[Deck] Elves Combo

[catmint]

Congrats Danyul! Sounded like fun racing an emrakul. :)

I am thinking about possibiliteis to keep playing elves successfully vs. blue decks with 4 FoW and 4 MM.
I see the primary problem not that glimpse is not able to resolve, but more the problem that it will be very hard to build up our board for a regal force with quirion, wirewood and heritage countered + the existing spot removal for the lords, that we already face today.

xantid swarm is a one drop so probably not the best idea. Plus easily removed...
Vexing shusher ...looks good and also helps to resolve other spells. downside: vulnerable to spot removal. Never tested but some of you made good experiences with it i think.

Did anyone ever test
Defense Grid

Playing in Turn 2 it surely makes us 1 turn slower (so does shusher), but the next 2-3 turns we should cribble the ability to counter and/or force them not to play anyhtin in their main phases.
+ Biggest advantage I think that it does not die to bolt/swords/fire-ice/lavamancer ...
+ there is also additional value in making the spot removal in our turn or the brainstorm EOT less attractive.
- Disadvantage... it can be countered. :)
- we cannot tutor so need to run 3-4 in SB to have access.

[k2thej]

Congrats Danyul! Sounded like fun racing an emrakul. :)

I am thinking about possibiliteis to keep playing elves successfully vs. blue decks with 4 FoW and 4 MM.
I see the primary problem not that glimpse is not able to resolve, but more the problem that it will be very hard to build up our board for a regal force with quirion, wirewood and heritage countered + the existing spot removal for the lords, that we already face today.

xantid swarm is a one drop so probably not the best idea. Plus easily removed...
Vexing shusher ...looks good and also helps to resolve other spells. downside: vulnerable to spot removal. Never tested but some of you made good experiences with it i think.

Did anyone ever test
Defense Grid

Playing in Turn 2 it surely makes us 1 turn slower (so does shusher), but the next 2-3 turns we should cribble the ability to counter and/or force them not to play anyhtin in their main phases.
+ Biggest advantage I think that it does not die to bolt/swords/fire-ice/lavamancer ...
+ there is also additional value in making the spot removal in our turn or the brainstorm EOT less attractive.
- Disadvantage... it can be countered. :)
- we cannot tutor so need to run 3-4 in SB to have access.

Grid seems really similar to shusher with the following downsides:
-Not a 2/2 body
-Does not activate glimpse
-Cannot tutor for it
-Can be countered

I think shusher seems a lot better

[catmint]

If forgot the downside that it does not draw for glimpse.
But I think his 2/2 body is his biggest disadvantage and not an advantage!!

However K2, in your list without GSZ you cannot tutor for shusher in turn 2 (which is the most important time I think).
That's why you are running 4 in SB right?

[k2thej]

If forgot the downside that it does not draw for glimpse.
But I think his 2/2 body is his biggest disadvantage and not an advantage!!

However K2, in your list without GSZ you cannot tutor for shusher in turn 2 (which is the most important time I think).
That's why you are running 4 in SB right?

I mean it's certainly not out of the question on turn 2, but ya I def have to be a lot more cautious about it than with GSZ. Post board we can run 3 md and on in board, leaving him still able to be wished for as well.

[Atikin]

Dan in round 4 game 1 how did you cast 5 dudes turn 2 then got hymned and still found emrakul turn 3?

[danyul]

I went back and tried to reconstruct my turns but, like I said, I didn't take notes so I was going by "feel" instead of actual accuracy. That was my scientific approach. I just remember game 1 feeling very easy. And I remember not fearing his Hymns.

My "like five elves" was probably four, the fifth being the Archdruid itself. And if I topdecked a Living Wish with two of the five elves being Quirion Rangers, then hitting 17 mana isn't a problem.

In the future I'll try to actually take notes before I go about writing a report. At this point my memory is so hazy that I might have been playing Affinity Caw Blade Rock and his Minions Elves for all I know.

[catmint]

As I already wrote I spend some thinking about how we can be successful in the future versus blue shells with 4 FoW & 4 MM. Probably the answer is … not really, but my local tourney this Wednesday brought up some surprise.
I met a guy playing combo elves with a NO Progenitus plan in the maindeck and no archdruids. My reaction was that I started to explain him why archdruid is the best card and that his combo is weakened significantly. He disagreed of course so we sat down and did some goldfishing.
First of here is his list he finished 3rd in the tourney:
(Before you click reply and start arguing that this is a different deck and so on please read what’s below the list)

Creatures
4 Priest of Titania
3 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
3 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Progenitus
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Instants
4 Summoner's Pact

Sorceries
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Natural Order

Lands
16 Forest

SB
4 Krosan Grip
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Terastodon
1 Empyrial Archangel


The goldfish results (again 71 games in MWS) were surprising:

T2 started 1% finisehd sucessfully 100%
T3 started 61% finished successfully 81% - cast NO for Prog 20%
T4 started 13% finished successfully 78% - cast NO for Prog 3%
Mulligan 7%

If you compare it to the goldfishing I’ve done with the list I play currently:

T2 started 13% finisehd sucessfully 67%
T3 started 46% finished successfully 97%
T4 started 23% finished successfully 94%
Mulligan 10%

I have no explanation why Turn 2 is so low with the NO list, because it needs the same cards as in my other list to start T2 and is even more likely to draw it because heritage is not in the board. So I think this is a result of variance.What I find pretty impressive is that the combo is NOT weakened by adding NO significantly. In fact if we want to go for a turn 3 kill NO is the cheapest regal force ever. If we have to we can still play out our hand, cast NO for regal force and hope to draw the win. In some extreme combo situations I also played NO for wirewood to return a visionary, but these scenarios do not really matter. You can also see that in 96% of the cases there is either a win or a Progenitus by Turn 4. That’s what I call consistency. In terms of consistent combo finish it can of course not be as strong as my list or K2’s (which does not know what fizzling is). It is obviously a result of 16 lands and other dead or bad cards when comboing. This can be optimized for sure, however I don’t weigh that factor that strong, because many fizzle situations still lead to 10+ permanents and 10+ cards which is usually also a win.

What is much more important is how NO plays in real life and not in a goldfish setup. Compared to Living wish or Green Sun’s Zenit it is a 1 card combo that can win many matchups on its own and we have very easy access to it in turn 3 and sometimes turn 2. That provides a lot of opportunities to vary our strategy vs. control. We can play NO (sacrificing 1 elf is not a drama) and see if they can deal with that. We keep our hand and can still go for the combo 1 or 2 turns later. Compared to the other “Plan B’s” this has the big advantage that we don’t have to play out our hand. Going aggro like K2, IBA or Mr. Safety like to do requires that you play a lot of elves + lords. Casting a regal force with wish or pact (my favorite play) requires to play out your hand so you draw the maximum number cards. Both strategies are more “all-in” and more vulnerable to hate than just casting a NO for Progenitus with 4-6 cards in hand. No doubt that Progenitus wins much more games than archdruid/elvish champion does in aggro mode and also has better defense abilities.

Another sweet thing is that Progenitus is very strong versus decks that play cards which cause us a lot of trouble and require artifact removal (canonist, chalice, trinisphere, jitte). If these cards are out and we have a progenitus it is often good game. Without it so far I needed some artifact removal or go off before jitte is active.

Also very good is that NO gives new sideboard options. Empyrial Archangel is probably the best thing we can bring up versus burn/zoo and it would be lovely to play it once pyrostatic pilllar is out. Terastodon can punish tight manabases or decks that rely on special cards and woodfall primus is a nice option to play against Perish.

Unfortunately there are also downsides to this strategy. Not having archdruid makes the deck fold to Engineered Plague and boarding in removal for a deck that (might) have plague or only plays plague and no other artifacts or enchantments is not very attractive. I therefore would adapt the deck and put at least 1 archdruid instead of 1 forest in the MD and 1-2 in the sideboard.

Concerning lands: I played a lot with 13 forest (8 fetches) +1 cradle, recently played 14 forest (8 fetches) and now this deck has 16 (in words SIXTEEN) basic forests and it still very strong in comboing.  It fizzled more as you can see in the number “finished successfully”, so I definitely think this can be cut and it might be worth to add fetches to thin out the library. However, I would not go down to 14 but rather play 15. Reason is that you don’t have to be that afraid of keeping a suboptimal hand, because chances are big that you have to mull down to 4-5 for some land and take whatever is given to you. The rock solid manabase of 15 forest also helps to just have natural land drops when your dudes are killed, so you can get to the “4 mana + 1 creature + NO” setup in 1 turn without being very vulnerable to removal/MM.

Concerning Wirewood Symbiote. I know you all love him and I do as well. However if we do not rely that much on the visionary/symbiote draw engine and we do not need that many combat tricks because we have Progenitus, I think the decision to cut him down to 3 is ok. It is still very valuable when comboing, but the downside is that it sucks to have multiples when all you want is elves in turn 2-3 to cast NO or glimpse.

[Atikin]

The issue is that progenitus can't race combo or zoo, some of our tougher match ups. A turn 3 progenitus is still only a turn 4-5 win and it wrong to evaluate goldfishes with the game ending the turn progenitus is cast.

[Koby]

While it's a bonus that you can NO for Regal Force, drawing either Pro or NO in the middle of the combo turn is effectively dead draws. Moreover, it does not answer the sweepers or common attack step blockers that this deck is already vulnerable to. Perish particularly, but also Moat, Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, all invalidate Progenitus.

It certainly is a good choice against some decks to bring in from the Sideboard, but Maindeck I feel as though the NO/Pro option is rather weak and dilutes the power of Combo Elves.

However, to be truly effective in this deck I think that adding Elvish Spirit Guide to help cast Natural Order to be very important, as it speeds up casting Natural Order to turn 2 with a manaelf draw. Some decks can deal with a turn 3 Progenitus. Not many can deal with a Turn 2 Progenitus.

[lorddotm]

While it's a bonus that you can NO for Regal Force, drawing either Pro or NO in the middle of the combo turn is effectively dead draws. Moreover, it does not answer the sweepers or common attack step blockers that this deck is already vulnerable to. Perish particularly, but also Moat, Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, all invalidate Progenitus.

It certainly is a good choice against some decks to bring in from the Sideboard, but Maindeck I feel as though the NO/Pro option is rather weak and dilutes the power of Combo Elves.

But without it, does the deck have enough to survive? Misstep counters Glimpse out of every colour.

[Koby]

MM counters half the deck. So what? If they counter your first elf, you're not casting NO on turn 2/3 anyway.

Hence the push towards GSZ and Living Wish to provide variance in the mana cost. The Manalord list is very capable of casting Emrakul without the aid of Glimpse.

[catmint]

The issue is that progenitus can't race combo or zoo, some of our tougher match ups. A turn 3 progenitus is still only a turn 4-5 win and it wrong to evaluate goldfishes with the game ending the turn progenitus is cast.
Who said that I evaluate casting Progenitus as game ending? Of course it does not helps versus combo, but it also does not significantly hurt it. The combo matchup is bad preboard with any elf-list. Btw: versus combo post board: how about NO for terastodon to blow off their lands while they duress you for mindbreak trap?

The zoo matchup was winnable before and a Progenitus or Empyrial Archangel help a lot!


While it's a bonus that you can NO for Regal Force, drawing either Pro or NO in the middle of the combo turn is effectively dead draws. Moreover, it does not answer the sweepers or common attack step blockers that this deck is already vulnerable to. Perish particularly, but also Moat, Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, all invalidate Progenitus.

First: NO is not always dead when comboing. If you have 5 Mana it is the cheapest regal force ever!
And in some situations you can also cast NO for untapper or visionary – you can compare it to GSZ while comboing, you miss the draw and it costs 1-2 mana more…

Second: I compared the NO-Prog plan to the plan of going aggro with archdruids,… Which of the cards you named is Progenitus vulnerable to that a bunch of elves is not? If you expect a control silver bullet you can still try to go for the combo win. As shown in my goldfish this plan is not hurt significantly by having NO-Prog. Besides Prog is a faster clock which is important vs. control silver bullets. On the other thand the list is long of things that a bunch of elves are vulnerable to but progenitus is not. Common things like a simple Goyf, Jitte, KotR, Swords any targeted removal,…
Post-Board NO for Terastodon helps versus silver bulllets except for Humility of course.

Third: Vs. Perish of course the combo win is the best. However if black is a splash you can use Terastodon to blow off their black mana-sources. If woodfall primus is strong enough vs. decks that run perish has to be tested. The biggest advantage is though: you don’t have to play out your hand to cast NO, if the board is perished, you can still combo off with cards in you hand!


It certainly is a good choice against some decks to bring in from the Sideboard, but Maindeck I feel as though the NO/Pro option is rather weak and dilutes the power of Combo Elves. .

That’s what I felt as well before I tested it.


However, to be truly effective in this deck I think that adding Elvish Spirit Guide to help cast Natural Order to be very important, as it speeds up casting Natural Order to turn 2 with a manaelf draw. Some decks can deal with a turn 3 Progenitus. Not many can deal with a Turn 2 Progenitus.

That is a very good idea, thanks!


MM counters half the deck. So what? If they counter your first elf, you're not casting NO on turn 2/3 anyway.
Hence the push towards GSZ and Living Wish to provide variance in the mana cost. The Manalord list is very capable of casting Emrakul without the aid of Glimpse.
The problem of the 1st turn mana-elf countered is always there. Another reason I lean towards 15 forests. Competent players will know how your deck works and I doubt it will be easy to cast regal force or even Emrakul without quirion or wirewood, once MM is there. Don’t forget that decks that have 4 MM, 4 FoW often also like to run bolts, swords, grim lavamancer or fire ice. This was prime disruption so far already, even without MM!! I tested it.. hitting them with a NO is very good!

Anyway, if we already have a board full of elves and mana, it does not a big difference if we wish for the win or NO for regal force for the win. The situations that matter are the ones where we are tight and disrupted! For example:
You have no glimpse: 2 elves & 2 lands in play and the opponent has an active lavamancer or some kind of spot removal (Very common scenario!!). what would you prefer having in your hand a lord and a living wish or a simple NO?

[kicks_422]

Just throwing this out here for comments, something I ended up with after taking my old Elf Staff list and tweaking it a bit.

// Lands
12 [UNH] Forest

// Creatures
4 [M11] Llanowar Elves
1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 [M11] Elvish Archdruid
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
4 [ON] Birchlore Rangers
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [US] Priest of Titania
1 [CFX] Progenitus

// Spells
3 [CH] Concordant Crossroads
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [FD] Staff of Domination
4 [VI] Natural Order

So many angles of attack - Glimpse, Priest/Archdruid + Staff, Order->Prog, Emrakul ramp. It might not be better than the Living Wish / Pact versions though.

[catmint]

Just throwing this out here for comments, something I ended up with after taking my old Elf Staff list and tweaking it a bit.

// Lands
12 [UNH] Forest

// Creatures
4 [M11] Llanowar Elves
1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 [M11] Elvish Archdruid
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [SC] Wirewood Symbiote
4 [ON] Birchlore Rangers
4 [EVE] Nettle Sentinel
4 [MOR] Heritage Druid
4 [US] Priest of Titania
1 [CFX] Progenitus

// Spells
3 [CH] Concordant Crossroads
4 [CHK] Glimpse of Nature
3 [FD] Staff of Domination
4 [VI] Natural Order

So many angles of attack - Glimpse, Priest/Archdruid + Staff, Order->Prog, Emrakul ramp. It might not be better than the Living Wish / Pact versions though.



I was also thinking about Staff of Dominiation since it reads basically like this "If you control an active archdruid or a priest and 4 more elves you win the game". I never tested how good this plays out...

The turn 3 win with Staff is only possible if we have a setup (active lord + 4 elves) that would also give us a Regal Force win. But on the other hand without an active lord Staff is pretty useless and horrible in multiples. So if at all, I would only consider to run it once.

Besides that some general comments to your list:

This is not really combo elves anymore in the sense of casting emrakul after glimpse. This won't happen that often.

I played with 12,13 & 14, forest and now I use 15. In my experience we mulligan to often or get disrupted a lot where land drops help a lot! Especially if you running NO!

you only play 4 Manaelf. That won't be enough. 6-8 is common to have consistent acceleration.

you don't need Birchlore. He is used by optimized glimpse lists like K2's to increase the Turn 2 combo percentage.

you should have Regal Force, because it is a Gamebreaker and a 2nd NO target!

concordant crossroads is questionable and running 3 probably not a good idea.

Without Visionary, pacts and Regal Force you are not able to have a win off a glimpse very often.

In general I think you have too much of a mix in there and therefore loose the primary ability to make a ton of mana an win consistently in turn 3.

[NihilObstat]

I was also thinking about Staff of Dominiation since it reads basically like this "If you control an active archdruid or a priest and 4 more elves you win the game"

An active Lord + Symbiote + Mirror entity also reads, "you win the game".
With the positive side that Entity is wishable, is a creature, is an elf, you don't need an active lord to win with him.

I actually run Entity over Emrakul, as my Wish wincon.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Entity would be great were he green. I don't personally find it appealing to splash in a very tight manabase.

Also, while I can certainly see the argument for Natural Order, I'm not sure how it requires or justifies cutting Archdruids.

[NihilObstat]

I don't personally find it appealing to splash in a very tight manabase.

Responding to you, and just so anyone can comment on it if they want. This is my current list, and it's working Wonders, no joke, amazingly stable and powerful:

2 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Fyndhorn elves
4 Heritage druid
4 Llanowar elves
4 Nettle sentinel
4 Priest of titania
4 Quirion ranger
1 Regal force
4 Wirewood symbiote
4 Summoner's pact
13 Forest
4 Glimpse of nature
3 Living wish

SIDE:
4 Thorn of amethyst
1 Joraga warcaller
1 Masticore
1 Mirror entity
1 Regal Force
1 Sylvok replica
1 Vexing shusher
1 Viridian shaman
2 Krosan grip
1 Gaea's cradle
1 Karakas

Explanation:
-I'm not running ESG, because the best aspect about it is landing Titania turn 1, and I didn't see it happening too frequently nor T1 or T2 making that much of a difference. I might add 1 ESG, though, for Pact.
-The only change I'd make to the MD would be adding 1 Fyndhorn or Forest, and cutting 1 Birchlore, maybe.
-Thorn of amethyst is a metacall, just as only 1 Vexing shusher is against blue. I feel that the wish list doesn't fear Blue at all, unless it is a T2 set up CounterTop or TeamAmerica.
-Mirror entity could be Emrakul. In 3 months I've never missed Emmy, but won some games exclusively thx to Mirror.
-I find myself only using Viridian shaman against Affinity which is already and auto-win so I think I'll take her out. When do you guys need her?
-Karakas is currently there for testing, but it's not a fix spot.

So the list is design to be very powerful on turn 3 and 4 and almost Always be able to win then, which isn't as good as turn 2, but it still is a super fast clock, and faster than 95% of decks in Legacy, and then Thorns come in to stop the fastest machines.
I might add Compost, because I still find monoblack, or any hard discard to be a tough matchup.

I welcome you to try the list, and see how it works for you ;)

[catmint]

Responding to you, and just so anyone can comment on it if they want. This is my current list, and it's working Wonders, no joke, amazingly stable and powerful:
...

I feel that the wish list doesn't fear Blue at all, unless it is a T2 set up CounterTop or TeamAmerica.
...


The list is pretty similar to many lists we all played and you are right it has proven to be reliable and stable. I would call it "8 lords - wish & pact", with a little uncommon configuration of manaelves/birchlore. ... Not worth discussing I think...

However, if you don't fear blue you probably did not play versus competent players. Wish is not good versus blue, because it is slow, can be spell snared and they can see it coming and are prepared.

A list like U/W landstill which is almost like monoblue control as we saw 2nd and 3rd in the last SCG Open has 4 MM, 4 Spell Snare, 3 Counterspell, 4 FoW, 3 Swords, 2 Vedalkan Shackles, 4 Repeal, 4 Standstill and of course 4 Jace... I am curious how often you resolve living wish for shusher.
The 4 shusher in the SB of K2 have a bigger chance of helping you post-board.

The sad thing is that with MM such a boring strategy is really strong now. 1 for 1 (sometimes 2 for 1) every spell, standstill and jace. Not sure how many people in my local meta are going to try to adapt such a deck, but even without the full budget version it can be very annyoing to play against it. We can always change deck but if we want to stick to our lovely green dudes, we need a better plan than wishing for shusher!

With every spell beeing countered it also does not make sense of runnig defense grid or thorn of amethyst. 4 shusher might be nice here, but can still be spot removed and makes us a turn slower. I would like to test summoning trap, because it does not make us a turn slower and we can sometimes get a regal force, emmy or progenitus if lucky and always some elf to replace what was countered.

[Koby]

In such a metagame a maindeck Shusher might be the right call too. As you can find it with Pact or GSZ, this would help the matchup in G1, where you are most vulnerable.

Choke might also be a good consideration, as it punishes monoblue moreso than other hate cards. Lastly, TSUNAMI! The Elf Advantage might be a better deck to run in this type of metagame, as we're highly dependent on a few key spells to make this deck work well. Removal of the mana engine, backed with Jace and protected by Mishra's Factory is both very obnoxious to fight through, and very demoralizing.

[NihilObstat]

A list like U/W landstill which is almost like monoblue control as we saw 2nd and 3rd in the last SCG Open has 4 MM, 4 Spell Snare, 3 Counterspell, 4 FoW, 3 Swords, 2 Vedalkan Shackles, 4 Repeal, 4 Standstill and of course 4 Jace... I am curious how often you resolve living wish for shusher.

No Daze, anymore? MM is definitely a pain in the ass, because they freely waste it on a turn 1 Llanowar, which makes our clock a lot slower. Other than FOW and MM, the cards shouldn't be a big problem. Counterspell, Shackles, Spell snare, and the rest are either too slow or inefficient against us. Spell snare countering Wish isn't a big problem, we can still combo through glimpse or pact or another Wish, and they'll need mana open anyway.

What I tend to fear about blue would be costless spells, if they've substituted Daze with MM that's just fine with me. Certainly MM hurts more, but they're still just 8 cards, which they already had (Daze+FOW).

[abel_lg]

I haven't read the last pages of this thread, and don't know if were mentioned yet, but... What about including Noxious Revival? It works fine recycling wasted Glimpses and other useful cards. Helps a lot to goldfish with an active Glimpse to recover Glimpse and re-cast it (with one should be enough but it fixes the cases in which we begin to combo out and don't finish comboing). It's mana free (or simple G) and instant speed. Little issue is that it recovers to the top of the library instead to hand, but with an active Glimpse or a Visionary it doesn't matter.

[Mr. Safety]

I haven't read the last pages of this thread, and don't know if were mentioned yet, but... What about including Noxious Revival? It works fine recycling wasted Glimpses and other useful cards. Helps a lot to goldfish with an active Glimpse to recover Glimpse and re-cast it (with one should be enough but it fixes the cases in which we begin to combo out and don't finish comboing). It's mana free (or simple G) and instant speed. Little issue is that it recovers to the top of the library instead to hand, but with an active Glimpse or a Visionary it doesn't matter.

I like the idea a lot...it would be like functionally playing 2 glimpses (if it resolves, get it back with Revival, play an elf, play your 2nd Glimpse, go go go!)

[Atikin]

I haven't read the last pages of this thread, and don't know if were mentioned yet, but... What about including Noxious Revival? It works fine recycling wasted Glimpses and other useful cards. Helps a lot to goldfish with an active Glimpse to recover Glimpse and re-cast it (with one should be enough but it fixes the cases in which we begin to combo out and don't finish comboing). It's mana free (or simple G) and instant speed. Little issue is that it recovers to the top of the library instead to hand, but with an active Glimpse or a Visionary it doesn't matter.

It doesnt do anything on it's own and requires a spell in the graveyard. It also puts it on top instead of in hand which is terrible.

[Infinitium]

Seeing as neither Reclaim nor Regrowth has ever seen play in competitive Elf lists to the best of my knowledge, I think it's pretty safe to assume that Revival won't either. Eternal Witness is probably an all around better choice if you want extra virtual Glimpses since it's easily tutored as a 1-of to retain your threat density (and even then getting Symbiote/Visionary is arguably stronger in most circumstances).

[Mr. Safety]

Sure...but I'm going to try it out anyways. I will be testing a miser's copy as card #61.

Honestly, I didn't know Reclaim existed until just now. I knew it was better than Regrowth because of it being free...but I didn't know Reclaim was even printed.

[Atikin]

Sure...but I'm going to try it out anyways. I will be testing a miser's copy as card #61.

Honestly, I didn't know Reclaim existed until just now. I knew it was better than Regrowth because of it being free...but I didn't know Reclaim was even printed.

Youre testing a 1-of card that you cant tutor for? There wont really be enough games where you draw it in order to tell if it helped or not.

[catmint]

I dont think running a card that puts something on top of our library is good. Minus card advantage and very slow!

The elve deck gets resilience due to redundancy and speed rather than protection or reuse utility cards. I tried it with eternall witness and GSZ and also a black splash for diabolic intent. These techs's don't work that great, because it is counter productive for the plan "play elves and do something great with your fast mana" ( glimpse, NO, Regal Force, Aggro or other stuff like Staff of Domination).

[Mr. Safety]

Points taken...but, with me being the bull-headed stubborn a-hole that I am, it will still be attempted.

I use Grapeshot as my win/con...and ALL the games I've been able to play a 2nd Glimpse I've won, without exception. I don't have a way to tutor Glimpse, but having another way to get it would be great. I'm also looking at the new challenge of working around Mental Misstep. Chances are good once you play a turn 1 Fyndhorn/Llanowar Elves, they've clued in that you are either playing Tribal/Combo Elves...so they will look for Glimpse of Nature to be their MM target (if they are experienced, or even just GOOD, players) It would be nice to have an instant speed way to get that Glimpse back for next turn, possibly (hopefully!) before Counterbalance shows up.

I will most likely answer my own quandry by looking at Regal Force again, lol. He's essentially Glimpse #5, and IS tutorable. Refer to line #1 of this post on why I'm still trying it, lol. :tongue:

[k2thej]

Any Elves players playing GP Providence tomorrow?

[NihilObstat]

Any Elves players playing GP Providence tomorrow?

I'm sure there'll be plenty ^^ Hope they do well :)

So, playing elves after MM has proven a bit more complicated than I expected, even when I'm running a more varied CMC list. Standstill, and hard control decks have become a lot more powerful. Now they can counter our turn 1 Llanowar, when back in the time they wouldn't Daze it unless they got a super slow hand, or simply couldn't if we started...

[Koby]

I was playing against BUG Landstill last nite, and that was a monster of a matchup. MM to counter any source of card advantage, Deed to reset the board. Ouch.

I almost managed to win a Sb game by decking them; but it was rough. I slow-rolled the Landstills until I made him discard, then followed up with discard to clear the way for a few creatures. Had I drawn a Living Wish earlier, it may have allowed me to gain a few more turns to deck Landstill.

Vengevine, Masked Admirers, and Thrun might be the way to play out this matchup.
EDIT: I also brought in KGrips against Deeds. Those helped a little bit.

[Mr. Safety]

I was playing against BUG Landstill last nite, and that was a monster of a matchup. MM to counter any source of card advantage, Deed to reset the board. Ouch.

I almost managed to win a Sb game by decking them; but it was rough. I slow-rolled the Landstills until I made him discard, then followed up with discard to clear the way for a few creatures. Had I drawn a Living Wish earlier, it may have allowed me to gain a few more turns to deck Landstill.

Vengevine, Masked Admirers, and Thrun might be the way to play out this matchup.

Is an Intuition/Vengevine sideboard worth playtesting?

[Koby]

Anything is worth testing. Whether it fits your style and worth the sideboard space is another matter. Consider if it helps you win matches you otherwise couldn't before.

[bakofried]

Wait, Safety, you don't play with Regal Force? I would go so far to say he's part of the core of the deck.

[Godmode]

An Elves deck (12 wins and two losses) was 1 round away from top8 Grand Prix Providence (lost to 2nd place - hive mind)


See on the bottom of the page "Brian Eleyet (Hive Five) vs. Ross Merriam (Elves)"

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gppro11/day2

Can anybody get that list? I can't find it.

[theross]

Hey guys, this is Ross Merriam. I'd like to share my list and some thoughts after the GP. Had a rough matchup in the last round for top8 where I was turn3ed both games with a counterspell. Almost any other pairing and I think i'd be writing about a top8 or more since I was ranching all weekend (and 10-3ed my die rolls after 2 byes). I finished with the 3rd highest game win percentage in the tournament since 8 of my 10 match wins were 2-0s. Onto the list:

2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves (This is essentially just a 4 of but the split is optimal in a world of Phyrexian Revoker, Cabal Therapy, Meddling Mage, etc. It's not a large edge, but it is still an edge)
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote (Best creature in the deck, not close)
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Priests of Titania (I tend to think of this as a tutor-able cradle)
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Green Sun's Zenith (Best non-land in the deck, not close)
3 Summoner's Pact (The 4th one here could be better than the Birchlore Rangers unless Hive Mind catches on, as of now it's the 61st card)
4 Glimpse of Nature (Obv)

4 Gaea's Cradle (Best card in the deck, not even remotely close)
4 Wooded Foothills (Can be any green fetchland)
4 Verdant Catacombs (Ditto unless you want the basic swamp which I cut after Vestal)
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Forest

SB:
4 Buried Alive
4 Vengevine (Mostly there for decks with hymn to tourach and perish since they are typically cold to it)
4 Cabal Therapy (Obligatory combo hate)
2 Beast Within (Catch-all that replaced Krosan Grip since I expected very little counterbalance---Peacekeepers were selling out on Friday so I expected to bring these in mainly against UW landstill. I of course never played that matchup)
1 Mortarpod (Alternate win condition with additional utility if you feel it necessary)

Before any further explanation, I'd like to give credit for the majority of this list where it is due, to Matt Sperling. I began preparing for Providence a few months ago since I don't play much legacy and would have to borrow many many cards, thus necessitating my deck choice be made early. In a 15 round event, I reasoned my best shot would be by playing many non-interactive matches where I was making the most powerful play available in the format...hard-casting emrakul. However, I also wanted the ability to grind out games if necessary. While reading through a Sperling article on Channel Fireball I read over his list and it looked very interesting. I was familiar with the deck from it's time in extended and decided to give it a try. Instantly impressed, I locked myself in early and began to tune. I played a few events at Jupiter games to get some tournament practice and the last one went fairly well with me splitting the finals with the eventual winner of the GP. (The first one didn't go as well; I didn't play cradle so my list was embarrassing, as was my play. Turns out when you have all one drops the number of lines of play is staggeringly large.) I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Mental Misstep wasn't even a large problem since most players didn't know what to counter other than glimpse and it was easy to either bait or overwhelm. Once acqiuring the necessary cards (big thanks to Ray Robillard and Paul Serignese for this one) I was ready to make my first day 2.

I don't really have match notes, but very few of my games were close. My only loss day 1 was to sneaky show when he had the sneak attack both games where show and tell would've given me the win, which is really how the matchup was decided in my limited testing. I managed to beat ANT when he fizzled game 2 by brainstorming into thoughtseize at 2 life so he couldn't empty his hand of blanks to hellbent tutor at the end of a ritual chain. He then mulled game 3 and duressed my cabal therapy instead of glimpse so I won on turn 2. Other wins were against merfolk, hive mind, UW stoneforge, mono-black (all I saw was therapy and thoughtseize), and something I cant remember.

Day 2 began well with 6 easy games against 2 goblin decks and Natural Order Bant. Round 13 I was paired with PV, which I knew would be tough since he was on BUG-still. I took a relatively easy game 1 where he mulled and didn't seem to have much in the way of disruption. In game 2 I forced through a buried alive and ended the game with 4 vengevines in the graveyard as I whiffed on drawing creatures for 5-6 turns. I was never really in game 3. I took out a burn deck in the next round where I demonstrated the true power of the combo to a small crowd by regal force-ing down to 1 card in library with 2 active glimpse, and then used zeniths for x=0 to refill my library and continue casting creatures and netting mana off of 2 nettles (other two in the graveyard). After about 10 minutes of this I had enough mana to cast emrakul for the win. Unfortunately Hive Mind got me since I think I had a great chance against the rest of the top8 past PV.


Some remaining thoughts on the deck:

Most players have no idea how to play against it, so it's quite easy to use this to your advantage if you can figure out how they value each of your cards.

Symbiote/Visionary won me more games than anything else.

I used the 2nd regal force much more often than you would think, as the first 1 would pull me ahead in many attrition wars. I used extra glimpses similarly.

Run 4 Gaea's Cradle.

The original list from Sperling had a Viridian Zealot in the main with the shaman in the board. I was unimpressed by zealot as it doesn't kill the 2 most problematic enchantments: Engineered Plague and Humility. Shaman is much better against artifacts given the synergy with symbiote so I made the swap. This is the only change from Sperling's MD that I made.

I had a swamp in the board per Sperling's list but found it was largely unnecessary given that you only needed to resolve buried alive once, wastelands generally targeted arbor and cradle first, and Birchlore Rangers gives you a tutor-able black mana producer.

I expected more Hymn to Tourach than the 0 that were cast against me on the weekend, so I went to 4 Vengevine in the board instead of 3. I'm still not sure about this but I think hardcasting Vengevine is a fine plan in most matchups where the transformation comes in.

Seriously, run 4 Gaea's Cradle.

[Rainbow Maker]

thank you theross for your reflection on GP Providence; i enjoyed reading it. I think what you said was very helpful, i couldn't agree more with what you said about gsz and symbiote. I think i will test cradle, you seem to give the impression it won many games. I'm sorry about your pairing against hivemind. I remember playing against it in old extended and you just felt as though there was nothing you could do; it was a horrid feeling. If you went again would you keep the buried alives?

[Godmode]

Awesome job with the deck!


Seriously, run 4 Gaea's Cradle.

Why 4 ? why not 1 or 2 and some crop rotation in the mix?

And 18 lands seems too much and dangerous when comboing

[1maarten1]

Hey guys, this is Ross Merriam. I'd like to share my list and some thoughts after the GP. Had a rough matchup in the last round for top8 where I was turn3ed both games with a counterspell. Almost any other pairing and I think i'd be writing about a top8 or more since I was ranching all weekend (and 10-3ed my die rolls after 2 byes). I finished with the 3rd highest game win percentage in the tournament since 8 of my 10 match wins were 2-0s. Onto the list:

2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves (This is essentially just a 4 of but the split is optimal in a world of Phyrexian Revoker, Cabal Therapy, Meddling Mage, etc. It's not a large edge, but it is still an edge)
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote (Best creature in the deck, not close)
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Priests of Titania (I tend to think of this as a tutor-able cradle)
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Green Sun's Zenith (Best non-land in the deck, not close)
3 Summoner's Pact (The 4th one here could be better than the Birchlore Rangers unless Hive Mind catches on, as of now it's the 61st card)
4 Glimpse of Nature (Obv)

4 Gaea's Cradle (Best card in the deck, not even remotely close)
4 Wooded Foothills (Can be any green fetchland)
4 Verdant Catacombs (Ditto unless you want the basic swamp which I cut after Vestal)
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Forest

SB:
4 Buried Alive
4 Vengevine (Mostly there for decks with hymn to tourach and perish since they are typically cold to it)
4 Cabal Therapy (Obligatory combo hate)
2 Beast Within (Catch-all that replaced Krosan Grip since I expected very little counterbalance---Peacekeepers were selling out on Friday so I expected to bring these in mainly against UW landstill. I of course never played that matchup)
1 Mortarpod (Alternate win condition with additional utility if you feel it necessary)

Thanks for posting here! I have been testing a similar list for a while now, but something I would like to know: Did you get perished during the GP? I mean: would you have rather run NO+Prog plan in the sb? That opens up another 3 spots for something like combo hate etc.

[bakofried]

I don't like 4 Cradle, and 18 land is far too much. Too much risk of failing to combo, along with the risk of unkeepable hands.

[theross]

@RainbowMaker: I would absolutely run the buried alive plan again, although it may only have 3 vengevine. This transformation helps you dodge things like perish (unlike NO-Prog) and give you a trump postboard. I didn't lose a game to a player with less than 17k names with the vengevine plan in either the vestal event 2 weeks ago or the GP. However, it's important to note that I didn't bring it in very often since I rarely faced decks with hymn to tourachs/perishes. I was perished once in the GP (@1maarten1) by goblins in round 11 and simply recurred my vengevines and won. I normally don't transform against goblins but I saw him play a feature match the previous round and he had perish and pyrokinesis which seemed ugly for my combo plan.

@Godmode: Cradle is powerful enough that running 4 lets you see 1 often enough to make up for the times when you see multiples. I've won plenty of times with dead copies in my hand on the turn I start to go off and seeing 2 is excellent against any deck with wasteland as they must use them aggressively. The deck is also so resilient to wasteland normally that it's easy to bait a waste with the bayou or dryad arbor to try and protect the cradle. I considered a 3/1 split with crop rotation before misstep but since that card is everywhere right now I don't think the risk is worth it.

@1maarten1: As I mentioned above, NO-Progenitus makes their perishes live, so it's not good against most B decks until perish becomes less common (which I don't see happening soon). Against any U deck, turning to a plan that requires you to resolve a key spell with no protection is poor. It's fine against any non-interactive deck but in those matchups, the combo plan is faster/more consistent so NO is just a poor option. I ran it in my first vestal test tournament and it was terrible so I've never played it since. As far as getting more space in the sideboard, that is my main concern with the transformational board. I doubt adding more "hate" for combo would be worth it though as most of them (disregarding belcher and other such all-in combo decks) are not that much faster than you so your best course of action is getting minimal hate over some of the slower cards (I bring out priest and v shaman against almost all of them unless it's obvious not too such as the case of v shaman against painter combo) and trying to race them.

@bakofried: It's hard to refute your claims since you offer no justification so I'll just demonstrate the math which I did before the GP using some simplifying assumptions from my testing data (Those unfamiliar with binomial coefficients should familiarize themselves with the concept first as this part is a bit technical):

Nearly all hands with 1-3 lands are keepable, and the ones that aren't are highly contrived (such as 3x pact, emrakul). Thus I will say that the set of mull-able hands are those that contain no non-cradle lands, or those that have 4+ lands. (Even here we dismiss hands that have cradle and ESG for a 1 drop, but those would be mulls against any deck with misstep or wasteland unless the one drop was a mana elf so I dismiss these as well)

In all of the following calculations, the numerators represent the number of hands with the given condition, and the denominator the number of 7 card hands that are possible.

The odds of getting a no lander are (42 choose 7)/(60 choose 7)=0.0699. Similarly, getting 1 cradle and 6 spells has a probability of 4*(42 choose 6)/(60 choose 7)=0.0543.

2 cradles + 5 spells: (4 choose 2)(42 choose 5)/(60 choose 7)=0.0132
3 cradles + 4 spells: (4 choose 3)(42 choose 4)/(60 choose 7)=0.0012
4 cradles + 3 spells: (4 choose 4)(42 choose 3)/(60 choose 7)=0.00003
4 lands + 3 spells: (18 choose 4)(42 choose 3)/(60 choose 7)=0.0910
5 lands + 2 spells: (18 choose 5)(42 choose 2)/(60 choose 7)=0.0191
6 lands + 1 spell: (18 choose 6)(42 choose 1)/(60 choose 7)=0.0020
7 lands: (18 choose 7)/(60 choose 7)=0.00008

Summing these figures gives 0.2518, saying that we should mull about 1/4 of the time on a 7 card hand. I mulliganed 6 times in 29 games during the GP, a little below average but most likely not statistically significant given the small sample size. I also never went to 5 and kept a few 4 land hands because of matchup considerations. (ie I thought the games would go long so the mana would be an asset rather than a hindrance) To me, lists that i've seen on this forum with 13-15 lands and only 1-2 cradle have more inconsistency since without making consistent land drops you are very dependent on your creatures for mana which makes the deck more vulnerable to removal. Empirically, I have never had a problem drawing too many lands when going off, although I bricked once in testing off of double glimpse then glimpse the next turn. I've even gone off despite drawing 5 lands in 7 regal force cards so I can't understand your position on cradle and 18 lands but I hope this helps you understand mine.

[Godmode]

Can you post what did you board in agianst each of the match-ups please? That would be awesome

by the way, what about maelstrom pulse instead of beast within?

[theross]

@Godmode: I fail to see how pulse is better. It's sorcery speed, requires black mana (thus requiring you expose your lands unnecessarily to wasteland), and doesn't kill lands (the most problematic of which is Tabernacle, although I've played through it with priests and/or cradle). Perhaps if you want an answer to Empty the Warrens tokens but that seems too narrow.

As for a sideboard guide, I would say that I don't think about sideboarding against specific decks. In general I bring in the Vengevine plan against any deck that can't deal with them effectively (Note: Swords is not an effective answer to 3x Vengevine) and/or decks that can deal with the combo plan effectively (Typically with sweepers like perish/pernicious deed but I would also try Vengevine against something such as the UWr Stoneforge decks because the combination of Grim Lavamancer, Jitte, Misstep, FoW, and Plow is too much disruption) Vengevine is also very good against Hymn to Tourach so I always strongly consider them against decks with Hymn. Probably not against an aggressive deck like Deadguy Ale but that could be wrong depending on the build. Typically I will bring out the Emrakul, 3 Pact, the ESG, 1 Regal Force, the Priests, and a floating card depending on what I see. All these card are heavily slanted towards the combo plan and pacts are much riskier against sweepers. I have still played games where glimpse drew most of my deck, I played/recurred 4 Vengevines, attacked and passed with a grip full of 7 guys so you can still effectively combo but in general glimpse is used as an ancestral or thoughtcast in post board games with this plan. I did swap glimpses for therapies against PV for game 2 of our match in an attempt to go all in as I expected him to be unprepared. However, once he went back for game 3 I swapped those 4 cards again, and brought the Emrakul to have a true combo win though. He ended up bringing in Leyline of the Void. I still wanted Vines even against possible Nihil Spellbombs because I knew his deck would have multiple Jaces (he had 4) and vines are my best card against it.

Therapy typically comes in against control decks where the combo plan stays in place like UW landstill. If their clock is slow enough that little beats can get there the vines aren't necessary, so it's best to leave them in the board. Decks like these also typically have more counters for buried alive. Then I bring out the V Shaman (although leave them in if they have shackles), the ESG since it's unnecessary to be that explosive, and 2 floaters. I always leave in Birchlore if black cards come in unless I know for sure they don't have wasteland.

I had beast within as a catch-all but mainly as a way to deal with peacekeeper, humility, and Counterbalance but I never boarded them in so the jury is still out.

The mortarpod is an alternate win condition but I never used it as such and never boarded Emrakul out for it, although I think I should've against mono-red goblins. I think i'd bring it in against natural order bant sometimes, although it might not be necessary and I didn't at the GP, or against Grim Lavamancer out of a deck with other disruption. (and not burn, since you can overcome their one relevant card)

I hope this helps more than just a typical guide, as I've tried to give you archetypal situations for each card to be considered to come in.

[1maarten1]

@TheRoss
Did you never wish you had a lord like Joraga Warcaller or Ezuri in the MD? I mean they make the aggro plan so strong with all the cradle effects. Or do you feel like you would want to get Regal Force instead of those lords in every situation?

[Astrix]

I dont know about that list.it lacks elvish archdruid which is a strong aggro plan in this much slower mental misstep legacy era.(also its good vs engineered plague)and 18 lands i dont know.even if u want to play 4 cradles u should cut at least 2 fetches and go to 16.i mean David Ho's list played 11 forests and 1 cradle 3 esg.and made top 4 at an SCG.that means 16 landds 12 +4 cradles is more than enough
maybe cut some lands to add elvish arcdruids
and i dont know about that buried alive+vengevine.
it is so easy to counter buried alive and then waste your land(easy to do if u are team america)

[Kich867]

The list produced good results. That means it has consistency and a high win potential in it. It's a bit hard to argue with results. Perhaps Elf Combo should be looking more towards lowering forest counts for ESG and increasing Gaea's Cradles at the same time?

[Astrix]

lists with 12 lands made top 4 of scg open.
Making top 16 of a grand prix is close to top4 of an scg (even if i strongly believe that Ross could have won the tournament if he had dodged that hive mind)
Tbh playing elves in this meta is very strong and non- perfect lists can make good positions
That does not mean the lists are perfect
I have a feeling that the creators of the list went:
4 cradles 4 of this fetch 4 of this fetch 1 bayou 1 dryad arbor and well...
4 forests. Cos u cant go to 2 forests.many games u will need more than 2 forests total in the deck
so they made a 18 land deck.
The logical misstep there was: "4 of this fetch 4 of this fetch..."THATS the wrong deckbuilding
IMHO they should play 6 fetches 4 cradles 4 forests 1 bayou 1 drayd arbor(total 16 lands)
and they could include more creatures to tutor for (like elvish archdruid-who is another cradle as the Ross said for titania enables strong aggro plan and helps vs plagues)

Anyway big congrats to Ross for that position!

[Koby]

Making top 16 of a grand prix is close to top4 of an scg


Not quite.

Making T16 of a 1,200 person tournament means playing out all 15 rounds, and still coming out at 13-2 or 12-2-1.

Making T4 of a SCG Open (which never reaches above 200) means playing 7-8 rounds of Swiss (X-2 minimum), then winning one more round before losing in Semi's. This means 9-10 rounds max.

The competition is also on a completely different scale, and the players are alot better after Round 6 onward. I value the T16 @ GP result much higher than a T4 @ SCG Open, based solely on the facts mentioned above.

EDIT: RE - manabase
There is no disadvantage in running 8 Fetch and 4 Forest. I've done this before and WON a 50+ man tournament. I typically play 7 Fetch 6 fetch-ables, and still don't run out of lands. The point is to minimize the amount of lands you will draw, not reach 4-5 forests in play. If you take the latter approach, you're playing the deck incorrectly. Invariably those situations will happen, such as against Landstill - but that is not where you want to be with this deck.

[Astrix]

Not quite.

Making T16 of a 1,200 person tournament means playing out all 15 rounds, and still coming out at 13-2 or 12-2-1.

Making T4 of a SCG Open (which never reaches above 200) means playing 7-8 rounds of Swiss (X-2 minimum), then winning one more round before losing in Semi's. This means 9-10 rounds max.

The competition is also on a completely different scale, and the players are alot better after Round 6 onward. I value the T16 @ GP result much higher than a T4 @ SCG Open, based solely on the facts mentioned above.

EDIT: RE - manabase
There is no disadvantage in running 8 Fetch and 4 Forest. I've done this before and WON a 50+ man tournament. I typically play 7 Fetch 6 fetch-ables, and still don't run out of lands. The point is to minimize the amount of lands you will draw, not reach 4-5 forests in play. If you take the latter approach, you're playing the deck incorrectly. Invariably those situations will happen, such as against Landstill - but that is not where you want to be with this deck.

I did not take into consideration playing with 4 forests minimum.Or better i was not the only one taking that into consideration-obiously Ross took it too.(and i agree with him)
My point is he should play 16 lands and cut the 2 fetches.
I tried to imagine the thoughts on deckbuilder's mind and his concerns for his mana base.And i found a flaw(always assuming) his urge to play so many fetces.I think the correct is 6 fetches and 16 lands total
Dont take me wrong the only change i would make is cut 2 fetches and add 2 archdruids who are tbh highly abusable with the 4 quirions and 4 wirewood Ross plays!!(remember cradle cant untap)

EDIT:Re make top16
we should take into consideration the fact that an scg meta is more specific wheras a legacy meta is much wider.that may be good or maybe bad.
But my whole point was that u can top 16 or top 8 or even win with a non-perfect list because the deck was tbh a surprise factor to most ppl.
Anyways dont want to argue about the achievement.I congratulated Ross and i really think and i am the first to say that he could have won the whole GP if he could dodge that hive mind deck!

[theross]

For the record, I finished 12-3, 2 byes and starting 11-1 allowed for high enough breakers to get to top16. I think that bracket went down to 26 or so. Having my two opponents to beat me on day 2 make top8 also helped, as well as getting a pair up in round 11 to the undefeated goblins player. (even if he had 3 perish, 3 pyrokinesis, 3 chalice, and a sharpshooter in his board)

The mana is currently 8 fetches and 6 fetch-able lands if you include bayou and arbor, the latter of which is very commonly found and protected with q ranger. (even PV ran his wasteland into this trick game 1) If you were to simply cut two fetches then the odds of hitting a hand without a forest or fetch would be (48 choose 7)/(60 choose 7)=0.1906 and this includes hands with just dryad arbor, which in general are mulligans from a 7 card hand due to vulnerability to wasteland and removal. Compare this to the current list which has the probability (46 choose 7)/(60 choose 7)=0.1385 of hitting no forests or fetches. This is a very significant gap over the course over the 29+ games of a GP, although perhaps not a large difference at a small local tournament or even a 9-10 round SCG event.

As for the original genesis of the list, I simply trusted Matt Sperling (who I assume consulted with Matt Nass) and never found a reason to change in testing. Sperling's article mentioned that 14 non-cradle lands was the number he found necessary to avoid hitting too many no-landers or mono-cradle hands. Note that fetching 2-3 times in a game also helps reduce the number of lands in the deck when you start to go off, so I would not advocate cutting fetch lands. Being able to make consistent land drops also helps a lot against removal-heavy decks to land a natural regal force for 3-5 and win the game from there. If you have trouble combo-ing with 18 lands, I would offer you a piece of advice from Matt Nass on elves: when faced with the option of generating more cards or more mana, it's almost invariably correct to chose cards.

On Archdruid: I've actually never played with him, so perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think he's necessary. I'm not a fan of tying so much mana production into a single creature since I think it makes the deck more vulnerable to spot removal. My goal for the MD was to be as consistent combo-ing as possible and I think I achieved that. I was 12-3 in game 1s on the weekend (All wins from casting Emrakul), losing to Sneaky Show, ANT, and Hive Mind, all of whom simply raced my combo. As far as defense against E Plague goes, my metagame analysis was that in general the card was not good and would not be played very often and against most of the decks that would have it I would be sidestepping it with Vengevine expecting Perish.

@Astrix: While I applaud your skepticism, I disagree with your logic that since one list from an SCG played 12 lands and 3 ESG, that a more robust mana base is unnecessary. The goal is not to find the number of lands that is "enough," but to find the number that is optimal. The answer to this question is also dependent on other choices, such as number of mana creatures. David Vo was playing 8 lords and thus depended largely on getting mana from them. To feed this plan, he needed a higher density of creatures and was less reliant on actual lands. This makes ESG especially good as they allow for turn 1 Priests and even Archdruid on occasion, (A strong play against Misstep but very weak to Plow) while also feeding the two later in the game when the mana is unnecessary. My list relies more on lands for early mana and accelerates with Llanowar/Fyndhorn or Zenith into Arbor--giving the deck a virtual 8 mana elves. If you look at Nicholas Malatesta's list from a more recent SCG, he plays 18 lands with 4 cradles and a similar curve, especially when compared to my post-board configuration with the Vengevine plan.
To address your concerns about the Buried Alives I would note that FoW is the only commonly played counter for it, so you're playing on an even field there, Bayou is protected by Quirion Ranger, and Birchlore Rangers can give you black mana. Additionally, you play an attrition strategy in these games, and given the number of cards Glimpse and Visionary can draw it's not uncommon to draw 1-2 vines naturally and simply cast them and beat face. (the 18 lands help a lot with this)

@1maarten1: I played Joraga Warcaller in my first test tournament and it was ok, although I only cast it with kicker once and proceeded to punt that game by not knowing how to play with my own Symbiotes to infinitely block is Goyfs. I would certainly play 1 in my board (I prefer it over Ezuri since it only costs 1 to fuel your other elves and can be bounced in the late-game with Symbiote if necesssary) if I did not have the Vengevine transformation but with that I don't think it's necessary. I've never had much trouble going on the aggro plan when necessary with 1/1s since they have typically used many resources to stop my combo and my goal becomes to aggressively assembe Visionary-Symbiote. 3-5 damage a turn is quite a clock when they have to worry about your ability to combo.

[Infinitium]

14 initial mana producing lands with fetches and duals is still pretty ballsy considering the heavy pretournament hype for tempo decks. Did you at any time want to play the blue splash for Intuition rather than the black one?

[Astrix]

Malatesta played 4 tropical islands.(so he needed to mulligan more)
and also had 3 intuition and 4 vengevine mainboard also the fauna shaman engine which
i think is more mana hungry in general to make it work
Anyway i think u can at least cut 1 land for a tutarable elvish archdruid to have an out to plague(which with merfolk's dominance and goblin's comeback will be back on sboards) and an another aggro plan.
IF u cut one land u have 7 fetches + 4 forest=11 solid
lands for your starting seven to be mullgian proof (David vo played 11 forests +1 cradle)
About his mana lords we have to say that he played only 2 GSZ and u play 4 (which is correct) so u can fetch priest and archdruid and u also play 4 cradle (which are like free uncounterable lords) so u still have many mana sources.
My final thoughts:
I really like the list.we can say that is an upgrade to combo elves but i would really cut 1 fetch for 1 archdruid to be fetched (and abused with 4 quirions and 4 wirewoods)

[theross]

@Infinitium: Are you trying to claim that 14 may have been too low? The tempo decks have mostly cut stifle by this point so having fetches isn't as risky as before and having 4 basics with 8 fetches protects from wasteland. I did consider the U splash and tested briefly with Malatesta's list but found it too fair for my tastes. Fauna Shaman was slow and vulnerable to removal and I did not like the lack of GSZ. Also, running 4 trops made the matchup against merfolk considerably worse. I conisdered the Intuitions for the board but had I done that the Cabal Therapies would've had to become Mindbreak Traps or something similar which I did not think was worth it although I think Intuition is an upgrade over Buried Alive.

@Astrix: I would agree that his list is more mana hungry than mine, but with his increased number of mana creatures I still see 18 lands as the number you want. If Plague is a real problem, I could see getting an archdruid in the deck, but probably just over the Priests. I don't agree that merfolk is dominating by any stretch. It has been the most popular deck because it was the easy choice for winner after Misstep came in and is relatively inexpensive but I think that will change as the metagame adjusts. Goblins while placing 3 players in day 2 did not do well on the day, even the player who started 11-0 finished 11-4, the other 2 started at 8-1 and finished 10-5 for a combined day 2 record of 6-12. A small sample size for sure but I doubt goblins will be a large part of the metagame moving forward. Engineered Plague isn't even that effective against merfolk since they have 12+ lords to fight it. I'm just not worried enough about that card to run an Elvish Archdruid. The Vengevines and Beast Withins give me plenty of options against it if necessary.

[Astrix]

I think infinitum wants to claim the opposite (:P) that you play a low mana count !

[Infinitium]

Nah, 14 is perfectly fine imo. Early land destruction backed up by even modest amounts of removal tend to be the worst form of disruption in my experience though since I can't just get Symbiote/Glimpse going and bounce back without permanent mana sources. And Wasteland/Stifle is still more prevalent than Sinkhole/Smallpox (granted it only really sees play in TA right now but still).

I can see Merfolk being a hit to the blue splash, but Quirion Ranger seem like it could make it bearable somehow. Cabal Therapy versus Spell Pierce or whatever I cannot really comment on because I don't like playing with either, especially not as the only form of disruption.

[theross]

@Infinitium: I never mentioned Spell Pierce, I would've gone with Mindbreak Trap, but both are definitely worse than Therapy, although the latter is certainly more difficult to play. I agree that with only one Tropical Island, Lord of Atlantis shouldn't be an issue, but Malatesta was running 4 trops with only 3 Quirion Ranger, which certainly makes it an issue.

[Astrix]

No i think 4 cabal therapies are much better than spell pierce as a combo answer.
For one cabal can be flashbacked easily in our deck.
Also cabal can hit creaures that played in combo(painter's servant etc...)
Also cabal can hit 2 or more cards and with flashback even more.

[Sharpfang]

I'm wondering what to cut to board in the Vengevines?

[Godmode]

I'm wondering what to cut to board in the Vengevines?

Obviously you didn't read al the info ross wrote... go to page 90, SB info it's there.

[Astrix]

Any1 seen the new elf legend from new commander decks wizards will print?
Its an 1 coloroles 1 blue 1 green : when a creature u control does dmg draw a card.
We can Green sun zenith it and could be like ancestrall recall in our deck.refilling our hand (so we can
keep going if mass removal happenes)

[theross]

I'll definitely be testing him as a tutor target to start, just not sure what to cut or of when he'd be my target of choice. It would not be prudent to just run your guys into goyfs etc against the aggro and midrange decks unless you had many more creatures than they did, in which case it's likely you can just tutor for regal force and the control decks can simply remove him before your guys deal damage. (really most decks can do this but control decks are more likely to have the mana up most turns) I always love cards like these so I'm excited, but I'll remain skeptical for now.

[NihilObstat]

Hi, I placed 4th out of 26 this weekend. My decklist was:

4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Priest of Titania
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Llanowar elves
4 Quirion Ranger
2 Birchlore rangers
1 Fyndhorn elves
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Regal Force
3 Living Wish
4 Summoner’s pact
4 Glimpse of nature
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Verdant catacombs
4 Misty rainforest
6 Forest


SIDE
1 Gaea’s craddle
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Masticore
1 Regal Force
1 Mirror entity
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Vexing shusher
4 Thorn of amethyst
3 Krosan grip


Matchups
Round 1 - Enchantress: 2-0 Easy pairing, unless they land a turn 2 Humility.
Round 2 - Merfolk MonoU 2-1 He kept an awesome hand in game 1. MM+FOW+3 lands+All lords. MonoU Merfolks should be an easy pairing, even with MM.
Round 3 - Show & Attack: 2-0 I kept strong hands both games, and was lucky to win through FOWs. He was going to win both games in the next turn.
Round 4 - Team America 1-1 Game 1 Brought him down to 12, then he controlled. Game 2, after some crazy shenanigans, and good plays, I was able to win through 2 FOW, 2 MM, 1 Pernicious, long game. We couldn't finish game 3.
Round 5 - Dredge 0-2 He won both games on turn 2. The sad thing is that I had a turn 2 win hand in G1, but he started playing. Didn't have any side against dredge.

Top8 - Show & Attack (again): 2-0 I combo turn 2, no counters. Game 2, he plays a turn 2 Show & Tell, which lands me an Archdruid that wins my game on my turn 2 ^^
Top4 - Dredge (again): 1-2 This time I start, and combo turn 2. Game 2, he starts, and on his second turn, plays 2 Therapies on me, and land Iona on turn 3. Game 3, I keep a super fast hand but with no tutor-wincon, so I land 6 1/1 elves and 1 Archdruid on turn 2, and pray that he doesn't combo, and I win aggro, but he kills me in his turn, with about 20 zombies.

So, I only lost to the same Dredge twice, in the tournament, maybe I should have brought grave-hate, oh well.

Thoughts & Comments
I love the 8 Lords, specially now with MM around, they are extraordinary.
Intuition/Buried Alive + Vengevine would have made the Team America matchup easier, but I don't own any Vengevines...
Maybe the 4 Thorn of amethyst should be 1 Glowrider + 1 Gaddock Teeg, saving 2 spots.
Viridian Zealot should be Sylvok Replica, but I didn't get one.
This list is pretty much the most combo oriented that I can think of right now, considering that we cannot rely so heavily on Glimpse since MM.
This deck is extremely powerful, but you need to play it for a long time, to learn how to take many decisions, as in what CMC 1 cast first, hands to keep, etc...

[theross]

Just a few questions about your report NihilObstat:

1-Why do you like Sylvok Replica over Viridian Zealot? They both effectively cost 4 and I don't see many situations where you would pre-emptively wish for either one, which would make the 1 mana you need to leave up for Replica a significant advantage over Zealot. However, when you board them in, Zealot is much better since you have Pacts to find it and it's an elf when combo-ing.

2-My objection to the 8 lord plan is mostly due to the vulnerability to spot removal inherent in relying on them for mana. Do you not find this to be the case? Also, with only 13 lands don't you have to rely on one drops for the mana to cast lords, especially archdruid?

3-Why are both War Caller and Mirror Entity necessary in the board? They both appear to support an aggro plan and thus seem to me to be redundant.

As for the issues you had with dredge, perhaps you could board a creature designed to blow up bridges or something like loaming shaman in addition to some traditional graveyard hate. I would suggest cutting the KGrips unless Humility is an issue since there seems to be very little counterbalance around.

[bakofried]

Sylvok dodges E-Plague, and tutoring for it with Pact is irrelevant when it's purely a wish-board. It also plays through Lodestone Golem, which is on occasion relevant. I'm assuming Mirror Entity is there for the infinite combo, not just to support an aggro plan (though it can do both).

[k2thej]

Sylvok dodges E-Plague, and tutoring for it with Pact is irrelevant when it's purely a wish-board. It also plays through Lodestone Golem, which is on occasion relevant. I'm assuming Mirror Entity is there for the infinite combo, not just to support an aggro plan (though it can do both).

The biggest advantage is that Sylvok can be cast the same turn as wish with a canonist on the board.

[theross]

Makes sense, I probably should've thought about it in terms of what specific cards you're answering, as E Plague and Canonist are probably 1 and 2 on that list.

@Bakofried: With a 4 Pact/3 Wish split it would seem to me to be better to bring in any singleton green creature after boarding in so as to effectively add an additional copy as long as all the Pacts are staying in. This isn't automatic, but as long as the opposing deck doesn't have too much (Read: multiple sweepers/tons of spot removal) to punish you for casting Pact aggressively, making your outs cost 2 less and adding one effective copy results in a net gain.

[Mr. Safety]

How are folks dealing with Team America? Seems like a rough matchup, for sure...

[Koby]

How are folks dealing with Team America? Seems like a rough matchup, for sure...

Vengevines. It's also a good way to deal with any base-:u::b: disruption decks.

[NihilObstat]

Just a few questions about your report NihilObstat:
1-Why do you like Sylvok Replica over Viridian Zealot?
2-My objection to the 8 lord plan is mostly due to the vulnerability to spot removal inherent in relying on them for mana.
3-Why are both War Caller and Mirror Entity necessary in the board?
I would suggest cutting the KGrips unless Humility is an issue since there seems to be very little counterbalance around.

1- Many people have answered your doubts on Replica, and I bet you understand them. I've already taken advantage of both situations, costing one less to Golem and being castable through Canonist, in actual games so I highly recommend it.

2- The 8 lord plan is necessary in a Mental Misstep metagame, which is everyones, ofcourse. We don't rely on them to add mana, but the opponents might think we do. So if we cast a 2nd turn Priest or Archdruid, they will FOW-Exile it, and so we are one step closer of safely casting Glimpse, Heritage, anything more freely. Also if you look at what I've cut for them, which are Fyndhorns & Birchlores, you see that I've replaced with much stronger cards. Sure this list doesn't combo that much on turn 2, but it has an incredibly strong-consistant clock for turn 3 and 4.

3- Warcaller is probably the best answer against E. Plague, Firespout & Pyroclasm. He is not a totally fix spot, but he is good.
Mirror entity on the other hand is my 1 turn wincon. I run him over Emrakul, because I found that many games I didn't get to 17 mana. He also has an infinite mana combo, and Aniquilator is a lot smaller edge, than missing mana to cast Emmy.

4- Krosan Grip goes against E.Plague, CTop, Pernicious Deed, Moat, Ethersworn Canonist, and many more. All of these cards really f*** us up, and are all protected by counters, or in the case of Deed, it is better not to let them respond... ^^



How are folks dealing with Team America? Seems like a rough matchup, for sure...
As I said, against Team America, and any other hard-control, disruption decks, Vengevine + (Intuition, Buried Alive) is probably the way to go.

[unemployer]

How is the combo elves with the new set of decks? Can Elves still run with mistep in almost all blue decks?

[KBH]

Could Ross maybe post what he would do if he didn't have Vengevines for the transformational sideboard?

Thanks

[Rainbow Maker]

mm isn't that bad, people could cut nettle sentinel if they're scared of MM

[zpikduM]

mm isn't that bad, people could cut nettle sentinel if they're scared of MM

So you're advocating cutting out the combo? Sounds dumb. Either way, Mental Misstep makes us play 7-8 lords, as opposed to the usual infinate 1 drop strategy. It doesn't harm us too much and only makes us slightly slower.

[Koby]

So you're advocating cutting out the combo? Sounds dumb. Either way, Mental Misstep makes us play 7-8 lords, as opposed to the usual infinate 1 drop strategy. It doesn't harm us too much and only makes us slightly slower.

No he's being snarktastic. NihilObstat described a way to play around MM, or just ignore it. It doesn't and shouldn't effect the deck too much if you're paying attention.

[danyul]

I've been playing this deck for awhile and I'm getting pretty tired of losing to Team America style decks. I feel like I have a chance against most other archetypes but against TA I feel like I'd rather concede and take a 50 minute nap or something.

My question: are the Living Wish builds and Vengevine/Buried Alive SB builds mutually exclusive? I don't recall seeing anybody post a list that uses both engines. I've been trying to find a way to utilize both but I feel like I'm trying to do too much here, especially in regards to SB space. I really like the versatility of the Wish builds with the wincons and silverbullets in the SB and all that but is it worth it to run with Wishes if I only have 3-5 SB cards to snag with them? Perhaps I'm being greedy and need to accept my fate against TA style decks?

[Godmode]

vs TA - Buried Alive + Vengevines its way to win

[NihilObstat]

My question: are the Living Wish builds and Vengevine/Buried Alive SB builds mutually exclusive?

I was thinking about just that the other day.

You should realize that a "regular" side for those archetypes would be:

Venge:
3-4x Vengevine
4x Buried Alive / Intuition

Wish:
1x Gaea's 1x Wincon 1x Masticore 1x Sylvok Replica 1x Regal Force 1x Joraga Warcaller 1x Vexing Shusher

Together = 14-15 cards

We would be left with no Krosan Grip (Very Important Postboard), Combo, or Gravehate sideboard options. We could also run Faerie Macabre and Glowrider or Gaddock Teeg though.

So I think it would depend on the Metagame. If you see that T.A. is Very big in your area, maybe it would be the best a Venge+Wish sideboard, but in my Krosan Grips are needed.

I will test the double sideboard list though, and post results when I have time ;)

[danyul]

Yeah. I guess it's pretty meta dependent. I had never thought of that. Right now I hardly see any combo around so I don't feel the need to toss in any Thorn of Amethysts and Dredge/Reanimator isn't a huge concern either, but I was thinking more about how to prepare for an SCG open. There is going to be one in my area in a month or so and who knows what I will have to battle through. Maybe I'm being overly ambitious in thinking I can prepare a sideboard for everything.

Is it even worth it to use up 4 SB slots against combo? Is Thorn of Amethyst really that helpful? Or should we just accept that matchup as unwinnable and hope for goddraws? I haven't had to play against combo very often and when I do see them I typically just toss some bad karma their way and hope they get terrible hands so I can race them.

Anyways, I'll try to get my hands on some Vengevines and see what I can work out.

[unicoerner]

What's your usual plan to side out for 4 Vengevines and 3 Inuts ina GSZ build?

[Rainbow Maker]

I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm a conservative player. Nettle is only good with heritage Druid. Therefore, I don't run it

[NihilObstat]

I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm a conservative player. Nettle is only good with heritage Druid. Therefore, I don't run it

OMG!!! Good luck with that ;)

[Rainbow Maker]

I know you people are being facetious and rather d-bags, but it's to be expected, you people are the people that thought goyf was a crap rare and jace was a bad card... Ultimately I DO have a better long game because I don't get so easily blown out by not having a glimpse resolve or being boned by an ee. The sacrifice is t2 kills are uncommon, it still will combo turn 3 with foldfishing, but then again, playing solitary doesn't count for much.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What do you mean, "You people"?

[Rainbow Maker]

What do you mean, "You people"?

I was responding to pik and nihil and their comments that accomplished nothing, they came off as elitist jerks

[zpikduM]

Nettle Sentinel is not only good with Heritage Druid. Its good with Birchlore Rangers, and its your biggest dude when you switch to the aggro plan. Either way, it is easily one of the neccessary cards in the deck due to it being part of the main engine [Heritage Druid/Birchlore Rangers + Nettle Sentinel] and it being useful in the aggro side.

[Rainbow Maker]

However being a 1/1 or a 2/2
Means that you will have an inherent problem with aggro. I run a list with in essence 8 lords, 4 archdruids, 3 warcaller, and 1 of the forestwalk person can't think of it's name. So my aggro plan is already pretty strong and will so many lords I don't see sentinel being that "big." I realize my list is slower, I don't run pacts, I run a play set of gsz. The heritage druid plan still works, it works perfectly fine.

Also birchlore is usually only a 1 of

[resum]

The best plan against Mental Misstep is GSZ for 2 for your one drops. One idea i've been toying with for resiliency against the blue decks is running 3-4 cloudstone curios as an alternate draw engine so I don't have to resolve a glimpse, cutting quiron rangers, and putting a much larger emphasis on elvish visionary.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Relying on Visionary seems weak. I'd rather just throw in some Messengers if you need aw ay to refill your hand.

[Augustas]

Turn on SCG live or just watch the match after the tournament.. Round 5. Double glimpse, tap three elves, draw two cards, nettle untaps, then he casts spirit guide, draws two again and ships the turn back while he still has an active quirion ranger. And other player doesn't cabal therapy three glimpses after gitiaxian probe milling two narcomoeabas.. seriously, what the hell :D

[Rainbow Maker]

well... I watched that match and it made it seem as though tabletop magic was competitive. They were both playing horribly, also, the dredge deck wasn't conventional and seemed pretty bad.

[catmint]

Turn on SCG live or just watch the match after the tournament.. Round 5. Double glimpse, tap three elves, draw two cards, nettle untaps, then he casts spirit guide, draws two again and ships the turn back while he still has an active quirion ranger. And other player doesn't cabal therapy three glimpses after gitiaxian probe milling two narcomoeabas.. seriously, what the hell :D

I also could not believe it when I saw that guy managed not to win this turn...
He did not have a sideboard, so maybe he is not a very experienced player.

[resum]

So for those running a wishboard, the new card from the commander precons, scavenging ooze, might be useful for the graveyard matchups.

[Koby]

So for those running a wishboard, the new card from the commander precons, scavenging ooze, might be useful for the graveyard matchups.

perhaps it might, but it's pretty slow compared to Loaming Shaman for the same cost (:g::g::g: to remove the first card with ooze, versus :2::g: to remove any # of cards with Loaming Shaman)

[resum]

perhaps it might, but it's pretty slow compared to Loaming Shaman for the same cost (:g::g::g: to remove the first card with ooze, versus :2::g: to remove any # of cards with Loaming Shaman)

Yeah, but the ooze can remove cards at instant speed which is relevant in against several GY strategies.

[Koby]

Yeah, but the ooze can remove cards at instant speed which is relevant in against several GY strategies.

This is true, but consider also the purpose of such a hate card in the grand scheme of the Elves combo. Do we need a long-term answer? Or just an answer for the next 1-2 turns to allow us to continue with our own combo. I can't determine which is better at this point w/o testing, but I suspect with the amount of mana Elves can generate, that the Ooze might be a worthy inclusion after all.

[Avatara]

Considering dredge uses Firestorm there might just be a "long(er)" game.

[theross]

Could Ross maybe post what he would do if he didn't have Vengevines for the transformational sideboard?

Thanks

I actually cut the transformation for the Jupiter Games invitational this weekend, instead running the following sideboard:

3 Dismember
2 Krosan Grip
1 Loaming Shaman
1 Mortarpod
3 Ground Seal (We were worried about reanimator after the grinders on Friday so I came up with this around midnight and promptly failed to read Loaming Shaman to realize the dis-synergy)
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Thrun, the Last Troll (Didn't board this guy in on the day)

I was promptly rolled by many Grim Lavamancers, LED Dredge, and a Humility I was not expecting from Alex Bertoncini. I correctly determined that Team America would not be a major part of the metagame and on that basis decided to cut the vengevines, which was a huge mistake as the various Bloodbraid Elf RUG decks and RUW Stoneforge decks also require the transformation.
Figuring these decks would also be present on Sunday, I went to the other extreme and played Vengevines in the main, formulating a list based on Malatesta's from SCG Boston. I played the following on Sunday to a 12th place finish with a 5-2 record:

4 Heritage Druid
3 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Fauna Shaman
4 Vengevine
1 Regal Force
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Intuition

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

SB:
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Dismember
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Seal of Removal
2 Faerie Macabre (My new Reanimator hate since you can shaman for it)
1 Loaming Shaman
2 Krosan Grip

I defeated Merfolk, Sui-Black, a WW-stoneforge/hate bears deck, UWR Stoneforge, and Reanimator while losing to NO RUG and Dragon Stompy (I never played a relevant spell in this match after mulling 4 times in 2 games) Each win was 2-0 while each loss was 0-2 and the deck felt very strong. Intuition was incredible and actually outperformed zenith in the deck, which was surprising. The worst card was definitely Fauna Shaman, since there was a lot of spot removal in the metagame he was much too slow against most decks, even with 8 untap effects. I was still able to combo effectively by just attacking with vengevines and passing with multiple creatures in hand. However, based on the combo heavy metagame of SCG Denver, black for therapy will be a necessity so my former list may be superior going forward. However, I will never be without Vengevines in my 75 again.


I'd like now to give my thoughts on some of the recent discussions in the thread.

On playing around Mental Misstep: Given the increase of spot removal in the format as the fair decks inbreed to fight each other, I'd rather not play a version with many lords. Overloading on one drops doesn't make you more vulnerable to misstep, it actually makes you less so since you can play through the 1-2 they have in a given game and force your opponent to counter an irrelevant or less important guy. I've found that many players are inexperience playing against elves and in this case these lines of play are much easier to find and execute. The deck does not rely on any single one mana spell to resolve (not even glimpse) so it's really just like fighting through more lightning bolts, although misstep being free makes it slightly worse for us. Baiting the misstep with a guy is made more effective by the presence of zenith, as the guy can easily be replaced mid-combo or even beforehand.

On Scavenging Ooze: Certainly better against reanimator than dredge, so the decision of playing it vs Loaming Shaman should come down to which GY deck is more prevalent. I never cast Loaming Shaman this weekend so I can't speak to its effectiveness but in general against dredge I wanted the ability to fight dread return on Elesh Norn and past that, I'd rather take a plan of racing them since they really aren't that much faster.

[unicoerner]

Hey,
i started testing the 8 lord list with 3 GSZ engine.

I have to say the 4 Vengies in the side are pure gold. But to this point i never brought the Buried Alive in.
Could we save these 3 for combo or did i make sth wrong?

What do you think about Viridian Shaman main and perhaps another n1 utility elf ( don't know any right now (-; ) which perhaps combos with Wirweood.

[Koby]

Hey,
i started testing the 8 lord list with 3 GSZ engine.

I have to say the 4 Vengies in the side are pure gold. But to this point i never brought the Buried Alive in.
Could we save these 3 for combo or did i make sth wrong?

What do you think about Viridian Shaman main and perhaps another n1 utility elf ( don't know any right now (-; ) which perhaps combos with Wirweood.

I've been doing this for a while - Jitte is ubiquitous in my metagame, and having an out for this card in the maindeck is very useful - much more than Viridian Zealot.

[Infinitium]

Run both. Shaman is useful in that it metaphorically murders Chalice decks and Affinity in conjunction with Symbiote, but the ability to deal with Counterbalance and assorted random is not to be underestimated.

[unicoerner]

Its a space problem imo.
One problem with Shaman is that he can't hewlp vs stoneforgers eot bringing in

[theross]

Until Counterbalance makes a significant return to the metagame, I see no reason to run Viridian Zealot anywhere in the 75. It is nowhere near as efficient as Shaman at dealing with artifacts, and does not answer Enigneered Plague or Humility. With Emrakul as the win condition, Moat is not an issue so rarely are there enchantments that require a direct answer. However, with the many artifacts currently running around, I wish I had a shaman in the MD of my list from last Sunday, as it was the most commonly boarded card on the day.

On an unrelated note, I'd like to address the biggest issue I see in most lists on this thread: the lack of Gaea's Cradle. For everyone extolling the 8 lord version of the deck as a means to circumvent mental misstep, I submit that Cradle is the best lord the deck can play. It has "haste," costs no mana, and is uncounterable. It also happens to make more mana than any lord once you have a symbiote in play. While it cannot be untapped by symbiote or q ranger, the mana this play generates is typically only useful when hard-casting emrakul naturally or finding a regal force to re-fuel for the combo, situations that are narrow enough for one lord to be sufficient. As far as vulnerability to wasteland is concerned, it is quite easy in my experience to save a lone cradle until the turn you plan to combo or bait a wasteland with the first cradle. Other decks must respect the power of cradle, so using a wasteland immediately typically uses most of their turn while accelerating your own game plan, at which point the second cradle then easily locks up the game. This card is so absurdly powerful that it is worth the risk of stranding dead copies in your hand. The chief argument I have confronted against the use of 4 cradles is the risk of opening on a hand with cradles as the only land but in the abstract this argument is only valid when cradles are taking the place of other lands. My list uses a robust mana base with 18 total lands, while other lists I encounter have around 14, so my cradles typically replace 4 lords from another version. Cradle being uncounterable, tapping the turn it enters play, and costing 0 mana far outweigh the slight decrease in glimpse hitting creatures and being vulnerable to wasteland is much better than being vulnerable to spot removal. Examining the former remark, drawing a 2-3 mana lord mid-combo from glimpse can also result in a failed combo much in the same way as a land will unless one has access to multiple nettle sentinels, so I see no reason for playing elvish archdruid specifically over more cradles. Having played without the card initially and then adding it later in my testing, I can never view a list without 4 of these (or 3 main with the 4th as a wish target--despite my disdain for wish) as optimal.

[Infinitium]

Seeing as it represents 1 of 2 cards that can actually disrupt the opponent I'm not keen to cut it however, and it does fulfill functions besides hitting Enchantments such as nuking Factories and Torpor Orbs (not that it sees much play but still). There's also the corner cases where Shaman gets destroyed/discarded/countered and having a backup gets relevant.

I do admit that Shaman is far stronger in the current meta, but I feel that Zealot is better than the card that would have its spot otherwise (most likely a mana producer).

ps It does answer Plagues with some help off assorted lords, granted I tend to side it out for Grips in those mu's

[Koby]

ps It does answer Plagues with some help off assorted lords, granted I tend to side it out for Grips in those mu's

I think whenever there is any doubt about SBing, KGrip is a safe call to bring in. Against any deck with :w: or :b:, this should be brought in to address any of the following -

Ethersworn Canonist
Rule of Law
Humility
Engineered Plague
The Abyss
Chalice of the Void

amongst other potential problems.

[NihilObstat]

I know you people are being facetious and rather d-bags, but it's to be expected, you people are the people that thought goyf was a crap rare and jace was a bad card... Ultimately I DO have a better long game because I don't get so easily blown out by not having a glimpse resolve or being boned by an ee. The sacrifice is t2 kills are uncommon, it still will combo turn 3 with foldfishing, but then again, playing solitary doesn't count for much.


The best plan against Mental Misstep is GSZ for 2 for your one drops. One idea i've been toying with for resiliency against the blue decks is running 3-4 cloudstone curios as an alternate draw engine so I don't have to resolve a glimpse, cutting quiron rangers, and putting a much larger emphasis on elvish visionary.

Responding to both at the same time. Around 60.70% of the games I win recently are due to resolving Regal Force before any glimpse, I can assure you that I do not rely on it, I actually never feel aymore like, "damn where's the glimpse, I need a glimpse". Glimpse is an awesome cards, the best against no-counter decks, but against blue it is just the card for them to keep counters for.

I also wasn't being a douchebag. It is just ridiculous for you to say that you would cut Nettle. With Nettle on the board, emptying your "lords" hand on turn 2, to assure a turn 3 win would be A Lot easier.



perhaps it might, but it's pretty slow compared to Loaming Shaman for the same cost (:g::g::g: to remove the first card with ooze, versus :2::g: to remove any # of cards with Loaming Shaman)

I have never run Loaming Shaman and never will, because it lacks the instant speed. Many games, Dredge will come back from one grave emptying, and the only thing that we need to make sure is that not Flamekin nor Iona hit the board, and against Reanimator Loaming is useless.


Run both. Shaman is useful in that it metaphorically murders Chalice decks and Affinity in conjunction with Symbiote, but the ability to deal with Counterbalance and assorted random is not to be underestimated.

There's not enough room to run both. Shaman is a good card, but I don't think her ability has enough of an edge to deserve a spot in our deck. Breaking 1 Chalice should be enough to win the game, and Affinity is usually an auto-win. Eventhough, Shaman might be better than Zealot since she can avoid E. Plague, big issue in my meta.

Anyway, the best card to run is Sylvok Replica, as it was discussed 2 pages ago, and given Many reasons why it is absolutely the best. That's if you're running a wish list. Anyway,

To Theross: Shaman can't deal with Humility either. Humility is a huge pain in the ass, luckily it doesn't show up too often ^^

[Kich867]

I've been fiddling with Elf Combo for awhile, I have a super janky version that works without the full combo (it's actually surprising how little Nettle Sentinel ever actually shows up to make a difference in my proxied version, frequently by the time I see them the engine is far more focused on spam-untapping a Priest of Titania and producing 5-12 mana a tap), but if I get this job I'll be building a combo deck this summer. In particular, either this or ANT, however I have more of the cards for this already and it's significantly cheaper to purchase what I -don't- have, plus green is what I do almost universally for all of my decks, in the end, Elf Combo makes far more sense for me to play.

However, I've been testing builds in a proxy setting of essential magic, just drawing hands and playing them out in my head through their deck analysis function, but I actually see myself running into this issue where I have everything necessary to go off, but not the thing that sets me off--glimpse or a green sun into regal force.

So this is more of a play question than a deck building question (as the list I intend to work with is a little unorthodox and resembles a more oldschool elf-ball style deck, with elf combo to ramp the mana). The deck analysis shows you every card you will be drawing in a supposedly randomly setup list (though I question how effective it actually is at randomizing the cards), and I'll occasionally see a fantastic hand--but nothing to win with for 12 turns.

Do you just mulligan into a glimpse? Or try to ramp enough mana to pump out a Green sun for Regal and aim to go off the turn after / that turn if you can produce the mana? Like, do you not keep a hand that doesn't have a card that you can win down the line with? Perhaps it's just bad luck in the goldfishing environment, but I keep running into situations where I won't be seeing a glimpse for many turns and what looks solid initially won't actually end up being able to pump out an 8 mana green sun's for 4-5 turns.

The core of my deck is pretty standard: Now, understandably I don't run any +lords so the aggro plan is basically non-existent, but is that essentially the only other option in the face of just not finding shit? I'm probably overstating this, since it's really not that common at all, but it just happened 2-3 times in a row in my last few goldfishing attempts where my opening hand seemed perfectly usable, but it just never found a glimpse or a green sun to really get things going. Are hands without one of those two unkeepable?


4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Ranger
4x Priest of Titania
2x Llanowar Elves
2x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Sentinel
1x Regal Force

4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Banefire

4x Misty Rainforest
1x Druid Arbor
1x Taiga
1x Gaea's Cradle
11x Forest

[Darklingske]

Do you just mulligan into a glimpse? Or try to ramp enough mana to pump out a Green sun for Regal and aim to go off the turn after / that turn if you can produce the mana? Like, do you not keep a hand that doesn't have a card that you can win down the line with? Perhaps it's just bad luck in the goldfishing environment, but I keep running into situations where I won't be seeing a glimpse for many turns and what looks solid initially won't actually end up being able to pump out an 8 mana green sun's for 4-5 turns.
I'm probably overstating this, since it's really not that common at all, but it just happened 2-3 times in a row in my last few goldfishing attempts where my opening hand seemed perfectly usable, but it just never found a glimpse or a green sun to really get things going. Are hands without one of those two unkeepable?


4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Ranger
4x Priest of Titania
2x Llanowar Elves
2x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Sentinel
1x Regal Force

4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Banefire

4x Misty Rainforest
1x Druid Arbor
1x Taiga
1x Gaea's Cradle
11x Forest

Hands without Glimpse or GSZ are not auto-mulligans. But it all depends on what you have in hand. Try cutting 2 Birchlore & Quirion Sentinel. Replace those with the 4th symbiote and QRanger and 2 extra Llanowars. This should improve your goldfishing since you will have more ways to bounce visionaries. But try it and tell us your findings. :)

[catmint]

I've been fiddling with Elf Combo for awhile, I have a super janky version that works without the full combo (it's actually surprising how little Nettle Sentinel ever actually shows up to make a difference in my proxied version, frequently by the time I see them the engine is far more focused on spam-untapping a Priest of Titania and producing 5-12 mana a tap), but if I get this job I'll be building a combo deck this summer. In particular, either this or ANT, however I have more of the cards for this already and it's significantly cheaper to purchase what I -don't- have, plus green is what I do almost universally for all of my decks, in the end, Elf Combo makes far more sense for me to play.

However, I've been testing builds in a proxy setting of essential magic, just drawing hands and playing them out in my head through their deck analysis function, but I actually see myself running into this issue where I have everything necessary to go off, but not the thing that sets me off--glimpse or a green sun into regal force.

So this is more of a play question than a deck building question (as the list I intend to work with is a little unorthodox and resembles a more oldschool elf-ball style deck, with elf combo to ramp the mana). The deck analysis shows you every card you will be drawing in a supposedly randomly setup list (though I question how effective it actually is at randomizing the cards), and I'll occasionally see a fantastic hand--but nothing to win with for 12 turns.

Do you just mulligan into a glimpse? Or try to ramp enough mana to pump out a Green sun for Regal and aim to go off the turn after / that turn if you can produce the mana? Like, do you not keep a hand that doesn't have a card that you can win down the line with? Perhaps it's just bad luck in the goldfishing environment, but I keep running into situations where I won't be seeing a glimpse for many turns and what looks solid initially won't actually end up being able to pump out an 8 mana green sun's for 4-5 turns.

The core of my deck is pretty standard: Now, understandably I don't run any +lords so the aggro plan is basically non-existent, but is that essentially the only other option in the face of just not finding shit? I'm probably overstating this, since it's really not that common at all, but it just happened 2-3 times in a row in my last few goldfishing attempts where my opening hand seemed perfectly usable, but it just never found a glimpse or a green sun to really get things going. Are hands without one of those two unkeepable?


4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Ranger
4x Priest of Titania
2x Llanowar Elves
2x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Sentinel
1x Regal Force

4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Banefire

4x Misty Rainforest
1x Druid Arbor
1x Taiga
1x Gaea's Cradle
11x Forest

Welcome to Elf-combo.
As already mention many times and actually also on this page the plan is to cast regal force in turn 3 or 4, draw many cards which hopefully includes a glimpse for the win in the same turn.
The problem you are facing is because you don't have enough tutors.

There are different routes you can go as you will find if you read the last 20+ pages of thread. I suggest you work through some crap posts to find the different approaches.

A very common way to do is to play 8 mana! lords, 8 untappers and 7-8 tutors (Summoners Pact, GSZ, Living Wish - depending on your strategy). In this configuration you will very consistently have the mana and the cards to go off in turn 3.

What I play at the moment is a version without archdruid, so only 4 mana lords and natural order. It makes the deck more versatile to either go for a Progenitus if he wins or use NO as a 4 mana Regal force to go for the combo win.

Some comments to your list.

Quirion Ranger is on of key cards. you will understand if you learn how to play the deck correclty: you need 4!

Birchlore is cuttable. He pushes your turn 2 wins a little, but looses value in longer and tougher games (as they are played today)

emrakul > banefire. I often cast him without glimpse...

Quirion Sentinel is just bad. there are many good elves, tutors and lands fighting for a space in the deck.

6-7 mana-elfs has been proven as good by many guys in the forum to ensure proper acceleration

17 lands is too much for a tight combo lists like yours. 13-15 is enough!

Summoners pact is the best elf and sometimes a regal force while comboing and ensures you finish when you start! GSZ has not good value while comboing tight because you dont draw a card and it costs 1 more.

___________
Personally I don't play elves these days because it is no fun to have so many highly interactive decks out there with ton's of combo-slasher like x-still, BUG variants, U/W control or RUG tempo decks with lavamancers, B/W hymns followed by stoneforge and jitte or just a faster combo deck with disruption like hive mind. Many popular things that can break your neck. Hell even Merfolk have game against us now with MM.

If you like to play elves I would go for a more aggro version with Vengevines and Intuition, where the glimpse kill is the 2nd win-con. But to buy into this deck you need Vengevinse, more cradles & intution... If money is a consideration that might be a problem though!

[NihilObstat]

4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Ranger
4x Priest of Titania
2x Llanowar Elves
2x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Sentinel
1x Regal Force
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Banefire
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Druid Arbor
1x Taiga
1x Gaea's Cradle
11x Forest

It has been said many times that this deck really needs getting used to it, for playing it well, more than most people imagine.

Apart from that, sticking to a pure combo list is unthinkable of at the time. Mental misstep fucks that up. So we need to have a second route for the win.
Options: A more aggro maindeck (+1 Lords, Vengevines), more mana producing for Regal (8 manalords, 8 untappers), or maybe a second combo (NO+Prog+Regal).

As everyone said, you need at least 6 Llanowars, 4 Symbiote and 4 Quirion. Cut lands down to 14 max., birchlore, and banefire, and Do Not play Quirion Sentinel, and read a few pages of the thread.

Test and post results ;)

[theross]

It has been said many times that this deck really needs getting used to it, for playing it well, more than most people imagine.

Apart from that, sticking to a pure combo list is unthinkable of at the time. Mental misstep fucks that up. So we need to have a second route for the win.
Options: A more aggro maindeck (+1 Lords, Vengevines), more mana producing for Regal (8 manalords, 8 untappers), or maybe a second combo (NO+Prog+Regal).

As everyone said, you need at least 6 Llanowars, 4 Symbiote and 4 Quirion. Cut lands down to 14 max., birchlore, and banefire, and Do Not play Quirion Sentinel, and read a few pages of the thread.

Test and post results ;)

I disagree with most of what is advised here. With GSZ he has an effective 8 llanowar elf cards which I have found the be enough. Moreover, playing more lands is an effective way to play through mental misstep, since it allows one to build a mana base while having the creature based mana-engine disrupted. For reasons I've expounded on earlier in this thread, I would advocate moving to 4 gaea's cradle. I do agree that Birchlore, Q Sentinel, and Banefire are not optimal, although a single birchlore can be effective against Hive Mind. I would also suggest moving to 4 each of Symbiote and Quirion Ranger even if you don't run extra lords since both contribute to the deck's power and resiliency---a rare combination.

As to whether or not a streamlined combo list is most effective, the answer clearly lies in the expected metagame. I found recently at Jupiter that the number of Grim Lavamancers and cheap, efficient removal increased dramatically, making a list with MD Vengevine optimal. However, SCG Denver saw an increase in other combo decks such as ANT and Hive Mind, and while elves is simply not a good choice in metagames defined by these such decks, a successful list must be as explosive as possible. I would also note that the presence of Mental Misstep does not in and of itself make a streamlined combo version of the deck obsolete, as the easiest way to play around the card is to play through it and overload on one drops. Incidentally, this plan also preys on the decision of many players to cut down on Force of Will due to its aggressiveness. However, I see these practices leading to a return of combo decks to the metagame, and I would submit SCG Denver as an example of this shift already taking place.

[catmint]

Dryad arbor is not an elf - I dont think its a good idea. you cannot go off Turn 2 if you have arbor!
You also need your tutors for the turn 3 regal force...

Beeing more streamlined for a turn 2 win (if you have the optimal hand) is high variance and still not enough to win versus other combo decks, since they are either still faster (more consistent Turn2) and/or pack a bunch of blue/black disruption.

...anyway your list is very slow: arbor / missing pact, lack of tutors,... If you want to we can play some mirrors and I'll demonstrate it...

I love elves and it's certainly my pet deck. However your arguments that you have a good game versus the current meta are wrong!

[theross]

@catmint: I wasn't arguing for a streamlined list simply to increase the consistency of a turn 2 win. Being more dedicated to the combo allows one to use that avenue of victory through the added disruption of mental misstep and light spot removal. (Think UW Stoneforge) In many metagames this type of consistency is quite valuable, and necessary if one is going to attempt to race other combo decks. (Decks such as Hive Mind and Painter don't consistently win on turn 2 either, so a consistent turn 3 gives one solid game in the matchup)

About Dryad Arbor: This card is simply fantastic. It allows one to save space on Llanowar/Fyndhorn slots, which are the worst elves to draw mid-combo but the best on turn 1 by giving the deck access to 8 of them. While drawing Arbor is not good, it's not unreasonable to play it on turn 2 and set up for the turn 3 win. He counts for cradle (and as a land while cradle in play it effectively has haste) and still retains synergy with the untap guys. Arbor doesn't even interrupt the elf mana engine of the deck since Heritage Druid effectively turns 3 guys into Llanowar Elves and Arbor already functions as one. Lastly, it is possible to win on turn 2 with a turn 1 Zenith-->Arbor. Something like Forest, Zenith, Glimpse, Heritage Druid, Nettle, Q Ranger, Symbiote can very easily win turn 2, or at least play a large volume of elves that will attack for the win in the coming turns. Obviously that hand is rather contrived, but it is merely there to provide an counterexample to your claim. With an effective 9 Regal Forces (2 copies, 3 Pact, 4 Zenith) and Zenith shuffling back, the deck is dense enough with Regal Force so as to not have to horde each tutor for the purposes of fetching Force. Providing Zenith with this type of versatility makes the card much more flexible, an invaluable trait for cards in a flexible combo deck that can take many roles.

[bakofried]

Ross, I must admit I am confused by your statement that it does not interrupt the mana engine of Heritage Druid. Could you please clarify that statement?

Could you please explain your dislike of Living Wish? It is useful at all stages of the combo, in setting up, going off, and finishing the opponent. It (similiar to Pact, or Zenith) can find any piece of the combo one happens to need, and furthermore, limits the number of dead draws in the maindeck.

[theross]

@Bakofried: Dryad Arbor produces one mana from one creature, which is the same efficiency Heritage Druid produces, although on a smaller scale. Also, taking the slot of a land does not reduce the density of elves in the deck, so it does not hinder the ability of Heritage Druid to function by reducing the number of elves you see in a given game. Lastly, Arbor is comparable to Llanowars in the context of synergy with untap effects.

On Living Wish: I would play wish if it weren't competing for slots with Pact and Zenith, which accomplish the same goal as Wish but at less of a cost. Zenith effectively costs 1, since the other mana is simply the cost of the creature you're finding, and Pact costs 0 so Wish is clearly the least mana efficient of the three. There is a gain in versatility with the wish board but when you account for the loss of sideboard space this is marginal. It is certainly not prudent to shave various core creatures (ie heritage/nettle/symbiote) to wish for them if necessary so the creatures in the standard wish board are those that are too narrow in application for Wish to warrant inclusion over Zenith and Pact, which are much more efficient and can find all the most important pieces of the combo. Wish may enable a more reliable game 1 aggro plan (Post-board Vengevine is far superior to War Caller or Ezuri) but this too is a very marginal gain, especially when most decks are not well set up to fight the combo game 1. (and if they are you should consider a new deck choice)

[catmint]

True theross.
I forgot you can untap dryad arbor with quirion, so the turn 2 win is (nearly equally) possible.
Sorry for flaming that your list is bad. I thought your are Kich867 which postet a really bad list. :)

The only advantage I can see from dryad is that you can free up 2-3 slots mana elves by the price of using a tutor and having 1 dead slot. Dryad is dead in your oppening hand and drawing it... a land with summoning sicknes is practically a dead slot (cannot count it as land or creature)!

Not even sure if that advantag is already a real advantage but here a list of the disadvantages that come to my mind:

It is true that your elve count is still high, but all the tight situations where you have 1 heritage and 1 more elf it is so much better to have a mana-elf compared to a dryad arbor! It makes a difference of 2 mana and gives us the opportunity to max. exploit nettle sentinel to build up mana!
Heritage is useless if you only have 2 elves and 1 dryad!

Another factor is that priest/archdruid are less strong with dryad. If you untap 1-2 times that is 2-3 mana less you accumulate. For my turn 3 regal force with mana free to go for the win every mana counts!

You are also more vulnerable to wastelands, which are common and useless for our opponent in the first turn. If I play vs. you and you go turn 1 GSZ for 1 I save my misstep and my bolt/swords for later on and use my wasteland...

Dryad is not pumped by archdruid or warcaller for an aggro win.

[theross]

Dryad, while lacking synergy with the tribal elements of the deck, only makes those elements worse if it would be otherwise taking the spot of an elf from the deck. I've been advocating 18 lands since I began posting on this thread, and will continue to do so. Thus, Arbor is really only taking the place of another land and not disrupting the tribal synergies of the deck. This was part of my earlier point, but I feel I did not adequately explain it then, so hopefully this provides clarity.

I agree that drawing Arbor naturally is pretty awful, but when setting up for a glimpse turn it is common for me to not use all of my mana so as to save creatures and draw more cards, so it is not always devastating to miss one mana early and the times when it is bad do not come up often since it is a singleton.

As for wasteland, I would be quite happy for my opponent to take the line that you mentioned, as if they are unable to put early pressure on, I can draw through most of their 1 for 1 removal and simply combo later in the game. With 3-4 basics, many fetch lands, and Quirion Ranger wasteland is rarely an issue. It's also not uncommon to try and bait a wasteland with arbor so cradle can land undisturbed.

I don't run any pump lords like Archdruid so that dis-synergy does not come up but I would imagine running a free 1/1 over some other land would only help the aggro-plan.

No worries on the accidental flame.

[catmint]

Dryad, while lacking synergy with the tribal elements of the deck, only makes those elements worse if it would be otherwise taking the spot of an elf from the deck. I've been advocating 18 lands since I began posting on this thread, and will continue to do so. Thus, Arbor is really only taking the place of another land and not disrupting the tribal synergies of the deck. This was part of my earlier point, but I feel I did not adequately explain it then, so hopefully this provides clarity.


I think there is a flaw in this logic, because since the most common play to get dryad arbor is by GSZ in Turn 1, you have it in play instead of the elf that you would otherwise play in T1. Altough arbor might take the place of a land when constructing the deck, in T2 and T3 arbor is effectively taking the place of an elf and is then lacking the premium synergy of heritage and priest.

I think 18 lands is too much. Too many dead draws/cards when comboing. I was increasing my land count from 13 (with 7 fetches) to 15 basic lands to be more stable, but I would not go much further for the non-vengevine Maindeck build. Of course it sucks to be stuck on 1 land if the first elf is countered/killed, however with 7 manaelfs and 4 quirion, I have effective 11 elfs that make me 2 mana if I am stuck on 1 forest.

[theross]

Obviously when both a mana elf and GSZ are in your opening hand, it is typically optimal to play the mana elf first since GSZ is much more flexible. Furthermore, it can never be the case that one draws Dryad Arbor instead of a necessary elf (say for Heritage Druid to become live) unless it is taking the slot of an elf in deck construction. Having Arbor simply gives redundancy without requiring an overload on Fyndhorns/Llanowars which are very weak draws later in the game.

On 18 lands: I believe I ran some numbers on this issue earlier in the thread so I won't go into great detail with them here but I contend that your conclusion is drawn from a short-sighted analysis. With 13-15 lands it is very common to be stuck on one land and even if one many have an active mana elf or Quirion Ranger it is quite difficult to win with only 2 mana while setting up. Hitting 2-3 land drops in the early stages of the game mitigates these problems. With 15 lands the odds of making your first 2 land drops with a 7 card hand is about 65% on the play and 72% on the draw so you're leaving yourself with those one land hands a significant portion of the time, almost once per match. With 18 lands these numbers become 76% and 83%. Reducing one's creature density by 1/20 (3 lands v 3 dudes) cannot be as harmful as stunting the early mana development in a deck as mana hungry as this one.

[NihilObstat]

On 18 lands
Really, you should make this more clear, so we don't argue pointlessly. The extra lands that you are adding are Gaea's Cradles x4 not Basic Forest. So, you should focus on that point. Where you take out 4 elves, for 4 cradles, or 3 for 3.

18 lands really seems like a lot if you don't explain this, and even so... I tend to mull any hand with 3 lands or more on it, because they are way too slow, simple as that.

I tested, again, the 4 Cradle list, but I'm very busy lately. I can't say I'm totally into it, but it would really help a maindeck Vengevine strategy.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Living Wish isn't comparable to Green Sun's Zenith or Summoner's Pact. It is much wider in scope. Unless you run an overrun lord main, those cards can't actually win you the game, which means you need to get the combo running at full throttle to reliably draw a one of maindeck Emrakul/Banefire/Mirror Entity to win otherwise. Neither can find a Gaea's Cradle. Neither can find any particularly useful answer outside of Zealot.

Living Wish is simply the most powerful tutor, not least because it lets you cut cards maindeck that are often bad to draw anyway. It's terrible on more than your budget to run 3-4 Gaea's Cradle. They're not actual lands early game and multiples are dead, and filling out your deck with more lands makes it harder to go off reliably. Ditto to the various win conditions. 4x Living Wish not only means never drawing a dead Emrakul, it means that without comboing, with mana lords you have a very high chance of randomly killing the opponent sans any Glimpses resolving. You also get a lot of cards that hose glass cannon decks like Dredge, and answers to Plague.

Furthermore, I think the loss in sideboard space is overstated. Elves is such a synergy-dependent deck that it's rare that you would want to side out more than four cards in any instance anyway. You really don't have too much leeway to abandon your main combo plan, nor is it even necessary or desirable to pursue an aggressive strategy. All you need is a few lords, and with 4x GSZ/Pact and 4x Wish, all you really need then is 2x Elvish Champion in the board to have access to 9 copies post-board.

[danyul]

Damn.

I'm so torn! Everybody sounds correct. Wish builds. Vengevines main or with transformational sideboards. Multiple Gaea's Cradles. Shit! I find myself utterly convinced in all directions. Is this just a difference in playstyle? How will we be able to arrive on an optimal build? Is there even such a thing? Are we chasing a white whale? I don't know what to do or even how to be. This shit is getting existential.

But I already bought these damn Vengevines so I guess I'll use them.

Somebody stop me before I buy these stupid Cradles.

[bakofried]

Don't buy them, and wait for the goddamn bubble that is Starcity to burst. Grab some copies from the Fallout.

[Kich867]

Living Wish isn't comparable to Green Sun's Zenith or Summoner's Pact. It is much wider in scope. Unless you run an overrun lord main, those cards can't actually win you the game, which means you need to get the combo running at full throttle to reliably draw a one of maindeck Emrakul/Banefire/Mirror Entity to win otherwise. Neither can find a Gaea's Cradle. Neither can find any particularly useful answer outside of Zealot.

Living Wish is simply the most powerful tutor, not least because it lets you cut cards maindeck that are often bad to draw anyway. It's terrible on more than your budget to run 3-4 Gaea's Cradle. They're not actual lands early game and multiples are dead, and filling out your deck with more lands makes it harder to go off reliably. Ditto to the various win conditions. 4x Living Wish not only means never drawing a dead Emrakul, it means that without comboing, with mana lords you have a very high chance of randomly killing the opponent sans any Glimpses resolving. You also get a lot of cards that hose glass cannon decks like Dredge, and answers to Plague.

Furthermore, I think the loss in sideboard space is overstated. Elves is such a synergy-dependent deck that it's rare that you would want to side out more than four cards in any instance anyway. You really don't have too much leeway to abandon your main combo plan, nor is it even necessary or desirable to pursue an aggressive strategy. All you need is a few lords, and with 4x GSZ/Pact and 4x Wish, all you really need then is 2x Elvish Champion in the board to have access to 9 copies post-board.

When you say 4x GSZ/Pact, are you saying 4 of one or the other, or 4 of each?

[bakofried]

He runs 4 of each.

[theross]

@NihilObstat: With 15 lands, the odds of hitting 0 lands or 3+ in your opener is 34 percent, do you actually mulligan 1/3 hands? If so, doesn't that seem like a problem? The fact that I'm adding cradles doesn't change the math that much. There is a 10 percent chance of hitting 2+ cradles in the top 9 cards (turn 2 on the draw, turn 3 on the play), certainly a risk I'm willing to take for a card as powerful as cradle. It's worth noting that 2x cradle is still far superior to 2 normal lands since cradle typically produces much more than 2 mana so simply having a "dead" card is worth it when the first copy does so much. Given the prevalence of wasteland in the metagame, the first 2 cradles are very often live and forcing them to waste on an early turn rather than developing their board only to drop a second cradle is devastating. Essentially, Cradle takes the place of extra Priests in my list, but with all the tutors in the deck having your excess lords cost 0 mana, have haste, add more mana, be uncounterable, and be untargetable by spot removal (which is more ubiquitous than wasteland) is a no-brainer. The only advantage Priests have is the synergy with Quirion Ranger and Wirewood Symbiote and in a draw heavy with these cards my combo list retains the ability to get out a Priests with 7 MD tutors for the 1 copy.

@BearAssassin: Living Wish is only wider in scope when you have more widely applicable targets. Pact/Zenith can get Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Priests of Titania, Viridian Shaman, Regal Force, Quirion Ranger, Elvish Visionary, Wirewood Symbiote, and occasionally Birchlore Rangers and Elvish Spirit Guide. Of these, I believe most wish lists can only find Shaman and Regal Force, but please correct me if I'm mis-informed. Having MD answers to sideboard cards like E Plague provides 0 value, you might as well just have regular SB answers. (and Vengevine is a sweet one) One may be tempted to shave some of the combo pieces to have them as possible wish targets but this is again reducing the number of copies of these cards in comparison to a list with GSZ and Summoner's Pact, assuming the total number of tutors remains the same. As far as answering glass canon decks, Dredge is resilient enough to fight through one piece of hate, especially when you must show it to them the turn before you cast it, so it is much more effective to try and race them by playing the most streamlined combo deck possible. Living Wish provides a tactical crutch for these matchups when you would be more well-served trying to adjust your game one strategy.

On the loss of sideboard space: With 7-8 spots devoted to the Vengevine plan and some number of cards for other combo decks I don't see much space for a wish board, and the marginal utility of the wish board is not worth losing these powerful SB options. Vengevine sidesteps plague and perish beautifully, as well as being excellent against UWr Stoneforge decks that have Plow, Bolt, Lavamancer, and the regular counter-suite backed by a strong clock from V. Clique and Batterskull. If one were not worried about other combo decks, 8 cards for the Vengevine plan and 7 for the wish plan gives enough space, but there is very little room for maneuvering in such a board.

There is little value is having a card to win that turn if you happen to fizzle since game 1 almost no decks have an answer to hordes of elves, even if they are 1/1s. If they do have sweepers post board, you should have Vengevines in so sandbagging a few dudes will protect you long enough to win. The 1 of Emrakul is worth it against other combo decks and the situations where you are combo-ing at the end of a long, grinding game and Emrakul's time walk gives you a way to win through a more advanced board position (More advanced here is relative to their board earlier in the game when you would typically combo, not relative to your own) .

@Danyul: If you can pick them up at a good price, I would definitely invest in cradles. They are the best card in the deck, not close.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I run 4 GSZ and 4 Wish because I think Pact is going to get you fucking killed.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

@BearAssassin: Living Wish is only wider in scope when you have more widely applicable targets. Pact/Zenith can get Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Priests of Titania, Viridian Shaman, Regal Force, Quirion Ranger, Elvish Visionary, Wirewood Symbiote, and occasionally Birchlore Rangers and Elvish Spirit Guide. Of these, I believe most wish lists can only find Shaman and Regal Force, but please correct me if I'm mis-informed.

You are misinformed.

I advocate a list that can grab via Wish Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Shaman, Regal Force, and Symbiote, and also Gaea's Cradle, Emrakul, and Eternal Witness in the event that Glimpse has been countered.


Having MD answers to sideboard cards like E Plague provides 0 value, you might as well just have regular SB answers. (and Vengevine is a sweet one) One may be tempted to shave some of the combo pieces to have them as possible wish targets but this is again reducing the number of copies of these cards in comparison to a list with GSZ and Summoner's Pact, assuming the total number of tutors remains the same.

The difference between running 11 copies of Heritage Druid (assuming 4 Wish and 4 GSZ) and 12 copies isn't much. Having reliable access to Emrakul/Cradle and other answer cards while not having to run them main where they can clog your actual combo is certainly worth that small difference.


[qutoe]As far as answering glass canon decks, Dredge is resilient enough to fight through one piece of hate, especially when you must show it to them the turn before you cast it, so it is much more effective to try and race them by playing the most streamlined combo deck possible. Living Wish provides a tactical crutch for these matchups when you would be more well-served trying to adjust your game one strategy.[/quote]

You can reliably wish for and drop Bojuka Bog turn 2, and you don't have to cast Faerie Macabre, which are the main Wish targets to deal with Dredge/Reanimator.

And Dredge isn't much slower than Elves, so having that crutch is much more important than you give it credit for.


On the loss of sideboard space: With 7-8 spots devoted to the Vengevine plan and some number of cards for other combo decks I don't see much space for a wish board, and the marginal utility of the wish board is not worth losing these powerful SB options. Vengevine sidesteps plague and perish beautifully, as well as being excellent against UWr Stoneforge decks that have Plow, Bolt, Lavamancer, and the regular counter-suite backed by a strong clock from V. Clique and Batterskull. If one were not worried about other combo decks, 8 cards for the Vengevine plan and 7 for the wish plan gives enough space, but there is very little room for maneuvering in such a board.

Between diminishing the strength of Living Wish and diluting your manabase- and being able to run a very low land count because of running all basics is a pretty big edge- I don't really think the Vengevine plan wins out, at lest not in a combo-oriented build.


There is little value is having a card to win that turn if you happen to fizzle since game 1 almost no decks have an answer to hordes of elves, even if they are 1/1s.

You say this as if the easy part were resolving Glimpse and churning out guys. It's not. Most games you will not resolve a Glimpse of Nature. In those games, having mana lords and Living Wish gives you a very viable alternative plan of simply Wishing for and casting either Regal Force or Emrakul (sometimes Terastadon, mainly against High Tide).

[Kich867]

I run 4 GSZ and 4 Wish because I think Pact is going to get you fucking killed.

Ok, yeah, I was pretty sure that was the case with you and I'm definitely in agreement with that idea. I recall a rather heated argument going on about that earlier in the thread, and given that Elves doesn't always win the turn it goes off, GSZ seems much more safe and resilient to counters (avoiding mental misstep like a boss).

Also, in response to an earlier criticism of my deck--it was just a deck that I was experimenting with on essentialmagic, however I'm rather dubious about their goldfishing system, it seems unrealistic when you compare it to actually sitting down and shuffling which obviously makes sense. I don't really see the hate towards a Banefire though (the list was streamlined to drop it and be able to pay for it). There are less answers to it than Emrakul and aggro strategies in general, it wins the turn you drop it, and elves can easily produce the mana necessary to use it without even putting a Taiga in.

I also wasn't asking for criticism of the list, just showing that with the generic core cards there seemed to be a lot of hands where you want to say "this is good", but when examining the upcoming cards you would surely lose just from draws. Even with that list, it would consistently goldfish a Banefire win, but the number of hands that were fantastic that would just lose because of the upcoming draws was still somewhat alarming.

I found it to be less problematic in actual testing--I also found the overreaction by catmint to be a little ridiculous (I'm not new to this thread and have been following it). The post was explicitly to ask "What happens when you have a nice looking hand, but with no tutors / glimpses / win conditions in the opening 7, what do you do?" Or I guess to clarify the question, "When you draw a hand with no glimpses or win conditions in them, or ways to find them, should you just mulligan?" Granted it seems unlikely, but it's something to consider--is it safe to keep a hand of something like, Land / Land / Llanowar / Symbiote / Priest / Quirion Ranger / Heritage?

That hand could produce absurd mana, and in the event you top deck a tutor or a glimpse you'll most likely win by turn 3 or 4, but that's asking the top 3-4 cards of your deck to be a tutor or a glimpse or a wish, when you still have 41 non-those cards left.

-----------------

Vengevines swarm out and are difficult to deal with (I may be running this style next week, I don't have intuitions however, so I'll most likely be using Buried Alive instead), but they occupy a ton of slots. I just don't think devoting 7 cards to a win condition interaction to be possible and I feel like you'd have to cut a lot of things that would make the combo work more consistently.

The upside is that it costs a lot less mana to get 2-3 Vengevines in play and swing out in 2 turns than it does to pull off a Banefire, so we'll see what happens (My list is looking almost exactly like Theross' just with black duals and buried alives, not dropping 75$ on 3 intuitions haha)

[theross]

@Bear: So I take it your list is very close to the following:

3 Heritage Druid
3 Nettle Sentinel
3 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Priests of Titania
4 Elvish Archdruid
6 Mana Elves
1 Regal Force
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 GSZ
4 Living Wish
1 Birchlore Rangers

8 Fetches
6 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle

SB:
1 Heritage Druid
1 Nettle Sentinel
1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Eternal Witness
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot
4 Combo Hate cards


The only cards you truly have more access to in this list than a list with 4 GSZ and 3 Pact are Emrakul, Regal Force, Cradle, and the dredge hate cards. The extra access here is only 1 extra copy in the main, so very little difference, and this is in a list with 4 wish, where most I see only run 3. Witness provides some versatility but I hardly think that is worth running 4 copies of a card as slow as Living Wish. The backup plan of wishing for emrakul/regal force after a failed attempt to combo exists in a list with tutors since you can find regal force anyway so I still fail to see the substantial gain this list has while devoting 4 MD and 11 SB slots to Living Wish.

Also, it's not Vengevine that necessitates my robust mana base, I would run 18 lands regardless of my SB plan since reliable access to mana, which mana lords do not provide, is necessary for a consistent combo plan. I run 12 Fetches+Basics, which is only slightly below the norm of 14-15. (and I've seen lists in the 12-13 range so it's not far outside the box)

On Summoner's Pact: This card only kills you if you play it incorrectly or you're already in a bad spot and they have an unlikely combination of removal spells, in which case you were almost assuredly losing anyway. Costing 0 as opposed to 2 makes is far superior to Wish mid-combo, and while it's worse when setting up, every other card in the deck can be used in this capacity, so I find the former point to be more relevant than the latter.

@Kich867: I would mull hands that lack some sort of action unless it can reliably assemble Symbiote-Visionary to find something to combo.

[NihilObstat]

@NihilObstat: With 15 lands, the odds of hitting 0 lands or 3+ in your opener is 34 percent, do you actually mulligan 1/3 hands?

I run 13 lands, so that math wouldn't apply, and I don't always mull a 3 land hand, but quite likely. How do you the math anyway? I would really like to know how to calculate the % of drawing lands, and everything, if you could enlighten me, I'd be very thankful.

I also haven't gone completely against your 4 Cradle idea, I said I need to test it further, but why not play Living Wish in your list??? Specially since you are supposed to have a lot more mana than us with Cradle, the extra mana from Wish shouldn't matter.



Vengevines swarm out and are difficult to deal with (I may be running this style next week, I don't have intuitions however, so I'll most likely be using Buried Alive instead), but they occupy a ton of slots. I just don't think devoting 7 cards to a win condition interaction to be possible and I feel like you'd have to cut a lot of things that would make the combo work more consistently.

The upside is that it costs a lot less mana to get 2-3 Vengevines in play and swing out in 2 turns than it does to pull off a Banefire, so we'll see what happens

If you expect a lot of the current control, go ahead and play the Vengevine + B.A./Int. option. They won't let you combo easily so having this 2nd strong aggro win is highly positive. This tech is actually amazing, since I believe that we can land the Vengevines a few turns faster and easier than Survival used to do some months ago.

[catmint]

I also wasn't asking for criticism of the list, just showing that with the generic core cards there seemed to be a lot of hands where you want to say "this is good", but when examining the upcoming cards you would surely lose just from draws. Even with that list, it would consistently goldfish a Banefire win, but the number of hands that were fantastic that would just lose because of the upcoming draws was still somewhat alarming.

I found it to be less problematic in actual testing--I also found the overreaction by catmint to be a little ridiculous (I'm not new to this thread and have been following it). The post was explicitly to ask "What happens when you have a nice looking hand, but with no tutors / glimpses / win conditions in the opening 7, what do you do?" Or I guess to clarify the question, "When you draw a hand with no glimpses or win conditions in them, or ways to find them, should you just mulligan?" Granted it seems unlikely, but it's something to consider--is it safe to keep a hand of something like, Land / Land / Llanowar / Symbiote / Priest / Quirion Ranger / Heritage?


Sorry for my overreaction!
I tried to answer your specific question of what to do if no wincon/tutor is around by just playing more tutors so you can cast regal force more consistantly. I took the chance to point out other things in your list, so you can get the most out of it...

If I play my build with 4 Pact & 4 wish or 4 pact & 4 GSZ I have no problem keeping a hand with Land / Land / Llanowar / Symbiote / Priest / Quirion Ranger / Heritage.
4 Glimpse, 8 Tutors, 1 Regal Force, 3-4 Visionary. Thats a lot of possible topdecks and surely better than an average 6.

[bakofried]

That is not the list IBA uses, to my knowledge. I have no clue where you got it. Here is the latest version of IBA's list that I have on record:
Rice Krispies:
Creatures:
4x Elvish Archdruid
3x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Elvish Visionary
1x Ezuri, Renegade Leader (alternatively Kamahl, Fist of Krosa)
4x Fyndhorn Elves
3x Heritage Druid
4x Llanowar Elves
3x Nettle Sentinel
4x Priest of Titania
4x Quirion Ranger
1x Regal Force
1x Wirewood Symbiote
Lands:
12x Snow-Covered Forest
Sorceries:
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Living Wish
Sideboard:
2x Elvish Champion
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1x Eternal Witness
1x Faerie Macabre
1x Heritage Druid
1x Nettle Sentinel
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sylvok Replica
1x Terastodon
1x Vexing Shusher
1x Wirewood Symbiote
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Wasteland

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That is somewhat close to my list. In this metagame I would cut ESGs for probably +2 Symbiote, +1 Dryad Arbor/Forest, not sure which.

Summoner's Pact kills you all the time, especially if your opponent is good. People always try to defend the card by arguing about how you play it cautiously, which means generally keep it in your hand doing nothing. People of course don't do this in real life, and then when it costs them the game they chalk it up to a play mistake rather than blaming the card. If there weren't already a host of other really good green tutors, it might be worth biting the bullet. But there are.

Elves was just a very different creature in Extended, and porting that deck, or even most of it and the same core strategies isn't going to work, or it's going to leave you with suboptimal results. New cards have come out, older cards are available; you didn't have to deal with Force, Hymn and Mental Misstep in Extended, you didn't have Natural Order, Green Sun's Zenith or Fauna Shaman available; you had Living Wish, but you didn't have the two strongest Wish targets, Emrakul or Cradle. There weren't combo decks maindecking Orim's Chant. Most of these things push against running Pact.

Also running multiple colors and 18 lands kills, in my opinion, one of the deck's real strengths, which is its ability to get away with 12-14 lands and still run out lots of threats reliably. Not being vulnerable to Wasteland/Stifle is a big deal, especially when you're inherently so vulnerable to cards like Mental Misstep and Jitte, Lavamancer etc.. Opening yourself up to further hate seems more foolish than productive.

I've also just never seen an Elves list, other than some of the NO/Shaman lists, that couldn't be strictly improved by cutting three or four jank cards for Living Wishes. Like, you run 1x Emrakul? It is nearly strictly better to run 1x Living Wish. You run 1x Emrakul and 2x Cradle? Same deal. It's just that then adding Wish, there's not a lot of reason to hold onto Pacts.

[Shax]

I support non-Wastelandable mana bases. *signs signature* I personally have never been a fan of Living Wish, it seems to be better here though than any other deck I would imagine.

Also, if your running Elfs even if it is close to IBA's list I highly recommend that you practice before being gung ho going into a large tourney atmosphere with some evil 'pals' playing stuff like Firespout, Submerge..

[Kich867]

So, I'm somewhat hooked on this Elf-Ball idea. Here's another take on making a dedicated Elf-Ball style deck (an improvement on my last venture into this idea for sure):

1x Birchlore Ranger
4x Elvish Visionary
4x Priest of Titania
3x Elvish Archdruid
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Arbor Elf
4x Quirion Ranger
4x Wirewood Symbiote
3x Heritage Druid
3x Nettle Sentinel

1x Banefire
4x Burning Wish
3x Glimpse of Nature
3x Living Wish

4x Wooded Foothills
2x Misty Rainforest
3x Taiga
6x Forest

//SB:
1x Regal Force
1x Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1x Banefire
1x Elvish Archdruid
1x Birchlore Rangers
1x Faerie Macabre
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Mountain
1x Sylvok Replica
1x Viridian Zealot
1x Heritage Druid
1x Nettle Sentinel
1x Glimpse of Nature
1x Eternal Witness
1x Living Wish

To an extent this is just for fun, but, to give it credit, I goldfished exactly 20 hands with the deck and it went off on turn 3 close to 90% of the time, turn 4 a few times, and only fizzled once. Going off being: I was able to drop a lethal banefire. That's all I really had time for tonight but I'll be continuing to work on it tomorrow. I got the idea for this from the new ANT lists running Burning Wish and felt it might be applicable here as an alternate means to casting Glimpse.

The first thing to notice is obviously that it doesn't run any tutors, it relies mostly on living wish for that, but to an extent--instead of running the things I'd be tutoring for I'm just running those things, I could shave 1's here and there to fit a playset of GSZ's in, but in the brief testing I've done it's yet to be an issue. I'd rather draw A mana elf, A mana lord, An untapper, one or two lands, and at least one part of a combo (Heritage / nettle / glimpse).

The second thing is that it only runs 3 glimpses mainboard, Burning Wish operates as Glimpse 4-7. It also operates as Banefire 2-4. Living Wish operates as a means to hit everything it could ever possibly need to and interacts well with Banefire--in the super long shot they have a Leyline down, after going off you can simply wish for a means to remove it and then Banefire them, with 8 untap effects you can ride a single mana lord into the ground. It also operates as an alternate means of winning in the event you just don't see a Burning Wish or a Banefire in the meantime via Emrakul. There's also a Living Wish in the board, so that in an incredibly awkward situation, with 19 available mana you could Burning Wish into a Living Wish into an Emrakul and win (just in case there's some Meddling Mage or something).

With surprising consistency, I was able to turn 1 mana elf, turn 2 mana lord, turn 3 burning wish into a glimpse or glimpse > drop an untapper, and eventually play my deck / hit them for lethal banefire at some point. One hand had to take it to turn 4 as I just didn't see what I needed, but Living Wish into Regal Force let me ride to a win.

Arbor Elf becomes a total boss as the first turn drop as he lets you untap Taiga to produce red in the event you can't wish/find a birchlore to produce red and need to tap Taiga.

The wishboard eventually started to run out of relevant slots, so I added in a Living Wish to do everything it does, and a Mountain in the event that for some reason you had all of the mana and pieces available just no means to produce red... Those situations never occurred in goldfishing so far, but it gives it some flexibility to work around those situations. Eternal Witness is there so in the event they actually do have a Mindbreak Trap that you didn't see coming, you can bounce however many Elves you can with Wirewood's back at the end of their turn (a good practice if you hit that "I need to bounce visionaries to dig" situation, as it lets you play them twice on your turn instead of once) and just go off again.

This list obviously had more thought put into it, so criticisms and ideas are encouraged.

This was only goldfishing, so only ideal circumstances were taken into consideration, which is obviously not the norm, but it at least goldfished extremely consistently.

The reason I feel a Banefire win is justified is that there are zero answers to it. After you combo, it is almost impossible to not win as there is no way to stop Banefire. Leyline can be destroyed, and Mindbreak Trap can be played around if they even have it.

-- Different topic: I playtested the Buried Alive / Vengevine style, and presumably this is similar to the Intuition Vengevine style, but I found that having Venges in my opening hand was annoying, and when I found a Buried Alive it was really cool and good, but when I didn't it wasn't that great. Instead of dedicating 7 slots to non-elves, all 3cc or higher, I could just run 7 more elves, like lords and joraga warcaller and crossroads and impact the combo far far less.

[catmint]

Interesting idea to use burning wish (this idea came up before I was in this thread I think). I don't think it "magically" adds another 20-30% to the turn 3 win%, because you basically cut the turn3 regal force percentage by adding turn3 glimpse%... I also think it is easier to disrupt this plan than the plan to cast a MD regal force... However I am curious and therefore will test before I judge. The "tech" to run a ton of lords to play them consistantly turn 2 and do unfair stuff turn 3 is not new though!

What I would suggest for that idea is to:
- cut banefire from the MD to free up a slot
- run more fetches to support red, so you can actually cast your "virtual glimpse" + 3-4
- run 1-2 less mana-lords because you actually don't rely too much on untapping to cast regal force, but you rely more on having a lot of 1 drops after your glimpse
- run 4 birchlore because you need red mana - therefore I would also put the 4th nettle in the MD, so you can maximize their synergy.
- run 4 living wish MD, because burning wish for living wish is too fancy as you said and its more important to access important pieces directly!
- run a gleeful sabotage in SB.
- Add some MD tutors MD to gain stability and maybe also a regal force, so you can fall back to that plan.

[NihilObstat]

1x Birchlore Ranger
4x Burning Wish
3x Glimpse of Nature

I don't mean to be rude. You can test this, but as you said that would be more "for fun", and there's enough people arguing in this threat to start discussing "just for fun" lists, that haven't even been tested.

Playing Burning Wish was discussed long ago, and everyone just dropped the list, eventually. Nowadays, it is more pointless, since you are making a deck 100% dependent and focused on resolving a Glimpse, and with MM around that is not gonna work...
Anyway, if you wanna test that, you should definitely run 4x Birchlore, 4x Nettle, and maybe not so many lords. Test the list, and post actual results, not just an idea for a deck, please.

[theross]

That is somewhat close to my list. In this metagame I would cut ESGs for probably +2 Symbiote, +1 Dryad Arbor/Forest, not sure which.

Summoner's Pact kills you all the time, especially if your opponent is good. People always try to defend the card by arguing about how you play it cautiously, which means generally keep it in your hand doing nothing. People of course don't do this in real life, and then when it costs them the game they chalk it up to a play mistake rather than blaming the card. If there weren't already a host of other really good green tutors, it might be worth biting the bullet. But there are.

Elves was just a very different creature in Extended, and porting that deck, or even most of it and the same core strategies isn't going to work, or it's going to leave you with suboptimal results. New cards have come out, older cards are available; you didn't have to deal with Force, Hymn and Mental Misstep in Extended, you didn't have Natural Order, Green Sun's Zenith or Fauna Shaman available; you had Living Wish, but you didn't have the two strongest Wish targets, Emrakul or Cradle. There weren't combo decks maindecking Orim's Chant. Most of these things push against running Pact.

Also running multiple colors and 18 lands kills, in my opinion, one of the deck's real strengths, which is its ability to get away with 12-14 lands and still run out lots of threats reliably. Not being vulnerable to Wasteland/Stifle is a big deal, especially when you're inherently so vulnerable to cards like Mental Misstep and Jitte, Lavamancer etc.. Opening yourself up to further hate seems more foolish than productive.

I've also just never seen an Elves list, other than some of the NO/Shaman lists, that couldn't be strictly improved by cutting three or four jank cards for Living Wishes. Like, you run 1x Emrakul? It is nearly strictly better to run 1x Living Wish. You run 1x Emrakul and 2x Cradle? Same deal. It's just that then adding Wish, there's not a lot of reason to hold onto Pacts.

Is there any metagame where you would consider playing less than 4 Wirewood Symbiote in the 75? It's the best creature in the deck.

On Summoner's Pact: I've lost 1 game (during testing) to a pact trigger that was played turn 2 as a calculated risk after mulling to 5 cards. In 42 tournament matches, I've not lost a single game to it, nor have I come particularly close. Simply put, when played correctly (not necessarily conservatively), pact should almost never lose you a game. Obviously it becomes higher risk against decks that bring in more removal, especially sweepers, which is why pact comes out for the Vengevine plan against those decks.

On land counts: Running 12-14 lands may make you less vulnerable to wasteland, but it makes you more vulnerable to spot removal since you rely on creatures for most of your mana production, especially in the early turns. With Quirion Ranger to protect Arbor and Duals, wasteland isn't even an issue for my version of the deck. Playing more lands allows you to play through the occasional wasteland, it's only when you cut down to 12-14 that making wasteland a blank becomes important.

On Living Wish: You imply that there is little to no opportunity cost in adding Living Wish to the deck but you neglect the fact that it takes sideboard space away from you. While it may be true that a deck as linear as this one does not want to board excessively for most matchups, Legacy is still the format that requires the most sideboard space to be effectively prepared for the wide range of decks you can expect to see at any tournament. The list bakofried posted essentially does not have a sideboard, which hurts against hate like Perish and any combo matchup where some light disruption would put you on nearly even footing. Having access in game 1 to cards like Terastodon, Phyrexian Revoker, Faerie Macabre, and Wasteland hardly justifies the loss of a sideboard. Added to the fact that Living Wish is much slower than the other tutor options and I can't see how to justify playing it. There is a reason the extended version of the deck did not play Living Wish, and it's not lack of access to cradle/emrakul. The card just isn't very good.



@NihilObstat: With 13 lands, the result changes to 33%, a very slim difference. To answer your question, most of my calculations are based off of the Hypergeometric Distribution, which you can find information on with a quick Google search. It essentially describes the chances of getting x successes in y trials given a population size p with s total successes in the population. For our purposes, a success is the kind of card you're looking to draw, (which makes it very easy for opening hand-land calculations) the population is your deck, and the number of trials is the number of cards you see off the top of your deck. More complicated questions that involve multiple desired parts (Like what are the odds of hitting a mana elf and a forest/fetch in my opener?) are more complicated. For the most part I use a combinatorial approach, where I count the total number of hands with the desired attributes and divide by the total number of hands, (60 choose 7).

@Kich867: At the risk of sounding rude, I will be blunt: Burning Wish is awful. It does nothing but find Banefire, (a worse win condition than Emrakul since it's vulnerable to Mindbreak Trap, Solitary Confinement, Leyline of Sanctity etc.) Glimpse of Nature, and Living Wish. Chaining Wishes is not a viable line of play in this format since it's incredibly slow so you essentially play red for the sole purpose of getting extra access to Glimpse, which is the card in the deck most of the format is prepared to deal with. Your list sacrifices the entire SB to support a dual wish plan, which I discussed earlier in this post as a poor choice. I'm skeptical of the consistency which you can produce the draws you described, and even given that you are correct in the abstract, relying on mana lords (which playing 7 2 mana sorceries forces you to do) makes you much more vulnerable to spot removal, as I've also explained earlier. The last thing I'd want to do is drive you away from this thread, but I can't support Burning Wish at all.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I never thought I would say this, but people are habitually over-rating Wirewood Symbiote. It doesn't have the versatility in Glimpse-Elves that it does in, say, a Food Chain list, where it has more to play with sans Glimpse than just Visionary and sometimes Quirion Ranger with a Priest. I don't think it's the best creature. I would play a fullset now because there are more aggro-control strategies where you want to stall and delay, especially against Jitte. Also because it helps draw down Missteps.

Also I am not sure that, "Running only twelve basics makes you vulnerable to removal and anyway Wasteland doesn't even matter because I run Ranger" is an argument that survives its own internal forces.

As for Living Wish, cutting cards like Cradle/Emrakul won't slow you down in most instances, and it's better to have access to them. It's not necessary to have eleven wish targets. And this argument;


There is a reason the extended version of the deck did not play Living Wish, and it's not lack of access to cradle/emrakul. The card just isn't very good.

Is nonsensical. The card is as good as the tutor targets available. To say that it doesn't matter that Extended didn't have access to the best targets is to hogwash. You might as well say that the reason the Extended list didn't play GSZ had nothing to do with the card not having been printed yet, except yes obviously it did.

[NihilObstat]

@NihilObstat: With 13 lands, the result changes to 33%, a very slim difference.

Thanks for the info ;)

Alright so, after some math, I have this results:

Hands//////13 Lands deck////14 Lands + 4 Cradle
0 Land-----16%---------------14% counting that a single Cradle doesn't work
1 Land-----36%---------------24%
2 Land-----31%---------------34%
3 Land-----13%---------------23%
4 Land-----3%----------------9%

There's almost no difference in getting 0 lands from both lists:
13 Lands: 16%---------18 Lands: 14%-------We have a +2% of having to mull for not seeing any
A single Cradle wouldn't do the work, so we should count the chances of drawing 0 lands as though you ran 14 lands, which would be 14%

I think we can ggree that either 1 or 2 land are the best hands, and are what we usually want to get. So adding those up:
13 Lands: 67%---------18 Lands: 58%-------We get a +9% of having Sweet hands

The difference of getting 3 or more, which I usually consider weaker hands, is:
13 Lands: 16%---------18 Lands: 32%-------Therefore a +16% of slower hands

I hope this shows that for drawing more Fuel, having a better combo clock, and having optimal hands, 13 lands is probably the best for our deck.

14 Lands + 4 Cradle only grants slower hand, and you don't have any better % of not having to mull than we do. So, the only thing left to test is better those Cradle are actually worth some very, very tight spots.

[Koby]

Is this also taking into account that a hand with multiple Cradles and no Forests as a 0-land hand?

[Absolutflipz]

Aside for taking up many sideboard slots, the biggest issue -to me- with Living Wish is its increased overal mana cost as compared to Pact and GSZ.

Living Wish costs 1 to 2 mana more than GSZ/Pact depending on what creature you're grabbing. That's an extremely significant cost for this deck and can easily throw a wrench in your attempt to start combo-ing off.

I don't think grabbing a cradle for 2 mana makes up for that.

I'm also completely on board with Summoner's Pact...the card is perfect for the deck.

[Kich867]

Aside for taking up many sideboard slots, the biggest issue -to me- with Living Wish is its increased overal mana cost as compared to Pact and GSZ.

Living Wish costs 1 to 2 mana more than GSZ/Pact depending on what creature you're grabbing. That's an extremely significant cost for this deck and can easily throw a wrench in your attempt to start combo-ing off.

I don't think grabbing a cradle for 2 mana makes up for that.

I'm also completely on board with Summoner's Pact...the card is perfect for the deck.

Living Wish is just flexible, it's basically a 2 mana Summoner's Pact that won't lose you the game and in the offchance (read: offchance) they throw an Extirpate at something worth hitting (mana lords, heritage), you can still get them out of the SB.

Flexible cards are bueno. Grabbing a cradle for 2 mana usually makes up for it. I know my elf-ball decklist gets a lot of flak, but the list I run in tournaments is more like IBA's, and wishing for a cradle is frequently an incredibly good idea. Sometimes paying 2 to get an extra 4-5 mana is all it takes to keep going and get pretty explosive.

[Infinitium]

Back when i ran Wish in my Elf deck my most common targets were Cradle to combo off Heritage (didn't run Nettle back then either), Emrakul in case I had 15 mana and wanted to win now or Wirewood Symbiote otherwise. Nothing else even came close, as Symbiote can and will improve most board positions capable of generating 5-6 mana more than whatever silver bullet you'd otherwise Wish for.

In any case I feel like GSZ is better than both by far, and that the deck doesn't really require more than 4 tutors.

[Absolutflipz]

Living Wish is just flexible, it's basically a 2 mana Summoner's Pact that won't lose you the game and in the offchance (read: offchance) they throw an Extirpate at something worth hitting (mana lords, heritage), you can still get them out of the SB.

Flexible cards are bueno. Grabbing a cradle for 2 mana usually makes up for it. I know my elf-ball decklist gets a lot of flak, but the list I run in tournaments is more like IBA's, and wishing for a cradle is frequently an incredibly good idea. Sometimes paying 2 to get an extra 4-5 mana is all it takes to keep going and get pretty explosive.

I can't find in here where you state why Living Wish is better than GSZ/Pact...or at least belongs over 1 of them.


I don't buy the "flexible" argument because GSZ and Pact are just that..flexible...they get you any creature in the deck, wherein the deck revolves around creatures for the most part. The only difference is being able to tutor up a Cradle.

I still maintain that the added effective mana cost to your tutored creature heavily outweighs being able to tutor up a cradle for 2 mana. Maybe I'll have to playtest some games with it...but I just see the card slowing down the ability to combo-off by a turn or two.

And Everyone should be playing 4 Cradles, as has been said before.

[Koby]

I've been running an odd mix of tutors to take advantages of each. I agree with IBA regarding the danger of Summoner's Pact and Living Wish, but at the same time I appreciate that Summoner's Pact is insanely powerful at its purpose.

To that end, I run a hybrid mix of tutors:

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

I've been pretty happy with this mix, and have been successful in large tournaments as well. This was before MM was legal, and my only absolute horrible matchup was Storm combo.

[resum]

I don't like wish because it doesn't let you sideboard. You're still as cold to deedstill as you were in game one, storm decks still beat you before you can go off since you can't board in disruption, and humility is even more of a game ender than if you could get out grips or beast withins from the board. I think that wish might be better for a local meta where you know what decks you're likely to face, while the non wish version that actually gets to sideboard is better to take to a big event with an open meta, because then you have a change against the BUG deck, the storm deck, the countertop deck.

[bakofried]

The "as has been said before" argument blows, especially when it's still a huge point of contention. And Living Wish can grab Emrakul (no other tutor can) as well as provide clutch access to hate in game 1, and games 2 and 3 with zero boarding in.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

There's basically no excuse not to run Wish if you're running 8 mana lords. It obviates so much need to actually find/resolve Glimpse, much more so than Pact or GSZ which can't straight up win when you're producing a shit ton of mana.

And if you're not going for the Vengevine or NO plan you really need 8 mana lords, as you're not going to be able to reliably play Glimpses in Misstep.metagame.

If nothing else, do as Ruckus said and run 2-3 L. Wish where you would normally run Cradles/Emrakuls. The only absolutely necessary Wish targets are those two, Regal Force and Symbiote. Not that I know what the Hell you're going to board against Deedstill that's going to significantly improve that matchup.

[resum]

4 vengevines makes the deedstill matchup not an autoscoop, even though you're still a dog, and why would you put a symbiote in he board, so you have more access to it with wish?t

[Absolutflipz]

There's basically no excuse not to run Wish if you're running 8 mana lords. It obviates so much need to actually find/resolve Glimpse, much more so than Pact or GSZ which can't straight up win when you're producing a shit ton of mana.

And if you're not going for the Vengevine or NO plan you really need 8 mana lords, as you're not going to be able to reliably play Glimpses in Misstep.metagame.

If nothing else, do as Ruckus said and run 2-3 L. Wish where you would normally run Cradles/Emrakuls. The only absolutely necessary Wish targets are those two, Regal Force and Symbiote. Not that I know what the Hell you're going to board against Deedstill that's going to significantly improve that matchup.

It appears people are talking about the use of Living Wish in completely different Elves builds.

From what you're saying with respect to using Living Wish w/ a build having 8 mana lords...I assume your list is more centered around hard-casting Emrakul with mana Lords and untap effects from Ranger/Symbiote....in which Living Wish is leaned on for Cradle and Emrakul, mainly?

I'm talking about Living Wish and its use in a more combo-oriented build (more Glimpse-centric).

I assume you like the Living Wish/mana generation build for Emrakul as it attemps to side-step Mental Misstep (on Glimpse) more by way of 2 and 3 mana lords? That sort of build would seem to do that, but seems to be much slower in its potential turn to "go-off".

Correct me if I'm wrong on my assumptions, but I'm trying to get a basis so we're all talking on the same baseline.

And Buried Alive/Vengevine is very difficult for BUG lists to beat games 2 and 3 if resolved.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

It appears people are talking about the use of Living Wish in completely different Elves builds.

From what you're saying with respect to using Living Wish w/ a build having 8 mana lords...I assume your list is more centered around hard-casting Emrakul with mana Lords and untap effects from Ranger/Symbiote....in which Living Wish is leaned on for Cradle and Emrakul, mainly?

I'm talking about Living Wish and its use in a more combo-oriented build (more Glimpse-centric).

I assume you like the Living Wish/mana generation build for Emrakul as it attemps to side-step Mental Misstep (on Glimpse) more by way of 2 and 3 mana lords? That sort of build would seem to do that, but seems to be much slower in its potential turn to "go-off".

Correct me if I'm wrong on my assumptions, but I'm trying to get a basis so we're all talking on the same baseline.

And Buried Alive/Vengevine is very difficult for BUG lists to beat games 2 and 3 if resolved.

The numbers don't actually shift much for the turn 3 kill, and the loss of turn 2 kills is very marginal. And that's goldfishing. The reality is that the deck can't survive being Glimpse-centric, even if it could have pre-Misstep (which I don't think it should have).

I'm also pretty sure you can make a Wishboard work with seven-eight slots pretty easily, running

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Gaea's Cradle
Wirewood Symbiote
Heritage Druid
Nettle Sentinel
Regal Force
Terastodon
Phyrexian Metamorph

Or something like that.

[NihilObstat]

4x Green Sun's Zenith, 4x Summoner's pact, & 1x Finisher means 9 spots, and these tutors would only run in 2 directions: an specific green creature (any), card advantage (regal force).

4x Living wish + 4x "Tutor", means only 8 cards, and 5 possible routes to take: a specific elf (symbiote, heritage, importants), card advantage, mana advantage (Cradle), Finishing the game, Any creature in magic to deal with threats, not just green (masticore, sylvok replica, etc)

This is actually quite simple for all of those who don't understand it. Relying heavily on the glimpse combo doesn't work anymore, therefore we need to find another possible win-con, thus Living Wish being an Awesome tutor + a Wincon.

[Absolutflipz]

4x Green Sun's Zenith, 4x Summoner's pact, & 1x Finisher means 9 spots, and these tutors would only run in 2 directions: an specific green creature (any), card advantage (regal force).

4x Living wish + 4x "Tutor", means only 8 cards, and 5 possible routes to take: a specific elf (symbiote, heritage, importants), card advantage, mana advantage (Cradle), Finishing the game, Any creature in magic to deal with threats, not just green (masticore, sylvok replica, etc)

This is actually quite simple for all of those who don't understand it. Relying heavily on the glimpse combo doesn't work anymore, therefore we need to find another possible win-con, thus Living Wish being an Awesome tutor + a Wincon.

Possibly.

But what about not having a true sideboard...with things such as Vengevine/Buried Alive, which is very necessary/helpful in several matchups. I suppose you could run the 8 Living Wish targets plus the 7 cards for Venge/Buried...but then you lose out on Cabal Therapy, K-Grip, and Mortarpod/Beast Within (i.e. outs to Peacekeeper/Meddling Mage-type cards).

Further, you're now heavily relying on resolving Living Wish...especially for Emrakul...who effectively went from uncounterable to counterable.

I don't mean to be shooting down the idea by any means, but I want to point out that the use of Living Wish does not come without any opportunity costs (those listed above and the fact that it effectively costs 1 to 2 mana more than the other tutors).

That said, I wish I had time to test both versions before Baltimore this weekend, I'm intrigued by the Living Wish build.

[NihilObstat]

Possibly.
But what about not having a true sideboard...with things such as Vengevine/Buried Alive, which is very necessary/helpful in several matchups. I suppose you could run the 8 Living Wish targets plus the 7 cards for Venge/Buried...but then you lose out on Cabal Therapy, K-Grip, and Mortarpod/Beast Within (i.e. outs to Peacekeeper/Meddling Mage-type cards).
Further, you're now heavily relying on resolving Living Wish...especially for Emrakul...who effectively went from uncounterable to counterable.
I don't mean to be shooting down the idea by any means, but I want to point out that the use of Living Wish does not come without any opportunity costs (those listed above and the fact that it effectively costs 1 to 2 mana more than the other tutors).
That said, I wish I had time to test both versions before Baltimore this weekend, I'm intrigued by the Living Wish build.

A possible Living Wish + Vengevine + Krosan sideboard:

1x Masticore (no Mortarpod nor Beast Within) This guy you can tutor for, and has a 4/4 Regen, body.
1x Regal Force
1x Emrakul / Mirror entity
1x Sylvok Replica
1x Gaea's Cradle
2x Krosan Grip (I usually never side in more than 2 Krosan, add more if you want)
3x Vengevine
3x Buried Alive
1x Wirewood 1x Heritage. I have played Wish for months, and I don't run these guys in the side, so they could be 1x Buried alive, 1x KG, 1x Joraga Warcaller.

You are right on Emmy being counterable, but in 4 months and tons of games I haven't had a problem with that yet. On the other hand, I've won many games for tutoring Cradle, or Masticore game 1, or playing 2 Regal Forces....

[Koby]

I don't see the need for a dedicated Wish-board either. If I ran both VV and Wish targets, I would run this:

4 Vengevine
1 Emrakul
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman/Terastadon
3 Krosan Grip
4 anti-combo

I'm not sold on Buried Alive anymore. Its strictly worse than most other options, and by the time you're boarding them, along with Grips, and other tools, the amount of creatures left in the deck don't make Vengevine rebuys very effective at all. Peacekeeper can be answered with Terastadon, and Humility with KGrips.

[Infinitium]

You still need a 1-mana creature (eg Symbiote) for LW to do anything productive when you cannot ramp up mana. Essence Warden is a neat little 1-drop that can improve the burn and sligh matchups at little cost as well.

@IBA: What gamestates do you propose Metamorph for? The problem legends can already be answered preemptively by fetching Faerie Macabre (Reanimate), Emrakul (S&T) or Viridian Shaman (Jitte). It does get Progenitus for a medium amount of mana but that's quite the specific situation, and the 5-mana + life copy best creature play looks underwhelming when compared to Symbiote in most situations.

[Koby]

You still need a 1-mana creature (eg Symbiote) for LW to do anything productive when you cannot ramp up mana. Essence Warden is a neat little 1-drop that can improve the burn and sligh matchups at little cost as well.


I disagree. Whenever I've played Living Wish, it has been primarily to get Cradle (setup) or a finisher (Terastadon, Emmy). On occasion, I've gotten Shaman when I've seen SFM being cast for Jitte.

Game 2-3, this is different, as I typically board out at least 1 Heritage Druid, 1 Nettle Sentinel, and/or 1 Llanowar Elves to make room for KGrips, Therapies, or Vengevine. This allows LW to be used mid-combo when the plan does not typically involve "comboing" off.

I won't ever play the deck without access to 4 Wirewood Symbiote in the maindeck.

[Kich867]

I don't see the need for a dedicated Wish-board either. If I ran both VV and Wish targets, I would run this:

4 Vengevine
1 Emrakul
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman/Terastadon
3 Krosan Grip
4 anti-combo

I'm not sold on Buried Alive anymore. Its strictly worse than most other options, and by the time you're boarding them, along with Grips, and other tools, the amount of creatures left in the deck don't make Vengevine rebuys very effective at all. Peacekeeper can be answered with Terastadon, and Humility with KGrips.

I'm sorry I think I missed something somewhere, what other options are there to put Vengevine's in the GY besides Intuition and how is BA strictly worse than them? "Strictly worse" can be used to describe Shock relative to Lightning Bolt given that they're the exact same card but one is simply better in it's entirety--in no circumstance is Lightning Bolt ever worse than Shock. If you're referring to Intuition, it's kind of a different beast than BA--for one, it has uses beyond just putting Venge's in the yard, but one of the problems there is that we already have better options to do what other things Intuition does: tutor.

BA hits 3 of the 4 vengevines as early as turn 2, allowing you to start swinging for 12+ on turn 3 with consistency.

Personally I'm just not a fan of devoting 7-8 card slots for this aggro plan..

[danyul]

Nah. rukcus is advocating the use of Vengevine without Buried Alive or Intiution. You just draw into them or GSZ them out or whatever works.

That way you still get access to the creature without filling up your sideboard.

[Infinitium]

I disagree. Whenever I've played Living Wish, it has been primarily to get Cradle (setup) or a finisher (Terastadon, Emmy). On occasion, I've gotten Shaman when I've seen SFM being cast for Jitte.

Game 2-3, this is different, as I typically board out at least 1 Heritage Druid, 1 Nettle Sentinel, and/or 1 Llanowar Elves to make room for KGrips, Therapies, or Vengevine. This allows LW to be used mid-combo when the plan does not typically involve "comboing" off.

I won't ever play the deck without access to 4 Wirewood Symbiote in the maindeck.

So what do you wish for in the fairly common "opponent answered my first three creatures, now what" gamestate?

I actually began playing my Wish builds with my usual 4/2 split between Symbiote/Ranger with access to the third ranger in the board, but quickly swapped this for the 4th Symbiote for a 3/3 split instead. Symbiote performs far too many functions in the early game besides generating mana not to maximize the amount of virtual copies run, and it's still broken at 3 mana. It also helps preserve the Elf count MD whilst making room for wish.

[theross]

Thanks for the info ;)

Alright so, after some math, I have this results:

Hands//////13 Lands deck////14 Lands + 4 Cradle
0 Land-----16%---------------14% counting that a single Cradle doesn't work
1 Land-----36%---------------24%
2 Land-----31%---------------34%
3 Land-----13%---------------23%
4 Land-----3%----------------9%

There's almost no difference in getting 0 lands from both lists:
13 Lands: 16%---------18 Lands: 14%-------We have a +2% of having to mull for not seeing any
A single Cradle wouldn't do the work, so we should count the chances of drawing 0 lands as though you ran 14 lands, which would be 14%

I think we can ggree that either 1 or 2 land are the best hands, and are what we usually want to get. So adding those up:
13 Lands: 67%---------18 Lands: 58%-------We get a +9% of having Sweet hands

The difference of getting 3 or more, which I usually consider weaker hands, is:
13 Lands: 16%---------18 Lands: 32%-------Therefore a +16% of slower hands

I hope this shows that for drawing more Fuel, having a better combo clock, and having optimal hands, 13 lands is probably the best for our deck.

14 Lands + 4 Cradle only grants slower hand, and you don't have any better % of not having to mull than we do. So, the only thing left to test is better those Cradle are actually worth some very, very tight spots.

It appears that the change shifts the distribution from a peak between 1-2 lands to a peak more evenly distributed around 2. I would argue that the latter is better, since I very much dislike 1 land hands. These hands are far more vulnerable to Mental Misstep and spot removal, since you are relying on your early creatures to accelerate you in the early game. This analysis also discounts the power of Gaea's Cradle, which is much better than any lord the deck could run. Having cradle as a "lord" replaces vulnerability to spot removal with vulnerabilty to wasteland, which is a trade I will gladly make.


@IBA: When generating a ton of mana with lords, any tutor will be able to find Regal Force to win the game so there is no great advantage to Wish here. As for my comment about the extended versions of the deck not running Wish, they still retained access to most of the utility targets that are commonly used such as Viridian Shaman, Enchantment Removal, E Witness, and various parts of the combo. They could've easily shaved the MD Eternal Witness, a Symbiote, and a Heritage Druid for 3 Wishes and had nearly all the utility you gain in the legacy version. They also could've had access to cards like Essence Warden and Wirewood Hivemaster, which were used in the mirror to effectively negate the Grapeshot win condition. This is all in a format that is slower than legacy, and thus elf players would not have been punished as much for sacrificing power for having flexible answers to a variety of threats. The issue with playing Living Wish, even in a format as wide open as legacy (which would logically incentivize flexibility) is that this trade is not worth it in an explosive combo deck like elves. Various hate cards do not exist in maindecks, providing no incentive for having maindeck answers to them while most of the hate (E Plague, Canonist, Perish, Humility, Peacekeeper) can be more effectively answered by Vengevine, Krosan Grip, Beast Within, Dismember and Mortarpod or by simply having a consistent turn 3 win since opponents cannont realistically mulligan aggressively for their few hate pieces. Living Wish is a worse tutoring spell than Summoner's Pact that gains its advantage by providing tactical solutions to various problems. However, there is no need to devote the space in the sideboard to give Wish tutoring power when those slots can simply be used to directly give tactical solutions (See the list above for examples) for post-sideboard games when they are necessary. Wish also fails to give any strategic flexibility (Which Vengevine does) so as to fight decks which have hate in addition to other cards that are effective in the matchup. (currently these decks are mostly BUG---Team America with hymns etc and BugStill with Deeds etc)

On vulnerability to Wasteland: Upon a comparative analysis, an 18 land list with 4 cradles is essentially playing 4 cradles over 4 lords, which replaces vulnerability to spot removal with vulnerability to wasteland, as I've mentioned above. Thus, the only 2 lands I play in a streamlined combo version are Dryad Arbor and Bayou, both of which are protected by a tutorable 4 of in the deck, Quirion Ranger. This should (and in my experience has) mitigate the vulnerability so much so that it is not an issue. Playing 18 lands also allows for a single wasteland not to bring you down to 0-1 lands that often, which also softens the blow.


@NihilObstat: The other possible win condition in the deck is Regal Force. In order to more reliably find/cast it one must run the cheapest, most powerful tutors available: GSZ and Pact.

[Koby]

I'm sorry I think I missed something somewhere, what other options are there to put Vengevine's in the GY besides Intuition and how is BA strictly worse than them?

You're relying on naturally drawing Buried Alive to activate the Vengevines. Instead, on that turn 3, you could be developing the game plan as usual, for instance Wirewood Symbiote + Visionary. The game is going to be an attrition war regardless, and Buries Alive adds more spells to the deck that needs to be playing creatures nearly every turn. It taxes the manabase too much to make it effective. I prefer Fauna Shaman to fill that role.


Nah. rukcus is advocating the use of Vengevine without Buried Alive or Intiution. You just draw into them or GSZ them out or whatever works.

That way you still get access to the creature without filling up your sideboard.

Correct, and also Fauna Shaman.


So what do you wish for in the fairly common "opponent answered my first three creatures, now what" gamestate?

I actually began playing my Wish builds with my usual 4/2 split between Symbiote/Ranger with access to the third ranger in the board, but quickly swapped this for the 4th Symbiote for a 3/3 split instead. Symbiote performs far too many functions in the early game besides generating mana not to maximize the amount of virtual copies run, and it's still broken at 3 mana. It also helps preserve the Elf count MD whilst making room for wish.

In the matchups where "opponent answered my first three creatures" occurs - you wish for Vengevine. it's pretty clear that these decks pack enough removal/counters to deal with a swarm plan, so a recursion plan is better suited.

[catmint]

Can you post your current list theross?
I was never a fan of cradle, but your arguments make me curious to test this in goldfish/real life.

[theross]

@Catamint: If I were playing a streamlined combo list, it would be nearly the same as my list from the GP, which is posted earlier in the thread. I doubt more than 2-3 of the 75 would be changed, if any. I'd most likely try to make some room in the board for Dismembers but I doubt that is possible with 4 BA, 4 Vine, and 4 Therapy. I'd most likely just have 3 Beast Within as a catch-all.

@Ruckus: You're not relying on Buried Alive, just using it to supplement the new plan as a means to make it as explosive as the original combo. Turn 1 mana elf, turn 2 buried alive, turn 3 recur is just as fast as the previous combo, although it doesn't ever end the game entirely on turn 3, it effectively does. You can still naturally draw Vengevines (great against hymn) and tutor for them with GSZ. I found Fauna Shaman to be incredibly slow, even when supplemented by untap effects, and also vulnerable to removal (Note the decks for which you want Vengevine will be playing a lot). However, I still think 1 is necessary as a tutorable way to start the chain. Intuition is slightly worse at enabling Vengevines but much better as a means to begin combo-ing with Glimpse or Regal Force since it can find a missing piece such as Heritage Druid, Zenith, Cradle, or Glimpse. Thus, I prefer a blue splash when MDing Vengevines but black when sideboarding since you also gain access to Cabal Therapy, the best combo hate. Splashing a 2nd color when you have access to fetch lands does not tax the mana base at all in the abstract, it merely exposes you slightly to Wasteland, which as I've argued before is not significant enough to overcome the strengths of the Vengevine plan itself.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

@TheRoss:

1) Drawing 5-7 cards with Regal Force is not winning. It may or may not lead to winning. Casting Emrakul is winning.

2) Extended Elves decks were, at least in themselves, faster than in Legacy. This is because Legacy has more instant speed removal, Force and now Mental Misstep to worry about. Extended Elves lists are much more streamlined for the combo, but this is not something that Legacy elves can afford to be. You need a fallback plan.

3) Living Wish's role is more of a hate grabber than a hate solver. It's useful to have maindeck answers to Jitte, graveyard decks, Emrakul, Affinity, planeswalkers. Most successful combo decks have some ability to disrupt or control the flow of the game, and are not just relying on being able to piece together an offensive combo, and this for a very good reason.

[theross]

1) Have you ever lost a game after resolving Regal Force for 5+ cards? I haven't, even with 5 of 7 cards being lands. Has anyone on this thread ever lost after drawing that many cards and landing a 5/5 beaststick? (Note that Goyf is typically a 4/5 against elves given the lack of artifacts and enchantments)

2) LSV won PT Berlin with a streamlined deck for the metagame since he expected that he had the best deck and wanted to be prepared to race in the mirror but most players at that event opted for less streamlined versions of the deck in order to have an aggro plan using Essence Warden, Wirewood Hivemaster, and Chord of Calling as an additional tutor. Many also had MD Elvish Champions and most had Jittes in the board to supplement this plan. LSV cut these cards for more mana elves (He was the only one with Elves of Deep Shadow) and a 2nd Viridian Shaman main since he understood that winning the Jitte war in the mirror was paramount, and would also be important in other matchups to hit Chalices as well as other Jittes. He also ran Weird Harvest as a 2nd tutor option as it is clearly the more powerful than Chord of Calling, (I would assume that casting this card for 2 or 3 will nearly always win the game) but he was the only player in top8 who made these choices. Despite these choices made to streamline the deck and decrease its fundamental turn, LSV's list is not faster than a list of Legacy elves due to the inclusion of mana lords, Quirion Ranger, Gaea's Cradle, and GSZ. These cards are incredibly powerful and certainly allow the deck to win on turn 3 more often than extra Birchlore Rangers would despite the synergy with Nettle Sentinel. Moreover, both decks have a natural fall back plan of going aggro and grinding the game with card advantage gleaned from Symbiote/Visionary and Regal Force. This is why Symbiote is so important to the deck, he is integral to both MD plans. 10+ creatures will end the game quickly, even if they are 1/1s.

3) You contradict yourself here. The line, "It's useful to have MD answers to Jitte, GY decks, Emrakul*, Affinity, P-Walkers" implies that you are primarily using Living Wish to combat these weapons, and all but the GY decks are examples of hate. Thus Living Wish is a hate solver rather than a hate grabber as you claim. Furthermore, MD answers to these cards are not important enough to devote 10+ of your 75 slots to a clunky wish package. 1 MD V Shaman answers Chalice and when supplemented by Symbiote, answers Jitte. An early SnT-->Emrakul can be answered by putting in Regal Force/Priests/Gaea's Cradle and then going off. Note here that Summoner's Pact is much more useful in this capacity than Living Wish, allowing you to find the necessary piece to win on your following turn. Jace is not a problem for this deck unless supplemented by Pernicious Deed in BUG-Still, where Vengevine helps much more than any single wish target. Thus I see wish providing more value as a utility spell than a tutor, and a more efficient tutor such as pact coalesces with what the deck naturally wants to do.

In response to your last point, Elf combo controls the game by applying early pressure, either with aggressive creature swarms or the threat of the combo. This forces the opponent into a defensive position in the early game, which allows the elf player to dictate the pace of the game. This plan does not work against faster combo decks like ANT, which is why I make room for some light disruption against those decks.

Abstractly, I think our differences stem from you trying to take a much more specific tactical approach to the deck, whereas I focus on a big-picture strategic approach. In the former paradigm, Living Wish acts as a tool-box, providing an array of cards, each of which is designed to answer various problems that may arise. In the latter, the Vengevine plan provides the deck an entire new angle of attack, one which completely shifts the deck's core strategy so that it dodges cards like Engineered Plague, Perish, Grim Lavamancer, and Umezawa's Jitte. My above solution to Show and Tell-->Emrakul is certainly a strategic one rather than tactical. I concede the fact that some permanents are real problems (mainly Humility but sometimes Lavamancer, Jitte, and Chalice as well) so I board some answers to those in the form of K-Grip, Beast Within, or Dismember but that's all I see as necessary. Rather than try and have a specific answer to everything, (Not possible in a format of 1K plus playable cards) I am confident that I can win matches by combo-ing before the hate hits or having one of my few answers. For the most part, single pieces of hate can be played through quite easily and if someone overloads, I'd much rather sidestep them than try to win with a single bullet. Obviously if a specific tournament has an expected metagame that is wildly different from what I'm seeing now I will adjust, but that just isn't happening. For the most part I see NO RUG, UW(r) Stoneforge decks, some residual BUG, Merfolk, and the assorted randomness that Legacy brings. I don't agree that the cards you're finding with Living Wish are changing various matchups to any appreciable degree, but threatening the combo faster certainly does. It forces opponents to play more conservatively, which plays into the strengths of such a resilient and versatile deck.

*Minor aside on Emrakul: Playing one MD has the added benefit of giving you a near un-losable game 1 against Painter decks, which is not insignificant given that otherwise they would be well positioned in the match to race you.

[NihilObstat]

Having cradle as a "lord" replaces vulnerability to spot removal with vulnerabilty to wasteland, which is a trade I will gladly make.
------------------------
Playing 18 lands also allows for a single wasteland not to bring you down to 0-1 lands that often, which also softens the blow.
------------------------
@NihilObstat: The other possible win condition in the deck is Regal Force. In order to more reliably find/cast it one must run the cheapest, most powerful tutors available: GSZ and Pact.

You wouldn't even have to talk about Wastelands, if you only run basics.
Anyway, I will not comment on the Cradles thing yet, because I haven't tested. I just wanted to show you a chart with the actual percentages, so that we all can see how running 18 lands increases to chances of drawing 3 lands (x2) and 4 (x3).


I've lost quite a few games after casting Regal Force and not winning, to combo, board sweepers, lightning bolt, etc, etc.

This is the difference between people like me who have played thousands of games with combo elves, to people who maybe have played a hundred.

[Koby]

This is the difference between people like me who have played thousands of games with combo elves, to people who maybe have played a hundred.

Not being incendiary, but this is a very important point. While someone can pick up the deck and learn to play it within a week, it takes thousands of games, and hundreds of matchups, to learn the limits of what the deck is capable of. Its the difference between knowing when to hold back for a combo turn, and rush out the hoard to start attacking for 5-6 a turn. It's the difference between recycling Visionary ad nauseam, and attempting to untap with a mana lord. It's the difference between Living Wish for Cradle, and having the patience to not play it on the same turn in the face of removal.

There are many small interactions that only become revealed after many iterations of play - most of which will make a difference in a tight game-state.

[Infinitium]

You wouldn't even have to talk about Wastelands, if you only run basics.
Anyway, I will not comment on the Cradles thing yet, because I haven't tested. I just wanted to show you a chart with the actual percentages, so that we all can see how running 18 lands increases to chances of drawing 3 lands (x2) and 4 (x3).

Making the first 3-4 land drops is not bad however, especially when facing disruption. In any case I wouldn't count Cradle as much as a land drop as a ritual effect.

[Absolutflipz]

I really don't understand some people's aversion to Gaea's Cradle purely because it can be Wasteland'ed. Absolving your deck of the potential Gaea's Cradle brings just because Wasteland exists is preposterous.

Further, most of the time you play it, you're tapping it that turn in order to go off or at the least, pump out a ton of stuff...so Wasteland has 0 impact.

Gaea's Cradle is extremely powerful and definitely a 4-of.

I do have a bit of an issue with Dryad Arbor in the deck without the NO/Prog plan.
Ross, while you've mentioned some upsides to Dryad Arbor...I'd like to point out that Dryad arbor is a 5th land (in addition to the 4 Cradles) that can't be kept in your 7 card opener as it can't be tapped for mana on the first turn. Further, using your turn 1 and a GSZ to "rampant growth" isn't all that great as there are more times when you'd rather save the GSZ for a combo piece/enabler.

[theross]

@NihilObstat: I don't disagree with the math, but with the assumption that drawing only 1-2 lands early is optimal. I'd much rather make 2-3 land drops consistently, so as to reduce reliance on my early creatures to generate mana and therefore reduce vulnerability to early disruption.

On Wasteland: Running basics does not automatically make Wasteland a problem or even much of a concern. As Absolutflipz notes, Cradle will still provide an immediate boon of at least 2-4 mana (something that mana lords do not do in the face of removal) and the threat of this mana advantage stifles your opponent's ability to apply pressure or disrupt the combo, since they absolutely must spend their next turn dealing with Cradle if they can. (and that's a very relevant if even with Wasteland) This threat also teams with Quirion Ranger to protect the other non-basics in the deck, since very few draws can afford to waste one such land if it leaves them open to Cradle. Wasteland simply isn't that relevant against a deck with 7-8 fetches, 3-4 basics, and approximately one billion cheap creatures that make mana.

On Regal Force: I hope the lightning bolt you lost to was a lethal one aimed at your head, otherwise something went horribly wrong. After resolving such a Regal Force, sweepers and spot removal spells become irrelevant since they cannot recoup the card advantage you've gained. It's incredibly hard to lose after hitting on a one-sided draw7, surely it happens under 5% of the time. I'll gladly take 95% win for 7 mana over 99.9999% win for 15. I never meant to imply that it's impossible to lose after hitting on Regal Force, although I see that was not clear in my post. I merely wanted to show that for it's cost, Regal Force wins enough of the time to be better than trying to hard cast Emrakul with Living Wish.

@Ruckus: Most of the decision trees you enumerated are not unique to this deck. All aggressive decks have to manage their threats against removal. All combo decks have to draw disruption with their weakest threats (Which are always dependent on what cards you have that game) so as to leave themselves in the best position to win when their opponent is spent. All decks have to shift roles during the course of the game and adjust their strategy/tactics accordingly. Elves has a fair amount of tribal synergies one must learn to use effectively (Q-Ranger and Mana creatures, Symbiote/Visionary, Heritage Druid/Nettle Sentinel are the most obvious) but these can be learned quite quickly by an experienced player. Once these are learned, the complicated decisions come down to playing correct Magic rather than specifically playing correct elves.

@Infinitum/Absolutflipz: I cannot agree more with your points on Cradle.

On Dryad Arbor: The more appropriate comparison is between GSZ-->Arbor and Llanowar Elf, since they differ only in vulnerability to land destruction and in creature type. Furthermore, that GSZ can also (and sometimes needs to) function as a tutor for some other creature is not a valid argument against the inclusion of Arbor, since all you're doing is giving the deck more options. To quote Brian Kibler, "Options win games." As far as Arbor giving you one less land that adds mana on turn 1, I see that as a minor detraction for what the card provides in utility, essentially giving the deck 4 more Llanowar Elves in one slot. Llanowars, while being the best creature to play on turn 1, are the worst to play on nearly every other turn of the game. Arbor allows you to play 8 while not having to draw as if you are playing 8, an effect which far outweighs the extra mulligans it causes. (about 2-3% more in 6-7 card hands)

[NihilObstat]

@NihilObstat: I don't disagree with the math, but with the assumption that drawing only 1-2 lands early is optimal. I'd much rather make 2-3 land drops consistently, so as to reduce reliance on my early creatures to generate mana and therefore reduce vulnerability to early disruption.
On Regal Force: I hope the lightning bolt you lost to was a lethal one aimed at your head, otherwise something went horribly wrong. After resolving such a Regal Force, sweepers and spot removal spells become irrelevant since they cannot recoup the card advantage you've gained. It's incredibly hard to lose after hitting on a one-sided draw7, surely it happens under 5% of the time. I'll gladly take 95% win for 7 mana over 99.9999% win for 15. I never meant to imply that it's impossible to lose after hitting on Regal Force, although I see that was not clear in my post. I merely wanted to show that for it's cost, Regal Force wins enough of the time to be better than trying to hard cast Emrakul with Living Wish.

For the last time on the Cradles idea. I'm not trying to bring the idea down. I like it, but I need to test and just wanted to show the math.

On regal force: I am not trying to underestimate its the potential, he is probably my most beloved card, but you are trying to make it sound as though Wish only works to tutor Emrakul. You are saying that there's a huge % of winning after Regal, and it is true, but you forget that Wish can also tutor for Regal and do the same plus the possibility of tutoring a straight wincon.

I don't like people who don't test reasonable ideas, and it seems to me that you haven't give Wish any testing. If you wanna post arguments against Wish test it for a week first, as I do with everything before attacking it. On the Cradles, I just showed the math.

Comparing the possibilities of Living Wish vs. non Living:
With your list, if you Tutor for Regal Force and he doesn't find a Glimpse you'll be stuck there, because your tutors are worth no card advantage after resolving the first RF.
With a Wish list, we can straight tutor for a win-con if we have enough mana (I run Mirror Entity - cheap). We can also tutor for a SECOND Regal Force (this is actually awesome).


Also: Yes, the LB went to my head, into 2 games and a Lavamancer in another game. Also removal in the form of Perish, Pernicious, etc, doesn't care if you have 2 or 20 cards on the board, and there's a lot of Black in my meta. Any Combo might also kill us or Humility-Moat might also humiliate us.
Just showing games were resolving Force isn't an auto-win.

[Absolutflipz]

Has anyone tried running the Buried Alive/Vengevine package main? The more I play these days I find myself wanting the Vengevine plan against so many decks.

I've tried to run versions with Fauna Shaman and Vengevine, but I find Fauna Shaman horribly slow (even with Quirion/Symibiote), while a resolved Buried Alive is game over against a large number of decks.

Maybe something like --

3x Llanowar Elves
3x Fyndhorn Elves
3x Quirion Ranger
1x Birchlore Rangers
4x Wirewood Symbiote
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
3x Elvish Visionary
3x Vengevine
1x Regal Force
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

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

4x Misty Rainforest
3x Verdant Catacombs
2x Bayou
4x Forest
4x Gaea's Cradle

SB (15):
1x Buried Alive
4x Cabal Therapy
2x Virdian Shaman/1xShaman-1x Thoughtseize
1x Regal Force
2x Krosan Grip
1x Mortarpod
4x Leyline of the Void

Obviously a rough sketch, and had to shave some numbers...but both the Vengevine plan and the Combo plan still seem reasonable with the maindeck build. In the few matches where Vengevine is too slow (Storm, CephBreakfast, Dredge, HiveMind, mirror), you can easily board in the hate and the second Regal Force to make the combo more reliable.

I'd also like to look at a list with Edric, Spymaster of Trest...as I think he could be a solid draw engine, but I'm not sure if he's better/worse/different from Regal Force to include. Can go the Intuition/Buried Alive Venge route...or just stream-lined combo with an aggro element to it with Edric included.

[Kich867]

I've tried it main-deck. I made a short post about it earlier--it basically came down to this: it's really nice when you turn 2 a Buried Alive into turn 3 triple Vengevine, but the frequency in which you end up with a vengevine in your hand, or just not seeing a buried alive in the first few turns really hurts. I think that was the bigger issue, not finding a black source of mana or having a vengevine or two in your opening hand is an auto-mull. Having 2 buried alives is also an auto-mull. The two cards just have very little use without each other.

It's a lot of card slots to devote to the maindeck, none of which aid the combo, all of which hurt the combo. Fauna shaman is really slow and under even ideal circumstances, you wouldn't be getting her fetch ability until around turn 4.

Also, we have absolutely no way to stop graveyard hate on their end.

[Absolutflipz]

I've tried it main-deck. I made a short post about it earlier--it basically came down to this: it's really nice when you turn 2 a Buried Alive into turn 3 triple Vengevine, but the frequency in which you end up with a vengevine in your hand, or just not seeing a buried alive in the first few turns really hurts. I think that was the bigger issue, not finding a black source of mana or having a vengevine or two in your opening hand is an auto-mull. Having 2 buried alives is also an auto-mull. The two cards just have very little use without each other.

It's a lot of card slots to devote to the maindeck, none of which aid the combo, all of which hurt the combo. Fauna shaman is really slow and under even ideal circumstances, you wouldn't be getting her fetch ability until around turn 4.

Also, we have absolutely no way to stop graveyard hate on their end.

I think 3 Buried Alives main helps alleviate drawing multiples...while having only 3 combined with Visionaries should let you see 1 per game fairly regularly, and you don't have to see Buried Alive as it is, given that you still have the combo available.

I don't think drawing a Vengevine is horrible, either. I've played many games where I've just beaten down with some Elves protected by Symbiote in combination with a Vengevine and you get there aggro-style.

I don't like Fauna Shaman, either, and have not included her in the list.

I'm not too worried about dealing with an opponent's graveyard hate as it softens their own game plan and further opens up the other half of our deck...and if you're really worried about dealing with GY hate, you have the discard package in the board...or the option to board out the BA/Venge plan in order to give them dead cards.

[resum]

Comparing the possibilities of Living Wish vs. non Living:
With your list, if you Tutor for Regal Force and he doesn't find a Glimpse you'll be stuck there, because your tutors are worth no card advantage after resolving the first RF.
With a Wish list, we can straight tutor for a win-con if we have enough mana (I run Mirror Entity - cheap). We can also tutor for a SECOND Regal Force (this is actually awesome).



As long as elvish visionary and wirewood symbiote are still in the deck, every tutor represents card advantage.

[danyul]

I think Nihil was speaking more about short term ways to win right on the spot. Sure, a tutor will always be "card advantage" if you have a Visionary in your 75, but if you tutor up a Regal Force and it whiffs, then you have kinda blown your load, combowise, and relying on the Visionary/Symbiotes for card advantage will give your opponent a few turns to catch up. Living Wish allows the flexibility to get a second Regal Force if necessary or just outright win if you have the mana.

edit- I played a small tourney the other night with 2 Cradles main and one in the SB. I kinda like them. I'll post again when I have something more, uh, concrete to say. For now they are just cute.

[Koby]

I think Nihil was speaking more about short term ways to win right on the spot. Sure, a tutor will always be "card advantage" if you have a Visionary in your 75, but if tutor up a Regal Force and it whiffs, then you have kinda blown you load, combowise, and relying on the Visionary/Symbiotes for card advantage will give your opponent a few turns to catch up. Living Wish allows the flexibility to get a second Regal Force if necessary or just outright win if you have the mana.

edit- I played a small tourney the other night with 2 Cradles main and one in the SB. I kinda like them. I'll post again when I have something more, uh, concrete to post. For now they are just cute.

Perhaps you can share the list you played. I suspect in this new metagame, Birchlore Ranger gains more value against the Hivemind decks than has given us before. I would be inclined to sub a few mana-dorks for Birchlores.

[NihilObstat]

As long as elvish visionary and wirewood symbiote are still in the deck, every tutor represents card advantage.

This is really funny actually. Today after I posted that I played a few games testing the 4 Cradles, but with Living Wish.

On a game I had and active Priest + 2 Quirion + Symbiote + Cradle = Tons of mana on turn 3. I played a Regal force into 7 cards, drew 3 Summoner's Pact, no glimpse, no Living Wish.... niiicee

I transformed the 3 pacts into 3 Visionaries, and bounced 1 with Symbiote, still didn't get Glimpse nor Living Wish. So I just pased turn. I was playing against Dredge so I was super lucky that he didn't combo that turn, but he dredged horribly.

Just to point out what I meant that tutors aren't a REAL card advantage if they can't get Regal Force, a second Regal Force, many times, although in this game the Wish would have become Emrakul/Entity for the win, thanks to the shit load of mana, but with a GSZ+Pact list there was no possible win that same turn... This also shows how superior Living Wish would have been in that game, and how superior it is many, many times.

I mean, seriously, Living Wish is not even fair compared to any other tutor. I win over 50% of my games without resolving Glimpse.

[danyul]

@ rukcus

I would'nt normally post a list because it's not as if I know WTF I'm talking about and I don't wanna toss lists everywhere like I'm some kinda elf savant, but here it is.

14 Forest
2 Gaea's Cradle

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

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Living Wish
4 Glimpse of Nature

SB

1 Masticore
1 Terastodon
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1 Faerie Macabre
4 Vengevine
3 Krosan Grip




That's what I ran. It's not set in stone. My intent was to strike a balance of all the things people have been talking about over the last few pages. Is it sad that I check this page all the time to see what IBA/theross has said? I have really enjoyed the back and forth lately. Anyways, I wanted to keep the mana lord plan somewhat intact while also giving myself access to Gaea's Cradle. I know it's kind of blasphemous to run any less than 8 untap dudes in the main but I thought I could live without a full 8 now that I had less mana lords. Maybe flawed logic there? Also I really like the Vengevine plan but Buried Alive wasn't working so well for me in practice. Full disclosure, I only played a few games with that build on MWS and I already had a negative opinion of it because I can't afford the fetches/duals (yet I bought 4 G.Cradles without hesitation. Stupid credit cards.).

I'm waiting on a fourth Gaea's Cradle to arrive in the mail. I will shove it into the maindeck somewhere. I really liked them whenever I saw them and 3 feels like a good number in the main. Also the sideboard is constantly in flux. I haven't actually played them before but the Beast Within plan seems more and more sexy. I hate flooding the sideboard with all these superfluous cards ( Terastodon, Wasteland, Masticore, Krosan Grip ) when a few copies of Beast Within can serve the same purpose.

Also, I was looking at some MTGO event results and some Elves! players have been using Gaddock Teeg , Xantid Swarm , and Qasali Pridemage as singletons in their SB. These are builds without Living Wish so I guess they just grab their singletons with Green Sun's Zenith . The Xantid Swarm seems random to me but I think the Gaddock Teeg is worth a look.

I'm thinking of changing the SB to something like this -


1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Regal Force
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Vengevine
2 Beast Within


Something like that. But I still want to try 1 Gaddock Teeg in there. Maybe. And this list leaves me with only 3 each of Wirewood Symbiote and Quirion Ranger in my 75. I don't know how to feel about that yet.

Anyways, that's where I'm at. I hope that was helpful in some way.

edit - oh also, I tried the Dryad Arbor plan but really didn't like burning a GSZ like that. I always found myself really wanting a tutor a few turns later. Actually, you always really want a tutor with this deck. So there you go.

[Kich867]

I see a Masticore pop up in the sideboard every now and then, and I have to say that I kind of like it. I think for the aggro-plan, he's practically a Day of Judgment, he stonewall blocks basically everything on the ground and kills what's in the air, we have an excess of land we don't need for discard fodder, and he regen's to boot.

Even if the side in artifact hate, they're siding in artifact hate for the offchance we wish for the one artifact we play that we only situationally need. I feel like if you have him on the ground for 1-2 turns they should basically be dead.. (wipe their board, swing out, rinse repeat)

Against dredge, you can ping your own Llanowar Elf to get rid of their bridges then go to town on their creatures and he can get rid of Blazing Archon and other reanimated targets..

I'll be tossing him in my sideboard for tomorrow, at my FNM the three most common decks (besides random jank ass decks) are Rock, Affinity, and Dredge. I feel like Masticore can be pretty solid against all of those. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll have some more insight into it.

-- Beast Within is iffy. I've played a lot with it, it's never necessarily "killed" me before, but handing them a 3/3 is not exactly solid. It can buy them an extra turn, it's another thing to put a Jitte on.. Most of the things you would hit with it you can take out with Viridian Zealot and Sylvok Replica.

[danyul]

Masticore is typically used to hit things like Peacekeeper or Ethersworn Canonist . He wouldn't be my first choice of SB cards for the Dredge matchup. If you can Wish for and cast a Masticore against Dredge, you are probably already dead or on the way to winning so I don't see it being terribly effective there. But you should let us know how it works for you.

Regarding Beast Within, ideally you don't care about the 3/3. You win the turn you play it or the next.

[Kich867]

Masticore is typically used to hit things like Peacekeeper or Ethersworn Canonist . He wouldn't be my first choice of SB cards for the Dredge matchup. If you can Wish for and cast a Masticore against Dredge, you are probably already dead or on the way to winning so I don't see it being terribly effective there. But you should let us know how it works for you.

Regarding Beast Within, ideally you don't care about the 3/3. You win the turn you play it or the next.

That example just kind of stemmed from the game I lost to dredge last week--Blazing Archon hit the table turn 2 and as a general statement, Elves has no means of winning that doesn't involve non-combat damage. It was no bueno, and I had to scoop turn 2-3 every game, had no way to stop it. Both games were turn 1 Putrid Imp, then during his upkeep he'd discard his hand, mill 5-6 from a grave troll, breakthrough his library into his graveyard, sac 3 narco's to dread return, Blazing hits the table and I scoop.

[danyul]

Like a year ago Dredge and Reanimator was everywhere. I still played Elves back then and had decent success against both decks. You need Faerie Macabre and maybe Tormod's Crypt/Bojuka Bog. I actually beat a Reanimator deck (2-1) just last night by Wishing for Faerie Macabre on turn two and just holding it until he tried to go off. I just went for hands with Living Wish. If you don't run a wish build then you might need 4 of whatever graveyard hate in the SB and just aggressively mull into it. Against Dredge you want to hit their early dredger dudes. It becomes easier to know what to hit and when if you have experience playing Dredge. It can sometimes sit there doing nothing if the Dredge player isn't able to get that first dredge activation going.

Basically you are just trying to stunt the development of these decks so you can race them. Nobody is asking you to deal with them after they have done all their crazy shiz.

Also, Beast Within can answer a Blazing Archon much easier than a Masticore can. And Viridian Zealot/Sylvok Replica can't touch your opponent's hate creatures at all.

edit - In the case you described, I would just hold the Faerie Macabre until he tried to reanimate the Blazing Archon. If you have an answer then you don't have to scoop right away. I dunno what list you are running but I think you had a Banefire list? You could have tried to Banefire the Archon or something. Or just toss fire directly at the player.

[Kich867]

I'm currently running a totally jank list that's not worth putting up (the banefire list was theoretical), I'm just getting into Legacy and have a list very similar to IBA's in the mail, so within the next few weeks I'll have a legitimate and functional elf-combo deck, but for now I'm just playing with what I have haha. I got hit with 2 grand in car repairs just before summer started, so I've been trying to find extra money to throw at magic.

That is good to know, however (I'll have Faerie Macabre's in the sideboard haha). I'm still toying with the idea of running a singleton banefire in the mainboard, but I won't have anything to really report on that until my order gets here. Take most of my opinions with a grain of salt haha.

[theross]

For the last time on the Cradles idea. I'm not trying to bring the idea down. I like it, but I need to test and just wanted to show the math.

On regal force: I am not trying to underestimate its the potential, he is probably my most beloved card, but you are trying to make it sound as though Wish only works to tutor Emrakul. You are saying that there's a huge % of winning after Regal, and it is true, but you forget that Wish can also tutor for Regal and do the same plus the possibility of tutoring a straight wincon.

I don't like people who don't test reasonable ideas, and it seems to me that you haven't give Wish any testing. If you wanna post arguments against Wish test it for a week first, as I do with everything before attacking it. On the Cradles, I just showed the math.

Comparing the possibilities of Living Wish vs. non Living:
With your list, if you Tutor for Regal Force and he doesn't find a Glimpse you'll be stuck there, because your tutors are worth no card advantage after resolving the first RF.
With a Wish list, we can straight tutor for a win-con if we have enough mana (I run Mirror Entity - cheap). We can also tutor for a SECOND Regal Force (this is actually awesome).


Also: Yes, the LB went to my head, into 2 games and a Lavamancer in another game. Also removal in the form of Perish, Pernicious, etc, doesn't care if you have 2 or 20 cards on the board, and there's a lot of Black in my meta. Any Combo might also kill us or Humility-Moat might also humiliate us.
Just showing games were resolving Force isn't an auto-win.


The post in question directly made the claim that having 1-2 lands is optimal, which I disagree with. This was independent of any possible views on Gaea's Cradle.

I'm not forgetting that Wish can do multiple things, just arguing that those things are largely unnecessary, and thus not worth 3-4 MD slots and 7-11 in the sideboard, which is a HUGE commitment. One of these options was the ability to find Emrakul and cast it when you have no way to viably combo but lots of mana. The rest of its versatility comes in the ability to answer various hate cards and find graveyard hate in game 1, which I've argued before is also unnecessary. I agree that a 2nd Regal Force is awesome though, which is why I've had 2 in the MD of every combo list I've posted and advocated.

You are right in saying I haven't played a single game with Living Wish in my deck, nor do I intend to, since I have no theoretical reason to believe that it's a reasonable choice.

On your last point, Perish does care how many cards you have to recover, which in this case is 7. Humility could be an issue, but you still have the ability to swarm (most of your guys are 1/1s anyway) or find an answer since you are in a post board game if they have Humility in their deck. Moat does nothing to stop Emrakul so I'm never worried about that card. If you have a lot of black in your metagame, might I suggest Vengevine?


In response to your next post: Is that supposed to convince anyone that Summoner's Pact is worse than Living Wish? You saw approximately 20 cards that game, after which you'd have an 80+% chance of hitting a Glimpse, yet you fail to note that you were extremely unlucky to miss. Furthermore, a 2nd MD Regal Force would've allowed you to win easily. Lastly, why did you find 3 Visionaries rather than 1 Visionary and 2 Symbiotes? This would let you see more cards to win on the following turn, which you certainly would've needed to do against dredge. This would also help you to block more zombies on the next turn without actually losing them when you try to combo after untapping.

I assume your last point is meant to clarify a previous post but after stating that as your intent, you go back to something about Living Wish and GSZ/Pact not being able to win immediately (since you didn't have a 2nd Regal Force MD), even though they still won. Finding Visionary with tutors is card advantage, it's just not overwhelming card advantage (like Regal Force) until active with Symbiote for a few turns.

@Absolutflipz: I've mentioned before that Intuition performed well in the MD when I ran it at Jupiter to a top16 finish. It's nearly as effective as BA with Vengevine while also allowing you to find various parts of the combo kill if necessary. Playing U also allows you to play 1 Edric if you are so inclined, which I feel would be quite good with vines, as it keeps your hand filled with dudes to recur them.

@Danyul: Don't be afraid to voice your opinion, it's the only way you can help the community. Your list looks fine based on your objectives for it, and my disagreements with it should be obvious based on my posting history.

On the Dredge/Reanimator matchup: I've typically tried to simply race these decks, especially Dredge since most lists kill around turn 3-4 as our deck does. Reanimator is much harder since they typically land a guy faster and have more disruption, so at recent events I packed some extra hate for the matchup. When I had the vines in at Jupiter, I ran Faerie Macabre (good with Fauna Shaman) and Seal of Removal.

[Neil]

This is really funny actually. Today after I posted that I played a few games testing the 4 Cradles, but with Living Wish.

On a game I had and active Priest + 2 Quirion + Symbiote + Cradle = Tons of mana on turn 3. I played a Regal force into 7 cards, drew 3 Summoner's Pact, no glimpse, no Living Wish.... niiicee

I transformed the 3 pacts into 3 Visionaries, and bounced 1 with Symbiote, still didn't get Glimpse nor Living Wish. So I just pased turn. I was playing against Dredge so I was super lucky that he didn't combo that turn, but he dredged horribly.

Just to point out what I meant that tutors aren't a REAL card advantage if they can't get Regal Force, a second Regal Force, many times, although in this game the Wish would have become Emrakul/Entity for the win, thanks to the shit load of mana, but with a GSZ+Pact list there was no possible win that same turn... This also shows how superior Living Wish would have been in that game, and how superior it is many, many times.

I mean, seriously, Living Wish is not even fair compared to any other tutor. I win over 50% of my games without resolving Glimpse.

Long time since i've posted here, but maybe I can actually get a helpful answer this time. From what you've posted, about casting a regal and then getting no glimpses, would it be better to run a second regal main-deck? I get plenty of situations were I would have wanted a second regal force to cast. I run living wish also and have found it to be a GREAT card. What is your SB for the living wish deck?

[danyul]

Perhaps you can share the list you played. I suspect in this new metagame, Birchlore Ranger gains more value against the Hivemind decks than has given us before. I would be inclined to sub a few mana-dorks for Birchlores.

Sorry I totally ignored half of your post. I tossed in a single Birchlore Ranger as the 61st card but have yet to play a live tournament with that build. I think of it as my 7th Llanowar Elf since it can give you that 1 mana on turn2 assuming you have another 1cmc elf in hand. Also, Hivemind.


Long time since i've posted here, but maybe I can actually get a helpful answer this time. From what you've posted, about casting a regal and then getting no glimpses, would it be better to run a second regal main-deck? I get plenty of situations were I would have wanted a second regal force to cast. I run living wish also and have found it to be a GREAT card. What is your SB for the living wish deck?

theross, who plays no Living Wishes, runs 2 Regal Force in the maindeck. Almost all the builds using Living Wish run 1 Regal Force in the main and another in the side. This gives most builds, Wish or not, access to 2 Regal Forces in case the first one gives you a bunch of chaff.

Typical Wish sideboards have single copies of Emrakul, Regal Force, and Gaea's Cradle at the very least. You can toss in whatever hate creatures you like on top of that (Sylvok Replica, Viridian Shaman, Masticore, Terastodon) along with maybe a Wasteland or Bojuka Bog if you want to get crazy. If you sat down and had nobody around to scold you, you might go a little hogwild with the Wish SB silverbullets. I personally am trying to work with as few Wish targets as possible to free up SB space for Deedstill/Team America/Bitch.deck and the combo matchups. Your mileage may vary.

[Absolutflipz]

This is really funny actually. Today after I posted that I played a few games testing the 4 Cradles, but with Living Wish.

On a game I had and active Priest + 2 Quirion + Symbiote + Cradle = Tons of mana on turn 3. I played a Regal force into 7 cards, drew 3 Summoner's Pact, no glimpse, no Living Wish.... niiicee

I transformed the 3 pacts into 3 Visionaries, and bounced 1 with Symbiote, still didn't get Glimpse nor Living Wish. So I just pased turn. I was playing against Dredge so I was super lucky that he didn't combo that turn, but he dredged horribly.

Just to point out what I meant that tutors aren't a REAL card advantage if they can't get Regal Force, a second Regal Force, many times, although in this game the Wish would have become Emrakul/Entity for the win, thanks to the shit load of mana, but with a GSZ+Pact list there was no possible win that same turn... This also shows how superior Living Wish would have been in that game, and how superior it is many, many times.

I mean, seriously, Living Wish is not even fair compared to any other tutor. I win over 50% of my games without resolving Glimpse.

Nice random 2 game sample.

There's another solution to your problem. Play a 2nd Regal Force main. 2 Regals in a GSZ/Pact version are common and I think correct.

[NihilObstat]

I'm not forgetting that Wish can do multiple things, just arguing that those things are largely unnecessary, and thus not worth 3-4 MD slots and 7-11 in the sideboard, which is a HUGE commitment. One of these options was the ability to find Emrakul and cast it when you have no way to viably combo but lots of mana. The rest of its versatility comes in the ability to answer various hate cards and find graveyard hate in game 1, which I've argued before is also unnecessary. I agree that a 2nd Regal Force is awesome though, which is why I've had 2 in the MD of every combo list I've posted and advocated.

I must say I'm sorry that I didn't realize that everyone in the threat who is not running Living Wish, plays 2 Regal Force maindeck. Four months ago no one ran 2 Regal Force maindeck.
I am confused though, I don't see 2 Regal Force in your latest list.

If you play 2 Regal Force + 1 Emrakul, that makes 2 more cards than I do. Many people also run, or should run, at least 1 Viridian Shaman/Zealot if they don't have Wish. Why not play 2-3 Living Wish instead?
It's as simple as that. It's not wasted spots maindeck, it's actually recycled spots, plus a huge bonus on versatility.

You Really need to test Living Wish, do me the favor as I'm testing 4 Cradles, please ;)


On the game post: I did not tutor for Symbiote because I saw that I was going to win anyway (he had dredged nothing useful before) but in most other games against dredge, I could have died the next turn.


I am just tired of arguing here anyway. Some people are so stuck up with their list and don't want to test anything different. I think I've already shown the many situations in which Wish is superior to any other tutor, and its only down-side is wasting spots in the side (Keep it down to Emmy, Masti, Sylvok, Force, Cradle then, only 5). So if anyone is willing to test Wish go ahead, I welcome you to it, if not fair enough ;)

[catmint]

I did some goldfishing with Ross' list, because I wanted to proof that running 18 lands is bad. However, I was stunned to see how sick 4 Cradles are. Ross list is so far the best one of the 5 builds i goldfished (always 71 games).

The list I ran 8 lords, 4pact/4 wish

T2 started 13% finisehd sucessfully 67%
T3 started 46% finished successfully 97%
T4 started 23% finished successfully 94%
Mulligan 10%

Ross list:
T2 started 11% finisehd sucessfully 75%
T3 started 55% finished successfully 95%
T4 started 27% finished successfully 95%
Mulligan 15%

So the first time I broke clearly the 60% by turn 3 statistic and I was never over the 90% by turn 4.
There might be some variance in there but 1 thing is clear. Playing 18 lands with 4 cradle and no lords does not hurt the plan to cast regal force at all and surprisingly does not cause more fizzles.

THe list can still be tuned by cutting the MD Viridian Shaman and adding the 4th Pact. I think running MD artifact removal is good these days (equipments obv), but I would definetly put the 4th pact in there somehow.

What was more fun than goldfishing was playtesting. The big advantage that the deck has is everything ross always argued.
- It is much more resilient to spot removal, because the mana does not depend on lords.
- Using GSZ as a manelf proofed also to be a very good play in goldfishing and play testing.
- I think GSZ is (slightly) better than wish, because it frees up slots functioning as a manaelf and is therefore not that "clunky" when you see 2 in the opening hand compared to 2 living wish. Also the most important function is to setup the combo in turn 2 and for that it also beats living wish by 1 mana. Having more SB spots is also very useful!
- With 18 lands it is easy to support the vengevine plan post board, which is a bank and much better than NO Prog (which I defended in the past) :)

Vengevine is clearly the best card to have a game vs. control and discard. I was a fan of NO-Prog, because I know many "weaker" decks in my local meta, that just fold to a Prog. However times are changing and resolving a 4 mana sorvery is not that easy anymore.

So testing really changed my opinion about elves once again. I feel TheRoss build is clearly better than mine in every aspect (explosivess, resilience and backup plan). I suggest everyone should do some testing before doing crazy math over draws or theoretical discussion about Living Wish!

[Godmode]

I've been testing TheRoss list online and the results are similar to the David Vo's list in the 1st game, in the 2nd/3rd game - BA + VV it's the way to go.

The problem is that I have all the cards besides the cradle playset. I only have one and they're too fckn expensive so I'm asking you: Playing theross list, what cards should I put in to sub the 3 cradles I don't have? I've been using +2 Priest of Titania and +1 Crop rotation. Yes crop rotation it's very easy to get countered, but they have to choose between that or glimpse/important elf. I love theross list but I don't know if the +2PoT and +1crop rot are the best cards to put in for the 3 missing cradles. I would appreciate a lot your thoughts on this guys.

[Kich867]

Went to FNM tonight, 4 rounds, this was my list:

4x Priest of Titania
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Arbor Elves
3x Elvish Archdruid
3x Heritage Druid
4x Quirion Ranger
3x Nettle Sentinel
1x Wirewood Symbiote
1x Regal Force
1x Banefire
2x Birchlore Rangers
4x Elvish Visionary

4x Living Wish
4x Green Sun's Zenith
3x Glimpse of Nature

15x Forest

SB:
1x Emrakul
1x Wirewood Symbiote
1x Elvish Champion
1x Elvish Archdruid
1x Faerie Macabre
1x Masticore
1x Heritage Druid
1x Nettle Sentinel
1x Birchlore Rangers
2x Krosan Grip
1x Viridian Zealot
1x Viridian Shaman
1x Gaea's Cradle

Round one: I got a bye
1-0

Round two: I played against some sort of blue/red burn / ping deck.
Game 1: He plays mountain, passes, I play Llanowar, pass, he plays a mountain, pass, I play a few more elves, pass, he plays a fetch and grabs an island and plays a pinger that every time he casts an instant or sorcery it untaps, turn 3 I go off.

Game 2: He burns every creature I drop for 4 turns, I manage to go off and Banefire him for lethal.
2-0

Round three: I play Dave, my roommate, who runs B/U Reanimator.
Game 1: I keep a 'nearly perfect' hand (the nearly part kills me), of one land and some dudes and a living wish--I was really just looking for the wish. He sets up for a turn 2 Iona, I don't top deck a land, so I go for the turn 2 Living Wish and it gets dazed, I scoop after Iona hits the table. I should have mulled but didn't want to risk not seeing another wish.

Game 2: Similar but better hand, first drop gets misstepped, second drop gets misstepped, ran out of elves to produce mana and no more land, went for the wish and got dazed, scoop when Iona hits the table.
2-1

Round four: I play Ezra, who runs Hive Mind (I think?).
Game 1: He mulls down to 4, he never finds what he needs, by the time he gets a Progenitus on the table, I wish for an Elvish Champion and raced him down easily.

Game 2: The first 4 turns go by, every Elf gets countered or burned, I eventually hit top-deck mode and just can't keep it up.

Game 3: Same deal, except this time he found a Grim Lavamancer as well, I couldn't keep enough creatures on the board through the burns to get out of it--I got a Symbiote on the table and tried to setup a Glimpse combo but it wasn't enough and got beat to death by Grim Lavamancer, 2 Tarmogoyf's, and a Vendillion Clique.

I never saw a Hive Mind or any particular indication he was running Hive Mind, it's just what he told me.
2-2

I was happy that it worked pretty consistently, it was sometimes frustrating that I could only produce 16 mana when I needed 17 to wish and drop emrakul which happened twice throughout the tournament. It sucks not having a fourth glimpse, I don't have access to one right now, but it only resolved once or twice, and only one of those times was it relevant to me winning (the other time it fizzled into 2 lands). Misstep really does hurt that plan.

I'd like to get more Symbiotes, but that was never really the issue, people stacking a fist full of burns and counters rocked my face. Uninhibited the deck was almost always going nuts on turn 3, GSZ into Regal Force was bossly except one game where I drew 5 land out of 7 cards.. The Banefire plan never hurt me, if I didn't see it I didn't see it, if I did see it it won me the game, Birchlore's were often pretty techy letting me pay for daze in awkward situations.

I found that Nettle Sentinels were cool, but their mana was mostly superfluous from the Heritage Druid. If I was going off I was doing just fine with Priest's and untapping them with Ranger's and Wirewood's.

[theross]

@NihilObstat: The downside of wasting sideboard slots is huge. With the Vengevine plan taking up many slots, the necessity of some form of combo hate, and a few answers to various bullets (Humility etc) there simply isn't enough room to make wish effective even if I agreed that a wish plan was good. As for testing Living Wish anyway, I need to devote my testing time to limited, standard, and extended for Nationals and PT Philly so I most likely won't have time until the end of the Summer. Being active in nearly every competitive format, I need to divide my testing time wisely, which is why I use theoretical arguments to focus my testing and increase efficiency.

@catmint: Glad to see some more empirical evidence in support of my list. As far as the 4th pact goes, it's pretty much the only casualty of going to 60 cards. If you didn't have to fear Hive Mind, Birchlore Rangers is a clear cut for it, but each other card has a very specific purpose. Perhaps you could cut a Quirion Ranger as he is typically the weakest creature without many lords.

@Godmode: Unfortunately, there is no replacement for cradle that doesn't come with a severe drawback. I'd most likely run a single Archdruid as the extra lord for versatility, (answering E Plague is nice as well) and 2 Crop Rotations but I'd urge you to invest when you can or see if you can borrow them for any major tournament. Having 2 would be significantly better with Crop Rotation since you can chain them mid-combo but you could wait longer to acquire the last 2 and hold out for a good trade/price.

@Kich867: That list definitely doesn't look like Hive Mind to me, could've been a bluff.

[Kich867]

Yeah, it wasn't--I saw a rather large portion of his deck over 3 games, he was playing RUG with NO-Prog.

[Infinitium]

Anyone has any experience with Elvish Skysweeper? I'm considering having it as a 1-of in the sideboard to provide a sunnable answer to decks with flying threats (ie Tombstalker) in general and Emrakul in particular.

[theross]

On Elvish Skysweeper: If you have enough mana to find and use this guy, you'd almost invariably be better off getting Regal Force and answering their threat by winning the game. Narrow 1-1 answers such as this don't have a place in a combo deck.

[NihilObstat]

To the ross: I'd like to see what your latest list is looking like to test it ;)

Also, I have a question. If your opponents lands a game 1 Peacekeeper or Canonist do you auto-scoop?

I am concerned about this because I see many of them in my meta and the wish helped a bit.

[theross]

As far as a streamlined combo list, I wouldn't change much from my GP list. It would be within a few cards of the following:

2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Priests of Titania
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Gaea's Cradle
7 Fetches
4 Forest
2 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

SB:
4 Buried Alive
4 Vengevine
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Beast Within

Game 1 Canonist is easily dealt with using the MD Shaman, but my list does scoop to Peacekeeper game 1. However, I have never seen someone use MD Peacekeeper, since it's a terrible MD card. It's only good against Merfolk and Elves and is actively bad against a large portion of the metagame. Thus my plan against anyone running MD Peacekeepr would be to win round 1 so I don't have to play against them. Even if you get that unfortunate pairing, they shouldn't have a huge edge and it's only 1 game before you get to bring in some answer. If you're that concerned about it, a MD Mortarpod can be used over the Birchlore Rangers or even the Emrakul, moving that to the board over the 4th Vengevine.

[NihilObstat]

Combo list:
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Priests of Titania
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Gaea's Cradle
7 Fetches
4 Forest
2 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

SB:
4 Buried Alive
4 Vengevine
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Beast Within

I like the list. It seems to be very focused.

Buried Alive definitely over Intuition? Faster aggro clock?
Dryad Arbor finally gained a fix spot?

I just really don't like running 2 Regal Force in the MD. I tried it for a while and just saw too many games drawing both early on and being terrible.

I'll give it some testing. Thx ;)

[theross]

Buried Alive gets the nod in the combo list for 2 reasons:

1) In this list, Vengevines are relegated to the board and BA feeds the plan more effectively than Intuition.

2) Therapy is much better than any other piece of combo hate, thus necessitating a black splash instead of a blue one.


Dryad Arbor has always had a spot in my lists, since taking one slot to gain 4 Llanowar Elves is incredible.

The odds of hitting both forces early is quite slim. In the top 10 cards it's about 2.5 percent, while that number increases to 6 percent when looking at 15 cards. When looking at the MD Emrakul as well, the odds of hitting 2/3 of the fatties in 10 cards is 6.5 percent, while getting all 3 drops to 0.4%. These numbers change to 13.8 and 1.3 percent when looking at 15 cards. You can mitigate these downsides with effective mulliganing, to the point where having access to a 2nd Regal force is much more relevant.

[danyul]

Yeah I've been playing Ross's list. The 2 MD Regal Forces are definitely useful. And the build feels much more resilient and faster and dammit, just better than the lists I was running before.

Now I gotta buy Bayous. If I ever meet you Mr. Ross guy, I'm gonna donkey punch your wallet. <3

[catmint]

I always like access to 2 regal forces. 1 might be discarded/countered and sometimes you just need to cast the 2nd one if the first one did not draw what you want.

[Absolutflipz]

Ross,

How do you feel about the 1 Elvish Spirit Guide? In both testing with the card and goldfishing/playing matches with the deck without ESG, I've never found myself in a situation where I need the ESG to keep going or to go off faster.

Do you find it worth a spot in your list?

The list I run is practically the same as your MD, with -1ESG +1 Joraga Warcaller as an alternative win-con that's also a 1cc Elf.

Incidentally, I went 3-3 at SCG Baltimore. Losing a couple matches that I very well would've won if I had won the die roll (one especially in my match vs. Reanimator). I also lost to Dredge, as I lost the die roll, had no SB hate, and his draws were t3 kills including having Firestorm in his opener of game 2.

Graveyard-based strategy seems to be creeping up more and more (Reanimator and Dredge both in t16 at the event, Aggro-Loam winning, and Ceph Breakfast appearing a decent amount as well).

I tried Edric, Spymaster of Trest as part of my Buried Alive/Vengevine package...as I thought it would go well together for drawing cards of Vengevine..but my impression after playing it was that it was just win-more. When I was able to resolve Buried Alive against UWr Landstill my opponent always just lost to the Vengevines plus random 1/1 dorks...even in a game where my opponent managed to swords/path all 3 Vines eventually. The same can be said for when I played it against BUG decks...in which Vengevine gets there even more easily as they have no swords-removal.

My SB going forward would be:
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Buried Alive
3x Vengevine
1x Mortarpod
1x Krosan Grip
3x Leyline of the Void

[Godmode]

Hey guys I have a quick question:

What's the best way to SB against Merfolk with theross list?

I played a couple of games with +4BA +4VV and didn't even need those to win...

[danyul]

I'm using Ross's list as well but even when I ran other builds Merfolk was never a problem. You should be beating them up left and right. The only thing I would bring in from the SB would be the Beast Within, or Krosan Grips if you are running those, to fight their Umezawa's Jitte.

[theross]

On ESG: It's certainly a consideration for cutting since I've only tutored for it a small handful of times (1-3) but I would definitely add the 4th pact before anything else.

On Graveyard Hate: This does seem to be something we should address going forward since Reanimator is an especially tough matchup. One of the reasons I played the Vengevines main in Vestal was to free some sideboard space for graveyard hate against Reanimator. I had Faerie Macabre (good with Fauna Shaman) and Seal of Removal for the matchup although I didn't need them in my one matchup against the deck. (Aggro-ed out a turn 3 Iona when he made the mistake of attacking once, his draw was awful in game 2) As far as general GY hate I would think some combination of Nihil Spellbomb and the new commander guy would be suitable.

On SB against Merfolk: With the strict combo list, I don't board anything in the matchup (although you should bluff a few cards at least) . Symbiote and the MD Shaman are enough to fight their 2-3 Jittes. I still haven't lost a tournament match to the deck.

[NihilObstat]

Seal of Removal

I'm sure that he means Ground Seal.

I really like Scavenging Ooze too. Tutorable, better than Withered Wretch. It looks freaking sweet. It might be fast enough against Dredge, but Reanimator is just way too fast... :/

[theross]

I meant Seal of Removal. I was particularly worried about Reanimator, having seen it on the weekend a fair amount, so we went overboard for the matchup. It deals with every relevant card they have in the matchup, as long as you dont overextend into Elesh Norn. It can also come in against SnT decks to deal with Emrakul. Ground Seal wasn't effective as part of a package since it shuts down your other hate, so I did not play it on the 2nd day.

[NihilObstat]

I meant Seal of Removal. I was particularly worried about Reanimator, having seen it on the weekend a fair amount, so we went overboard for the matchup. It deals with every relevant card they have in the matchup, as long as you dont overextend into Elesh Norn. It can also come in against SnT decks to deal with Emrakul.

Alright it makes sense too. It seems like a good option, but maybe better against Reanimate than Dredge. Would you consider Seal of Doom in the Buried Alive list for the supporting Bayous?

Worth playing this type of cards if we keep seeing more and more Reanimate?

[theross]

Once you're in black, Nihil Spellbomb is the way to go. The cantrip will help mitigate having to take out parts of the combo.

[Koby]

Why the hell would you be splashing Nihil Spellbomb when Scavenging Ooze exists tailor made for this deck?

Having a tutorable g/y nuker is much better than having a cantripping crypt. The matchups where you need to exile g/y far outweigh the 2ndary use of cycling for :1::b:.

[theross]

Ooze is probably worth it as a tutor target, but he won't be enough against dredge, and Reanimator can easily answer him with a Pithing Needle so you need something else. Since many lists already have black in them for Cabal Therapy, Buried Alive, etc, it makes sense that Spellbomb be played.

I'm not entirely sold on Ooze in the first place, since he requires a hefty mana commitment and the use of a tutor. Given that Elves is nearly as fast as Reanimator and Dredge in the first place, it makes more sense to just race them in many situations. Nihil Spellbomb is much more mana efficient while not interfering as much with the combo since it cantrips.

[Koby]

Spellbomb is just as answerable with Pithing Needle as Ooze. Reanimator is a tough matchup indeed, but how likely will it become that Reanimator boards into Pithing Needle against us G2? What about G3? Most likely the result will be that they will get Elesh Norn reanimated, and we won't stand a chance to recover. This matchup is not worth sideboarding for IMO, and should be attributed as an auto-loss. Ooze is still useful in other matchups, such as against Dredge, were they actually can't stop him outside of a well timed Firestorm.

Ooze is also good against Life from the Loam decks, where Spellbomb is just a one-time kill switch. They must answer Ooze, or risk losing. Spellbomb costing 1 mana is a liability against the Chalice builds of Aggro Loam. Ooze, not so much.

Ooze also shrinks Goyfs, KotR, and provides life gain against the occasional Zoo/Burn matchups.

[theross]

I'm aware Spellbomb can be stopped with needle, hence why I noted that using the two in concert would be ideal. However, if one lacks the space for this many cards against Dredge/Reanimator, Spellbomb is certainly more efficient, and thus should be the choice. Ooze is not very effective against dredge, since it costs so much mana to actually use, and many lists are already bringing in Firestorm in the matchup. It's also worth noting that this deck does not want to sideboard many cards in any matchup so it maintains the same fundamental turn so perhaps just a couple Spellbombs and the one Ooze is correct.

On Reanimator being "un-winnable:" No matchup should be thought of this way for a deck that can win on turns 2-4.

On the Loam matchup: Given that you don't want to play a long game against this deck, the one time kill switch is more effective, since it will give you the time you need to win for only 2 mana and without costing you a card. Chalice is simply an issue you must deal with anyway, so I fail to see how that point is relevant.

These other fringe applications of Ooze are not nearly enough to bring it in in any applicably matchups, so again I see this as irrelevant.

[Koby]

Naturally we want to, and are capable of going off against a slow draw from Reanimator. That's never been the issue. The issue is of timing and beating the resolved fattie. Elesh Norn is unbeatable unless we start running Living Wish (Karakas) - which even I am hesitant in this new metagame. Ooze plays perfectly in this deck, as we're bound to make a ton of green mana to nuke any size g/y with ease.

This is what i'm running lately, and has been great so far:

5 Forest
2 Bayou
7 fetch
3 Gaea's Cradle

5 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
2 Birchlore Ranger
1 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Priest of Titania
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Regal Force
1 Emrakul

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

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

[theross]

If you're making enough green mana to eat their graveyard, you should just be winning the game. Ooze is also quite slow given how you are judging the speed of Reanimator. Best case scenario you have turn 1 mana elf into turn 2 GSZ so you can't disrupt them until turn 3. I'd much rather try and disrupt them with Therapy and as I noted earlier, Ooze is not as effective as Spellbomb against Dredge.

On your list: Cutting Q Rangers and still playing multiple lords seems suspect, as does playing less than 4 Vengevine without a mass tutor. The rest of it looks fine.

[Koby]

Between Therapy, Thoughtseize, Mortarpod, and Ooze; there should be enough disruption against Dredge. Therapy especially is great against Bridges when they get slow draws, and Mortarpod is actually the insane. No jokes I discounted when I first saw it in lists, but it's been performing well in so many matchups. My favorite has been show-boating by equiping Emrakul, then saccing it to shuffle it back in, then draw some more cards with Glimpse and cast it again. Infinite loop? Perhaps. :D

[Kich867]

Went to FNM tonight, was about 12 people I think. Round 1 I lost to some..awkward form of Landstill + Aggro Loam? It was a landstill deck that packed 2-4 diabolic edicts and 2-4 innocent bloods, 2-4 pernicious deeds and 2-4 maelstrom pulses. I don't know exact quantities but I was hit with enough of them to choke a goat out.

So, round 1 as per usual: die to massive amounts of creature removal and counterspells.

Round 2 was against affinity, I lose due to a stupid play game 1 where I go off at 5 health, forget he has a disciple on the board, swing for -way- more than lethal with emrakul, he sacs 6 artifacts and I die. Game 2 and 3 went something like > Engineered explosives at 1, spend turns dealing with it while he lands a cranial and gets me. Game 2 I had to wish for zealot, play zealot, then sac zealot, since I didn't draw any lands I was working off 2 and didn't want to drop any 1 drops because that'd just give him an out. Game 3 went similar.

Round 3 I played against a bad goblin deck, I win game 1 because he blocks poorly and didn't realize that nettle sentinels were 2/2's. Game 2 I lose because a sharpshooter hits the table when I don't have a lord down and wipes my board. Game 3 I win because I just pump lords out and they can't really do much about that without good spot removal.

I'm having an unbelievably hard time dealing with..anything of a remotely good quality deck. It's troublesome having to deal with the fact that elves is the only combo that's hateable by virtually all angles: discards wrecks us, spot removal wrecks us, mass removal wrecks us, and counters wreck us (kind of). Generally every deck runs some combination of these and we have no options to stop it.

Maybe I'm just playing in a terrible meta for it, but every deck of good quality I run into has -more- than enough removal or counters or both to deal with elves. One game I literally got hit by 2 diabolic edicts, 2-3 innocent bloods, 3 pernicious deeds, and a maelstrom pulse, on top of the FOW's and missteps that hit me that I don't recall how many. And then I got jace'd to death.

[theross]

@Ruckus: I find it hard to believe that it's optimal to bring in that many cards in any matchup, let alone Dredge, a resilient combo deck that requires one to enter a race.

@Kich867: Decks with that much removal require the Vengevines in the board. Spot removal becomes much less effective against a horde of recurring 4/3s.

[Tiago_B.]

One game I literally got hit by 2 diabolic edicts, 2-3 innocent bloods, 3 pernicious deeds, and a maelstrom pulse, on top of the FOW's and missteps that hit me that I don't recall how many. And then I got jace'd to death.

lool im sorry man, but that was just.....the only possible word to describe it is 'rape'.

Today i got totally destroyed by a MBC, in a similar way: 2 Infest, 1 Hymn to Tourach, 1 Despise, 1 Damnation, 2 Go for the Throat, 3 Doom Blade, 2 Geth's Veredict.....And died to a single mishra's factory. I wont be playing elves again for a long time. Its powerfull, but easy to disrupt.

[theross]

It's not a fault of the deck when one loses to someone having an overload of removal. Sometimes you just don't win.

As far as the deck being "easy to disrupt" I must disagree completely. From the moment I started testing, I found the deck to be incredibly resilient when piloted correctly. (Which I admittedly did not come close to for about 2 weeks) My faith was shaken after the spoiling of Mental Misstep but to my surprise, even a card that seemed tailor made to beat Elves did not help decks like Merfolk and Bant nearly enough. It is true that the MD is not built to withstand an onslaught of creature removal from various board control decks but the matchup is not impossible if played conservatively since they must respect your explosiveness or die holding multiple wraths. Vengevines help immensely in post board games in these matches as well.

[Kich867]

It's not a fault of the deck when one loses to someone having an overload of removal. Sometimes you just don't win.

As far as the deck being "easy to disrupt" I must disagree completely. From the moment I started testing, I found the deck to be incredibly resilient when piloted correctly. (Which I admittedly did not come close to for about 2 weeks) My faith was shaken after the spoiling of Mental Misstep but to my surprise, even a card that seemed tailor made to beat Elves did not help decks like Merfolk and Bant nearly enough. It is true that the MD is not built to withstand an onslaught of creature removal from various board control decks but the matchup is not impossible if played conservatively since they must respect your explosiveness or die holding multiple wraths. Vengevines help immensely in post board games in these matches as well.

I find that people actually don't have to respect the explosiveness so long as they kill your turn 1-2 drops. If your first elf is countered it can set you back several turns, especially if you miss the third turn land drop. I've even held it until I had a full hand, went to go nuts, in response to my heritage druid (played third to hopefully bait something out of the first two since my board was cleared) they remove an elf and then from there it's usually game.

If your solution to mass spot/board removal is to sideboard in buried alives, cabal therapies, and vengevines your solution to mass removal is to not play elf combo.

[Absolutflipz]

I find that people actually don't have to respect the explosiveness so long as they kill your turn 1-2 drops. If your first elf is countered it can set you back several turns, especially if you miss the third turn land drop. I've even held it until I had a full hand, went to go nuts, in response to my heritage druid (played third to hopefully bait something out of the first two since my board was cleared) they remove an elf and then from there it's usually game.

If your solution to mass spot/board removal is to sideboard in buried alives, cabal therapies, and vengevines your solution to mass removal is to not play elf combo.

Given how you wrote your last remarks, "...your solution to mass removal is to not play elf combo", you don't seem to get it.

That's the point of the sideboard, you can transform into a build that's resilient to mass-removal. By doing so you're less-reliant on the combo portion of the deck....in which the combo portion is harder to pull off against such mass removal...but the added buried alive/vengevine plan will be almost as effective here and gives you an actual way to win the game through mass removal.

Glimpse is still a great card after boarding as such.

[theross]

When transforming, I almost never bring in the Therapies, as that would require taking too much of the combo out. I simply bring out Pacts, most of the 1ofs, and the 2nd Regal Force. This leaves all the essential pieces of the combo intact except Emrakul, which is unnecessary since you just play 4 Vengevines and pass the turn with a full grip to recur them. It's still a combo deck, but the traditional glimpse combo is plan B.

[nexus blue]

Hi all,

I don't post a lot, but this seemed like the wisest thread based on my build. I'm aware that the version I currently run isn't the coolest, but seeing as how I have just started to play again I figured I'd keep those interested in combo elves informed.

Here's my current build:

14 Forest

4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Priest of Titania
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Nettle Sentinel
3 Joraga Warcaller
4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Quiron Ranger
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader

4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Hurricane

SB:
4 Root Maze
3 Thorn of Amythest
3 Krosan Grip
2 Staff of Domination
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Progenitus


It's a little more Aggro/Combo than straight Combo, which I'm sure explains why I don't combo out as quickly or as regularly. But it's also a newer deck to me. As to the SB, i know, it's whack. I had Progenitus in the main in the first tourney I played two weeks ago, but I drew him in several opening hands which made him way lame. I like the Vengevine plan but as you'll see below, diapers come before cardboard. Unless they're cardboard diapers.....

Okay, results:

First Round against a U/r Wizard deck. Not much to say, I never went off but just aggro'd him by the fourth or fifth turn. 1-0/2-0

Second Round against a guy who took third, I think. It was a W/B Stoneforge Mystic/Mirrodin Crusader deck with Jitte. Both games he laid a turn 1 Mystic and a turn 2 Jitte. Ugly. 1-1/2-2

Third Round, against another Stoneforge Mystic deck, but this guy was running a W/g version. I rolled him the first game with a third turn Warcaller pumped up x5. The second game he landed an Ethersworn Canonist which tied me up, but he could only follow up with a few KotRs. He landed a Jitte but couldn't equip, next turn I was able to hardcast Emrakul, I swung taking him to 1, then Hurricaned him for the rest. 2-1/4-2

Fourth Round was a U/G/r jumble with NO, I'm sure it's cool and has a name, but like I said, I just started playing again after a year and half off, so I don't know. First game I whooped him and thought it was gonna be easy riding to the Top 8. But the next two games he was able to drop a third turn NO into a Progenitus. Not cool, no easy riding. 2-2/5-4


This was a 20 person tourney or so, went 2-2 and ended up in 9th. Not too impressive, I know, but apart from a weak SB I can truthfully say I don't have a lot of experience piloting this. It's a blast to play, though. I played the last round for a shot at the top 8 (would have been in 4th with a win). I would love to run some NO of my own, as well as Gaea's Cradles, but having just started playing again I'm looking to trade for them, not blow diaper money on them. I'm sure there'll be some critiques about my build; I welcome them, but don't be a douche, I like Magic and have been playing on and off since Revised, but have a life and a family that comes first.

Also, please keep up the good work in this thread, took me a long time to read the whole thing but it's focused and to the point with improving Combo Elves, which is appreciated.

Edit: I used to run a few Birchlore Rangers and a Banefire in place of Hurricane, would consider going back to that. Hurrican does have the downside of killing both of us. but I have also drawn a few games with it when i was down and out.

[Koby]

Between Therapy, Thoughtseize, Mortarpod, and Ooze; there should be enough disruption against Dredge.


@Ruckus: I find it hard to believe that it's optimal to bring in that many cards in any matchup, let alone Dredge, a resilient combo deck that requires one to enter a race.


You're right, in testing Thoughtseize is less than optimal against Dredge. This makes only 6 cards that would be boarded in: 3 Cabal Therapy, 2 Mortarpod, and 1 Scavenging Ooze. To make room for this, I would cut 1 Viridian Shaman, 1 Llanowar Elves, 1 Priest of Titania, 1 Elvish Archdruid, 1 Summoner's Pact, and 1 Heritage Druid.

The plan isn't so much cemented, as it is removing some of the slower cards to make room for more disruption. Summoner's Pact is useful in comboing out, but not otherwise, and hence less useful after sideboarding. Therapy provides a way to kill their Breakthroughs/Careful Studies, and as a sac outlet to remove Bridges. It's very likely that it's not fast enough to matter against Bridges, but better than the alternative Thoughtseize.

What are others plan for sideboarding this matchup?

[theross]

In the list you posted above Ruckus, I would bring in the Ooze and a single Mortarpod for a Birchlore Rangers and the Viridian Shaman, no real need to dilute your deck for more than that. Even the Mortarpod may be too much although if they have Iona it's fairly important to keep them off of Bridge from Below tokens to make Dread Return worse.

[mooN_MTG]

What is the name of guy who made top15 at Grand Prix Providence??? HE does any report or somthing similar?

[1maarten1]

What is the name of guy who made top15 at Grand Prix Providence??? HE does any report or somthing similar?

go ahead and read the last couple pages man. Theross is his account name here and since the GP he has been posting here, alot.

[mooN_MTG]

go ahead and read the last couple pages man. Theross is his account name here and since the GP he has been posting here, alot.

Ok, thanks :D

[theross]

Yeah, that was me. I never posted a complete report given that I wasn't expecting such a good finish and didn't have any notes. Also, most of my games were straightforward ranchings since I ran pretty well most of the weekend. Any further questions can be posted once you read through what everyone has posted.

[blind]

Hi,

I am French so sorry for my English.


2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Priests of Titania
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Gaea's Cradle
7 Fetches
4 Forest
2 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

SB:
4 Buried Alive
4 Vengevine
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Beast Within

I have several questions :

- Emrakul.. why? It's good when you have already won. Ezuri is just better all times !

- 1 Birchlore.. why? It's good for Combo (Nettle + Glimpse) and it's good post SB for your splash B.

- 2 Regal Force.. why? When do you want your 2nd Regal Force? If you have played your Regal Force, you are win and if isn't the case so it's not this card that you need to win.

- 1 Elvish Spirit Guide? I don't unerstand...

My decklist :

1 Dryad Arbor
2 Bayou
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Regal Force
1 Vexing Shusher
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Llanowar Elves
3 Quirion Ranger
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
SB: 2 Beast Within
SB: 4 Vengevine
SB: 4 Cabal Therapy
SB: 4 Buried Alive
SB: 1 Krosan Grip

I have see decklist with Mortarpod in SB. It's for what? Moat and Blazing Archon?

[Koby]

I have several questions :

- Emrakul.. why? It's good when you have already won. Ezuri is just better all times !

- 1 Birchlore.. why? It's good for Combo (Nettle + Glimpse) and it's good post SB for your splash B.

- 2 Regal Force.. why? When do you want your 2nd Regal Force? If you have played your Regal Force, you are win and if isn't the case so it's not this card that you need to win.

- 1 Elvish Spirit Guide? I don't unerstand...

I have see decklist with Mortarpod in SB. It's for what? Moat and Blazing Archon?

Emrakul gives you another turn. This is important more often than having a 15/15 monster. Eruzi, on the other hand, only allows the elves you have out in play and untapped to attack for the win. Sometimes, you don't start the turn with enough elves to achieve this, hence Emrakul provides the free turn to achieve it.

Birchlore Rangers - you answered your own question. It's also another 1-drop elf that allows you to continue producing mana with a Glimpse chain.

2 Regal Force - For the longest time I only played with one as well. Having a second allows you not to rely on Glimpse of Nature to combo off. It's really handy to have.

Elvish Spirit Guide - allows you to cast Priest of Titania on turn 1, and gives you a critical mana when you need it via Summoner's Pact. This card could be cut for another elf, but some like to have it in the deck to accelerate Priests. I wouldn't consider it unless you do run them.

Mortarpod - This card is insane at what it achieves. It's great against Dredge, Control, any deck with Dark Confidant. When you bring in Vengevines, it's a great compliment to keep applying pressure. It helps you to defeat planeswalkers (Jace) and kill Peacekeeper, which we otherwise have very few outs for. In past lists, this card might have been a Masticore.

[blind]

Emrakul gives you another turn. This is important more often than having a 15/15 monster. Eruzi, on the other hand, only allows the elves you have out in play and untapped to attack for the win. Sometimes, you don't start the turn with enough elves to achieve this, hence Emrakul provides the free turn to achieve it.

If you cast Emrakul, you are win. It's just overkill and it's good when you are win. Forthemore you can't search it with GSZ or Pact, it's problematic when you are played Glimpse.
Emrakul is just good when you are in Combo. Ezuri is good when you are in combo (lot of mana, boost + trample = win) and it's good when your are Aggro, you play Cradle !

Ezuri is just better.

[Infinitium]

Not arguing with you, but Emrakul is convenient when facing damage prevention and/or Moat. Still not worth it maindecked, especially as Elves have access to Concordant Crossroads, which is heavily synergistic with Priest effects. Not really getting 'Pod over Masticore to be honest; both are inherent card disadvantage and mana consuming, but at least Masticore beats for 4 and survives deed and EE.

[1maarten1]

Hi,

I am French so sorry for my English.



I have several questions :

- Emrakul.. why? It's good when you have already won. Ezuri is just better all times !

- 1 Birchlore.. why? It's good for Combo (Nettle + Glimpse) and it's good post SB for your splash B.

- 2 Regal Force.. why? When do you want your 2nd Regal Force? If you have played your Regal Force, you are win and if isn't the case so it's not this card that you need to win.

- 1 Elvish Spirit Guide? I don't unerstand...

I have see decklist with Mortarpod in SB. It's for what? Moat and Blazing Archon?

On mortarpod: If you play beast within it becomes less important because you have an answer for Peacekeeper then. Ofcourse it is very strong against dredge, but I think if you want to improve that matchup your better off playing other hate cards. If however, you play krosan grip over beast within because your meta has alot of landstill or countertop in it or whatever its good to have mortarpod as an out to peacekeeper.

On 2 regals: Since MM people have started to struggle a bit more with going off with glimpse. However getting a priest of titania with GSZ is pretty common, which enables a quick regal force. If they counter that with FoW, you are pretty much done. So a second Regal force is just as backup to start up the combo again.

1 Birchlore: Again since MM the ''quicker'' combo got worse then the ''slower'' one where you start with heritage or with titania, so the remaining copy's were cut to increase the chances on a more resilliant combo, less all-in. Keeping 1 is still good against non-control decks because it allows you to simply combo a turn quicker.

1 ESG: Great with Summoner's pact, if for some reason you get stuck during mid/early combo this can give you the extra G that you need to go off.

@your decklist
Dont you think 3 forests is a little too low? I really dont want to fetch for bayou's game 1, ruining the surprise of buried alive.

I dont really agree on the Ezuri point. When I have mana to pump my elves several times when I go aggro, I usually rather spend that mana to play regal force and combo off and kill them with emrakul. And I have had several times where I just hardcast emrakul without ever playing Glimpse. Titania and Cradles simply make alot of mana. I could see cutting the one birchlore for the Ezuri since when you go GSZ for 1 you rather grab heritage druid anyway.

EDIT: wow reading beyond the post you reply on is tech. others already answered most of the questions xD. Sorry for that.

[theross]

@blind:

Emrakul vs Ezuri: Since my aim was to build the most dedicated combo deck possible, it became positive EV to play a card that wins the game immediately, especially against other combo decks. Playing the deck, I found that in the rare instances I was forced to take an aggressive game plan, my swarms of creatures were sufficient despite their size. It's also not uncommon to hard-cast him without Glimpse of Nature after finding the Priests of Titania. Lastly, having an near un-losable matchup against Painter, a deck I expected to be somewhat popular is not insignificant.

Birchlore Rangers: Certainly one of the weakest cards but it's useful when you're cut off from Heritage Druids so using the slot on this guy over another mana elf was fine. In the wake of the GP Hive Mind has become a deck so I certainly would not cut it now.

2 Regal Force: Absolutely necessary since anyone who knows what is going on will try and counter your card drawing engines. In any attrition matchup the first is typically used to get ahead and the 2nd puts you over the top.

1 ESG: I would say the worst card in the deck since it primarily functions by allowing an extra Pact to become a Lotus Petal. I could see this becoming another mana elf.

On Mortarpod: It has some functionality in game as some have noted, but it's primary purpose is as an alternate win condition with the combo. 40 mana and 20 creatures is not difficult to assemble after combo-ing.

[resum]

Hey is the buried alive plan the best one to be on against the U/w stoneblade decks?

[nexus blue]

I'm curious regarding Ross's list, as well as some others I've seen - what's the story with only running a few priests, and no archdruids as well? Are they considered too slow? I like the points made regarding the extra Regal Force, and I've cut back the Archdruids in my build to 3, but he seems to always do well - if he stays, great, but often people will choose to kill him over priest, scared of the aggro danger and then losing to a hard-casted Emrakul. Anyways, just curious, maybe its the Pact, as I don't run any of those right now, just the GSZ.

[Mr. Safety]

I think I'm going to be playing a 2nd Regal Force now...I see many good points for it.

Concerning Ezuri...I've been using a singleton Joraga Warcaller...would Ezuri be better? It works well now, I'm not sure I'd drop the Warcaller.

Questions:
1) Is everyone using GSZ, or are some folks still sticking to Living Wish?
2) How has Beast Within been doing as general hate, anyone tried it?

[Koby]

Living Wish can replace 2nd Regal Force, Emrakul and 1 Gaea's Cradle - all of which move to the sideboard. This puts 3 Living Wish into the maindeck. However, now you must find room to cut some of the spells to make it fit.

In terms of game play, this has no difference from GSZ and Pacting - except against UW/x Stoneblade which runs Spell Snare. This is where Living Wish is weaker against. As this deck is starting to become prevalent, I would advise not to play the Living Wish versions right now.

[Mr. Safety]

Gotcha...how do you feel about Joraga Warcaller vs. Ezuri?

[Koby]

Same idea with, Joraga Warcaller is vulnerable to Mental Misstep. Ezuri, while weaker, is going to work out better against blue decks. Warcaller is marginally better, as even a StP/PtE will ruin your day too. (in combat)

[theross]

On lords: I don't like the lists that overload on lords as this ties up too much mana in a single creature, thus making you more vulnerable to spot removal. Given the synergy with untap effects, I simply play 1 which I can tutor for. Priests is cheaper, so it gets the nod.

@nexusblue: If you're not running Pact, I suggest doing so. It's nearly a free DT.

@MrSafety: Fortunately, most people have realized that the power of Summoner's Pact and GSZ far outweigh the marginal utility of Living Wish, although many proponents of the latter have not posted in a while, so this may also be a contributing factor to the newly found consensus.

I've played Beast Within several times and still haven't cast it, but it's the best general hate the deck can play.

I prefer War Caller since it should be better when trying to go off as a 1 mana guy who can be bounced later with Symbiote but I don't think either is necessary.

[catmint]

I also think wish builds are not the best ones, however I don't think you convinced everyone theross. :)

Probably people are posting and arguing less, because elves struggle to compete at the moment...

Are you currently still successfully playing elves theross?
It is my pet deck, however it is not a lot of fun in the current meta..

[Godmode]

@catmint : The 4 Buried Alive + 4 Vengevine changes a lot the 2nd/3rd game outcome and becomes a lot of fun then. I haven't been playing much elves latelly, but Ross proved it in the GP...

[theross]

I haven't played a Legacy event since June, where I scrubbed the Jupiter Games invitational before getting top16 with a MD Vengevine list I wrote about briefly. I think I'd go with a similar list the next time I play barring a metagame shift. The RUG decks cannot deal with Vengevine and bringing them to the main gives you much more room in the SB against poor matchups like Dredge, Reanimator, Hive Mind, etc.

[Godmode]

If you come up with some nasty MD Vengevine list, feel free to share it dude. I thought of one similar to the Nicholas Malatesta but with black instead of blue and without the faunas, but it wasn't necessary for my metagame.