Thousand-Year Elves

[RevEvolution]

This is a somewhat fast and different variation to the normal elf legacy deck (Combo Elves). I really love the idea of using Thousand-Year Elixir to speed up the deck. Lightning Greaves serves as a backup to Thousand-Year Elixir, as well as granting haste to cards like Taunting Elf, who can quickly nuke the board once released. I've tested the deck quite a bit and it works pretty well, it definitely isn't going to take any tournaments by storm but it can quickly get out of hand if not dealt with quickly. Here's the deck:

Creatures (31)

1x Taunting Elf
4x Sylvan Messenger
4x Timberwatch Elf
3x Seeker of Skybreak
2x Llanowar Elves
4x Priest of Titania
4x Immaculate Magistrate
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Bloodline Shaman
1x Chameleon Colossus


Lands (20):

2x Forest
2x Misty Rainforest
4x Windswept Heath
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Mutavault
4x Bayou
2x Gaea's Cradle


Sorcery (3):

3x Green Sun's Zenith


Artifacts (6):

4x Thousand-Year Elixir
2x Lightning Greaves


The Mana Accelerators:
Llanowar Elves- A generic quick accelerator that is a useful turn 1 drop.
Deathrite Shaman- The main 1 drop that acts as a versatile mana accelerator, attacker, or healer. As the game continues he usually relies on his other abilities to offer extra assistance to the player.
Priest of Titania-The main mana accelerator and can get absolutely insane in this deck. Combining him with untapping effects and consistent drops, he can easily drop your entire hand by turn 4 even with only one or two lands.

Tutors/Card Draw-
Sylvan Messenger-Hand refresher.
Green Sun's Zenith-Great tutor allowing you to pull out a Priest of Titania, Bloodline Shaman, or Sylvan Messenger depending on what you need.
Bloodline Shaman- Very useful in this deck as she can grab you 2-3 extra cards a turn when combined with Seeker of Skybreak and Thousand-Year Elixir. The best part is that the extra lands that are revealed go to the graveyard, which provide fuel for Deathrite Shaman.

Lands-
This one is a bit tricky. I use 2 basic Forests in case my opponent is using a lot of Wastelands, 2x Gaea's Cradle because while it is useful, Priest of Titania provides more mana then the land itself, 4 Bayou to allow all effects for Deathrite Shaman and sideboard (although still working on this, but on my more recent sideboard I have several black cards which Bayou is also used for), 2 Mutavaults which are useful for extra attackers as well as upping my Elf count which pumps up my mana acceleration and power, and 10 fetchlands to help thin the deck and feed Deathrite Shaman's ability.

Artifacts-
Obviously, due to the name of the deck, Thousand-Year Elixir is the main card which allows all my creatures with tapping abilities to play them right away and stack on top of other effects. The card also provides an untapping ability which is useful to draw more cards, generate more mana, or pump my creatures to higher levels. Even with 4 copies, I found that the deck was fairly inconsistent with only 4 Thousand-Year Elixirs so I looked around for a bit and found Lightning Greaves, which basically provided the same thing but with no untapping ability, sorcery speed equips which prevents stacking my tap abilities, in exchange for Shroud and true Haste. It is definitely slower but continuously equipping the Equipment from one creature to another allows me to get around Shroud's negative sides (compared to Hexproof). This also works better then Swiftfoot Boots since the equip cost is 0, thus it helps me focus all my mana on throwing out creature after creature.

Pumpers-

Immaculate Magistrate & Timberwatch Elf- the pumpers. Any creature that is free can get targeted by these two and get pumped up as soon as these guys hit the table (assuming there is a TYE in play).

Attackers-
Sylvan Messenger, Taunting Elf, Chameleon Colossus, anything available- The first three are the best attackers for the deck as Taunting Elf can destroy an entire table with a single pump, Chameleon Colossus pumps itself several times (which is great for blowing spare mana or when the two pumpers aren't available), and Sylvan Messenger has Trample so he's automatically a good pump target. If none of those are available, any creature will do.

Anyway, this is a really fun deck and I think it is far more dangerous then it initially looks. It is fairly quick and can swarm opponents by turn 4 with large waves of elves. It can also bounce back fairly quickly with a well timed Sylvan Messenger or Bloodline Shaman (since BS can tap immediately when hitting the field due to TYE and LGs). Any feedback to help make this deck more consistent would be appreciated.

Note: I tried several lands which provided colorless mana but gave extra benefits like untapping my elves, make pseudo creatues, etc but I ultimately reverted back to the lands I have currently because this deck requires you to always have opening hands with green mana available and those lands made the deck too unreliable.

[Taldier]

If you want to go this route it seems like Concordant Crossroads would be faster.

[Lemnear]

There is no reason to run only 3 GSZ, 2 Cradles and zero Dryad Arbors among dismissing all the powerhouse untappers like Symbiote or Quirion Ranger to double, triple, quadruple the DRS activations per turn just to run crap like thousand-year Elixer. This is a strickly worse Version of Elves which is even more vulnerable to spot removal and sweepers than the other versions which should be the maingoal to adress if you want to create another Twist on the Tribe. Building the deck around Priest of Titania alone is nuts as the part about Colossus and Taunting elf is blatant nonsense if you compare these cards to Wren's Run Packmaster

[RevEvolution]

That's cool. I take criticism pretty well, and I understand what you're saying. I posted on here so I could see ideas on what I could change. I honestly don't have to use TYE if their are more solid options out there, I really like Concordant Crossroads, it is a much faster drop. I'll substitute the cards you suggested, move Gaea's cradle to 4, 4 GSZ, and what, 2 Dryad? (that always seems like the average amount in Elf Combo). Wirewood symbiote and quirion ranger are great suggestions as well. I understand their uses, since they work great for stopping attackers, and Wirewood would also work to basically untap a creature that was bounced back to my hand, assuming all my creatures have haste and could use their abilities right away again.

Do you have a suggestion for all around utility elves that I could use in place of Chameleon Colossus, Taunting Elf? I know you gave Wren's Run Packmaster but I'm not sure how that would work in the deck. I guess spamming out 2/2 Wolf tokens is a smart idea but are there any other types of cards you might suggest?

[Lemnear]

That's cool. I take criticism pretty well, and I understand what you're saying. I posted on here so I could see ideas on what I could change. I honestly don't have to use TYE if their are more solid options out there, I really like Concordant Crossroads, it is a much faster drop. I'll substitute the cards you suggested, move Gaea's cradle to 4, 4 GSZ, and what, 2 Dryad? (that always seems like the average amount in Elf Combo). Wirewood symbiote and quirion ranger are great suggestions as well. I understand their uses, since they work great for stopping attackers, and Wirewood would also work to basically untap a creature that was bounced back to my hand, assuming all my creatures have haste and could use their abilities right away again.

Do you have a suggestion for all around utility elves that I could use in place of Chameleon Colossus, Taunting Elf? I know you gave Wren's Run Packmaster but I'm not sure how that would work in the deck. I guess spamming out 2/2 Wolf tokens is a smart idea but are there any other types of cards you might suggest?

My Problem is that I don't see why you replaced all the known options in Elves with a lot of cute or outdated stuff. You build your deck around Priest and the +1/+1 counter while a single Packmaster and a Cradle just overwhelmes your opponent. The whole core you build here to make Elves dominate the field is obsolete. If your plan was to create a midrange approach, I fear the whole Priests and +1/+1 doods are too fragile