked. Aim more for birchlore rangers and heritage druids, it's more tedious, but it's easier to use them than it is a lord for mana.

I've often had games with only a gaea's cradle and a fistful of elves, pseudo-heritage nettle combo up to about 8 mana, tap cradle and hardcast emrakul from my hand. No mana lords (cradle I guess can be considered one), just tapping and untapping nettles with heritage/birchlore activations.

The more 1 mana elves you can play that further the purpose of the deck the better. The fewer lords you can play, the better (especially archdruid, he's an enormous mana sink).

[Mr. Safety]

I like the Archdruids for the aggro secondary win/con...I think I have to keep them in here. The swap would have to be putting in 3 Birchlores in the Priest of Titania slots. Is that what you're recommending?

Oh, and what do I cut to make room for GSZ? Summoner's Pact?

BTW, I'm working on getting the Gaea's Cradles...they can be somewhat hard to trade around for.

[Anfylion]

How about Cabal Therapy In This deck?, Sorry If It Was Discussed Before, I used to watch list that included many, but not lately ...

Do not work as expected?

(sorry for my google-translate-english)

[Kich867]

I like the Archdruids for the aggro secondary win/con...I think I have to keep them in here. The swap would have to be putting in 3 Birchlores in the Priest of Titania slots. Is that what you're recommending?

Oh, and what do I cut to make room for GSZ? Summoner's Pact?

BTW, I'm working on getting the Gaea's Cradles...they can be somewhat hard to trade around for.

Priests of titania >>>>>>>> Archdruid.

GSZ and Pact are run together, not one or the other. You need to drop something else for them, I posted my list earlier--I've had tremendous success in my meta with it, you can see how I make room for them there.

[lord182]

Yeah...testing was abysmal!!:tongue:

Is anybody still using a 1-shot of Joraga Warcaller in their MD? I have gotten to the point of having 4 Archdruids and 3 Priest of Titania in the deck (I have already pushed out Birchlore Rangers...they went from 4 down to 3, down to 2, then gone) and I'm running out of space considering I want to keep the 1-mana elves at a premium to make sure Glimpse does its job. The Archdruids/Priests give you an incredible amount of consistency though...I've gotten Emrakul turn 3 many times with no Glimpse.

Current List:

4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Llanowar Elves
3x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Quirion Ranger
4x Wirewood Symbiote
4x Elvish Archdruid
3x Priest of Titania
4x Elvish Visionary
1x Regal Force
1x Joraga Warcaller
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Summoner's Pact
8x Forest
1x Overgrown Tomb
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Wirewood Lodge

Sideboard:
4x Buried Alive
3x Vengevine
4x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Viridan Zealot
2x Autumn's Veil





So for discussion's sake, understanding the budget nature of my list, here are my questions:

1) What is the appropriate number of Quirion Ranger?

2) Wirewood Symbiote?

3) Are Birchlore Rangers neccessary?

4) I will be upgrading the list to add in 3x Green Sun's Zenith. What should I cut to make room?

Without Gaea's Cradle is viable the Vengevine plan?

I use to have 3 Elvish Archdruid and 3 Priest of Titania but they were removal targets in almost games and i decide to cut them off and only left 2 Priest in MD. With Green Sun's Zenith you can search them in turn 2 if you need it. You can try -4 Elvish Archdruid --> +4 Green Sun's Zenith. (I'm from Argentina so sorry for my poor English)

[oyzar]

I played the list under at a local 20 man tournament to a 7-1 record(counting 5 rounds + top 8):

2 Gaea's Cradle
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Bayou
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Windswept Heath

2 Priest of Titania
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Llanowar Elves
1 Elvish Archdruid
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Quirion Ranger
2 Regal Force
2 Birchlore Rangers
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Summoner's Pact

Sideboard:
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Vengevine
3 Buried Alive
1 Choke
1 Mortarpod

I like the maindeck a lot. Lords do draw spot removal and it might have been correct to go -1 priest of titania +1 quirion ranger, however they did lead to a lot of hardcast emrakulks when i was not able to combo (having my draw spells countered or just drawing emrakul instead). With 2 Regal Forces, Fierce Empath should never be necesarry, but there were loads of cases where Fierce Empath would not have been enough and i was really happy with 2 Regal Forces all day. I would want more chokes in the sb, as it is just so good against such a large porition of the metagame, but not sure what i want to cut. All the sb cards were awesome with mortarpod giving me outs to blazing archon out of dredge(as well as stopping bridges), with it, you are probably a favourite even before counting crypts. Krosan Grip never feels amazing, but there needs to be some outs to stuff like coutnerbalance. I played against dredge, mono black, storm(lost), hivemind, UW stoneforge and in the top 8 4 color counterbalance(with firespout and punishing fire), UR delver and finally storm again. Faeries macabre is probably better than crypt as Reanimator should be a harder matchup than dredge. If storm is to be a good matchup a lot more hate is needed, but that depends on your metagame. The vengevine plan is very good against counterbalance/decks with a lot of removal, but it does take up a lot of space, it is possible just playing more chokes and devoting the space for other cards would be more effecient.

[Godmode]

Olivier Pamart made 1st @ Magic Bazaar League (Paris) 71 players

Surprising that he made 1st with such tough MUs in the top4. His SB is definitely interesting... Is NO a game-changer vs Reanimator? Haven't tested yet, but looking forward to!

Pamart's list: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2368

MD:
12 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dryad Arbor

4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Vengevine
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Joraga Warcaller

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature


SB:
3 Dismember
1 Progenitus
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Natural Order

[Vandalize]

Olivier Pamart made 1st @ Magic Bazaar League (Paris) 71 players

Surprising that he made 1st with such tough MUs in the top4. His SB is definitely interesting... Is NO a game-changer vs Reanimator? Haven't tested yet, but looking forward to!

Pamart's list: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2368

MD:
12 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dryad Arbor

4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Vengevine
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Joraga Warcaller

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature


SB:
3 Dismember
1 Progenitus
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Natural Order

Four Vengevines and Fauna Shamans main deck is SUCH A BEATING against those tempo decks that are having success today. Vengevine is so good. Hits hard and fast enough.

I think this approach is better in the new metagame, full of removal and counterspells. The list is far more solid, as it doesn't depend on Glimpse of Nature that much. Casting Emrakul is cute, but Quirion Ranger + Fauna Shaman + Wyrewood Symbiote is so powerful. You guys should give it a try.

[Godmode]

Carpet of Flowers looks interesting in this Stoneblade meta, NO+Prog is definitely nasty against Punishing Maverick type decks, but 3 Ooze looks little protection vs Reanimator. I mean Elves can go off on turn 3 easily, but Iona/Elesh turn 2 is also too fast for us. Maybe NO+Prog in the Reanimator MU? They can't do shit about it and puts a 2 turn clock and looks like the only way to survive after Elesh hits the board..

[Vandalize]

Carpet of Flowers looks interesting in this Stoneblade meta, NO+Prog is definitely nasty against Punishing Maverick type decks, but 3 Ooze looks little protection vs Reanimator. I mean Elves can go off on turn 3 easily, but Iona/Elesh turn 2 is also too fast for us. Maybe NO+Prog in the Reanimator MU? They can't do shit about it and puts a 2 turn clock and looks like the only way to survive after Elesh hits the board..

Perhaps, the best hate avaliable for Fauna Shaman builds is Faerie Macabre. Tutorable, and can delay Reanimator for a while.

[Kich867]

Carpet of Flowers looks interesting in this Stoneblade meta, NO+Prog is definitely nasty against Punishing Maverick type decks, but 3 Ooze looks little protection vs Reanimator. I mean Elves can go off on turn 3 easily, but Iona/Elesh turn 2 is also too fast for us. Maybe NO+Prog in the Reanimator MU? They can't do shit about it and puts a 2 turn clock and looks like the only way to survive after Elesh hits the board..

No prog requires 4 mana to do, which, unfortunately is actually kind of hard to pull off turn 2 with elves unless you have a llanowar, quirion ranger, and heritage druid in your hand with 2 lands and Natural Order. That seems like a stretch.

Faerie Macabre is the best anti-reanimator card around.

[boneclub24]

This is a list I've been tweaking for a long time. Still feel really weak to Team America, but other than that it's very well-rounded I feel.

Creatures: 34
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Fauna Shaman
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Vengevine
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Priest of Titania
1 Mirror Entity
1 Regal Force

Spells: 11
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation

Land: 15
4 Forest
3 Gaea's Cradle
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
1 Savannah
1 Dryad Arbor

[Godmode]

@boneclub24 Take a look at the list I've posted in the previous page if you have problems against TA-like decks.


Yesterday I played a few games with Olivier Pamart's list and it was great. It's very consistent and seems to be like Emrakul or Mirror may be "win more" cards that could give slots to some consistensy.

I want to ask something to you all. I've been playing dredge for a long time and for a long time most of the dredge players have been playing unecessary cards like Flame-Kin Zealot and other "win more/overkilish" Dread Return targets. Now and in the last year, the deck has evolved leaps and bounds due to players discussion, information sharing and kinda working together in a direction that leads the deck to it's maximum potencial and I for sure elves can be a better deck. It all comes to a point where meta can pretty much dictate your playstyle with the deck but can a list without Emrakul or Mirror could be the better based on consistensy and resilience?

[resum]

I'm not a big fan of fauna shaman because it just feels so... slow. Turn 3 is the earliest you can activate her unless you use ESGs like some lists I've seen. Of course, turn 3 is the earliest you're recurring VVs with any list, so it might not be that bad. This is the list I've been playing
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Regal Force
3 Vengevine
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Priest of Titania

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Intuition

4 Gaea's Cradle
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Tropical Island
2 Forest

SB: 4 Cabal Therapy
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 1 Viridian Shaman
SB: 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB: 1 Vengevine
SB: 3 Purify the Grave
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 1 Savannah

The sideboard is still experimental, but it hits everything that really gives me trouble. One problem is that my list is extremely weak against surgical extraction and extirpate.

[Koby]

I want to ask something to you all. I've been playing dredge for a long time and for a long time most of the dredge players have been playing unecessary cards like Flame-Kin Zealot and other "win more/overkilish" Dread Return targets. Now and in the last year, the deck has evolved leaps and bounds due to players discussion, information sharing and kinda working together in a direction that leads the deck to it's maximum potencial and I for sure elves can be a better deck. It all comes to a point where meta can pretty much dictate your playstyle with the deck but can a list without Emrakul or Mirror could be the better based on consistensy and resilience?

Dredge can win without those because it has inevitability: it puts a huge threat on the battlefield, disrupts the opponent with discard, then can creature more threats the next turn with Ichorid.

Elves only has the first option: put a staggering amount of Elves on the battlefield in one turn. However, it is really susceptible to mass removal like Firespout, Pyroclasm, Wrath, EE, etc. For this reason, having a way to ensure they survive is important.

One method for this is to make sure they don't get another turn. Emrakul neatly achieves this. Another is to win the same turn, Mirror Entity ensures this (with infinite mana). Storm based spells also work, but have less synergy with the rest of the deck.

I do not think that the deck is functional without this "win-con" method; the deck would otherwise become "Elven Advantage" that Infinitum often brings up.

[Infinitium]

@Godmode: Depends. Concordant Crossroads acts as a win condition and utility in one (albeit it gets much better with Priest/Archdruid). If you run Vengevine getting a few of them on the field with a full grip of elves on hand is fairly inevitable. Ezuri is an on-color option to Mirror Entity should you not want to splash white. If you're something of an asshole I suppose getting infinite life with Staff of Domination shenanigans and using GSZ to prevent you from decking somewhat counts as well.

[Godmode]

@rukcus and Infinitium


Well, Olivier made 1st in two tournaments in a row (57 and 71 players) in the last two months, in a very competitive meta.

Link here: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2228&d=215190

and here: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2368&d=215777

Allways using the same list based alot on consistensy, with the VV/Joraga/Glimpse combo win-con, can go infinite counters with Joraga Warcaller because of the Nettle + GSZ synergy, you never deck urself.. There's no dead-cards in hand and that's gotta make a significant diference. Let's be real too, when the VV gang hits the board, it's pretty much over - any thing plus might be "win-more".

I'm just trying to be the most open minded possible in order to improve the deck I love (not despising Emrakul/Mirror lists).

[Koby]

I'm definitely not knocking the list nor the player. It does however seem that the particular metagame is advantageous to beatdown Elves. Especially against most of the SFM decks, Elves fights on another level (orthogonal if you will) that those decks aren't equipped to handle properly. When there's a lot of Tempo, Elves shines (lack of mass removal in those decks).

I've won more "stale" games by simply casting Emrakul with mediocre hands + gaea's Cradle. Emrakul also allows you to outrace certain decks (Dredge, combo, High Tide, etc) in which you have to put in all your resources to combo off, but can't pass the turn back. I've been sold on Emrakul due to this scenario; but i can understand some might not prefer it.

[Vandalize]

Olivier lists (and Vengevines MD lists) doesn't depend on Glimpse of Nature that much. By the way, they don't depend on it at all.

I've been testing this configuration for some weeks and about ~70% of the matches I won, I didn't cast a single Glimpse of Nature.

Vengevine is simply stunning. Mostly in a deck that runs 30+ creatures. If Fauna Shaman lives until she can tap (and Wirewood Symbiote allows us to do that), she can get AT LEAST 2 activations (4 Symbiotes + 4 Quirion Rangers), and that means that those angry vines are coming.

Moreover, that list is more resilient against mass removal (namely Wrath of God, Perish and Firespout). Just bounce some elves, and replay them, to get Vengevines back (which makes Elvish Visionary much better, actually).

The only bad interaction of Vengevines, is that Surgical Extraction is quite popular nowdays. But that's why Olivier plays Natural Order in sideboard. And it works.

My list is the following:

13 Forest
3 Gaea's Cradle (do not own the fourth, but not sure if needed).
1 Dryad Arbor (singleton to abuse Fauna Shaman and GSZ)

4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Vengevine
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature

SB: 4 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 3 Choke
SB: 3 Faerie Macabre
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Gaddock Teeg
SB: 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze

I didn't opt for NO+Prog sideboard, because my meta has a lot of Combo (Storm, Hive Mind and Dredge).

Choke is awsome, and it's a must handle spell against Control. If it sticks, GG.

[Godmode]

@Vandalize

How do you do agaisnt combo decks like ANT, Show and Tell, Dredge, Reaminator...? Thorn of Amethyst seems to be very fragile or easy to get dealt with and ultimately will take consistensy from the deck.
This deck seems to be the best version of Elves in the current meta (Stoneblade, Punishing Zoo, Canadian Threshold, Stone Bant, Punishing Maverick) just because of it's versatility and consistensy, but in a storm/combo meta the Emrakul/Mirror seems to be a must.

Again, this all comes to a question of metagame

[Vandalize]

@Vandalize

How do you do agaisnt combo decks like ANT, Show and Tell, Dredge, Reaminator...? Thorn of Amethyst seems to be very fragile and easy to deal with.
Obviously this deck it's better in the current meta (Stoneblade, Punishing Zoo, Canadian Threshold, Stone Bant, Punishing Maverick) just because of it'sversatility and consistensy, but in a storm/combo meta the Emrakul/Mirror seems to be a must.

Again, this all comes to a question of metagame

By the time you can cast Emrakul or Mirror Entity (turn 3, at least), the ANT player has already stomed you, or you've been Cabal Therapied twice by Dredge.

So, Thorn delays them pretty well (you might gain 1 turn, or 2). That's enough time to set up Vengevines, or even GSZ into Gaddock Teeg.

I know this deck is very poor in a Combo infected meta, but if you tweak the sideboard a little, and be a little lucky, you can win many matches.

[Darklingske]

I've been playing Elves for a while now (with VV MD) but I keep having problems with the BUG MU. Any advice on your sideboarding strategy to tackle this problem? Most BUGlists in my meta play with Liliana of the veil, snapcaster + churgical Extraction & Deed. (Deed & Extraction after SB)

[resum]

I've been playing Elves for a while now (with VV MD) but I keep having problems with the BUG MU. Any advice on your sideboarding strategy to tackle this problem? Most BUGlists in my meta play with Liliana of the veil, snapcaster + churgical Extraction & Deed. (Deed & Extraction after SB)

My plan against BUG used to be to cheat out VVs, but if they stock up on extractions, it will be a lot harder. What i've been doing is siding in Cabal Therapy and Though seize to aggressively attack their removal while still trying to cheat out VVs.

Also, I'm going to try out a Fauna Shaman build. Though with intuition, I don't know what to take out. Also going to try and fit in brainstorms with my intuition build since I'm already splashing blue.

[blind]

Hi guys,

It's Pamart Olivier. I think my decklist it's the best if you haven't combo.deck in your meta.

Decklist full combo it's not good actually because lot of tempo deck.

Natural Order it's very very good Vs hate grave and it's obvious win in lot of Mus (Maverick, Zoo, Loam...).

[Godmode]

Hi guys,

It's Pamart Olivier. I think my decklist it's the best if you haven't combo.deck in your meta.

Decklist full combo it's not good actually because lot of tempo deck.

Natural Order it's very very good Vs hate grave and it's obvious win in lot of Mus (Maverick, Zoo, Loam...).

First of all, congratulations on your recent sucess!

I've been testing your list and the results are great vs any deck other than ANT, show n tell, Reanimator - it's kind of a coin toss, it's a question of who goes off first. The Scavenging Ooze has been helping in the Reanimator MU tho. I love the list, its probably the most consistent Elves deck I've played. But, at the end of the day the best style to play depends on the metagame despite the core of the deck beeing allways the same.

I just want to ask you how do you deal with Reanimator decks? And what about combo/storm? Play and pray? And by the way, can you tell us a little about your choice to play Carpet of Flowers in the SB?


Edit: I gotta say the results are very similar to Samuel Poulain's list. The diference it's a big change in playstyle both in MD and SB. I love both lists, I don't even know what list to use if I go to a tournament!

[Alexeezay]

Why don't you play Ezuri, Renegade Leader over Joraga Warcaller? He can pump the turn he comes into play even without Symbiote's Bounce Protection and also gives trample. I guess there's not much difference between them when you go off, but Ezuri is better than Joraga IMO when you're not going off, but just going beatdown.

Also, Ezuri is better against Counterbalance.deck

[blind]

I just want to ask you how do you deal with Reanimator decks? And what about combo/storm? Play and pray? And by the way, can you tell us a little about your choice to play Carpet of Flowers in the SB?

Reanimator it's not a good Mu, Scavenging Ooze is too slow. Vs Combo : I think pray it's good game plan. :) If you side 5-6 cards Vs combo (Cabal, Gaddock, Orim...) you can always lose. This Mu becomes less bad but still bad.

Carpet of Flowers is pretty good Vs RUG Tempo. In this Mu, post sb, Llanowar-like are very bad (Submerge = Timewalk). Ooze it's very important in this Mu (gain life is relevant).


Why don't you play Ezuri, Renegade Leader over Joraga Warcaller?

Because he cost 1. My decklist has a high curve. I rarely need Joraga to kill, 4 VV is suffisant. I wanted a victory condition the least restrictive and Joraga it's better : He cost 1 (good foor VV and Glimpse plan...)

[resum]

About my previous deck, I just realized that I'm an idiot and coffin purge does the same thing as purify the grave, but is in the color that I'm already playing.

[Augustas]

Olivier Pamart made 1st @ Magic Bazaar League (Paris) 71 players

Surprising that he made 1st with such tough MUs in the top4. His SB is definitely interesting... Is NO a game-changer vs Reanimator? Haven't tested yet, but looking forward to!

Pamart's list: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2368

MD:
12 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dryad Arbor

4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Vengevine
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Joraga Warcaller

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature


SB:
3 Dismember
1 Progenitus
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Natural Order

I just want to say that this build is completely nuts and I want to give huge props for the creator. I've tested the shit out of it and the way everything plays out is just simply amazing. The fact that it doesn't rely on manalords at all shows that the amount of mana you create with cradle/heritage is enough and running priest or archdruid now feels like it's absolute overkill and it is completely unnecessary to run them. I'm so glad that finaly someone found a perfect elf list and hoghly recommend it to anyone playing elves. Great job Olivier Pamart!

[Alexeezay]

Really nice list!

1. Wouldn't it be useful to splash Blue & play 3 Intuition, 1 Fauna Shaman, 1 Land instead of 4 Fauna Shaman,1 Gaea's Cradle? I guess Olivier doesn't splash because of the many Tempo/Canadian Threshold Decks with Stilfe/Wasteland in the current Metagame.

!Questions on the sideboard:
2. For what creatures do you need Dismember except Ethersworn Canonist? Is it that good?
3. How do you use Carpet of Flowers? Where is it useful, how & in which matchups do you sideboard it in?
Thanks :)

[Koby]

From what I understand:

Carpet of Flowers comes in vs blue decks (obv) at the expense of Llanowar Elves

Against non-blue decks, Natural Order comes in, since Progenitus is hard to deal with.

I'm still unsure about Dismember, maybe this is an out to Grim Lavamancer? I personally like Mortarpod to deal with Dark Confidant, Grim Lavamancer, Canonist (tho I prefer KGrip since it also kills E-plague).

[Alexeezay]

Ok, thank you.
I'm still unsure about the consistency of the mana base. 12 Forest 4 Gaea's Cradle... doesn't it seem too greedy? You always have to have at least 1 forest in your opening hand
Maybe 1 more Forest and only 3 Cradles?

[Koby]

Without running fetchlands, 12 Forest is fine. I've played lists that ran as few as 10 before and that did a fine job. Fetchlands run a risk of being Stifled, so you generally increase the count; but 12 basic lands is the minimum.

Mulling to get at least 1 Forest has always been this deck's "problem", so that is nothing new.

[resum]

4 Cradles. Always 4 Cradles if you can afford them. A cradle is the best card you can draw, and sometimes you even need two of them if they have wasteland. I've never been unhappy drawing multiple cradles, because that meant I already had a cradle.

[Alexeezay]

Alright I played a few matches with Olivier's list on MWS yesterday and only mulliganed once or twice. Turns out the Forest count should be fine. Definitely upping Cradles from 3 to 4 now.

[blind]

2. For what creatures do you need Dismember except Ethersworn Canonist? Is it that good?
3. How do you use Carpet of Flowers? Where is it useful, how & in which matchups do you sideboard it in?
Thanks :)

2. It's also very good against Gaddock Teeg when you want to resolve a Natural Order post sideboard. It's a good way to get an edge over SFM that has just fetched a batterskull.

3. Carpet are going in against UR delver and RUG/*****. Those MU are mainly based on resources and our ability or disability to overextend.

As you know, the main way to overextend with elfball is to get mana from your elves, and a good opponent will take them down as fast as he can in order for you not to extend. With carpet you are opposing a resource he can't deal with and that allows you to establish your game plan.

[Darklingske]

I've been playing Olivier Pamart's list for a week now, but I don't have that incredible good feeling with it, unlike with the full combo version. Maybe I'm doing all the wrong things, but if it's so, then I don't know what I'm doing wrong. What is the right angle for that deck? Can anyone explain it to me? It could be that it's because of my fellow players. They all know how to play against Elves. Typically a game will go like this:
Me: forest, Llanowar (countered)
They: Land, Thoughtseize
Me: forest, elf (or symbiote)
They: destroy elf or symbiote
Me: play Fauna
And then what? Do I pitch the remaining elf to search for the missing combopiece or do I just go and search VV? I really don't know. With the combo version I don't have any problems at all G1, but G2 is horrible and that is why I'm trying Olivier's List. Anyone that can help me concerning this problem?

[Godmode]

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/387934_10150481142907918_174376972917_8830438_817522472_n.jpg


Quoting Vandalize from the Dredge thread:

"I guess that card will mess the entire format, and will be a good candidate for a Ban Hammer, because it hits every deck in the format: Dredge, Reanimator, GSZ.dec (GW/x Maverick, Nic Fit, Bant Aggro), Natural Order.dec (Bant, RUG and Elves), ANT/TES (shutting off Past in Flames), Snapcaster.dec, Lands.dec."


This isn't gonna affect Elves as much as Dredge, but it's still rough tho. Fauna build will probably get more popular if Grafdigger's Cage finds a way into alot of SBs.

[soiber2000]

It will find a way in a lot of SB for sure, and it hits quite a lot of cards in my elves list (similar to Pamart's list): mainboard 4xGSZ and 4xVengevine, and also postboard 4xNatural Order. It affects a lot!

By the way, last saturday I played a 120 players tournament, and was really happy with my performance: 5-1 until last round. And my last round was against MUD and chalice for 1 the first turn in those 2 matches, so missed top8 and 5-2.

I have to admit that 4xVengevine maindeck was a good call winning some matches just for that, and the Natural Order postboard plan was also good.

Win: Merfolks, GWzenith, Agroloam, RUGB agrocontrol and rug tempo
Lost: Reanimator (almost imposible but he was at 1 life before killed me twice) and MUD with perfect hands in both matches.

[blind]

Pierre Sommen (winner GP Amsterdam) has played my decklist in 116players event. He lost the last round for the top 8 and finished at 5-2.


It will find a way in a lot of SB for sure, and it hits quite a lot of cards in my elves list (similar to Pamart's list): mainboard 4xGSZ and 4xVengevine, and also postboard 4xNatural Order. It affects a lot!

yeah but you can always search Viridian Shaman with Fauna. I'm not sure this card is played much, much less in many slot.

[Godmode]

I almost positive that Cage won't interfer with the Vengevine engine, since you don't cast it.

[lord182]

I almost positive that Cage won't interfer with the Vengevine engine, since you don't cast it.

But the cage don't lets cards enter the battlefield from graveyards

[Godmode]

But the cage don't lets cards enter the battlefield from graveyards

Oh yeah, you're correct.

"Creature cards can't enter the battlefield from graveyards or libraries"

[GoldenCid]

From what I understand:

Carpet of Flowers comes in vs blue decks (obv) at the expense of Llanowar Elves

Against non-blue decks, Natural Order comes in, since Progenitus is hard to deal with.

.

i'd like to see your list with NO-Proggy in side.

For the moment i post my decklist (Very solid pre board)
For advices:


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

// Lands
8 [LRW] Forest (2)
4 [ON] Wooded Foothills
2 [US] Gaea's Cradle

// Creatures
1 [RAV] Nullmage Shepherd
3 [M10] Elvish Visionary
4 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
1 [EVE] Regal Force
2 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (is 2 too much or just 1 works??)
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [M11] Elvish Archdruid
4 [U] Llanowar Elves
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [ON] Birchlore Rangers

// Spells
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
4 [MBS] Green Sun's Zenith
3 [FUT] Summoner's Pact

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of Lifeforce (i'm not sure if this is rentable nowadays. When i included in the list CB was everywhere)
SB: 4 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [LE] Caller of the Claw
SB: 1 [10E] Viridian Shaman

Thx very very much.

[Alexeezay]

Wooded Foothills should better be Forest because of Stifle (Canadian Thresh/Team America).

You don't need 4 Birchlore Rangers in Mono G with Summoner's Pacts. I would rather play 4 Visionaries and 4 S.Pact.

Why 2 Emrakul? the 2nd Emrakul is a dead card. You're better off playing Chord of Calling, Crop Rotation, Gaea's Cradle or an useful Elf like Fauna Shaman/Viridian Shaman/Ezuri/Priest of Titania in its place.

Leyline of Lifeforce isn't very useful except against Counterbalance. But even then it's better to play Krosan Grip or something like that or you go with Vengevines.

[GoldenCid]

Priest of Titania in its place.
.

Indeed?? What is your experience on her? I considered a bit slow :/

[Kich867]

Indeed?? What is your experience on her? I considered a bit slow :/

An un-dealt with priest on turn 2 results in a guaranteed turn 3 win. I see nothing wrong with her. She's awful mid-combo but pre-combo she's an all-star.

[Koby]

I don't play with NO-Proggy; it is much weaker against decks that already bring in Perish. I can see it being good against Maverick and Zoo, so there might be some merit to that plan. However, their only real way to interact with the combo is Canonist and Punishing Fires. The former can be dealt with Krosan Grip (which should come in regardless to deal with Jitte) and the latter can be ignored if you wait for an optimal time to combo off.

Elves generally has a good matchup vs Maverick, so I don't see why the No/Prog is even necessary.

[Augustas]

So far 2-0 in the MtgSalvation cockatrice tourney with Pamart's list :)

[Tammit67]

I don't play with NO-Proggy; it is much weaker against decks that already bring in Perish. I can see it being good against Maverick and Zoo, so there might be some merit to that plan. However, their only real way to interact with the combo is Canonist and Punishing Fires. The former can be dealt with Krosan Grip (which should come in regardless to deal with Jitte) and the latter can be ignored if you wait for an optimal time to combo off.

Elves generally has a good matchup vs Maverick, so I don't see why the No/Prog is even necessary.

Was testing tonight against your winning 75. Only game I lost with elves was when he had fires and swords early and I didnt have glimpse. Even then I could have just dropped lands and passed the turn until I had more in hand to go off with and he would have had more of a problem.

Elves seems really good right now

[Infinitium]

Ghoultree 7G
Creature - Zombie Treefolk

~ costs {1} less to cast for each creature card in your graveyard.

10/10

Worth keeping in mind for anyone still rocking Living Wish for those drawn out affairs involving sweepers and recurring removal. 1GG for a 10/10 in the lategame could be worth the spot.

[lord182]

Indeed?? What is your experience on her? I considered a bit slow :/

You play with 4 Elvish Archdruid and considered Priest of Titania a bit slow? I like her more than archdruid because she can be search with GSZ on turn 2 (i don't have the cradles yet). Don't play the second Emrakul instead play Fierce Empath. If you have the cradles play with the Fauna/Vengivine plan and add 1 Crop Rotation, can seems a bit slow but is more consistent.

[peteypablo]

The sideboard is still experimental, but it hits everything that really gives me trouble. One problem is that my list is extremely weak against surgical extraction and extirpate.

I really like the deck, but why not run Coffin Purge in the board instead of Purify the Grave? Clears up the Savannah spot.

[Koby]

It's starting to look as though the metagame is becoming favorable to Elves. What have been people's experiences with the NO/Pro SB plan vs Vengevine? Both get hit pretty hard by Grafdigger's Cage. What alternatives are there to both that don't get hit? Do we even care about the Cage?

[Hencules]

Hi there!

Been a long time since i've been playing elves (3+ years), and i'm trying to get into it again. The main concensus here seems to be that elves should focus mainly on combo, with some sort of aggro sub-plan. I would like to try that the other way around, due to personal preferences. So, i'd like an aggro main plain, with the possible "oops-i-win-button" in Natural Order.

How feasible would a deck such as that be? Browsing the last 10+ pages of this thread, i see very little love for NO. I know i should playtest a lot before posting such questions here, but the amount of possibilities seem vast!

So I wondered which cards are worth playing, and which aren't. GSZ, NO, archdruid, imperious perfect etc are good cards. But in the aggro style birchlore rangers and heritage druid seem weak.

Ideas?

[Koby]

You may want to checkout this thread instead: Elven Advantage (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19802-Deck-Elven-Advantage).

That list focuses on the aggro element and skips out on Heritage Druid and Birchlore Rangers.

Elves Combo focuses on the mana engine of Heritage Druid with Nettle Sentinel.

[resum]

It's starting to look as though the metagame is becoming favorable to Elves. What have been people's experiences with the NO/Pro SB plan vs Vengevine? Both get hit pretty hard by Grafdigger's Cage. What alternatives are there to both that don't get hit? Do we even care about the Cage?

I used to play with the BA/VV board and I liked it a lot. I found myself siding in at least the VVs in all interactive MUs. Because of this, I moved them into the maindeck with a list a lot like oliver's (I would play intuitivine if I had intuitions), as the only times when VV is bad are against the combo decks that are faster than you (storm, dredge, reanimator) and when they get a multiple tarmogoyf draw, but if you have some disruption (ooze, cabal therapy), you can slow the combo decks down enough to be faster than them.

The NO/prog plan I haven't actually played with, but it just feels worse than some kind of VV plan, and should be ran mostly as a backup to VVs if you know they're going to bring in GY hate, of if they're like zoo or maverick with a ton of removal and access to lots of goyf/kotrs.

Graffdigger's cages sounds super annoying, but not too big of a problem. We are a GSZ based deck, but we should be able to either remove it with claim/grip/shaman or just glimpse them out if you rin some sorta instawin in side or main (I have an emrakul in the side for the combo MUs).

[Rabrab]

When you afraid of Grafdigger's Cage you should run more Summoner's Pact to search Viridian Shaman;)

[blind]

I have win two Daily with my deck list, very good with your metagame :

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/3283977

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/3314197

[joemauer]

@blind: I have several questions for you.

First I just want to say I have been testing your decklist and think it is very solid, the maindeck that is.

I know you have answered this, but is dismember really that good? I see it saving the day against Lavamancer but that's against burn type decks and we don't want to lower our own life?

Also, is NO/prog package that good? As Ruckus pointed out earlier it seems win more.

What is your answer to control decks with snapcasters? How do you beat those decks when they side in wraths and have 8-12 plow effects?

Finally, do you feel you have enough graveyard hate in your SB?

Sorry if these questions are too noobish, I don't play elves too much.

[blind]

I know you have answered this, but is dismember really that good? I see it saving the day against Lavamancer but that's against burn type decks and we don't want to lower our own life?

Most defintely ! You should never siding in dismember against burn where life points DO matter. I have already explained why the card is strong. It offers a solution to : creature + equipment that is often the only game plan for many decks to beat us.
It also deals with many problematic creatures.


Also, is NO/prog package that good? What is your answer to control decks with snapcasters? How do you beat those decks when they side in wraths and have 8-12 plow effects?

YES ! Progenitus offers many obvious win against many decks. Against decks full of snapcaster with 7 swords to plowshares effect post board, the Vengevine plan does suck. You can also get "surgicaled" and in order to kill, 1/1 are kind of useless in these MU (Batterskull). In a single sentence, Progenitus is a second kill really strong that punish any opponent without wrath effect. Strangely, NO + Pro is a strong plan against deck that enter wrath. Indeed, where the plan to go glimpse, you got to over extend and get elves on the board to have a chance to combo off, so we do got to expose ourselves to wrath (please keep in mind I am talking about my particular list, a full combo list can combo off without any elve on board), NO + PRO only requires a single creature.

Just test the list guys ;)

[blind]

so what's your exact sideboarding plan with your list, against UW Blade/Control?
+4 NO +1 Progenitus, - 4 Vengevine -1 Fauna Shaman

-4 Glimpse -1 Regal -1 Joraga -1 Quirion -1 Fauna
+4 NO +1 Pro +3 Dismember

[Alexeezay]

ah okay thanks

[2sided3angle]

Is there a posting or a separate thread to give pointers on how to help maintain game state? Sometimes I forget as have I used Symbiote or not and other triggers.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

[joemauer]

Is there a posting or a separate thread to give pointers on how to help maintain game state? Sometimes I forget as have I used Symbiote or not and other triggers.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Try putting counters or loose change on your guys.

[Tammit67]

Is there a posting or a separate thread to give pointers on how to help maintain game state? Sometimes I forget as have I used Symbiote or not and other triggers.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

I turn them upside down when I've used them. Its a little harder with quirion since I tap him too, but so long as the orientation is different it is easy to see.

[andrebonotto]

Greetings to everyone,


I have been following this thread for some time for I am assembling a Elves Combo deck for myself.

I don't have much experience with all the interactions of the deck, nor with the decision on evaluating my initial hands, beacuse as far as here, I have only played casually against friends who have not prepared efficient sideboards agains me and whose playing level is a little below mine. So, these games I could easily win.

However, since I am planning on bringing this deck to some sanctioned tournaments, I wanted to present you my current list in order to hear your advices.


Here it is:



LANDS (16):

2x Gaea's Cradle (I look forward to get the other 2)
1x Temple Garden (It will be a Savannah)
1x Dryad Arbor
4x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills (I plan to use a split of 2/2/2 of each G-Fetchland, when I get them)
1x Misty Rainforest
6x Forest

CREATURES (32):

3x Llanowar Elves
4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Birchlore Rangers
3x Elvish Visionary
4x Wirewood Symbiote
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Wirewood Hivemaster
1x Fauna Shaman
1x Viridian Shaman
1x Regal Force
1x Mirror Entity


OTHER SPELLS (12):

4x Glimpse of Nature
3x Green Sun's Zenith
3x Chord of Calling
1x Crop Rotation
1x Concordant Crossroads


This is what I came upon untill now, but I intend to incorporate soon a Fauna Shaman-Vengevine package (I am now 1 Fauna and 2 Vengevines short for the playset) so, advice can be oriented to this future plan to.


Also, I am not very familiarized with my actual metagame, but according to what I read from recent tournaments, there was many UWx Stoneblades, RUG, UR Delver, Punishing Maverick, TES/ANT, Dredge and Reanimate around here.

So, I tried to put together a rather "generic" sideboard for the deck:


SIDEBOARD (15):

Removal:
1x Caller of the Claw
1x Burrenton Forge-Tender

Combo:
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Sylvan Safekeeper
1x Children of Korlis

GY:
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Loaming Shaman
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Bojuka Bog

Enchantmenst/Artifacts:
1x Harmonic Sliver

Creatures:
1x Goblin Sharpshooter

Other Threats:
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Phyrexian Revoker


Do you think this list could be competitive? What would you suggest me to change, so that I can improve it?

I am eager to receive your elder and wiser elvish advices :smile:


Sincerely,

[Augustas]

If your meta is actually how you described, I strongly recommend you to run Pamart's list. SB the way he built it is actually unnecessary, you can go with chokes + grips + combo hate and you should be fine. Believe me, it's insane. I did not have an opportunity to play it IRL, but I've already won one online tournament with it and I guess I already made top 8 in the MTGSalvation cockatrice tournament, currently 3-0 with a record of 2-1 against Bloodbraid RUG 2-1, Maverick 2-0, Junk 2-0.

[blind]

SB the way he built it is actually unnecessary

Why ...?

[resum]

you're a massive dog to zoo and punishing fire decks without no-prog

[kicks_422]

My non-Elf cards in the deck are currently 4 Glimpse of Nature, 4 Living Wish, and 4 Green Sun's Zenith.

I haven't lost a match for some time now.

[Tammit67]

you're a massive dog to zoo and punishing fire decks without no-prog

Zoo, sure. Punishing fire maverick? I have not found that to be the case.

[Augustas]

What I meant about saying that exact SB is unnecessary is that if you don't own Orders/Progenitus, usual SB like 4 Grips + Combo hate + Grave hate does just fine. My meta is completely combotastic with things like TES/Doomsday/Dredge running around and I really don't want to be a bye for them. I have very limited exerience piloting elves against other combo decks and since I'm running Vengevine build, the only match-up I'm concerned about is not Zoo or other aggro decks but in fact combo. Any suggestions? Mindbreak Trap sucks because of Silence/Duress, Thorns does help but I still feel that it's still kinda lackluster to beat combo.

[blind]

My decklist is just bad if you have lof of combo deck in your metagame.

[Augustas]

Well, but I think that your list is propably the best of all that has ever been posted here and I like the way it plays out. I just 2-0'd most of my matches in online cockatrice tournaments and I don't think that I would like to play some other build IRL. Anyway, once again mad props for finding that perfect elves list!

[NihilObstat]

My non-Elf cards in the deck are currently 4 Glimpse of Nature, 4 Living Wish, and 4 Green Sun's Zenith.
I haven't lost a match for some time now.

Kicks, you are still playing Living Wish! Interesting.

What are you Wish targets in the side? How's your full sideboard looking like?

Any tournaments you have taken this to?

[Mr. Safety]

Zoo, sure. Punishing fire maverick? I have not found that to be the case.

I agree with this...Punishing/Groves is a fairly slow engine...and Elves is a fairly fast deck. Zoo with all of it's cheap removal (Bolts/Chains/Paths/Grims) is more dangerous to elves than Punishing Fire.

[joemauer]

The best reason to run Natural Order is zoo, but is it worth it?

Zoo will keep killing your creatures one by one with their bucket of removal spells, making it tough to cast NO. Sure you could wait until you are up to five mana and cast a dork and then NO, but that is not easy to do in elves especially against zoo.

Zoo is not very popular right anyway. Maverick, in all it's forms, is the beat down deck of choice at the moment.

[blind]

The best reason to run Natural Order is zoo

No. Punishing Maverick, Loam, Junk, Snapcaster Contrôle, etc... Natural Order + Pro are good in lot of Mus.

[joemauer]

No. Punishing Maverick, Loam, Junk, Snapcaster Contrôle, etc... Natural Order + Pro are good in lot of Mus.

I thought junk ran perish?

[Augustas]

The biggest advantage of the vengevine build is that if they perish you and does not back it up with an extraction for vengevines you still will kill them because of simbiote bounce ability. In one recent match against Aggro Loam I was perished three times during the match and it didn't affect me too much because vengies + wirewood symbiote is really nasty to deal with.

[andrebonotto]

If your meta is actually how you described, I strongly recommend you to run Pamart's list. SB the way he built it is actually unnecessary, you can go with chokes + grips + combo hate and you should be fine. Believe me, it's insane. I did not have an opportunity to play it IRL, but I've already won one online tournament with it and I guess I already made top 8 in the MTGSalvation cockatrice tournament, currently 3-0 with a record of 2-1 against Bloodbraid RUG 2-1, Maverick 2-0, Junk 2-0.



Thank you for your assistance.

Pamart's list looks indeed very solid to me. I tried to build it, but I needed to do little arrangements:

-2 Gaea's Cradle (until I get these two)

+1 Forest
+1 Crop Rotation (to compensate on the Cradle's shortage)


(I'm trying to get the 2x Vengevines and 1x Fauna Shaman that are missing, but I think I can do that in time for the next tournament.)

Based on Pamart's list and your considerations, what do you think of the following sideboard:


3x Scavenging Ooze
1x Caller of the Claw
4x Thorn of Amethyst
3x Krosan Grip
4x Carpet of Flowers


The Carpets would be here in place of Chokes.

I'm also considering to maybe find a SB slot to fit 1x Sylvan Safekeeper. (But what to take out?.) Would not it be worthy to have this extra protection for our creatures?

For this, I'm considering specially Zoo, that still shows up around here, and maybe UR Delver, that is popular, and against which our lands' sacrifice could be compensated by the use of Carpets.

Although I lean toward agreement on the superiority of the NO-Prog package against Zoo and other removal-full match-ups, unfortunately I do not own these cards and do not think I will acquire them soon.


Cheers,

[kicks_422]

Kicks, you are still playing Living Wish! Interesting.

What are you Wish targets in the side? How's your full sideboard looking like?

Any tournaments you have taken this to?

Here's my SB:

1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Heritage Druid
1 Nettle Sentinel
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Krosan Grip
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Wasteland
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot

I my Elves list, I can Glimpse you out, hardcast Emrakul or just go all-out aggro. I just love having so many paths to victory without feeling that the deck's watered down.

I know most of you have dropped Living Wish from the discussion for Summoner's Pact and/or GSZ, but it works for me, and to each his own right?

[andrebonotto]

Here's my SB:

1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Heritage Druid
1 Nettle Sentinel
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Krosan Grip
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Wasteland
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot

I my Elves list, I can Glimpse you out, hardcast Emrakul or just go all-out aggro. I just love having so many paths to victory without feeling that the deck's watered down.

I know most of you have dropped Living Wish from the discussion for Summoner's Pact and/or GSZ, but it works for me, and to each his own right?


Interesting Wishboard.

And what does your MainDeck look like, in order do smoothly support Living Wish?

[OurSerratedDust]

Would someone mind outlining the RUG Tempo and Stoneblade matchups for me? I've been meaning to pick up Elves w/ Vengevine + Intuition for a while now, but I want to make sure the timing is right.

[joemauer]

Would someone mind outlining the RUG Tempo and Stoneblade matchups for me? I've been meaning to pick up Elves w/ Vengevine + Intuition for a while now, but I want to make sure the timing is right.

Try blind's(a.k.a. Oliver) list a few pages back. It does not use intuition but it is tuned to fight mid range aggro. His deck is fauna/vengevine build.

He gives very good advice with SB strategies for these decks. I will sum it up briefly if you can't find his posts.

With RUG take out Llawanor style elves and add carpet of flowers. Helps fight there mana denial plan.

With stoneblade take out glimpse combo and accessories like regal force and add NO/prog plan and dismembers. I questioned this at first but after lots of testing this does help a lot. Stoneblade's best way to kill you is their few creatures using equipment, dismember sideswipes this plan. NO/prog plan helps you not over extend, and gives a creature that can fight through 8-12 plow effects.

Hope I helped some.

[andrebonotto]

Do you think the Dismembers on the SB could be succesfully replaced by Pithing Needles?

Needles could shut SFM's ability, Equipments and other threats like Lavamancer (or even a Goblin Player's Gempalm Incinerator)...

[joemauer]

Do you think the Dismembers on the SB could be succesfully replaced by Pithing Needles?

Needles could shut SFM's ability, Equipments and other threats like Lavamancer (or even a Goblin Player's Gempalm Incinerator)...

I could see a case being made for pithing needle versus grim Lavamancer, but against goblins you shouldn't need it.

Pithing needle does not seem as strong as dismember against stoneblade. If you shut down stoneforge mystic with it they still get an equipment(probably jitte) to put in play and hook to him.

Stoneblade decks usually have 8-10 creatures right? Stoneforges, snapcasters, and some number of vendillion cliques. If you manage to suppress his creatures with dismembers you can easily out aggro them. Between Fauna Shaman, vengevines, Symbiote+visionary or viridian shaman, and Natural Order/ prog you can give them too many must answer cards. Dismember or Natural Order usually resolve after stoneblade exhausts it's resources, swinging the game into your favor.

[resum]

One thing to note about dismember, is that it's a clean and easy answer to turn 1 delver turn 2 flip, which is the only way I've ever lost to RUG delver decks.

[Koby]

Here's my SB:

1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Heritage Druid
1 Nettle Sentinel
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Krosan Grip
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Wasteland
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot

I my Elves list, I can Glimpse you out, hardcast Emrakul or just go all-out aggro. I just love having so many paths to victory without feeling that the deck's watered down.

I know most of you have dropped Living Wish from the discussion for Summoner's Pact and/or GSZ, but it works for me, and to each his own right?

I feel like intrinsically, not playing 4 maindeck Wirewood Symbiote is a mistake. It's the deck's strongest creature by far.

[AlmostGrown]

Pithing Needle doesn't do anything to Gempalm Incinerator.

[Kich867]

I feel like intrinsically, not playing 4 maindeck Wirewood Symbiote is a mistake. It's the deck's strongest creature by far.

That's the reason Living Wish just isn't as strong of a build. Summoner's Pact hits redundant cards that you need to get to get there. If you're that worried about not finding emrakul, do what I do, run a singleton Fierce Empath. I'm almost blown away that every mono green list doesn't run him.

He's an important factor in many ways, and with 8 cards to tutor him, himself, and emrakul, it's like having 10 copies of emrakul in the deck.

At the moment, I wouldn't change a card in my list, it combos out at turn 3 with amazing consistency and it's -fast-. Speed is important to the combo, you get worn out doing that much math that quickly, it burns you out mentally. Fierce Empath turns a 10 minute turn into a 4 minute turn. Hit 18 mana? Pact for Empath, Emrakul, next turn, tap for trigger, swing, dead. The biggest problem I used to have was taking forever to just find emrakul and occasionally fizzling while trying to get to him. To this day, since adding a singleton Fierce Empath, I've had a 0% fizzle rate and my goldfish by turn 3 is higher than it's ever been.

Living Wish slows you down, and the many circumstances where you look at your available mana and say "If I could drop a nettle sentinel right now and win" and realize Living Wish for a Nettle Sentinel would just cost too much to pull it off..

In gold-fishing, living wish probably looks really sweet, but when you play against real people, who actually kill things and know what threats to hit, your turn 1 or 2 play is often dead--your turn 3 is almost never "I wasn't disturbed for 2 turns so I get to win now."

If your opponent doesn't do shit to you for two turns while you do something like Llanowar, go > Priest, Llanowar, go > turn 3 win--you win no matter what. But under circumstances like Llanowar, it gets bolted, shit, go > Llanowar, Heritage Druid, go > your turn 3 is a lot weaker. You can't tap that Llanowar to produce mana because you need it for heritage druid--what does Living Wish do for you now? Pact on the other hand lets you drop a Glimpse, Nettle Sentinel, tap for 3 mana > Begin the winning process.

That's not even like that farfetched of a situation, and that's why I genuinely don't understand the fascination with Living Wish, it's slow as hell, it makes your sideboard genuinely bad, and it only gives you one real tutor. I can't even count how many times I've burnt 3 summoner's pacts in one turn fetching Wirewood Symbiote's to repeatedly untap a Priest of Titania for the win--Living Wish won't do that and it's a terrible means of finding Emrakul. Fierce Empath costs one more, is an elf, is tutorable, and fetches emrakul OR regal force for you in the event you already have emrakul but don't have the mana to cast him yet.

Living Wish is just bad.

[AlmostGrown]

That's the reason Living Wish just isn't as strong of a build. Summoner's Pact hits redundant cards that you need to get to get there. If you're that worried about not finding emrakul, do what I do, run a singleton Fierce Empath. I'm almost blown away that every mono green list doesn't run him.

He's an important factor in many ways, and with 8 cards to tutor him, himself, and emrakul, it's like having 10 copies of emrakul in the deck.

At the moment, I wouldn't change a card in my list, it combos out at turn 3 with amazing consistency and it's -fast-. The biggest problem I used to have was taking forever to just find emrakul and occasionally fizzling while trying to get to him. To this day, since adding a singleton Fierce Empath, I've had a 0% fizzle rate and my goldfish by turn 3 is higher than it's ever been.

Living Wish slows you down, and the many circumstances where you look at your available mana and say "If I could drop a nettle sentinel right now and win" and realize Living Wish for a Nettle Sentinel would just cost too much to pull it off..

In gold-fishing, living wish probably looks really sweet, but when you play against real people, who actually kill things and know what threats to hit, your turn 1 or 2 play is often dead--your turn 3 is almost never "I wasn't disturbed for 2 turns so I get to win now."

If your opponent doesn't do shit to you for two turns while you do something like Llanowar, go > Priest, Llanowar, go > turn 3 win--you win no matter what. But under circumstances like Llanowar, it gets bolted, shit, go > Llanowar, Heritage Druid, go > your turn 3 is a lot weaker. You can't tap that Llanowar to produce mana because you need it for heritage druid--what does Living Wish do for you now? Pact on the other hand lets you drop a Glimpse, Nettle Sentinel, tap for 3 mana > Begin the winning process.

That's not even like that farfetched of a situation, and that's why I genuinely don't understand the fascination with Living Wish, it's slow as hell, it makes your sideboard genuinely bad, and it only gives you one real tutor. I can't even count how many times I've burnt 3 summoner's pacts in one turn fetching Wirewood Symbiote's to repeatedly untap a Priest of Titania for the win--Living Wish won't do that and it's a terrible means of finding Emrakul. Fierce Empath costs one more, is an elf, is tutorable, and fetches emrakul OR regal force for you in the event you already have emrakul but don't have the mana to cast him yet.

Living Wish is just bad.

Could you please post your list? I agree with you on a lot of points and would like to compare.

[Irenicus]

Pithing Needle doesn't do anything to Gempalm Incinerator.

Actually it does. Pithing Needle is able to stop cards from being cycled.

[andrebonotto]

Pithing Needle doesn't do anything to Gempalm Incinerator.

Well, based on the FAQs from both cards:

Pithing Needle: (http://magiccards.info/m10/en/217.html)

"6/1/2005: Pithing Needle affects cards regardless of what zone they're in. This includes cards in hand, cards in the graveyard, and exiled cards. For example, a player can't cycle Eternal Dragon or return an Eternal Dragon from his or her graveyard to hand if Pithing Needle naming Eternal Dragon is on the battlefield."

Gempalm Incinerator: (http://magiccards.info/evg/en/37.html)

"10/1/2008: Cycling is an activated ability. Effects that interact with activated abilities (such as Stifle or Rings of Brighthearth) will interact with cycling. Effects that interact with spells (such as Remove Soul or Faerie Tauntings) will not."

Therefore, Pithing Needle will interact with Gempalm Incinerator's Cycling, in spite of Gempalm being in a player's hand, since Cycling is itself an activated ability.

[Kich867]

Could you please post your list? I agree with you on a lot of points and would like to compare.

Yep, here it is:

//Creatures:
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

1x Elvish Archdruid
2x Priest of Titania

1x Regal Force
1x Fierce Empath
1x Viridian Shaman
3x Elvish Visionary

4x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Ranger

3x Birchlore Rangers
4x Llanowar Elves
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Arbor Elf
4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel

//Spells:
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Summoner's Pact
4x Green Sun's Zenith

//Lands: 15
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Pendelhaven
13x Forest

//Sideboard: 15
3x Faerie Macabre
3x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Carpet of Flowers
3x Vengevine
3x Surgical Extraction

This runs beautifully and is the best version of the deck I've ever run. The sideboard is experimental--it pretty much addresses the only things I care about: the Reanimator / dredge match up, blue tempo matchups, and times I need to go on the aggressive. I haven't actually tried it out yet, that just seems to make the most sense to me.

Surgical Extraction seems like a good answer to opposing combo decks, green really isn't the best at this sort of thing though. Maybe Thorn of Amethyst? Seems too slow, I'd rather remove key pieces at instant speed. I think I'll stick with that sideboard for now unless someone has a better idea for combo matchups.

The maindeck however, is the same maindeck I've been using since.. about the time I brought up Fierce Empath and made a similar argument against living wish quite awhile ago. Since then I haven't really played Elves competitively, but it remains the deck that I'm most comfortable playing and is definitely the deck I'm best at playing. There's something really rewarding about being able to play something complicated very well :laugh:.

[Koby]

Thorn of Amethysts has always been half a turn too slow whenever I ran it. Best case, they don't go off or disrupt you on turn 1, and you slow them down enough to aggro/combo them out. Worst case, it gets nabbed by Thoughtseize/Duress and you lose the next turn.

I like Surgical however. I might utilize your SB Kich867, and see how that works out.

[AlmostGrown]

Whats the point of the Pendelhaven? Going on the aggressive without a lord? Or is it for the defense?

[lord182]

Yep, here it is:

//Creatures:
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

1x Elvish Archdruid
2x Priest of Titania

1x Regal Force
1x Fierce Empath
1x Viridian Shaman
3x Elvish Visionary

4x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Ranger

3x Birchlore Rangers
4x Llanowar Elves
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Arbor Elf
4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel

//Spells:
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Summoner's Pact
4x Green Sun's Zenith

//Lands: 15
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Pendelhaven
13x Forest

//Sideboard: 15
3x Faerie Macabre
3x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Carpet of Flowers
3x Vengevine
3x Surgical Extraction

This runs beautifully and is the best version of the deck I've ever run. The sideboard is experimental--it pretty much addresses the only things I care about: the Reanimator / dredge match up, blue tempo matchups, and times I need to go on the aggressive. I haven't actually tried it out yet, that just seems to make the most sense to me.

Surgical Extraction seems like a good answer to opposing combo decks, green really isn't the best at this sort of thing though. Maybe Thorn of Amethyst? Seems too slow, I'd rather remove key pieces at instant speed. I think I'll stick with that sideboard for now unless someone has a better idea for combo matchups.

The maindeck however, is the same maindeck I've been using since.. about the time I brought up Fierce Empath and made a similar argument against living wish quite awhile ago. Since then I haven't really played Elves competitively, but it remains the deck that I'm most comfortable playing and is definitely the deck I'm best at playing. There's something really rewarding about being able to play something complicated very well :laugh:.

Grafdigger's Cage stops your Zeniths and Vengevines. Why don't you play Fauna Shaman?

[Kich867]

Whats the point of the Pendelhaven? Going on the aggressive without a lord? Or is it for the defense?

Honestly, it's tech against Grim Lavamancer's. There was a game where someone dropped that turn one and made my life hell. It's been incredibly useful. Occasionally someone will forget about it and swing me assuming I won't trade and forget about pendelhaven. It's also sweet VS goblins trying to get a lackey through.

In general, it's better than a normal forest. If people want to wasteland it, be my guest. But the main purpose is to stop Grim Lavamancers.

In regards to Grafdigger's Cage--like I said, that isn't my sideboard it was just the things that came to mind because my sideboard at the moment is a garbled mess of testing stuff. Replace them with Tormod's Crypts. I'll update it.

[soiber2000]

I just like to point out that I participated in my monthly tournament for the last two months and have completed quite successfully, 14th out of 119 and 9th of 109, not entering the top in both tournaments by losing to the same Mud player (chalice of the void).

My list has Vengevine and Fauna main, and natural order as a sideboard plan, and I have to say it's a real blast to play. Vengevine wins so many games, and people do not expect the Progenitus of second match, winning 90% of second games.

If I have time and hang a mini-report.

regards.

[lord182]

Christoffer Andersen made 5th/8th at Starcitygames Legacy Series: Cincinnati

MD
4 Forest
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Savannah
2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Pendelhaven
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Windswept Heath
1 Dryad Arbor

4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Birchlore Rangers
3 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Priest of Titania
2 Quirion Ranger
2 Mirror Entity
2 Llanowar Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Qasali Pridemage

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation

SIDEBOARD
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mortarpod
3 Absolute Law
3 Choke
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Fecundity

I'm curious about Fecundity and Jitte in SB. I like the white splash but i don't have Savannah and fetchlans.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That's the reason Living Wish just isn't as strong of a build. Summoner's Pact hits redundant cards that you need to get to get there. If you're that worried about not finding emrakul, do what I do, run a singleton Fierce Empath. I'm almost blown away that every mono green list doesn't run him.

He's an important factor in many ways, and with 8 cards to tutor him, himself, and emrakul, it's like having 10 copies of emrakul in the deck.

At the moment, I wouldn't change a card in my list, it combos out at turn 3 with amazing consistency and it's -fast-. Speed is important to the combo, you get worn out doing that much math that quickly, it burns you out mentally. Fierce Empath turns a 10 minute turn into a 4 minute turn. Hit 18 mana? Pact for Empath, Emrakul, next turn, tap for trigger, swing, dead. The biggest problem I used to have was taking forever to just find emrakul and occasionally fizzling while trying to get to him. To this day, since adding a singleton Fierce Empath, I've had a 0% fizzle rate and my goldfish by turn 3 is higher than it's ever been.

Living Wish slows you down, and the many circumstances where you look at your available mana and say "If I could drop a nettle sentinel right now and win" and realize Living Wish for a Nettle Sentinel would just cost too much to pull it off..

In gold-fishing, living wish probably looks really sweet, but when you play against real people, who actually kill things and know what threats to hit, your turn 1 or 2 play is often dead--your turn 3 is almost never "I wasn't disturbed for 2 turns so I get to win now."

If your opponent doesn't do shit to you for two turns while you do something like Llanowar, go > Priest, Llanowar, go > turn 3 win--you win no matter what. But under circumstances like Llanowar, it gets bolted, shit, go > Llanowar, Heritage Druid, go > your turn 3 is a lot weaker. You can't tap that Llanowar to produce mana because you need it for heritage druid--what does Living Wish do for you now? Pact on the other hand lets you drop a Glimpse, Nettle Sentinel, tap for 3 mana > Begin the winning process.

That's not even like that farfetched of a situation, and that's why I genuinely don't understand the fascination with Living Wish, it's slow as hell, it makes your sideboard genuinely bad, and it only gives you one real tutor. I can't even count how many times I've burnt 3 summoner's pacts in one turn fetching Wirewood Symbiote's to repeatedly untap a Priest of Titania for the win--Living Wish won't do that and it's a terrible means of finding Emrakul. Fierce Empath costs one more, is an elf, is tutorable, and fetches emrakul OR regal force for you in the event you already have emrakul but don't have the mana to cast him yet.

Living Wish is just bad.

Because I don't think the deck is viable right now regardless of how you build it (due to metagame considerations), I haven't been playing Elves much lately, but I'm kind of blown away by how wrong the suppositions here are.

Like when you said;


In gold-fishing, living wish probably looks really sweet, but when you play against real people, who actually kill things and know what threats to hit, your turn 1 or 2 play is often dead--your turn 3 is almost never "I wasn't disturbed for 2 turns so I get to win now."

My immediate thought was that you had to be joking and this had to be satire. Either that or you got your cards confused. Certainly Pact looks better in a goldfish situation because it doesn't cost any mana! If you always get to go off unmolested then Pact is certainly stronger than Wish. It's exactly in the situation where you are dealing with disruption that you would rather have Wish, since it doesn't cost four mana or risk you losing the game.


I can't even count how many times I've burnt 3 summoner's pacts in one turn fetching Wirewood Symbiote's to repeatedly untap a Priest of Titania for the win--Living Wish won't do that and it's a terrible means of finding Emrakul. Fierce Empath costs one more, is an elf, is tutorable, and fetches emrakul OR regal force for you in the event you already have emrakul but don't have the mana to cast him yet.

Living Wish doesn't require you to run these bad cards maindeck, so you never have to worry about what to do when you don't have the mana to cast Emrakul, because then you don't Wish for Emrakul. I really can't emphasize enough how wrong you are. The advantage of Wish is having a reliable method to find Emrakul without having to actually draw it when it's dead, or draw a Fierce Empath when it's dead. Or die to disruption on your creatures and spells.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Like, with 4 Wish and a Ranger, Symbiote and Cradle to Wish for it seems ridiculous to say that you're going to have problems with an active Priest and multiple Wishes in hand as in that hypothetical situation. Equally it's ridiculous to say that there's a significant difference between running 3 Symbiote/4 Wish/4 GSZ and 4 Symbiote/4 Pact/4 GSZ. That's an incredibly marginal benefit in terms of likelihood of getting a Sybmiote versus the other advantages offered.

[Koby]

Running any less than 4 Symbiote in the maindeck is the wrong approach. Living Wish should only grab situationally useful cards, or mana sources. Cradle, Emrakul, Regal Force (spotty at best), Viridian Shaman, Quirion Ranger, Bojuka Bog, Gaddock Teeg, etc

Symbiote and Nettle belong in the maindeck as 4 of with Living Wish. SB you can skimp on 1 of each of the combo pieces to play actual SB cards like Thorns or Vengevine or whathaveyou, and still enabling you to assemble some sort of combo with Wish.

[Kich867]

Because I don't think the deck is viable right now regardless of how you build it (due to metagame considerations), I haven't been playing Elves much lately, but I'm kind of blown away by how wrong the suppositions here are.

Like when you said;

My immediate thought was that you had to be joking and this had to be satire. Either that or you got your cards confused. Certainly Pact looks better in a goldfish situation because it doesn't cost any mana! If you always get to go off unmolested then Pact is certainly stronger than Wish. It's exactly in the situation where you are dealing with disruption that you would rather have Wish, since it doesn't cost four mana or risk you losing the game.

Living Wish doesn't require you to run these bad cards maindeck, so you never have to worry about what to do when you don't have the mana to cast Emrakul, because then you don't Wish for Emrakul. I really can't emphasize enough how wrong you are. The advantage of Wish is having a reliable method to find Emrakul without having to actually draw it when it's dead, or draw a Fierce Empath when it's dead. Or die to disruption on your creatures and spells.

In the nearing a year of my experience playing summoning pact in Elves I have died 0 times to it. Claiming that the risk of dying is at all a consideration is simply wrong.

Summoner's Pact lets you recover your game state for free, if you're at the point where you're tapping Priests of Titania for mana it's usually that you've already won. Drawing Emrakul is highly unlikely and isn't worth how bad running Living Wish is.

The most important aspect of elves is the first few turns and how well you can recover. Living wishes are slow, they're mana intensive for when you need them, and keeping emrakul outside the deck is irrelevant. Running a singleton Emrakul main deck versus the one in the board is as statistically insignificant as running your 4th symbiote in the board. That's not even the largest issue. It's the simple fact that Living Wish is worse than summoner's pact in too many situations.

Situations in which you aren't comboing out with nettle sentinels, living wish sucks, situations in which your board is being remove, living wish sucks, situations in which you need every drop of mana you have in order to eek out a win, living wish sucks, games that you know you need to combo out turn 2 in, living wish sucks.

Pre combo, living wish is just a bad card. It gives you sort-of-not-really game against Reanimator and Dredge but realistically they won the roll (they always do :frown:) and Iona hit before you could cast it. But on a serious note, the moment they see llanowar elf, go, they entomb blazing archon / iona and force/daze your wish. Reanimator is the -only- scenario where Living Wish maindecks can be good, and the likelihood of it actually working is -so- small.

It's an inferior card, and your build is worse for it. And then what for game 2 and 3?

Maybe you could show me what your sideboard looks like and I'd have a better understanding of what your plan is?

I initially played for months with Living Wish, and as soon as I switched to Pact my consistency skyrocketed. The main deck is super solid and the sideboard can actually be a sideboard again.

I think the biggest thing that turned me off of Living Wish was.. wishes are usually for when you need a bomb or something, most of the time, I'm looking for redundant copies of things. I tutor for sentinels and visionaries because they give really sick card advantage, I tutor for extra symbiotes to bounce visionaries and get stupid card advantage out of them. Living Wish doesn't get you multiples, drawing into multiple living wishes and not creatures during a combo turn can make some combo turns either not happen without a setup you're guaranteed to win with regardless of what happens or it might just not get there.

Maybe you're super lucky, but early turns are rarely ideal and 2 mana is a huge, game-breaking deal. The difference between having to combo off with 4 mana available to you and 2 living wish in your hand and 4 mana available to you and 2 summoner's pacts in your hand is absurdly different. Summoner's pact lets you play better under less ideal situations, where you don't have as much mana available to you and you're down on relevant creatures.

[lord182]

Living Wish doesn't require you to run these bad cards maindeck, so you never have to worry about what to do when you don't have the mana to cast Emrakul, because then you don't Wish for Emrakul. I really can't emphasize enough how wrong you are. The advantage of Wish is having a reliable method to find Emrakul without having to actually draw it when it's dead, or draw a Fierce Empath when it's dead. Or die to disruption on your creatures and spells.

Living Wish requires dedicated SB slots and it's a countereable method to find Emrakul. I played with Fierce Empath in MD sometimes helps a lot but sometimes is so clunky that i decide to cut off.

[Kich867]

Living Wish requires dedicated SB slots and it's a countereable method to find Emrakul. I played with Fierce Empath in MD sometimes helps a lot but sometimes is so clunky that i decide to cut off.

I can't think of a situation in which Empath is clunky. Once you can start generating mana you just win, you can actually tutor Emrakul out of your deck. Maybe if your list runs a lot of expensive shit, maybe, I have no idea. My deck has literally 3 CMC 3 creatures: Empath, Archdruid, and Viridian Shaman.

In case people didn't know: lords aren't that great. They're easy to burn and are slow as hell compared to just winning with Heritage Druid. Untappers aren't as big of a deal in my deck as they are in others, maybe that's part of the reason Living Wish seems silly and useless to me, but you don't need lords to win, you just win with what the actual combo is. Lords can be convenient if they work, but never rely on them.

Heritage druids have haste, lords don't.

Being able to counter Living Wish is a non-issue. If they actually held their counter long enough to hit living wish, they'd lose anyways to the swarm on the table.

[lord182]

I can't think of a situation in which Empath is clunky. Once you can start generating mana you just win, you can actually tutor Emrakul out of your deck. Maybe if your list runs a lot of expensive shit, maybe, I have no idea. My deck has literally 3 CMC 3 creatures: Empath, Archdruid, and Viridian Shaman.

In case people didn't know: lords aren't that great. They're easy to burn and are slow as hell compared to just winning with Heritage Druid. Untappers aren't as big of a deal in my deck as they are in others, maybe that's part of the reason Living Wish seems silly and useless to me, but you don't need lords to win, you just win with what the actual combo is. Lords can be convenient if they work, but never rely on them.

Heritage druids have haste, lords don't.

Being able to counter Living Wish is a non-issue. If they actually held their counter long enough to hit living wish, they'd lose anyways to the swarm on the table.

My list runs the same expensive shit your list runs, i'm glad Fierce Empath work well for you but for me it's clunky.

[Kich867]

My list runs the same expensive shit your list runs, i'm glad Fierce Empath work well for you but for me it's clunky.

Your list is green white with mirror entity..why..would you consider running Fierce Empath to begin with? You don't run the same expensive shit mine does, I'm talking about converted mana cost, not money :eyebrow:.

[resum]

Why I like pact over wish:You get sideboard slots. Period. In testing originally with a wish list, I would get ranched by BUG and Junk over and over and there was nothing I could really do about it. Since changing to a pact, and then to a fauna shaman list, those matchups have become a lot better. Also, in a combo list, in tutor slots 5-8, you need to hit the card while you are going off. Then 2 mana in those situations is HUGE. In my experience, the ONLY times I've died to pact are games where I was pressured super hard and forced to go for it (sick draws from merfolk, burn, zoo, etc), but in those games living wish wasn't going to win me anything because of how slow it is. The only card I ever felt good wishing for was emrakul, because then I already won.

Anyways, I've since moved on to the Parmat fauna shaman list because my meta is swarmed with RUG and UW blade. These are traditionally kinda hard matchups, and I'm very surprised at how hard vengevine smashes them. U/W is GOING to use their first and maybe their second plows on a symbiote or a heritage druid, then your vengevines go very much unmolested. Of the tier 1 decks here on the source, maverick can be kind of swingy, like if they have an early punishing fire and you don't grab a progenitus, they win. Otherwise, you beat them. The 2 GY decks are the only real bad matchups and if you have an explosive start, you can get an ooze out and just smash their face in while stopping their combo. Still a bad MU though.

Kich: You yourself have admitted that lords are slow and clunky. Why do you run a singleton archdruid instead of 3 priests? Engineered plague isn't really a card that sees any play these days.

[lord182]

Your list is green white with mirror entity..why..would you consider running Fierce Empath to begin with? You don't run the same expensive shit mine does, I'm talking about converted mana cost, not money :eyebrow:.

My list is mono green and runs the same 3 cmc your list runs.

[Kich867]

My list is mono green and runs the same 3 cmc your list runs.

Ah sorry misread your previous post. Would you mind describing what you meant by it being clunky? Even when I've drawn them in my opening hand it was never "clunky". My list runs so smoothly nothing really feels clunky. Some key points to my list is that I focus entirely on the combo and run a lot more one drops than other lists run. I don't focus at all on lords, just straight 1 cmc combo potential. With so many 1 drops and 3 maindeck birchlores, comboing on turn 2 is a very real possibility and combos on turn 3 are superbly fluid. I found when I ran 3-4 archdruids and 3-4 priests I would just dump -way- too much mana into them.

I run a singleton Archdruid for the rare event of needing to aggro someone out. It helps a bit and turns your set of crappy 1/1 dudes into at -least- somewhat threatening 2/2's. It also gives me a second lord in the event of getting priests extracted or something, it's never really been an issue.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Why I like pact over wish:You get sideboard slots. Period.

This is a completely valid reason. Unfortunately, despite the emphatic use of "period" you list other reasons which I consider less valid.


In testing originally with a wish list, I would get ranched by BUG and Junk over and over and there was nothing I could really do about it. Since changing to a pact, and then to a fauna shaman list, those matchups have become a lot better. Also, in a combo list, in tutor slots 5-8, you need to hit the card while you are going off. Then 2 mana in those situations is HUGE. In my experience, the ONLY times I've died to pact are games where I was pressured super hard and forced to go for it (sick draws from merfolk, burn, zoo, etc), but in those games living wish wasn't going to win me anything because of how slow it is. The only card I ever felt good wishing for was emrakul, because then I already won.

It's worth noting here that Living Wish can be a control card where Pact can't be, and thus can alleviate pressure from a certain subset of decks by keeping, for instance, a Karakas/Bojuka Bog/Faerie Marcabre in the board. Or even a Tabernacle, which is surprisingly irrelevant against Elves.


In the nearing a year of my experience playing summoning pact in Elves I have died 0 times to it. Claiming that the risk of dying is at all a consideration is simply wrong.

Resum apparently differs, as do I. I have in fact killed Elf opponents with their own Pacts before. It feels wonderful. Besides, if you have to sit with it in your hand and do nothing when under duress then it's a dead card, where Wish would be letting you grab potential outs or otherwise develop your position.


Summoner's Pact lets you recover your game state for free, if you're at the point where you're tapping Priests of Titania for mana it's usually that you've already won.

These two ideas seem disconnected. Summoner's Pact isn't free in counterpoint to the first. In the second place I agree, but I wasn't the one talking about how good Pact was with active Priest. I never had problems winning with Living Wish and active Priest.


The most important aspect of elves is the first few turns and how well you can recover. Living wishes are slow, they're mana intensive for when you need them, and keeping emrakul outside the deck is irrelevant. Running a singleton Emrakul main deck versus the one in the board is as statistically insignificant as running your 4th symbiote in the board. That's not even the largest issue. It's the simple fact that Living Wish is worse than summoner's pact in too many situations.

This is incoherent. The marginal cost of running a Symbiote in the board is only having 11 rather than 12 ways to get Symbiote maindeck; the marginal cost of running Emrakul main is having a dead card to draw a good chunk of the time.


Situations in which you aren't comboing out with nettle sentinels, living wish sucks

Again, this simply isn't true and makes me suspect you haven't tested it. Which is fine but then don't pretend you have. In the combo situation Pact is much better. The entire advantage to running Living Wish is that it's superior when you're not comboing off, because if you can't combo off Pact costs twice as fucking much.

I mean that and giving you a wider array of answers and flexibility (albeit at the cost of sideboard space.)

I mean at this point I'm not even saying that it is correct to run Living Wish, I haven't tested either build in the current meta; I'm more annoyed that your arguments for why not to run Wish are simply wrong. There are good arguments against Wish but "it's dead when not comboing off" is as far as possible from being one of them.

[lord182]

Ah sorry misread your previous post. Would you mind describing what you meant by it being clunky? Even when I've drawn them in my opening hand it was never "clunky". My list runs so smoothly nothing really feels clunky. Some key points to my list is that I focus entirely on the combo and run a lot more one drops than other lists run. I don't focus at all on lords, just straight 1 cmc combo potential. With so many 1 drops and 3 maindeck birchlores, comboing on turn 2 is a very real possibility and combos on turn 3 are superbly fluid. I found when I ran 3-4 archdruids and 3-4 priests I would just dump -way- too much mana into them.

I run a singleton Archdruid for the rare event of needing to aggro someone out. It helps a bit and turns your set of crappy 1/1 dudes into at -least- somewhat threatening 2/2's. It also gives me a second lord in the event of getting priests extracted or something, it's never really been an issue.

I said sometimes it's clunky because rarely needed to fetch Emrakul that way when comboing and now I maindeck Fauna Shaman so I fetched what I need with her. Don't get me wrong Fierce Empath doesn't work in my list but it's the best way to fetch Emrakul if you don't play with Fauna.

[Kich867]

I said that Living Wish sucked when you aren't comboing off because it does. It's not dead, I explicitly said that it's not like you can't win with the card, it's just not as good.

At what point did Resum differ? He elaborated my point that you never really die to Summoner's Pact and even went on to explain that Living Wish wouldn't have done anything anyways because it's slow and 2 mana is a big deal.

There's too many scenarios and card setups where having living wish will not let you combo that turn when you need to in order to win. I tested living wish for 3 months straight and lost too many games to it sitting idly in my hands not doing anything because it cost too much to play.

Pact is free, I've had to pay for it twice without comboing off, I was under absurd pressure and it was a hail-mary at that. Living Wish won't win those situations, or if they would, enlighten me. What's your sideboard look like?

Situations in which you aren't comboing out with Nettle Sentinel do suck with living wish. If your three elves are 3 elves that aren't nettle sentinels, you tap for 3, you play a dude, draw a card, if that card is Living Wish and you need to play it to keep going, there's a decent chance you're fucked.

There are combos that involve burning pretty much just tutors in order to keep going, at the very beginning of the combo when mana is most important, paying 3 mana for a heritage druid or a nettle sentinel is too risky. If you have to do it more than once, you're paying 6 mana for 2 creatures, sorry, that just doesn't fly with me. The way you describe the card to me and my experience with the card says that it's more of a card that can give you hope to an already lost game, but you're not going to win anyways. I'd rather have a sideboard plan against reanimator/dredge, not 4 cards maindeck that require it to not be countered and for me to go first in order to just have them play around it and win anyways. I would rather opt for speed over flexibility. That's it.

Sideboard space, speed over flexibility, turn 2 wins, and easier/more ways to start the combo. My list has a pretty decent shot at turn 2 wins, and game 1 that's what I would aim for against other combo decks.

[Kich867]

I said sometimes it's clunky because rarely needed to fetch Emrakul that way when comboing and now I maindeck Fauna Shaman so I fetched what I need with her. Don't get me wrong Fierce Empath doesn't work in my list but it's the best way to fetch Emrakul if you don't play with Fauna.

I would say that Fauna is pretty terrible as a tutor unless you have some way to give her haste. Better opponents will just kill her and slow you down. You can't use her on your combo turn unless she's already been in play and you lose creatures you should be playing.

What are you discarding to her that you don't want on the field?

[Koby]

I said that Living Wish sucked when you aren't comboing off because it does. It's not dead, I explicitly said that it's not like you can't win with the card, it's just not as good.


This is patently untrue. I've often used the 2nd turn to L-wish for Cradle or Viridian Shaman prior to going off. Not every hand is going to be a Glimpse-ready hand, and those are often bridged by playing Visionary (why aren't you running 4 btw?) or GSZ for a piece. Living Wish acts the same way by setting up your combo phase.

[Koby]

Quick note since I'm tired as fuck. Made top 8 in a 53 man tourney with the list a few posts above, then promptly lost to TES in 4 turns. Total run: 5-2 (11-4).

Bonus: Decklist!

4 Forest
2 Bayou
7 Fetchlands
1 Gaea's Cradle (only own 2 in paper, so make due with what I got)

4 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Birchlore Ranger
1 Quirion Ranger
4 Priest of Titania
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Elvish Archdruid
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Regal Force

4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Summoner's Pact
3 Living Wish

Sideboard:
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas (wanted to show-boat for infinite turns, but never got the chance)
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Terastodon
1 Emrakul

3 Krosan Grip
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Duress (lacking 'Seizes)

This was back from April. I would still run this list today if I decided to test Living Wish again.

[Kich867]

This is patently untrue. I've often used the 2nd turn to L-wish for Cradle or Viridian Shaman prior to going off. Not every hand is going to be a Glimpse-ready hand, and those are often bridged by playing Visionary (why aren't you running 4 btw?) or GSZ for a piece. Living Wish acts the same way by setting up your combo phase.

Outside of the cradle, pact can do the same thing on your combo turn and not give your opponent a turn to think about it. I don't see how that changes what I said about it. It even lets you play the shit you probably should have played turn 2 anyways. That being entirely true, I don't think it's as good as pact. It produced speed bumps of mana that were unnecessary, it can't hit redundant copies of something, and it fucks with your sideboard for games two and three.

[joemauer]

Summoner's pact is a better tutor because it costs zero mana.

Think about it for a second, why does high tide decks run pact of negation over counterspell? Counterspell won't make you lose if you fizzle out right? It only costs two mana. Can be used on turns outside of the combo turn. Sounds like counterspell is the better card than pact of negation.......on paper.

That being said Summoner's Pact is strictly intended for a fast combo style elves deck only.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm not actually particularly interested in arguing over which the deck should run at the moment, as, as I mentioned, I haven't tested the deck much lately and don't think it's a good meta choice.

I was only pointing out that the reasoning why was terrible. The reason given was that Living Wish is only good when going off. In fact Living Wish is damn near always worse than Pact going off; Living Wish is at its greatest relative value over Pact when you can't go off, since that's when Pact costs four mana and you have the most need for setup spells or answer cards.

[resum]

Currently, I would never run a pure combo list of elves in any meta. Punishing maverick, stoneblade, and RUG tempo are the 3 most popular decks and they all have very favorable matchups against the 7-8 tutor emrakul style elves. The list I currently run is a mono-G fauna shaman list, but I'm working towards getting the cards to run a UG intuition list. You're a turn to two slower, which hurts against storm, reanimator, and dredge, but storm is already hated out by stoneblade and RUG tempo who have tremendously good matchups, and reanimator and dredge will be suppressed by the fact that dredge just won the last starcityopen.

IF I were to run an emrakul elves list, I personally like the summoner's pact list more because of the fact that pact is better when you're starting to go off. IBA is right in that living wish is better when you're nowhere near going off because then you can grab something situationally good. One thing I liked about the living wish version over the pact version was that you could just win off of some untappers and a mana lord, but the technology of fierce empath mitigates that advantage of living wish. The only reason I personally would run living wish over summoner's pact is that you get an effective 7 copies of Gaea's Cradle. That card is just that sick. (about dying to summoner's pact, I only really died to it during my first few weeks of playing when I got greedy with a cradle or a mana lord or something when I should have played around removal. either that or I was dead the next turn no matter what).

[Kich867]

Currently, I would never run a pure combo list of elves in any meta. Punishing maverick, stoneblade, and RUG tempo are the 3 most popular decks and they all have very favorable matchups against the 7-8 tutor emrakul style elves. The list I currently run is a mono-G fauna shaman list, but I'm working towards getting the cards to run a UG intuition list. You're a turn to two slower, which hurts against storm, reanimator, and dredge, but storm is already hated out by stoneblade and RUG tempo who have tremendously good matchups, and reanimator and dredge will be suppressed by the fact that dredge just won the last starcityopen.

IF I were to run an emrakul elves list, I personally like the summoner's pact list more because of the fact that pact is better when you're starting to go off. IBA is right in that living wish is better when you're nowhere near going off because then you can grab something situationally good. One thing I liked about the living wish version over the pact version was that you could just win off of some untappers and a mana lord, but the technology of fierce empath mitigates that advantage of living wish. The only reason I personally would run living wish over summoner's pact is that you get an effective 7 copies of Gaea's Cradle. That card is just that sick. (about dying to summoner's pact, I only really died to it during my first few weeks of playing when I got greedy with a cradle or a mana lord or something when I should have played around removal. either that or I was dead the next turn no matter what).

Would you mind posting the mono-g fauna shaman list? What exactly is the fauna shaman for? Pitching VV's to find business?

I'm currently fiddling with U/R Delver and Turbofog, but maybe I'll grab some vengevines and fix up a mono-g VV version. I feel like elves always has potential, it's tough that virtually all forms of hate hit the deck, but it's hard as shit to fizzle and Vengevines can be pretty unstoppable sometimes. I can see how interactions with Symbiote and Ranger can let you swing out 3-4 vengevines in one turn for minimal mana investment.

[resum]

Would you mind posting the mono-g fauna shaman list? What exactly is the fauna shaman for? Pitching VV's to find business?

I'm currently fiddling with U/R Delver and Turbofog, but maybe I'll grab some vengevines and fix up a mono-g VV version. I feel like elves always has potential, it's tough that virtually all forms of hate hit the deck, but it's hard as shit to fizzle and Vengevines can be pretty unstoppable sometimes. I can see how interactions with Symbiote and Ranger can let you swing out 3-4 vengevines in one turn for minimal mana investment.

It's almost the same as Oliver Parmat's list. It's really well tuned.
http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2368&d=215777
I have my sideboard adjusted for the local meta of course. Also -1 Gaea's Cradle -1 Virdian Shaman +1 Pendlehaven +1 Viridian corrupter because of card availability. If i were playing at a GP or something I would get the 4th cradle.

[woodjt5]

Hello all,

I recently qualified for the SCG Invitational through a Standard qualifier, and I need a Legacy deck for the tournament.

I have experience playing Combo Elves in Overextended (while it existed), as well as Aggro elves in Extended, Scars Standard, Modern, and Overextended. I play Legacy Affinity on MODO and have had some success with the list, and I have decided to either play that or elves for the Invitational in Baltimore. I'm here to ask you for your help and for your advice, because I don't think Affinity is quite good enough.

Last night I cashed in a few modern decks and put this list together online:

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Birchlore Rangers
2 Priest of Titania
2 Quiron Ranger
1 Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Green Sun's Zentith
1 Crop Rotation

12 Forest
3 Gaea's Cradle
1 Pendelhaven

I don't have a board together yet but I jammed some games online and came up with these initial conclusions:

1. Reanimater is impossible

2. Dredge is a bad matchup

3. A lot of opponents don't know the best ways to interact with Elves (what to bolt; what to counter)

4. Regal Force is SO important when I don't naturally have a Glimpse in the first few turns

5. It feels like every time I cast Crop rotation, I win, but getting it countered seems dangerous

6. Sometimes it takes a LONG time to get to Emrakul and finish people off

7. This deck feels very strong, and if I get going, I just win

So my questions to you (since you have more knowledge and experience than I do):

A. Is mono-Green viable? Or do I need to splash either white (for mirror entity) or black (for sideboard buried alive) to be viable? This is important because I can borrow Cradles but I have no access to duals.

B. Is the Vengevine version just better? Why?

C. Are there any general tips or go-to plays that I should know as an Elves player?

D. Can anyone suggest a good board strategy and graveyard decks (and others)?

E. Is there anything else I should know before I decide to run Elves in a major tournament?

I plan on doing lots of testing over the next two months and hopefully providing results and feedback when I can. Any help is very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Jon (woodjt5 on MTGO)

[Kich867]

6. Sometimes it takes a LONG time to get to Emrakul and finish people off

I also run a mono green list. Get a singleton Fierce Empath. Your line of play will be: Get 18-19 mana, Pact or GSZ for Empath, get Emrakul, play Emrakul. Your combo turns are severely cut down in time. If you happen to draw into Fierce Empath, he's also a great tutor for Regal Force if you have no other tutors.



So my questions to you (since you have more knowledge and experience than I do):

A. Is mono-Green viable? Or do I need to splash either white (for mirror entity) or black (for sideboard buried alive) to be viable? This is important because I can borrow Cradles but I have no access to duals.

Not totally sure. Mirror Entity is a strong build but opens you up to wasteland and kin. I think mono-green is certainly viable, and while I'm a little skeptical of the Fauna Shaman engine, I can see it's merit. I'll likely be trying it out soon.

I posted my list earlier in the thread, take a look at it. In terms of mono-green "get Emrakul" lists I think it's the best there is. But Vengevines give you a plan you otherwise wouldn't have, they're hyper aggressive and swing hard. If they die it's fine, you play elves and you can recur them via Wirewood Symbiote.



C. Are there any general tips or go-to plays that I should know as an Elves player?

D. Can anyone suggest a good board strategy and graveyard decks (and others)?

E. Is there anything else I should know before I decide to run Elves in a major tournament?

I addressed vengevines in the previous question.

C: Just remember how your elves interact. Nettle sentinels untap, set up a convenient way for you to remember not only to untap them but to constantly be using them, you'll end up with more mana in the long run.

Know when you should keep your hand etc.

The great thing about Elves is the more you play, the deeper understanding you have of -just- how much mana you can actually produce, often with very little.

The general rule of thumb is if you have a choice between generating mana or drawing cards, always draw cards. You can have all 4 glimpses active if you have all 4 GSZ's in your deck, you can play them for 0, fail to find anything, and place them in the deck again.

D: Faerie Macabre

E: Just keep your cool, work on your nerves. Keep a level head and don't get tricked, read every card you don't know. If you know how to play your deck and keep a cool head, you'll go a lot farther than you normally would. It's not specific to elves.

I'm not really sure what to say about it otherwise, don't rush yourself, keep a pen and paper with you to do math on if you need it. A lot of decks cave to elves, a lot of decks don't though. Reanimator--you need Faerie Macabre's. Game one is likely a loss unless you can go off before they establish themselves. I would probably run both Faerie Macabre's and Tormod's Crypts, the matchup is that bad. This is why I think Vengevine plans might be better, you don't intend to win in one turn -anyways- so subbing out cards you don't particularly need won't kill you.

[joemauer]

A. Is mono-Green viable? Or do I need to splash either white (for mirror entity) or black (for sideboard buried alive) to be viable? This is important because I can borrow Cradles but I have no access to duals.

B. Is the Vengevine version just better? Why?

C. Are there any general tips or go-to plays that I should know as an Elves player?

D. Can anyone suggest a good board strategy and graveyard decks (and others)?

E. Is there anything else I should know before I decide to run Elves in a major tournament?

(woodjt5 on MTGO)

A. Mono green is viable. Splashing white or black gives you a chance against combo, but makes you susceptible to wasteland. I don't know if it is worth it.

B. Vengevine engine isn't exactly better. It is better in an aggro control/ control meta. It is worst against most combo decks.

C. Wirewood Symbiote + Elvish Visionary can win you games.

D. Either go overboard with graveyard hate or don't bother putting much graveyard hate in your sideboard.

[resum]

I
Not totally sure. Mirror Entity is a strong build but opens you up to wasteland and kin. I think mono-green is certainly viable, and while I'm a little skeptical of the Fauna Shaman engine, I can see it's merit. I'll likely be trying it out soon.


I was very skeptical of fauna shaman originally too, but once I actually played with it, I saw how straight up busted it is with untapped in heritage druid. Basically if you have a fauna shaman and a heritage druid, they basically have to choose what beats them, a million mana from druid or a steam of VVs from shaman.

Also, you shouldn't be too worried about being susceptible to wasteland if you splash. You shouldn't be fetching/laying your dual until you're using to cast a spell anyways, and by then it's done it's job. Also, I fistpump internally every time they waste my duals instead of my cradles.

[Basaka]

Evening, my fellow green men;

I'm planning to build an elves deck mainly to lend to friends for our local legacy tournaments. The meta is a healthy mix of... everything from TES to reanimator to UW stoneblade, with the odd goblins, and pox thrown in (etc.)

I'm wondering which build of elves (combo vs Fauna Shaman) would be better. If someone can give me a quick rundown of which archetypes each build does better against, it'll be much appreciated. Right now I'm looking at having the combo-heavy build MB with the ability to side into the Fauna/Vine engine, plus hate for stuff like storm (mindbreak/thorn) and reanimator (Faerie).

I've only got 2 Gaea's Cradles (should be enough for local events), and will need to pick up some vines if I decide to go with the vine build. Otherwise, I've got most of the deck.

Thanks in advance!

[Rabrab]

I play a version with 4 summoner's pact for my combo MU. But 1 Fauna Shaman for Progenitus/Natural Order in SB. It works very well, also I play 3 Gaeas Cradle, because it's the best way to cast Regal Force or Ezuri Aggro.

[Godmode]

Bernardo Fonseca made it to the semi finals at the SCG Memphis event yesterday.

He was on a roll before losing in the 3rd game due to a turn 1 Trinisphere against Zac Hicks (MUD). The game wasn't certainly over, but turn 1 Trinisphere it's a pretty rough start against any deck.

Event coverage here: http://www.starcitygames.com/events/120226_memphis.html

Top 16 Legacy Decklists: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=2011-12-04&end_date=2012-02-26&event_ID=20&city=Memphis


Bernardo Fonseca's list:

MD:

1 Birchlore Rangers
2 Elvish Archdruid
3 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Priest of Titania
3 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Zealot
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
2 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Concordant Crossroads

11 Forest
1 Verdant Catacombs


SB:

1 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Thorn of Amethyst
4 Faerie Macabre
2 Vengevine
2 Krosan Grip
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Creeping Corrosion


This list is somewhat similar to the list David Vo made top 4 aswell in Atlanta about a year ago: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=1377&d=211116


Legacy Open Top 8 Profiles: http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/442_legacy_open_top_8_profiles.html

" Which card was your sideboard all-star this weekend?
Faerie Macabre "

[Godmode]

Always Be Cobbling: An Elves Primer


This is a great Elves Combo article by Christoffer Andersen, who recently reached the 5th place at StarCityGames Cincinnati. In this article, Andersen goes specifically into topics such as:

- Mirror Entity Combo Loops;
- Some Tips on Playing the Deck;
- Sideboard;
- Boarding Cards Out;
- Matchups, etc.


" I don't play much Magic anymore, but I've always wanted to write an article before limping off into the sunset of my proverbial Magic career. Unfortunately, my general disdain for people writing about things they have no idea about combined with the feeling that I myself have nothing worthwhile to say has kept me away from putting pen to paper over the last few years. The fact that I have a super hard time finishing papers hasn't helped too much either. But today, reader, you're in luck. I decided that I probably know enough about playing Combo Elves that composing this piece would be worthwhile. "

Read the whole article here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/23712_Legacy_Week_Always_Be_Cobbling_An_ElvesPrimer.html


" Chrandersen is my hero. This is a sick article. " - Adam Prosak

[k2thej]

Always Be Cobbling: An Elves Primer


This is a great Elves Combo article by Christoffer Andersen, who recently reached the 5th place at StarCityGames Cincinnati. In this article, Andersen goes specifically into topics such as:

- Mirror Entity Combo Loops;
- Some Tips on Playing the Deck;
- Sideboard;
- Boarding Cards Out;
- Matchups, etc.


" I don't play much Magic anymore, but I've always wanted to write an article before limping off into the sunset of my proverbial Magic career. Unfortunately, my general disdain for people writing about things they have no idea about combined with the feeling that I myself have nothing worthwhile to say has kept me away from putting pen to paper over the last few years. The fact that I have a super hard time finishing papers hasn't helped too much either. But today, reader, you're in luck. I decided that I probably know enough about playing Combo Elves that composing this piece would be worthwhile. "

Read the whole article here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/23712_Legacy_Week_Always_Be_Cobbling_An_ElvesPrimer.html


" Chrandersen is my hero. This is a sick article. " - Adam Prosak

I'm baaaaaaaack

correct me if I'm wrong but in the article he says you need nettle, heritage, symbiote, and mirror entity for the loop, but I'm pretty sure you don't need nettle. You can have infinite mana with just heritage, symbiote, and mirror entity no?

[Infinitium]

Nope. Not unless you also have a lord in play so you can activate Entity for 0 (in which case you can bounce Wirewood to itself to untap the other 2, netting 1 mana each iteration).

[Darklingske]

Nope. Not unless you also have a lord in play so you can activate Entity for 0 (in which case you can bounce Wirewood to itself to untap the other 2, netting 1 mana each iteration).

Your statement is wrong if I'm not mistaken. Activating Entity for 0 causes ALL your creatures to die since they become 0/0. But you need Nettle, Heritage, Entity & Symbiote to gain infinite mana. Tap 1 mana to make all your creatures 1/1 elves. Then tap Nettle, Entity & Symbiote for 3 mana. Bounce Symbiote to untap Entity. Replay Symbiote, nettle untaps. Now you can start the chain again, gaining 1 mana each time. Rince, repeat for enormous amount & then pump your creatures that are able to attack to kill your opponent.

[Alexeezay]

no, they will not die because of +1/+1 off the Lord, right?

[k2thej]

Do you need to remake symbiote into an elf each time you replay him?

[Kich867]

Do you need to remake symbiote into an elf each time you replay him?

Yes, he's a new entity and will -not- be an elf upon reentering the field. For the same reason that if someone bolts some creature with flash, you bounce it to your hand and play it again before the bolt resolves, the bolt is still countered upon resolution because it's original target doesn't exist--despite the physical card still being on the table.

[k2thej]

Yes, he's a new entity and will -not- be an elf upon reentering the field. For the same reason that if someone bolts some creature with flash, you bounce it to your hand and play it again before the bolt resolves, the bolt is still countered upon resolution because it's original target doesn't exist--despite the physical card still being on the table.

noooice

[BjoernEE]

no, they will not die because of +1/+1 off the Lord, right?

They will still die because the lord only gives other elves +1/+1, so the lord itself ends up being 0/0. However, if you have 2 lords in play it is possible.

[Vash]

mindbreak trap or Thorn Of Amethyst???
:confused:

[k2thej]

Thorn can be used against a lot of decks, but trap only helps against storm. Trap is better against storm since thorn gives them turn 1 (or 2 is you're on the draw) even if you have it in hand. So I'd say if you're really concerned about storm go trap, but if not go thorn (or neither, they're not super important)

[Godmode]

Ross Merriam (AKA theross) made top8 at the SCG Baltimore Legacy Open and is up a game right now in the Quarter-Finals playing with Maverick.

Congratulations to Mr. Merriam!

[NihilObstat]

Hey, grats for Ross!!!

And btw, Maverick is the other deck I play in Legacy next to Elves :-)

Both sweet, fun and strong decks. I just love having fun playing Magic while being competitive, not going S&T - Emrakul, concede? ...

Also, if lately I'm not reporting any info or tops I make with Elves is because I'm unfairly banned from the WPN for half a year... :-/

[Kich867]

Hey, grats for Ross!!!

And btw, Maverick is the other deck I play in Legacy next to Elves :-)

Both sweet, fun and strong decks. I just love having fun playing Magic while being competitive, not going S&T - Emrakul, concede? ...

Also, if lately I'm not reporting any info or tops I make with Elves is because I'm unfairly banned from the WPN for half a year... :-/

Jebus, how'd that happen?

In any event, I'm returning to elves after a stint with UR Delver. Has there been any recent developments with the deck?

I tried Living Wish again, I still feel it's a terrible card. There were too many times where I started to combo and couldn't find another nettle and wasn't hitting 1 drops, running into Living Wish caused me to fizzle twice by requiring to pay 3 mana for a nettle sentinel with no one-drop in hand. Had it been summoner's pact I could have played out a visionary or an arch-druid into more cards and taken it.

Putting key combo cards into your sideboard reduces their density in your opening hands and reduces the number of 1 drops in the deck while increasing the number of 3 drops in the deck.

I've only gotten to playtest against UW Stoneblade lately, the matchup seems fine--though a resolved and active jitte is pretty much game. Most games I either went off early enough or could drop a shaman over and over again to kill it, but sometimes I couldn't and I lost those games. Not sure if Zealot is better in these scenarios since he can pop at instant speed. Wirewood Symbiote helped a lot as well, but once he got wise to the combat tricks he could just remove symbiote prior to combat.

What's the consensus on the deck these days? Is the mono-green vengevine, splash vengevine, emrakul, or mirror entity lists looking the strongest?

[Zombie]

Been playing the Chris Andersen build against friends for a while now. Goddamnit I had forgotten how fun this deck was (last played back in Berlin times). The midrange-oriented version is a blast, and such a marked improvement over the old days. Just the fact that you actually have a long game is amazing.

What's puzzling about the Andersen sideboard to me is the lack of Enlightened Tutor. He packs multiple copies of basically everything, and all of that can be hit by Enlightened Tutor. Wouldn't some kind of E.Tutor package allow for more diversity for less slots? I'm especially bothered by the 1-of Jitte and Mortarpod which answer outs to you and no way to find them.

[Kich867]

Been playing the Chris Andersen build against friends for a while now. Goddamnit I had forgotten how fun this deck was (last played back in Berlin times). The midrange-oriented version is a blast, and such a marked improvement over the old days. Just the fact that you actually have a long game is amazing.

What's puzzling about the Andersen sideboard to me is the lack of Enlightened Tutor. He packs multiple copies of basically everything, and all of that can be hit by Enlightened Tutor. Wouldn't some kind of E.Tutor package allow for more diversity for less slots? I'm especially bothered by the 1-of Jitte and Mortarpod which answer outs to you and no way to find them.

You find them from comboing presumably.

[joemauer]

What's the consensus on the deck these days? Is the mono-green vengevine, splash vengevine, emrakul, or mirror entity lists looking the strongest?

I think the strongest elf deck is the mono green fauna/vengevine build, blind's build.

It sacrifices the fast combo match ups, so it can shore up the aggro control/control matchups. Fast combo was never favorable to elves, even with a devoted sideboard.

[blind]

:)

I have missed the top 8 this week (90 players tournament) :

5-1 before the last rounde but forced to play. I lose Vs Dredge 1-2.

I haven't changed my decklist (just -1 Dismember +1 Beast Within in SB).

[joemauer]

:)

I have missed the top 8 this week (90 players tournament) :

5-1 before the last rounde but forced to play. I lose Vs Dredge 1-2.

I haven't changed my decklist (just -1 Dismember +1 Beast Within in SB).

Hey blind. What was your other loss?
Why beast within? Did a singleton help you?

Final question, how is the new esper blade match up? I haven't tested it yet but it seems bad on paper. Jitte+ fliers+ perish + countermagic= bad?

[blind]

What was your other loss?

R1 win Vs High Tide (Carpet is priceless)
R2 lose Vs Burning Retrace Loam (with 4 Flame Jab MD)
R3 win Vs UGR Delver
R4 win Vs Patriot UWR
R5 win Vs UR Delver
R6 win Vs ANT
R7 lose Vs Dredge


Why beast within? Did a singleton help you?

For Jitte. Now Esper play Lingering Soul and Dismember is less strong. Beast within is good Vs Aven, Gaddock, Cage (for Natural Order).


I haven't tested it yet but it seems bad on paper. Jitte+ fliers+ perish + countermagic= bad?

yeah, NO + Prog is good because Esper play just 2 Perish (and 1 Persecution). This Mu is difficult, it's sure.

[MaximumC]

Not that this is news, but I was playtesting Christoffer Andersen's build against a Merfol deck today. It was packing some removal in the form of Echoing Truth, and otherwise was typical merfolk. I went 10-1, including two post-sideboard. I was impressed. I never missed Emrakul, and I was ripping him up with changeling regardless of how comboed I was. I only own one Gaea's Cradle, and in at least one game that really hurt; I had one in play, but needed to Crop Rotate for a second Cradle to really go off.

I had a few questions, though:

1) I ran two Eldrami's Call over the two Chords of Calling. My justification was the same as Anderson running Pridemage over Zealot: it costs less. Chord gets a creature for 3 green plus casting cost. Call gets a creature for 2 plus its cost. Note, however, that Chord has Convoke, and Call costs one white. Does anyone have experience running one over the other? I only once was hurting for white to tutor up something in all ten games.

2) At least four of the ten games I had a circumstance where I could go fetch something with Zenith but had no clear route to comboing in any way. In that circumstance, I always defaulted to assembling Witness + Symbiote. Is that the right way to do it?

[resum]

The main thing about chord that Eldrami's call and zenith don't give you is that they let you put creatures on the board at instant speed, so you can EOT get mirror entity or EOT get priest and gank them.

[Kich867]

2) At least four of the ten games I had a circumstance where I could go fetch something with Zenith but had no clear route to comboing in any way. In that circumstance, I always defaulted to assembling Witness + Symbiote. Is that the right way to do it?

Just out of curiosity here, you phrased witness + symbiote as if they have some interaction where there's very clearly none, or are you referring to paying 1 to turn it into an elf, bouncing it, and replaying it for 3?

This seems like a not-so-great interaction to be perfectly honest, though witness as a 1-of sounds amazing as a means of grabbing glimpse again.

[MaximumC]

Just out of curiosity here, you phrased witness + symbiote as if they have some interaction where there's very clearly none, or are you referring to paying 1 to turn it into an elf, bouncing it, and replaying it for 3?

This seems like a not-so-great interaction to be perfectly honest, though witness as a 1-of sounds amazing as a means of grabbing glimpse again.

Hah, you're totally right. When I said Witness, I meant Visionary. Hopefully my question makes more sense now!

I don't actually like Witness in the Gw version of this deck because you really do not have a critical card. Like the article explains, it's really just a swarm deck with the ability to violently explode if allowed.

[Eatatjoes]

So is stingerfling spider the best answer to linvala?

[.Ix]

I'm playing this soon, and I expect a fie with burn, dredge, and animator. What should my board look like? 4 faerie is a given, but I can'T think of a card to run against burn.

[Kich867]

I'm playing this soon, and I expect a fie with burn, dredge, and animator. What should my board look like? 4 faerie is a given, but I can'T think of a card to run against burn.

Just race them. They almost can't beat you by the time you beat them, if they spend cards sweeping or killing creatures, it puts them that many turns behind.

[joemauer]

So is stingerfling spider the best answer to linvala?

Dismember

[Koby]

Dismember

If you're already splashing for :w: with Mirror Entity then StP is better.

[Augustas]

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/avr/0c5uhsdutp_en.jpg

I think we have a new reasonible win condition :)

[catmint]

Craterhoof vs. Regal Force
The scenario when Regal force is worse is if you untap with a lot of dudes and win the same turn by attacking for a million with Craterhoof without casting glimpse, but where you would not have enough mana to start the combo after Regal Force resolved. In my experience resolving a regal force is a win... and very often in the same turn.

-> Advantage in a very very narrow scenario.
-> In case you cannot win the same turn with Regal Force, you pass the turn with a full hand.
-> Often you build up mana by playing elves with summoning sickness -> that mana is useless with crater, but nuts with Regal Force

Craterhoof vs. Emrakul:
you need at least 2-3 untapped/hasty creatures to bash with a couple of "20+/20+" in your combo turn. Since that is hard to achieve, it is strictly worse than Emrakul. If I play a wincon which I am willing to pass a turn in some scenarios I would go with Mirror Entity.

Craterhoof can be tutored with GSZ/Pact and Emrakul not: Just tutor for Regal Force

It will see play because people like to play new cards, but I think it makes the deck worse.

[Godmode]

That's awful for elves. That card doesn't have nothing to do with Regal nor Emrakul, it would take consistensy of the deck and it would be a win-more con...

No thank you

[.Ix]

Went 4-1 last night. One pack and the FNM Dismember for me, and I pulled Sorin and Elbrus!

This is the list I played:

4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Green Sun's Zenith

4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Llanowar Elves
1 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Priest of Titania
2 Quirion Ranger
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Sylvan Messenger
1 Regal Force
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

14 Forest

SB:
2 Carpet of Flowers
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Dismember
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Nature's Claim

R1 Quest (dafuq?)

G1: Turn 1 he played a Doomed Traveler. I thought it would be a cakewalk, then he plays a turn 2 Jitte. I play an archdruid so he has to waste counters on something before I try to combo. He equips, attacks, I take the damage, he kills the druid. I topdeck a pact, pact for Viridian Shaman, destroy the Jitte, and let out a sigh of relief. I pay the pact mana with two forest, one llanowar, and an ESG. I combo soon after.
G2: I go off turn 3.

R2 Merfolk

G1 He counters my glimpse and beats me down with some fish.
G2 I side in 2 Carpet, 3 Dismember, 3 Nature's Claim. I don't have Glimpse, but I have Visionary, Priest of Titania, Wirewood Symbiote. Somehow I manage to find a Crossroads and play a Regal Force, then untap-chain into a Warcaller for 13 counters. He then bounces it EOT. I replay it next turn and he concedes.
G3 I never saw Vials or Jitte, so I took out Nature's Claim, thinking he didn't have them. He FOWs a Heritage druid and I glimpse and win. I saw him playing later on with TWO vials on the field. Hah!

R3 Dredge

G1 Faithless Looting turn 1, drops two GGT. I play elf, go. He plays Careful Study, dredges a ton of good stuff, and DOES NOT CABAL THERAPY ME while I had two glimpse in hand. Went off turn 2.
G2 He mulls to four and bricks. I win.

R4 RUG Tempo

G1 I mull to 5 and keep a hand with 2 Elvish Visionary, 1 Wirewood. Two Spell Snares and a Lavamancer later, I lost.
G2 I board in 3 Dismember, 2 Carpet and 3 Thorn of Amethyst. I keep a hand with Visionary and Wirewood again. Couldn't get to a position where I could actually win the game.

R5 Affinity

G1 He plays stuff, I go off turn 2 with Birchlore in hand.
G2 He plays stuff, I play Llanowar. He plays Frogmite and swings with Memnite. He DARKBLASTS my elf?! I play a Visionary to dig for a symbiote or the combo. He kills it again. He attacks until I'm down to 9 life, then he stops dredging the Darkblast. I've only been playing lands up to this point, and I'm at 4 lands, 2 Nettle Sentinel, 2 Heritage Druid, 1 Glimpse and I went off.


Got pretty lucky last night, and I never had to aggro to win. RUG Tempo seems like something I'd need more board slots for. Elvish Champions for Priest of Titania, maybe? The priests are too slow in that matchup, and they get Spell Snared. Champions are also good in the mirror, as well as other decks like Junk and Maverick. I sided out the Sylvan Messenger in many matchups, so maybe it should stay in the board and come in against midrange or control opponents.

[Infinitium]

I'm playing this soon, and I expect a fie with burn, dredge, and animator. What should my board look like? 4 faerie is a given, but I can'T think of a card to run against burn.

Essence Warden is pretty monstrous versus burn (and sligh in general) and is acceptable versus storm combo as well.

[Godmode]

Playing with the Christoffer Andersen's list (with one Ezuri in the place of the 3rd Birchlore), Leon Kornacki made it to the Top8 at the SCG Phoenix Legacy Open event. He lost 2-1 in the Quarterfinals against Adam Prosak (RUG Delver).

Leon Kornacki vs. Adam Prosak: http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/quarterfinals_leon_kornacki_vs.html

Leon Kornacki's elven horde: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=45469

MD:

1 Dryad Arbor
2 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Mirror Entity
4 Nettle Sentinel
2 Priest of Titania
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader

1 Crop Rotation
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Chord of Calling

1 Pendelhaven
2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Savannah
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Forest


SB:

2 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Faerie Macabre
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Absolute Law
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Progenitus
4 Natural Order

[Anfylion]

What do you think about "cavern of souls"? i see it as a 4-off, or minimum 3-off, however it can cause problems with quirion ranger or wasteland... but is a nice card for us, i think

[blind]

SB:

2 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Faerie Macabre
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Absolute Law
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Progenitus
4 Natural Order

Elesh? Really?


What do you think about "cavern of souls"? i see it as a 4-off, or minimum 3-off, however it can cause problems with quirion ranger or wasteland... but is a nice card for us, i think

I am not sure it's good MD, maybe a good SB card.

[joemauer]

I don't think cavern of souls is a good idea in elves, I could end up wrong though.

One of elves strengths is being wasteland proof. Very rarely do I care if my creature gets countered. Removal is more a problem than counters for elves. The only creature that I typically need to resolve is scavenging ooze, not an elf.

In fact, I believe the non creature spells are more important to resolve:GSZ, Glimpse of Nature, and Natural Order. However, if counterbalance ever became a DTB again than this land would be a staple in at the least our sideboards.