[Free Article] Legacy: Elves!

[voltron00x]

Elves.

You all know Elves, right? Of course you do!

They’re the jolly folk that tirelessly build toys in Santa’s workshop. They’re the rosy-cheeked tribe who bake sandwich cookies in a magical tree. They’re the metro-sexual folks in the Lord of the Rings movies. Nothing to really fear there, am I right?

WRONG.

These Elves? They’re here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And they’re all out of bubblegum…

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21524_The_Long_And_Winding_Road_Legacy_Elves.html

[Infinitium]

Lots of Elf articles these days huh? Good thing though, the archetype as a whole has been a contender since Shards, but people have been slow to catch on. Don't agree with running only 3 Wirewoods (4 is always the correct number, which the author touches on), Viridian Zealot should at least get a mention as maindeck security versus any enchantment not named humility, and the sideboarded Reverent Silence is completely superflous versus enchantress (as Enchantress already folds to hardcasted Emrakul).

Nice tournament report as well, bummer about the T8.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Nice article, I've been looking to play this deck for a while, just need to pick up a few random things. The one thing that confuses me about this deck is how it actually goes off with glimpse on turn 2 - it seems like there just isn't enough available mana. I figure I'm missing something obvious.

[voltron00x]

Here’s an example.

Turn one: Play Forest, tap and play Fyndhorn Elves.

Turn two: Play Forest #2, tap one forest and play Glimpse of Nature. Tap the other Forest and play Quirion Ranger (draw a card). Tap Fyndhorn Elves for Heritage Druid (draw a card). Untap Fyndhorn Elves with Quirion Ranger, return forest to hand. Tap all three Elves using Heritage Druid for GGG. Play Nettle Sentinel, draw a card. Play Birchore Rangers, draw a card. Tap Birchlore and Nettle Sentiel using Birchlore Rangers, and play Pact for Nettle Sentinel. Untap Nettle Sentinel. Use green floating to play Nettle Sentinel, draw a card. Tap Nettle Sentinels x2, play Llanowar Elf, draw a card, untap both Nettles. Tap Nettle x2 and Llanowar Elf for GGG, and continue.

[GGoober]

I'm not sure if the statement: "Perish isn't played as much due to the decline of zoo and loss of survival" is correct. Perish was often too slow against Survival, and if I were to imagine, Perish is played more than it was now because Survival left, i.e. the GWx decks all caught on with GSZ being a beast in knight-based decks. At least I've seen quite a lot of GWx being beaten unfairly by Perish.

Elves can potentially win before Perish resolves (turn 2) but sometimes I think cards like Firespout/Perish are still kick in the nuts if the deck catches on. Any suggestions on how to fight these decks? I know you can play around Perish and go semi-aggro, but are there any techs beside careful playskill?

Also, Cursed Totem is a card that hoses Elves to a large extent if they don't pack Viridian Shamans/Grips :P

@Admiral: turn 2 Glimpse wins involve a Heritage druids + Nettle Sentinel, otherwise it's quite unfeasible. Turn 3 wins can be done comfortably when Priest of TItania is in play. In the past, you can go turn 2 wins without Heritage druids/Sentinel drawn if you played with lists playing with Elvish Spirit Guide powering out turn 1 Priests, although I think those lists tend to fizzle more due to lower land count (greed from playing ESG) and ESG being a subpar card drawn post-combo (doesn't draw card with glimpse if you don't play it).

I have an Elves deck built and I feel the right approach isn't pure combo Elves, but rather something like Matt's list or Infinitum's aggro-combo approach. The reason being that if you're going pure combo, it's much easier and more consistent (AND FASTER) to play ANT/TES. The main reason to play Elves combo over TES/ANT is because in case the combo fizzles, you can win in 2 turns by hitting with green men. It's why I like the lists that are not pure combo oriented. I do like GEnesis Wave in your list but I have not tested them. They function like Glimpse, but I think they do a little more than that. when topdecking mode, Genesis Wave is much stronger than Glimpse (you don't need further cards in hand and risk of fizzling) but it demands you have plenty of mana out (board position), which isn't too hard in this deck if Elves are best at generating mana:P

[voltron00x]

The number of copies of Perish in SCG Legacy Top 16s has been minimal. You can do a search through the SCG deck database for Legacy decks from 1/1 through today with copies of Perish. It only pulls 12 decks. That's considerably less play than I would expect given the popularity of G/W/x decks and Natural Order decks - but perhaps the popularity of those decks is actually what's keeping Perish from being played. After all, fast combo has no need for cards like Perish. (And I pulled a search for Nature's Ruin in case Legacy players were being silly / crafty and using that instead, but only one person had Nature's Ruin).

In any case, Perish and Engineered Plague are really bad news. Totem at least leaves the creatures in play, and they can attack. If you draw Shaman or KGrip for Totem, you're back in action, but if you're hit by EE or Plague and lose your team, then they're already gone.

You can fight this in a number of ways. You can use Fecundity against sweepers, or you can use Caller of the Claw to transform it into a different team so you can attack. Most of the other cards require you to splash colors. Absolute Law makes your creatures immune to Firespout and Grim Lavamancer, as does Mark of Asylum. Nature's Resurgence can help you recover after a sweeper, but you need four mana to play it. Blue can give you Spell Pierce if you want to get techy.

Anyway, Elves definitely has a viable alternate win of just bashing, whether you use "lords" and Warcaller, or use NO/Prog, or Intuition / Buried Alive + VV out of the board, or want to get crazy and play Coat of Arms. So you trade some speed and become vulnerable to some cards that Storm decks ignore,but also get to sidestep a lot of the hate that is laser-focused on storm combo.

[Waikiki]

Great article mate, keep up the good work!