SpeedOfDark
12-15-2011, 10:01 PM
Hi guys!
I’d like to present an Elf Aggro list I threw together to get some feedback (thinking of playing something like this at my next local legacy event). The list is as follows:
Total: 60, Creatures: 35, Lands: 19, Non-Creatures: 6, Elf Count: 27
Mana dorks (10)
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Priest of Titania
Elf Lords (10)
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Elvish Archdruid
1 Elvish Champion
1 Imperious Perfect
Draw Engine (8)
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
Stoneforge Package (4)
2 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Batterskull
Utility (4)
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
Combo win (5)
4 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
Mana Base (19)
1 Dryad Arbor
5 Forest
1 Plains
4 Savannah
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
Sidebaord (15)
1 Essence Warden
2 Gaddock Teeg
4 Mindbreak Trap
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Essence Warden
Used against burn and creature-heavy tempo/aggro decks (merfolk, affinity, zoo) to ensure we make it to the mid-late game where we do best.
4 Mindbreak Trap/2 Gaddock Teeg
Used against combo, and I suppose gaddock can be used against ramp decks (if such a thing exists... coudpost eldrazi? :P)
1 Relic of Progenitus, 2 Scavenging Ooze
Used against graveyard based decks.
3 Stoneforge Mystic
Used against decks where jitte/batterskull have more value, such as decks with a lot of burn (life gain) or control decks (batterskull recursion).
1 Viridian Shaman/1 Wickerbough Elder
Standard GSZ targets for artifact/enchantment removal.
Card Choices
Mana dorks: 4 fyndhorn elves, 4 llanowar elves, 2 priest of titania
The 1-mana ones are fairly self-explanatory. Priest of titania is both there as a GSZ target and because I wanted and because I wanted to reach a certain number of mana makers for explosiveness. Maybe titania is better as a 1-of, but I don’t know.
4 Wirewood symbiote
Here’s the work they do for you:
1. They can help you generate additional mana.
2. Prevents you from losing too much value against removal. If anybody wants to aim removal at key elves (lords mostly), they have to aim it at symbiotes first because of the bounce ability. This both protects your elves against low-removal hand and prevents you from losing too much tempo on big plays against high-removal hands (such as a GSZ for a lord killed by a sotps eot).
3. Infinite blocks. If you are behind on board position, you can block and bounce without ever losing a card. Take that batterskull!
4. Sweet draw engine when combined with elvish visionary. Can net you 2 cards per one of your turns for 4 mana.
All that for 1 green mana. Holy shit.
Lords: 4 joraga warcaller, 4 elvish archdruid, 2 elvish champion, 1 imperious perfect
This is your most straightforward and consistant wincon. Joraga and elvish archdruid are the best by far, for both being extremely explosive in their own ways. Elvish champion is next because of the often useful forest walk (probably the second most played color in legacy after blue), and imperious perfect is just there as a miser incase she is ever more useful than the others in a specific situation (recover from a sweeper maybe?). The numbers of champion or imperious could need some tweaking, but overall there’s not much to say.
4 Elvish Visionary
A staple in most elf decks. Here we love her because of her synergy with lords (value), wirewood symbiote (card advantage engine) and jitte/stoneforge (body for jitte without losing a card).
1 Stoneforge Mystic/1 Jitte/1 Batterskull
Stoneforge mystic enables us to get jitte quickly for a hand that lacks attack power or battleskull for a hand with plenty of mana production. Unlike stoneforge control decks, you don’t care about protecting your mystic in this deck because even if she gets hit by removal, you can probably brute force batterskull into play the next turn anyways. And if they counter your batterskull, they have just 2-1’d themselves (or 3-1 if they used FoW lol). The other 3 are in the sideboard when jitte or batterskull carry more weight (against fast tempo decks, burn, control).
4 Natural Order/1 Progenitus
A combo finish. Eats up non-FoW matchups, and goes 2-2 with FoW hopefully leaving room to resolve something from the stoneforge package.
1 Dryad Arbor
It’s there to make 1 land hands keepable with a GSZ and 1 or 2 mana dorks in hand, it accelerate 2-3 land hands with no 1-mana dorks but with GSZ, and it allows fetchlands to get an extra body for your equipments in mid-late game.
Cards not on the list
Nettle sentinel/Heritage druid/Glimpse of nature
Nettle sentinel doesn’t do much without glimpse of nature, and glimpse of nature and heritage druid don’t do enough without more 1-drop elves. If we were to add more 1-drop elves, the threat density (lords) would decrease significantly and it would lead us to other card choices which would slowly transform our deck into combo elves, which this is not. We play this over combo elves because combo elves have too many 1-hit kill silver bullets (engineering plague, humility, chalice of the void, trinisphere, pyrokinesis, pyroclasm, devastating dreams, jitte) and is subpar against FoW.
Vengevine
A good card for sure, mostly no included because I don’t expect a huge amount of control decks in my metagame, also they can often make opening hands clunky and akward.
Sylvan messenger
Even though this is an elf deck, the elf density isn’t actually that high. Less than half of the deck are elves, which means on average you’ll be getting a bit less than 2 cards (and you will never get any of the cards in the stoneforge package, which will often be the ones you want when you’re digging). The synergy with symbiote is nice ofc, but extremely expensive. In short, most of the time you would rather just get an elvish visionary, and these fit in the curve much more nicely anyways.
Sword of “color metaphor” and “opposing color metaphor”
There might be a sword worth addition to the stoneforge package, perhaps in the sideboard. If this is the case, it would probably have to be decided as a result of shoring up a bad matchup or in anticipation to a specific metagame. My metagame has a lot of 1 or 2-of random stuff (drege, reanimator, stax, storm, enchantress) and the rest is mostly aggro/tempo with a bit of control. In other words, jitte works best.
Mirror Entity/Ezuri
Good cards for sure, I just don’t expect this deck to be able to reliably produce this much mana to justify replacing other lords. Too many opponents play removal/counterspells to reply on this kind of setup. Ezuri might be worth as a 1-of though for GSZ lategame considerations… although if I have enough elf/mana to justify getting him, why haven’t I won already? Lol
Gaea’s Cradle
The definition of explosiveness, as far as creatures are concerned. I might consider playing it as a 1 o 2-of, but I’ve had meh experiences with gaea’s cradle in the past. It usually gets wastelanded after 1 activation and it happens too often that otherwise keep-worthy hands have to be mulligan’d away because gaea’s cradle can’t tap for 1 mana with an empty battlefield.
Regal Force
I considered it hard, it’s hard to resist this sexy beast of a GSZ target. But it seems very winmore considering whenever GSZ>regal would be worthwhile I should probably be winning already. Not to mention I’d rather not have him in my opener.
I’d like to present an Elf Aggro list I threw together to get some feedback (thinking of playing something like this at my next local legacy event). The list is as follows:
Total: 60, Creatures: 35, Lands: 19, Non-Creatures: 6, Elf Count: 27
Mana dorks (10)
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Priest of Titania
Elf Lords (10)
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Elvish Archdruid
1 Elvish Champion
1 Imperious Perfect
Draw Engine (8)
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
Stoneforge Package (4)
2 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Batterskull
Utility (4)
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
Combo win (5)
4 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
Mana Base (19)
1 Dryad Arbor
5 Forest
1 Plains
4 Savannah
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
Sidebaord (15)
1 Essence Warden
2 Gaddock Teeg
4 Mindbreak Trap
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Essence Warden
Used against burn and creature-heavy tempo/aggro decks (merfolk, affinity, zoo) to ensure we make it to the mid-late game where we do best.
4 Mindbreak Trap/2 Gaddock Teeg
Used against combo, and I suppose gaddock can be used against ramp decks (if such a thing exists... coudpost eldrazi? :P)
1 Relic of Progenitus, 2 Scavenging Ooze
Used against graveyard based decks.
3 Stoneforge Mystic
Used against decks where jitte/batterskull have more value, such as decks with a lot of burn (life gain) or control decks (batterskull recursion).
1 Viridian Shaman/1 Wickerbough Elder
Standard GSZ targets for artifact/enchantment removal.
Card Choices
Mana dorks: 4 fyndhorn elves, 4 llanowar elves, 2 priest of titania
The 1-mana ones are fairly self-explanatory. Priest of titania is both there as a GSZ target and because I wanted and because I wanted to reach a certain number of mana makers for explosiveness. Maybe titania is better as a 1-of, but I don’t know.
4 Wirewood symbiote
Here’s the work they do for you:
1. They can help you generate additional mana.
2. Prevents you from losing too much value against removal. If anybody wants to aim removal at key elves (lords mostly), they have to aim it at symbiotes first because of the bounce ability. This both protects your elves against low-removal hand and prevents you from losing too much tempo on big plays against high-removal hands (such as a GSZ for a lord killed by a sotps eot).
3. Infinite blocks. If you are behind on board position, you can block and bounce without ever losing a card. Take that batterskull!
4. Sweet draw engine when combined with elvish visionary. Can net you 2 cards per one of your turns for 4 mana.
All that for 1 green mana. Holy shit.
Lords: 4 joraga warcaller, 4 elvish archdruid, 2 elvish champion, 1 imperious perfect
This is your most straightforward and consistant wincon. Joraga and elvish archdruid are the best by far, for both being extremely explosive in their own ways. Elvish champion is next because of the often useful forest walk (probably the second most played color in legacy after blue), and imperious perfect is just there as a miser incase she is ever more useful than the others in a specific situation (recover from a sweeper maybe?). The numbers of champion or imperious could need some tweaking, but overall there’s not much to say.
4 Elvish Visionary
A staple in most elf decks. Here we love her because of her synergy with lords (value), wirewood symbiote (card advantage engine) and jitte/stoneforge (body for jitte without losing a card).
1 Stoneforge Mystic/1 Jitte/1 Batterskull
Stoneforge mystic enables us to get jitte quickly for a hand that lacks attack power or battleskull for a hand with plenty of mana production. Unlike stoneforge control decks, you don’t care about protecting your mystic in this deck because even if she gets hit by removal, you can probably brute force batterskull into play the next turn anyways. And if they counter your batterskull, they have just 2-1’d themselves (or 3-1 if they used FoW lol). The other 3 are in the sideboard when jitte or batterskull carry more weight (against fast tempo decks, burn, control).
4 Natural Order/1 Progenitus
A combo finish. Eats up non-FoW matchups, and goes 2-2 with FoW hopefully leaving room to resolve something from the stoneforge package.
1 Dryad Arbor
It’s there to make 1 land hands keepable with a GSZ and 1 or 2 mana dorks in hand, it accelerate 2-3 land hands with no 1-mana dorks but with GSZ, and it allows fetchlands to get an extra body for your equipments in mid-late game.
Cards not on the list
Nettle sentinel/Heritage druid/Glimpse of nature
Nettle sentinel doesn’t do much without glimpse of nature, and glimpse of nature and heritage druid don’t do enough without more 1-drop elves. If we were to add more 1-drop elves, the threat density (lords) would decrease significantly and it would lead us to other card choices which would slowly transform our deck into combo elves, which this is not. We play this over combo elves because combo elves have too many 1-hit kill silver bullets (engineering plague, humility, chalice of the void, trinisphere, pyrokinesis, pyroclasm, devastating dreams, jitte) and is subpar against FoW.
Vengevine
A good card for sure, mostly no included because I don’t expect a huge amount of control decks in my metagame, also they can often make opening hands clunky and akward.
Sylvan messenger
Even though this is an elf deck, the elf density isn’t actually that high. Less than half of the deck are elves, which means on average you’ll be getting a bit less than 2 cards (and you will never get any of the cards in the stoneforge package, which will often be the ones you want when you’re digging). The synergy with symbiote is nice ofc, but extremely expensive. In short, most of the time you would rather just get an elvish visionary, and these fit in the curve much more nicely anyways.
Sword of “color metaphor” and “opposing color metaphor”
There might be a sword worth addition to the stoneforge package, perhaps in the sideboard. If this is the case, it would probably have to be decided as a result of shoring up a bad matchup or in anticipation to a specific metagame. My metagame has a lot of 1 or 2-of random stuff (drege, reanimator, stax, storm, enchantress) and the rest is mostly aggro/tempo with a bit of control. In other words, jitte works best.
Mirror Entity/Ezuri
Good cards for sure, I just don’t expect this deck to be able to reliably produce this much mana to justify replacing other lords. Too many opponents play removal/counterspells to reply on this kind of setup. Ezuri might be worth as a 1-of though for GSZ lategame considerations… although if I have enough elf/mana to justify getting him, why haven’t I won already? Lol
Gaea’s Cradle
The definition of explosiveness, as far as creatures are concerned. I might consider playing it as a 1 o 2-of, but I’ve had meh experiences with gaea’s cradle in the past. It usually gets wastelanded after 1 activation and it happens too often that otherwise keep-worthy hands have to be mulligan’d away because gaea’s cradle can’t tap for 1 mana with an empty battlefield.
Regal Force
I considered it hard, it’s hard to resist this sexy beast of a GSZ target. But it seems very winmore considering whenever GSZ>regal would be worthwhile I should probably be winning already. Not to mention I’d rather not have him in my opener.