Printable View
Someone was playing Hypergenesis :O . I wish I got to see that. I did play against the Eureka-Tell guy, that was a cool/evil deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by uhhey
I'm not sure what I'd put my opponent on after see that game 1.
Yeah, if you're not a Force of Will deck, they can "comfortably" mull to 4 without much worry. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by uhhey
What's the thought on maindeck bullets? Uhhey's listed RecSage, and I think Julian's on Scooze. I guess Sage is good with all the Chalices running around. I'd say that Scooze can help against Deathrite Shamans, except that we rely on them too.
Reid duke has a new video out.
https://www.channelfireball.com/vide...acy-elves-2-2/
plays some hot cards, like Multani's Acolyte as a 5th Visionary, has the crop rotation package sb.
GP VEGAS REPORT
DAY 1
Rd 3 vs Mark Stanton: Loss
I was coming off byes and knew this would be a test...I have a very bad tendency to give up the first match after bye rounds in GPs (maybe a mental block...who the hell knows). Mark was on BUG delver, a very favorable matchup imho. Game 1 I displayed why this is the case and just ran him out of countermagic while creating a ton of actual and virtual card advantage with our various engines. Games 2 was the highlight of the match and a game I'll personally never forget because it was a true learning moment. After a few exchanges of resources, I found myself with an opportunity to NO for progenitus with Mark only having one card left in hand...but it would tap me out AND leave me with only progenitus on the table. This is a scary proposition because A. they play daze and B. liliana is a thing. My options were to either assume he boarded out dazes (which is common amongst GOOD delver players, as daze is really bad vs elves) and just go for it or to play the thoughtseize in my hand to make 100% the coast was clear and play out one more guy--effectively playing around daze AND liliana. Well, I chose the first option...and I was correct in my assumption he was a good boy and boarded out daze; but in my hubris I left myself open to liliana and sure as shit he had it. He windmill slammed lily the following turn just as he wrote it up (he set this play up by thoughtseizing out one of my elves a few turns back). Well played Mark (no sarcasm, it was a very good play by him and I believe it was the only way for him to win the game given the resources he had at that stage). The moral, however, is that when you have can safely play around EVERYTHING--just do that. Why leave him outs?? :) lesson learned.
Rd 4 vs Greg Ogreenc: Win
This was a good match vs BUG (iirc) delver. As is typical in this matchup, I lost one game to flying beat downs (game 2) and won the other two through running my opponent out of interaction. Not much else of note from this matchup unfortunately.
Rd 5 vs David Nguyen: Win
After this match I genuinely felt like it might be my weekend. I happened to know from past history that David was a seasoned sneak and show pilot. This allowed me to keep a good hand in game 1 that allowed me to race a medium/slow draw from his deck (since his fast draws are unbeatable...sigh). Luckily for me he ended up keeping a cantrip/countermagic heavy hand. At one point he cunning wished to wipe my board with K.Return, and after about 4 more turns of him finding air I pulled out the victory...how lucky for me! Game 2 he did his thing and plopped Omniscience into play then casted Emrakul...dead. Game 3 was a repeat of game 1 somehow and his deck failed to produce while my mediocre creatures got the job done. He took the bad luck in stride and wished me luck. Sorry for the bad beat David--Hopefully you had a better rest of your weekend!
Rd 6 vs Shea Graham: Win
If I could beat Sneak and show; why not storm too?? :) Not much to say here except my opponent went for Ad Nauseam two games in a row and died to it due to very bad draws and not finding lotus petals for mana. I felt for him, but at the same time was doing an internal fist pump for winning an otherwise very difficult matchup.
Rd 7 vs Carlos Romao: Win
I immediately recognized Carlos but wasn't quite sure where from. After a bit of extra (and awkward) conversation, I realized I recognized him from PT coverage when he got 2nd at PT Kaladesh and then his team had a second outstanding performance at PT Aether Revolt. Carlos was super nice the entire match and epitomizes the qualities I would strive for as a professional MTG player. No angle shooting, clear communications, and tight play--anyway, enough fanboy banter!! Carlos sleeved up the new miracles deck and this would be my first chance to play against it so I was a bit nervous. Luckily I reached out to abombdiggity here on the Source and he gave me some valuable insight on this matchup (essentially; don't be scared because it's like miracles lite). I was able to take this match down in 3 very back and forth games. I got my board swept about 6 times over the match and had lots of dudes die to StP; but at the end of the day with no counter/top to lock out my draw steps, I was able to eventually overcome my opponent with the power of green!! (rawr.) If getting lucky vs two fast combo decks didn't make me feel like I was going to win the GP--beating a PT runner up and long time pro magic player surely did the trick.
Rd 8 vs Chris Stitson: Win
Chris is a seasoned miracles player and I was actually familiar with that fact so going in I was able to put him on the new miracles deck. I kept a hand in game 1 that was capable of grinding through a wall of countermagic--something along the lines of glimpse, wirewood, visionary, q.ranger, cradle, fetch, gsz...basically the stones vs control. Chris was able to make some good plays over both of our two games but thanks to my newfound confidence in this matchup, he didn't really stand much of a chance. The new UWr miracles deck looks amazingly fun to play, but I have to say it is not even close to the power level of the previous format-definining juggernaut.
Bonus: not-so-subtle brag... At one point during our second game Chris had 5 mana available and had spent the previous few turns cantripping and using predicts to stock up; but I wasn't quite sure which (if any) counterspells he had hanging out in there. I drew a cabal therapy but wasn't sure what to name--so I chose to lead off with glimpse as a bit of bait...he counterspelled it leaving exactly scalding tarn, island, tundra as his lands. Thanks to my prior match with Carlos Romao I was aware of the sb plan of a pile of hate creatures (canonist, c.priest, etc)...so I knew it was highly likely my opponent had staticaster and was waiting to ambush my team. Instead of the typic play of wirewood, visionary, bounce, repeat I went with my gut and cast the cabal therapy...Chris tanked for about 15 seconds before letting it resolve. When I named staticaster his face went flush and he sheepishly revealed his hand and slid his human wizard with flash into the graveyard. Victory!
Rd 9 vs Max Gilmore: Win
Max was on an innovative deck that me and my friends were just discussing--the rarely seen Bant Stoneblade (goodstuff!). This match can be extremely swingy because depending on which half of the deck they draw it can be a cake walk or an utter nightmare--and you never know until it's over. Game 1 Max telegraphed that he had no countermagic after tapping out for a TNN alongside his stoneforge mystic which grabbed jitte the prior turn. I knew if I let him untap it was over, so I (successfully) went for the throat. In game two I got locked out fairly early with some hate creatures backed up by an evasive threat. Game 3 was more of the same from game 1, except with a hate creature mixed in--which I was able to end step decay, untap, and glimpse out for the game.
8-1 at the end of day 1; feeling good, went out for dinner with the boys...time to clean up shop in day 2 and collect my PT invite (spoiler alert: fml)
DAY 2
Rd 10 vs Richard Liu: Draw
This match was vs UW control and game 1 I kept a pretty sick opener including land, cradle, glimpse, duders, and NO...I forced my opponent to blow a counterspell on a visionary (symbiote was already on board with cradle--a decent play by him...buuut) then I just had enough mana to cast NO ftw. Game 2 was super grindy and lasted about 25 minutes with Richard beating me down with a V.Clique for about 9 turns. He played this game very well and I drew a little thin when I needed some gas; close game! Game 3 was basically exactly like game 2 except this time it was active Jace over v.clique and we went to turns with jace on 7 counters...when the last turn was played jace was on 11. I had to take the draw, because although my opponent played wonderfully and was "going to win," I was still very live for top 8 at x-1-1. He understood and said he'd do the same in my position.
Rd 11 vs Ali Farran: Loss
This was a heartbreaker.. game 1 Al (as he preferred to be called) locked me out of mana very early using ghost quarters on my basics and loaming starting on turn 2...gg. Game 2 I had basically the nutter butters and there wasn't much he could do about it. Game 3 I mulliganed to 5 and the game started out like game 1 and looked grim...but I had a lot of action so if I could turn off loam with surgical the game could've easily went my way.. unfortunately my draw steps were irrelevant and I lost with a buncha sweet cards in my hand. Sad times...dead for the PT, which was my goal for the event.
Bonus: Check out my opponent's hand game 3....lol..makes me want to play lands-- turn 1; mox diamond pitching windswept heath, cast exploration, play grove and ghost quarter...pass. On my end step-- shoot my guy with p.fire, cast gamble with no cards in hand for loam. Yep; that was all 7 cards to make close to a perfect opener vs my deck..haha I couldn't help but admire that opening.
Rd 12 vs Jonathan St Martin-Allard: Loss
Wheels officially fell off...no top 8 chance and cashing looking slim. This was a fun mirror match with an equally pretty elf deck (we're both foiled out). Super nice guy and he won the dye roll...I lost. Not much to say really....very dye roll dependant matchup. Sb games come down to a bit of luck as well--I thoughtseized out his leovold in game 2; because my hand was a glimpse hand and although he kept a 1-lander if he drew any mana source I just lose to leovold. Jonathan proceeded to draw q.ranger to make 2 mana and empty his hand of creatures then the turn after drew a gsz to get heritage druid for exact NO mana for lethal :( I showed him my sweet bayou alters which are apparently not tournament legal (this weekend tho.. lol jeez can't catch a break). Cool guy, hope to play/meet him again.
Rd 13 vs Nathan Gottlieb: Win
I super apologize for this one--but I am only 80% sure about how this match went. I believe he was on Bug control; I just kinda destroyed him both games. He kept hands with little to no countermagic...so I just got to go ham and it didn't seem like he enjoyed watching me make millions of mana and create 13/13 elf men. I don't blame him; and I apologize once again for not having a better memory of this match. Nice guy despite the rough game, and I'm sure I'll encounter him again.
Rd 14 vs Edgar Magalhaes: Loss
This was the Czech pile and my opponent seemed fairly well versed in it--he took little time making tough decisions and kinda ran me out of the gym with a ton of removal and key countermagic. Game 1 I got hosed by leovold and drew the wrong half of my deck (glimpses and visionaries) then lost to Jace. Game 2 I kept a hand of dude, decay, 2 NO and 2 land...this type of hand is fine because all I need to do is stick a NO for progenitus... but my opponent thoughtseized right away and saw my plan of NO...he aggressively took 1 NO from my hand and then 2 turns later snapcastered to take the next. Much to both of our chagrin however, I drew 2 more NOs... lol? He then found another thoughtseize and was able to bounce his snapcaster to take both my last action spells away and leave me stranded with a decay and uncastables...:( I drew pretty horrendously, but like I said Edgar played this match nicely and I can't credit the loss only to my bad luck. We discussed his deck and the matchup a bit and I'm curious to play more games vs it in the future.
Rd 15 vs Joan Anton Mateo: Win
This gentleman was playing UB landstill...I can only assume this because I saw a ton of removal, no other duals beside seas and several mishra's factories. Luckily in both of our games, I was able to navigate around a dense suite of countermagic and spot removal. I even threw away a heritage druid with a hasty chump attack into a mishra's factory...I audibly said "oops" and he snapped off the block. I think he thought I was a scrub at that point, and I don't blame him--I was tired and a bit dejected at my finish. I was able to pull myself together and string together some creative plays- one of which included baiting him into using mishra's factory on my turn so I could post combat rec sage it. Joan was visibly not thrilled with how his deck was performing but being a very classy and distinguished gentleman he congratulated me with a "well played." I love legacy for interactions like this...for the most part, legacy players are all respectful of one another and can appreciate the artistry of investing ones self into the format. I'm sure I'll play Joan again, and it will be another fun game!
FINAL RECORD: 10-4-1, dead for cash, dreams crushed
(but it's legacy, so ofc I still had a blast)
That's it. Any questions/comments just reply and I'll swing back in to give my thoughts.
Rounds 1&2- byes
Round 3- BUG Delver- Got a quick game one. He hit me with a mess of sideboard cards (Plague and Deluge both games) during games two and three. He was running 2 True-Name and 2 Leovold instead of the 4 Goyf, and that was much more effective in addition to the additional high-impact sideboard threats. Loss
R4- My opponent was on a fair blue deck. I believe it was grixis delver? I won. I may have played bant deathblade this round and lost my round 6 notes instead.
Round 5- Burn
I won the roll and killed him on turn two after drawing a cradle off guide. Nice. Game two I got burned by a SB Mindbreak Trap, and game three I combo’d off, went to 11, and played around Trap.
R6- Bant Deathblade
This matchup was a blast. TNN+Jitte got game one from his side and game two his upkeep clique took a GSZ that found me a natural order (skillfully). Game three featured a long, drawn our board stall that involved me discarding Progenitus after a glimpse chain, tanking a sweeper, and Natural Ordering for him and Craterhoof on back-to-back turns facing down lethal.
R7- UR Delver
Game one, my draws were- NO, NO Craterhoof, Rec Sage, NO, after keeping a beautiful hand that had the 3rd Order in it. Got all my dorks bolted and couldn’t get past two mana. Game three I don’t play around him seeing all 4 Force and it backfires.
R8 Lands-
5-2, still in top 8 contention let’s do this! My lands opponent crop rotates for a tabernacle on turn one, and draws it naturally in his opening hand games 2 and 3. Shit.
R9- BUG Faeries
Exactly like GP Columbus and GP Louisville, I play a midrange BGx deck in my final round, but this time it eschews Gatekeeper of Malikar and intead ran blue for Spellstutter Sprite. I get there in 3
Round 10- Aluren
Game one my opponent played Forest, Deathrite, Taiga. Game two he plays Swamp, Deathrite, Underground Sea and shows me Aluren, Fetch + Recruiter of the Guard when I kill him on turn 3.
Round 11- Tezzeret
This was the only match I was happy with the 2nd Rec Sage out of the board. We line up extremely well with tezzeret, with chalice and force being their only real interaction. Got a ton of value throughout the 3 game match.
Round 12 BG POX
Another strange matchup, I kill him quickly through his limited hate game one and had no idea what he was playing. Mox Diamond, Crop Rotation, and Marit Leige were the parts of his deck that I saw, but after the match he told me the rest was smallpox, innocent blood, and life from the loams.
Round 13- Elves!
I won the roll so I won game one, he got a slightly longer game two where scooze was an-all star for him, and game three was me frantically looping Visionary, ahead on board, and him topdecking Order and killing me. He played very well, hope it was someone reading this and he won out.
Round 14- Merfolk
I lost the match 2-1 to merfolk by not playing around anything on game three and gunning for a t3 win. He had a t3 topdecked chalice and I never saw a black source for the decay in my hand. At 9-5, I was still live for the pro points and should have stayed in, but I was too tilted by my loss to Fish and decided to go gamble and get some sleep before the modern GP (10-5 with RG Ponza).
Deck felt great, I was just bad. 9-5 is alright, but we have one of the best positioned decks in the room and I was hoping to improve on my last few GP performances. those 12th and 13th wins are always the hardest. still Will probably run my 60 back, scooze in the SB was fine. Will end up cutting Packmaster again and the second rec sage, but I’m not sure for what- pretty much the same things I was thinking pre-GP. I don't expect the format to be so light on LED for long, as it had a big target on its back and people were ready for all the hate.
Agreed, despite not putting any copies into top 16; the deck felt amazing. Some minor tweaks to the sb to make it more resilient to czech pile, lands, etc (im thinking library) will go a long way.Quote:
Originally Posted by abombdiggity
btw sounds like you had some really interesting matchups! lol gotta love legacy...and congrats on beating the pox guy. If that deck is firing on all cylinders it's almost harder to beat than reanimator..
Reid Duke had some nice videos on cfb, as mentioned above. If you're the other elves player at 15:50, which of Reid's cards do you Thoughtseize away? Why?
edit: It's in the third match, here.
I take glimpse here. He can fetch a arbor, has an untapped and a cradle. Just hope he doesn't have lethal fast enough with natural order.
Any thoughts on Reid Duke's sideboard plan for Lands? (Crop Rotation, Wasteland, Karakas). I really wish he had been paired up with Lands in his league, but no luck.
Between Tabernacle, Glacial Chasm, and Dark Depths, matchup feels so bad, that I'm wondering if I should just give up any sideboard slots against it and just call it a loss.
Some earlier suggestions in this thread were Elderscale Wurm, but that's only good if you win game 1 and just want to not finish game 2.
Anyone with a solid plan against lands to make it a bit more even?
I've been thinking about Wasteland in Elves a lot but never really had the time/guts to properly try it. I've also considered running Thespian Stage as an additional target to create our own Marit Lage. Overall though, it wouldn't not be worth the slot as Wasteland is the much more important card for Elves.
The problem is sideboard slots. You can only play so many "cute" cards in the board without giving up too much cards vs combo. If you're willing to take the gamble, it's a great package to have vs Lands (or TurboDepths).
The biggest problem with the package, like you said, is the space it takes up- 1 MD slot for a rotation, and 4 for rotation & the lands (I don't think it's worth it without karakas bog AND wasteland), so:Quote:
Originally Posted by Julian23
-You're stuck cutting down to 5 discard spells and 1 surgical.
-There's no room for the meekstone/jitte I know you and many others love for delver- it's pretty much just decays.
-Bojuka Bog is often weaker against ANT- if they can play around surgical, they do, and we're unable to mess with their ad nauseums post-resolution.
This leads to us being a little worse against ANT and having less room for Delver, and unless we have knowledge that our expected meta is lacking in Delver, we should be preparing as if it will be the most common deck in the room.
There are times when it's an excellent choice, despite the downsides. In an extremely hostile meta, it can give us a huge agvantage against our worst matchups. Against Sneak & Show, Reanimator (minus BR's T1 wins), infect, and turbo-depths, it's worth a few blowout wins, and it turns even matchups like lands and dredge into matchups we want to see. I also have loved just rotation vs TES and the mirror, as it's a small boost to our goldfish speed.
It cleans up a lot of what we see in the early rounds of a large tournament, but if we get to the point in a tournament where we expect every other match to be against tempo decks where crop rotation is a liability we want to have access to a more traditional sideboard.
surgical is still just the best sb card we have against lands, right? I get the value of having a tutorable wasteland..but imo tabernacle and marit lage are not really the issue. It's loam, chasm, and p.fire.. all of which are dealt with by surgical. Reid cut surgicals and a decay for this package (iirc) and I can't get behind that for paper mtg (where delver, dnt, and reanimator are much more popular).
He even said in his video that it's probably wrong...but it never hurts to experiment with new things.
Hmm... that's a good point. What if we go all in in that direction, got rid of the 3 Surgicals and something else, and added 4 Leylines of the Void? That would help a lot vs. Lands, Reanimator, and ANT, which are some of our worst matchups. On the other hand, it wouldn't help stripping them of all Dark Depths, so Marit Lage would continue being a problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shagstaman
I don't hate lotv actually, since we can cast it and it's difficult to remove.. might be worth looking at, but as you pointed out, it would not be an end-all answer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doneval
fast marit lage might just be the "acceptable loss" for us, tbh.
So I've ran into this problem twice in 8 rounds over the past 2 days.
2x Glimpse chain going off, I draw 10 lands and fizzle out. Am I just extremely unlucky or is there a point where I'm supposed to hit the brakes to make sure I can continue playing an actual game after the turn is over, or both? In the most recent match, it wouldn't have mattered. I was against UB Standstill and he wiped my board the next turn and I was never in a position to recover for the rest of the game after discarding down to 6 lands + Ruric Thar at the end of my turn.
It's just so frustrating fizzling out in such a pitiful way after drawing a dozen cards.
Is this postboard or preboard? It happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by JermStudDog
That's part of the problem with running an abnormally high amount of lands...and no brainstorm to filter them away. I've had that happen quite a few times (in the dozens, so yea it definitely is a thing).
The best advice I can give is to maximize your glimpse draws...I've seen lots of players gsz for random elves (heritage usually) mid glimpse chain and I feel like 9/10 times you should just get wirewood to continue drawing.
The one last night was postboard, and gearing up for it, I put 2 Dryad Arbors, 2 Forests, 2 Bayous, a Gaea's Cradle, Pendelhaven, and Cavern into play, and drew up to 7 cards in hand (we were staring at each other under a Standstill).
My starting 7 for the turn was 2x Gaea's Cradle, 1x Glimpse, and 4x dudes. I played and bounced some Visionaries, got a 2nd Glimpse running, and proceeded to fill my hand up with 10 lands and a Ruric Thar, which I couldn't cast because I was never in a position to make that much mana since I never drew a Heritage Druid or a Nettle Sentinel.
Part of me wants to say that this was just the worst possible outcome and that's what happens when you play no blue cards. Another part of me is questioning if I did anything obviously wrong to get to this point. I mean... I effectively drew every single land in the deck at this point and none of the glimpse combo elves (as in 0 Nettle Sentinels and 0 Heritage Druids - I was running purely off of Quirion/Wirewood untaps and a Birchlore Ranger) so I was already reeling from those whiffs on top of whiffs.
A few things to mention:Quote:
Originally Posted by JermStudDog
* Storm has this happen to them with some regularity too. I'm sure you've won a couple games off of the back of bad AN's from a reasonable life total
* If it's frustrating you may be playing the wrong deck. To me the clunky Elves engine is a lot of the deck's charm. It works pretty well, but the excitement is literally that you aren't sure if you'll get there until you do. It's exactly why Lage/S&T combos are so boring to a lot of people: there's no risk. Reanimator sits in between, because it has loads of interaction points I think.
* You drew a potential win con of Ruric Thar; if you drew 12-15 (10 lands, 1 glimpse, 1 Thar) that means you casted 2 Glimpse, and say.. 6-8 dudes? That's 8-12 mana, which is what you had before Birchlore and Gaea's Mana. If you played it as waiting until the last possible moment to Gaea you can still get 12 mana before birchlore (Gaea, play gaea, gaea) so I'm guessing your mana got goofed somewhere being greedy; because by my count you had up to 23-25 or so mana and optimal usage seems like it'd guaranteed to be less than 17 maximum (leaving 6+ for Thar.) I know that I'm probably missing a couple things; but I imagine optimal play could've casted him.
If it helps, there's a reasonable chance he had counterspells ready anyway (haha) so you may have just been fucked.
On a different note: Were you consistently attacking with Dryad Arbors to race him? He has to give you three cards to kill them unless he has factories or something.
This is unrelated to your question/conundrum; but you definitely shouldn't be letting the standstill player play draw go... as a rule of thumb, you should break standstill as soon as possible. So they got to draw 3 for 2 mana...it's better than letting them sculpt a godlike hand. There are exceptions--such as if you have literally no relevant plays, or you think you can beat a hand of 4 counterspells, 2 removals, and a brainstorm (cabal therapy would do the trick).Quote:
Originally Posted by JermStudDog