My non-Elf cards in the deck are currently 4 Glimpse of Nature, 4 Living Wish, and 4 Green Sun's Zenith.
I haven't lost a match for some time now.
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My non-Elf cards in the deck are currently 4 Glimpse of Nature, 4 Living Wish, and 4 Green Sun's Zenith.
I haven't lost a match for some time now.
Zoo, sure. Punishing fire maverick? I have not found that to be the case.Quote:
Originally Posted by resum
What I meant about saying that exact SB is unnecessary is that if you don't own Orders/Progenitus, usual SB like 4 Grips + Combo hate + Grave hate does just fine. My meta is completely combotastic with things like TES/Doomsday/Dredge running around and I really don't want to be a bye for them. I have very limited exerience piloting elves against other combo decks and since I'm running Vengevine build, the only match-up I'm concerned about is not Zoo or other aggro decks but in fact combo. Any suggestions? Mindbreak Trap sucks because of Silence/Duress, Thorns does help but I still feel that it's still kinda lackluster to beat combo.
My decklist is just bad if you have lof of combo deck in your metagame.
Well, but I think that your list is propably the best of all that has ever been posted here and I like the way it plays out. I just 2-0'd most of my matches in online cockatrice tournaments and I don't think that I would like to play some other build IRL. Anyway, once again mad props for finding that perfect elves list!
Kicks, you are still playing Living Wish! Interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by kicks_422
What are you Wish targets in the side? How's your full sideboard looking like?
Any tournaments you have taken this to?
I agree with this...Punishing/Groves is a fairly slow engine...and Elves is a fairly fast deck. Zoo with all of it's cheap removal (Bolts/Chains/Paths/Grims) is more dangerous to elves than Punishing Fire.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tammit67
The best reason to run Natural Order is zoo, but is it worth it?
Zoo will keep killing your creatures one by one with their bucket of removal spells, making it tough to cast NO. Sure you could wait until you are up to five mana and cast a dork and then NO, but that is not easy to do in elves especially against zoo.
Zoo is not very popular right anyway. Maverick, in all it's forms, is the beat down deck of choice at the moment.
No. Punishing Maverick, Loam, Junk, Snapcaster Contrôle, etc... Natural Order + Pro are good in lot of Mus.Quote:
The best reason to run Natural Order is zoo
I thought junk ran perish?Quote:
Originally Posted by blind
The biggest advantage of the vengevine build is that if they perish you and does not back it up with an extraction for vengevines you still will kill them because of simbiote bounce ability. In one recent match against Aggro Loam I was perished three times during the match and it didn't affect me too much because vengies + wirewood symbiote is really nasty to deal with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Augustas
Thank you for your assistance.
Pamart's list looks indeed very solid to me. I tried to build it, but I needed to do little arrangements:
-2 Gaea's Cradle (until I get these two)
+1 Forest
+1 Crop Rotation (to compensate on the Cradle's shortage)
(I'm trying to get the 2x Vengevines and 1x Fauna Shaman that are missing, but I think I can do that in time for the next tournament.)
Based on Pamart's list and your considerations, what do you think of the following sideboard:
3x Scavenging Ooze
1x Caller of the Claw
4x Thorn of Amethyst
3x Krosan Grip
4x Carpet of Flowers
The Carpets would be here in place of Chokes.
I'm also considering to maybe find a SB slot to fit 1x Sylvan Safekeeper. (But what to take out?.) Would not it be worthy to have this extra protection for our creatures?
For this, I'm considering specially Zoo, that still shows up around here, and maybe UR Delver, that is popular, and against which our lands' sacrifice could be compensated by the use of Carpets.
Although I lean toward agreement on the superiority of the NO-Prog package against Zoo and other removal-full match-ups, unfortunately I do not own these cards and do not think I will acquire them soon.
Cheers,
Here's my SB:Quote:
Originally Posted by NihilObstat
1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Heritage Druid
1 Nettle Sentinel
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Krosan Grip
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Wasteland
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Viridian Zealot
I my Elves list, I can Glimpse you out, hardcast Emrakul or just go all-out aggro. I just love having so many paths to victory without feeling that the deck's watered down.
I know most of you have dropped Living Wish from the discussion for Summoner's Pact and/or GSZ, but it works for me, and to each his own right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kicks_422
Interesting Wishboard.
And what does your MainDeck look like, in order do smoothly support Living Wish?
Would someone mind outlining the RUG Tempo and Stoneblade matchups for me? I've been meaning to pick up Elves w/ Vengevine + Intuition for a while now, but I want to make sure the timing is right.
Try blind's(a.k.a. Oliver) list a few pages back. It does not use intuition but it is tuned to fight mid range aggro. His deck is fauna/vengevine build.Quote:
Originally Posted by OurSerratedDust
He gives very good advice with SB strategies for these decks. I will sum it up briefly if you can't find his posts.
With RUG take out Llawanor style elves and add carpet of flowers. Helps fight there mana denial plan.
With stoneblade take out glimpse combo and accessories like regal force and add NO/prog plan and dismembers. I questioned this at first but after lots of testing this does help a lot. Stoneblade's best way to kill you is their few creatures using equipment, dismember sideswipes this plan. NO/prog plan helps you not over extend, and gives a creature that can fight through 8-12 plow effects.
Hope I helped some.
Do you think the Dismembers on the SB could be succesfully replaced by Pithing Needles?
Needles could shut SFM's ability, Equipments and other threats like Lavamancer (or even a Goblin Player's Gempalm Incinerator)...
I could see a case being made for pithing needle versus grim Lavamancer, but against goblins you shouldn't need it.Quote:
Originally Posted by andrebonotto
Pithing needle does not seem as strong as dismember against stoneblade. If you shut down stoneforge mystic with it they still get an equipment(probably jitte) to put in play and hook to him.
Stoneblade decks usually have 8-10 creatures right? Stoneforges, snapcasters, and some number of vendillion cliques. If you manage to suppress his creatures with dismembers you can easily out aggro them. Between Fauna Shaman, vengevines, Symbiote+visionary or viridian shaman, and Natural Order/ prog you can give them too many must answer cards. Dismember or Natural Order usually resolve after stoneblade exhausts it's resources, swinging the game into your favor.
One thing to note about dismember, is that it's a clean and easy answer to turn 1 delver turn 2 flip, which is the only way I've ever lost to RUG delver decks.
I feel like intrinsically, not playing 4 maindeck Wirewood Symbiote is a mistake. It's the deck's strongest creature by far.Quote:
Originally Posted by kicks_422
Pithing Needle doesn't do anything to Gempalm Incinerator.
That's the reason Living Wish just isn't as strong of a build. Summoner's Pact hits redundant cards that you need to get to get there. If you're that worried about not finding emrakul, do what I do, run a singleton Fierce Empath. I'm almost blown away that every mono green list doesn't run him.Quote:
Originally Posted by rukcus
He's an important factor in many ways, and with 8 cards to tutor him, himself, and emrakul, it's like having 10 copies of emrakul in the deck.
At the moment, I wouldn't change a card in my list, it combos out at turn 3 with amazing consistency and it's -fast-. Speed is important to the combo, you get worn out doing that much math that quickly, it burns you out mentally. Fierce Empath turns a 10 minute turn into a 4 minute turn. Hit 18 mana? Pact for Empath, Emrakul, next turn, tap for trigger, swing, dead. The biggest problem I used to have was taking forever to just find emrakul and occasionally fizzling while trying to get to him. To this day, since adding a singleton Fierce Empath, I've had a 0% fizzle rate and my goldfish by turn 3 is higher than it's ever been.
Living Wish slows you down, and the many circumstances where you look at your available mana and say "If I could drop a nettle sentinel right now and win" and realize Living Wish for a Nettle Sentinel would just cost too much to pull it off..
In gold-fishing, living wish probably looks really sweet, but when you play against real people, who actually kill things and know what threats to hit, your turn 1 or 2 play is often dead--your turn 3 is almost never "I wasn't disturbed for 2 turns so I get to win now."
If your opponent doesn't do shit to you for two turns while you do something like Llanowar, go > Priest, Llanowar, go > turn 3 win--you win no matter what. But under circumstances like Llanowar, it gets bolted, shit, go > Llanowar, Heritage Druid, go > your turn 3 is a lot weaker. You can't tap that Llanowar to produce mana because you need it for heritage druid--what does Living Wish do for you now? Pact on the other hand lets you drop a Glimpse, Nettle Sentinel, tap for 3 mana > Begin the winning process.
That's not even like that farfetched of a situation, and that's why I genuinely don't understand the fascination with Living Wish, it's slow as hell, it makes your sideboard genuinely bad, and it only gives you one real tutor. I can't even count how many times I've burnt 3 summoner's pacts in one turn fetching Wirewood Symbiote's to repeatedly untap a Priest of Titania for the win--Living Wish won't do that and it's a terrible means of finding Emrakul. Fierce Empath costs one more, is an elf, is tutorable, and fetches emrakul OR regal force for you in the event you already have emrakul but don't have the mana to cast him yet.
Living Wish is just bad.
Could you please post your list? I agree with you on a lot of points and would like to compare.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Actually it does. Pithing Needle is able to stop cards from being cycled.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlmostGrown
Well, based on the FAQs from both cards:Quote:
Originally Posted by AlmostGrown
Pithing Needle:
"6/1/2005: Pithing Needle affects cards regardless of what zone they're in. This includes cards in hand, cards in the graveyard, and exiled cards. For example, a player can't cycle Eternal Dragon or return an Eternal Dragon from his or her graveyard to hand if Pithing Needle naming Eternal Dragon is on the battlefield."
Gempalm Incinerator:
"10/1/2008: Cycling is an activated ability. Effects that interact with activated abilities (such as Stifle or Rings of Brighthearth) will interact with cycling. Effects that interact with spells (such as Remove Soul or Faerie Tauntings) will not."
Therefore, Pithing Needle will interact with Gempalm Incinerator's Cycling, in spite of Gempalm being in a player's hand, since Cycling is itself an activated ability.
Yep, here it is:Quote:
Originally Posted by AlmostGrown
//Creatures:
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1x Elvish Archdruid
2x Priest of Titania
1x Regal Force
1x Fierce Empath
1x Viridian Shaman
3x Elvish Visionary
4x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Ranger
3x Birchlore Rangers
4x Llanowar Elves
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Arbor Elf
4x Heritage Druid
4x Nettle Sentinel
//Spells:
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Summoner's Pact
4x Green Sun's Zenith
//Lands: 15
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Pendelhaven
13x Forest
//Sideboard: 15
3x Faerie Macabre
3x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Carpet of Flowers
3x Vengevine
3x Surgical Extraction
This runs beautifully and is the best version of the deck I've ever run. The sideboard is experimental--it pretty much addresses the only things I care about: the Reanimator / dredge match up, blue tempo matchups, and times I need to go on the aggressive. I haven't actually tried it out yet, that just seems to make the most sense to me.
Surgical Extraction seems like a good answer to opposing combo decks, green really isn't the best at this sort of thing though. Maybe Thorn of Amethyst? Seems too slow, I'd rather remove key pieces at instant speed. I think I'll stick with that sideboard for now unless someone has a better idea for combo matchups.
The maindeck however, is the same maindeck I've been using since.. about the time I brought up Fierce Empath and made a similar argument against living wish quite awhile ago. Since then I haven't really played Elves competitively, but it remains the deck that I'm most comfortable playing and is definitely the deck I'm best at playing. There's something really rewarding about being able to play something complicated very well :laugh:.
Thorn of Amethysts has always been half a turn too slow whenever I ran it. Best case, they don't go off or disrupt you on turn 1, and you slow them down enough to aggro/combo them out. Worst case, it gets nabbed by Thoughtseize/Duress and you lose the next turn.
I like Surgical however. I might utilize your SB Kich867, and see how that works out.
Whats the point of the Pendelhaven? Going on the aggressive without a lord? Or is it for the defense?
Grafdigger's Cage stops your Zeniths and Vengevines. Why don't you play Fauna Shaman?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Honestly, it's tech against Grim Lavamancer's. There was a game where someone dropped that turn one and made my life hell. It's been incredibly useful. Occasionally someone will forget about it and swing me assuming I won't trade and forget about pendelhaven. It's also sweet VS goblins trying to get a lackey through.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlmostGrown
In general, it's better than a normal forest. If people want to wasteland it, be my guest. But the main purpose is to stop Grim Lavamancers.
In regards to Grafdigger's Cage--like I said, that isn't my sideboard it was just the things that came to mind because my sideboard at the moment is a garbled mess of testing stuff. Replace them with Tormod's Crypts. I'll update it.
I just like to point out that I participated in my monthly tournament for the last two months and have completed quite successfully, 14th out of 119 and 9th of 109, not entering the top in both tournaments by losing to the same Mud player (chalice of the void).
My list has Vengevine and Fauna main, and natural order as a sideboard plan, and I have to say it's a real blast to play. Vengevine wins so many games, and people do not expect the Progenitus of second match, winning 90% of second games.
If I have time and hang a mini-report.
regards.
Christoffer Andersen made 5th/8th at Starcitygames Legacy Series: Cincinnati
MD
4 Forest
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Savannah
2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Pendelhaven
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Windswept Heath
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Birchlore Rangers
3 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Priest of Titania
2 Quirion Ranger
2 Mirror Entity
2 Llanowar Elves
1 Regal Force
1 Qasali Pridemage
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation
SIDEBOARD
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mortarpod
3 Absolute Law
3 Choke
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Fecundity
I'm curious about Fecundity and Jitte in SB. I like the white splash but i don't have Savannah and fetchlans.
Because I don't think the deck is viable right now regardless of how you build it (due to metagame considerations), I haven't been playing Elves much lately, but I'm kind of blown away by how wrong the suppositions here are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Like when you said;
My immediate thought was that you had to be joking and this had to be satire. Either that or you got your cards confused. Certainly Pact looks better in a goldfish situation because it doesn't cost any mana! If you always get to go off unmolested then Pact is certainly stronger than Wish. It's exactly in the situation where you are dealing with disruption that you would rather have Wish, since it doesn't cost four mana or risk you losing the game.Quote:
In gold-fishing, living wish probably looks really sweet, but when you play against real people, who actually kill things and know what threats to hit, your turn 1 or 2 play is often dead--your turn 3 is almost never "I wasn't disturbed for 2 turns so I get to win now."
Living Wish doesn't require you to run these bad cards maindeck, so you never have to worry about what to do when you don't have the mana to cast Emrakul, because then you don't Wish for Emrakul. I really can't emphasize enough how wrong you are. The advantage of Wish is having a reliable method to find Emrakul without having to actually draw it when it's dead, or draw a Fierce Empath when it's dead. Or die to disruption on your creatures and spells.Quote:
I can't even count how many times I've burnt 3 summoner's pacts in one turn fetching Wirewood Symbiote's to repeatedly untap a Priest of Titania for the win--Living Wish won't do that and it's a terrible means of finding Emrakul. Fierce Empath costs one more, is an elf, is tutorable, and fetches emrakul OR regal force for you in the event you already have emrakul but don't have the mana to cast him yet.
Like, with 4 Wish and a Ranger, Symbiote and Cradle to Wish for it seems ridiculous to say that you're going to have problems with an active Priest and multiple Wishes in hand as in that hypothetical situation. Equally it's ridiculous to say that there's a significant difference between running 3 Symbiote/4 Wish/4 GSZ and 4 Symbiote/4 Pact/4 GSZ. That's an incredibly marginal benefit in terms of likelihood of getting a Sybmiote versus the other advantages offered.
Running any less than 4 Symbiote in the maindeck is the wrong approach. Living Wish should only grab situationally useful cards, or mana sources. Cradle, Emrakul, Regal Force (spotty at best), Viridian Shaman, Quirion Ranger, Bojuka Bog, Gaddock Teeg, etc
Symbiote and Nettle belong in the maindeck as 4 of with Living Wish. SB you can skimp on 1 of each of the combo pieces to play actual SB cards like Thorns or Vengevine or whathaveyou, and still enabling you to assemble some sort of combo with Wish.
In the nearing a year of my experience playing summoning pact in Elves I have died 0 times to it. Claiming that the risk of dying is at all a consideration is simply wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Summoner's Pact lets you recover your game state for free, if you're at the point where you're tapping Priests of Titania for mana it's usually that you've already won. Drawing Emrakul is highly unlikely and isn't worth how bad running Living Wish is.
The most important aspect of elves is the first few turns and how well you can recover. Living wishes are slow, they're mana intensive for when you need them, and keeping emrakul outside the deck is irrelevant. Running a singleton Emrakul main deck versus the one in the board is as statistically insignificant as running your 4th symbiote in the board. That's not even the largest issue. It's the simple fact that Living Wish is worse than summoner's pact in too many situations.
Situations in which you aren't comboing out with nettle sentinels, living wish sucks, situations in which your board is being remove, living wish sucks, situations in which you need every drop of mana you have in order to eek out a win, living wish sucks, games that you know you need to combo out turn 2 in, living wish sucks.
Pre combo, living wish is just a bad card. It gives you sort-of-not-really game against Reanimator and Dredge but realistically they won the roll (they always do :frown:) and Iona hit before you could cast it. But on a serious note, the moment they see llanowar elf, go, they entomb blazing archon / iona and force/daze your wish. Reanimator is the -only- scenario where Living Wish maindecks can be good, and the likelihood of it actually working is -so- small.
It's an inferior card, and your build is worse for it. And then what for game 2 and 3?
Maybe you could show me what your sideboard looks like and I'd have a better understanding of what your plan is?
I initially played for months with Living Wish, and as soon as I switched to Pact my consistency skyrocketed. The main deck is super solid and the sideboard can actually be a sideboard again.
I think the biggest thing that turned me off of Living Wish was.. wishes are usually for when you need a bomb or something, most of the time, I'm looking for redundant copies of things. I tutor for sentinels and visionaries because they give really sick card advantage, I tutor for extra symbiotes to bounce visionaries and get stupid card advantage out of them. Living Wish doesn't get you multiples, drawing into multiple living wishes and not creatures during a combo turn can make some combo turns either not happen without a setup you're guaranteed to win with regardless of what happens or it might just not get there.
Maybe you're super lucky, but early turns are rarely ideal and 2 mana is a huge, game-breaking deal. The difference between having to combo off with 4 mana available to you and 2 living wish in your hand and 4 mana available to you and 2 summoner's pacts in your hand is absurdly different. Summoner's pact lets you play better under less ideal situations, where you don't have as much mana available to you and you're down on relevant creatures.
Living Wish requires dedicated SB slots and it's a countereable method to find Emrakul. I played with Fierce Empath in MD sometimes helps a lot but sometimes is so clunky that i decide to cut off.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
I can't think of a situation in which Empath is clunky. Once you can start generating mana you just win, you can actually tutor Emrakul out of your deck. Maybe if your list runs a lot of expensive shit, maybe, I have no idea. My deck has literally 3 CMC 3 creatures: Empath, Archdruid, and Viridian Shaman.Quote:
Originally Posted by lord182
In case people didn't know: lords aren't that great. They're easy to burn and are slow as hell compared to just winning with Heritage Druid. Untappers aren't as big of a deal in my deck as they are in others, maybe that's part of the reason Living Wish seems silly and useless to me, but you don't need lords to win, you just win with what the actual combo is. Lords can be convenient if they work, but never rely on them.
Heritage druids have haste, lords don't.
Being able to counter Living Wish is a non-issue. If they actually held their counter long enough to hit living wish, they'd lose anyways to the swarm on the table.
My list runs the same expensive shit your list runs, i'm glad Fierce Empath work well for you but for me it's clunky.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Your list is green white with mirror entity..why..would you consider running Fierce Empath to begin with? You don't run the same expensive shit mine does, I'm talking about converted mana cost, not money :eyebrow:.Quote:
Originally Posted by lord182