I also could not believe it when I saw that guy managed not to win this turn...Quote:
Originally Posted by Augustas
He did not have a sideboard, so maybe he is not a very experienced player.
Printable View
I also could not believe it when I saw that guy managed not to win this turn...Quote:
Originally Posted by Augustas
He did not have a sideboard, so maybe he is not a very experienced player.
So for those running a wishboard, the new card from the commander precons, scavenging ooze, might be useful for the graveyard matchups.
perhaps it might, but it's pretty slow compared to Loaming Shaman for the same cost (:g::g::g: to remove the first card with ooze, versus :2::g: to remove any # of cards with Loaming Shaman)Quote:
Originally Posted by resum
Yeah, but the ooze can remove cards at instant speed which is relevant in against several GY strategies.Quote:
Originally Posted by rukcus
This is true, but consider also the purpose of such a hate card in the grand scheme of the Elves combo. Do we need a long-term answer? Or just an answer for the next 1-2 turns to allow us to continue with our own combo. I can't determine which is better at this point w/o testing, but I suspect with the amount of mana Elves can generate, that the Ooze might be a worthy inclusion after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by resum
Considering dredge uses Firestorm there might just be a "long(er)" game.
I actually cut the transformation for the Jupiter Games invitational this weekend, instead running the following sideboard:Quote:
Originally Posted by KBH
3 Dismember
2 Krosan Grip
1 Loaming Shaman
1 Mortarpod
3 Ground Seal (We were worried about reanimator after the grinders on Friday so I came up with this around midnight and promptly failed to read Loaming Shaman to realize the dis-synergy)
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Thrun, the Last Troll (Didn't board this guy in on the day)
I was promptly rolled by many Grim Lavamancers, LED Dredge, and a Humility I was not expecting from Alex Bertoncini. I correctly determined that Team America would not be a major part of the metagame and on that basis decided to cut the vengevines, which was a huge mistake as the various Bloodbraid Elf RUG decks and RUW Stoneforge decks also require the transformation.
Figuring these decks would also be present on Sunday, I went to the other extreme and played Vengevines in the main, formulating a list based on Malatesta's from SCG Boston. I played the following on Sunday to a 12th place finish with a 5-2 record:
4 Heritage Druid
3 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
3 Fauna Shaman
4 Vengevine
1 Regal Force
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Intuition
4 Gaea's Cradle
7 Green Fetch Lands
3 Tropical Island
3 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
SB:
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Dismember
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Seal of Removal
2 Faerie Macabre (My new Reanimator hate since you can shaman for it)
1 Loaming Shaman
2 Krosan Grip
I defeated Merfolk, Sui-Black, a WW-stoneforge/hate bears deck, UWR Stoneforge, and Reanimator while losing to NO RUG and Dragon Stompy (I never played a relevant spell in this match after mulling 4 times in 2 games) Each win was 2-0 while each loss was 0-2 and the deck felt very strong. Intuition was incredible and actually outperformed zenith in the deck, which was surprising. The worst card was definitely Fauna Shaman, since there was a lot of spot removal in the metagame he was much too slow against most decks, even with 8 untap effects. I was still able to combo effectively by just attacking with vengevines and passing with multiple creatures in hand. However, based on the combo heavy metagame of SCG Denver, black for therapy will be a necessity so my former list may be superior going forward. However, I will never be without Vengevines in my 75 again.
I'd like now to give my thoughts on some of the recent discussions in the thread.
On playing around Mental Misstep: Given the increase of spot removal in the format as the fair decks inbreed to fight each other, I'd rather not play a version with many lords. Overloading on one drops doesn't make you more vulnerable to misstep, it actually makes you less so since you can play through the 1-2 they have in a given game and force your opponent to counter an irrelevant or less important guy. I've found that many players are inexperience playing against elves and in this case these lines of play are much easier to find and execute. The deck does not rely on any single one mana spell to resolve (not even glimpse) so it's really just like fighting through more lightning bolts, although misstep being free makes it slightly worse for us. Baiting the misstep with a guy is made more effective by the presence of zenith, as the guy can easily be replaced mid-combo or even beforehand.
On Scavenging Ooze: Certainly better against reanimator than dredge, so the decision of playing it vs Loaming Shaman should come down to which GY deck is more prevalent. I never cast Loaming Shaman this weekend so I can't speak to its effectiveness but in general against dredge I wanted the ability to fight dread return on Elesh Norn and past that, I'd rather take a plan of racing them since they really aren't that much faster.
Hey,
i started testing the 8 lord list with 3 GSZ engine.
I have to say the 4 Vengies in the side are pure gold. But to this point i never brought the Buried Alive in.
Could we save these 3 for combo or did i make sth wrong?
What do you think about Viridian Shaman main and perhaps another n1 utility elf ( don't know any right now (-; ) which perhaps combos with Wirweood.
I've been doing this for a while - Jitte is ubiquitous in my metagame, and having an out for this card in the maindeck is very useful - much more than Viridian Zealot.Quote:
Originally Posted by unicoerner
Run both. Shaman is useful in that it metaphorically murders Chalice decks and Affinity in conjunction with Symbiote, but the ability to deal with Counterbalance and assorted random is not to be underestimated.
Its a space problem imo.
One problem with Shaman is that he can't hewlp vs stoneforgers eot bringing in
Until Counterbalance makes a significant return to the metagame, I see no reason to run Viridian Zealot anywhere in the 75. It is nowhere near as efficient as Shaman at dealing with artifacts, and does not answer Enigneered Plague or Humility. With Emrakul as the win condition, Moat is not an issue so rarely are there enchantments that require a direct answer. However, with the many artifacts currently running around, I wish I had a shaman in the MD of my list from last Sunday, as it was the most commonly boarded card on the day.
On an unrelated note, I'd like to address the biggest issue I see in most lists on this thread: the lack of Gaea's Cradle. For everyone extolling the 8 lord version of the deck as a means to circumvent mental misstep, I submit that Cradle is the best lord the deck can play. It has "haste," costs no mana, and is uncounterable. It also happens to make more mana than any lord once you have a symbiote in play. While it cannot be untapped by symbiote or q ranger, the mana this play generates is typically only useful when hard-casting emrakul naturally or finding a regal force to re-fuel for the combo, situations that are narrow enough for one lord to be sufficient. As far as vulnerability to wasteland is concerned, it is quite easy in my experience to save a lone cradle until the turn you plan to combo or bait a wasteland with the first cradle. Other decks must respect the power of cradle, so using a wasteland immediately typically uses most of their turn while accelerating your own game plan, at which point the second cradle then easily locks up the game. This card is so absurdly powerful that it is worth the risk of stranding dead copies in your hand. The chief argument I have confronted against the use of 4 cradles is the risk of opening on a hand with cradles as the only land but in the abstract this argument is only valid when cradles are taking the place of other lands. My list uses a robust mana base with 18 total lands, while other lists I encounter have around 14, so my cradles typically replace 4 lords from another version. Cradle being uncounterable, tapping the turn it enters play, and costing 0 mana far outweigh the slight decrease in glimpse hitting creatures and being vulnerable to wasteland is much better than being vulnerable to spot removal. Examining the former remark, drawing a 2-3 mana lord mid-combo from glimpse can also result in a failed combo much in the same way as a land will unless one has access to multiple nettle sentinels, so I see no reason for playing elvish archdruid specifically over more cradles. Having played without the card initially and then adding it later in my testing, I can never view a list without 4 of these (or 3 main with the 4th as a wish target--despite my disdain for wish) as optimal.
Seeing as it represents 1 of 2 cards that can actually disrupt the opponent I'm not keen to cut it however, and it does fulfill functions besides hitting Enchantments such as nuking Factories and Torpor Orbs (not that it sees much play but still). There's also the corner cases where Shaman gets destroyed/discarded/countered and having a backup gets relevant.
I do admit that Shaman is far stronger in the current meta, but I feel that Zealot is better than the card that would have its spot otherwise (most likely a mana producer).
ps It does answer Plagues with some help off assorted lords, granted I tend to side it out for Grips in those mu's
I think whenever there is any doubt about SBing, KGrip is a safe call to bring in. Against any deck with :w: or :b:, this should be brought in to address any of the following -Quote:
Originally Posted by Infinitium
Ethersworn Canonist
Rule of Law
Humility
Engineered Plague
The Abyss
Chalice of the Void
amongst other potential problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainbow Maker
Responding to both at the same time. Around 60.70% of the games I win recently are due to resolving Regal Force before any glimpse, I can assure you that I do not rely on it, I actually never feel aymore like, "damn where's the glimpse, I need a glimpse". Glimpse is an awesome cards, the best against no-counter decks, but against blue it is just the card for them to keep counters for.Quote:
Originally Posted by resum
I also wasn't being a douchebag. It is just ridiculous for you to say that you would cut Nettle. With Nettle on the board, emptying your "lords" hand on turn 2, to assure a turn 3 win would be A Lot easier.
I have never run Loaming Shaman and never will, because it lacks the instant speed. Many games, Dredge will come back from one grave emptying, and the only thing that we need to make sure is that not Flamekin nor Iona hit the board, and against Reanimator Loaming is useless.Quote:
Originally Posted by rukcus
There's not enough room to run both. Shaman is a good card, but I don't think her ability has enough of an edge to deserve a spot in our deck. Breaking 1 Chalice should be enough to win the game, and Affinity is usually an auto-win. Eventhough, Shaman might be better than Zealot since she can avoid E. Plague, big issue in my meta.Quote:
Originally Posted by Infinitium
Anyway, the best card to run is Sylvok Replica, as it was discussed 2 pages ago, and given Many reasons why it is absolutely the best. That's if you're running a wish list. Anyway,
To Theross: Shaman can't deal with Humility either. Humility is a huge pain in the ass, luckily it doesn't show up too often ^^
I've been fiddling with Elf Combo for awhile, I have a super janky version that works without the full combo (it's actually surprising how little Nettle Sentinel ever actually shows up to make a difference in my proxied version, frequently by the time I see them the engine is far more focused on spam-untapping a Priest of Titania and producing 5-12 mana a tap), but if I get this job I'll be building a combo deck this summer. In particular, either this or ANT, however I have more of the cards for this already and it's significantly cheaper to purchase what I -don't- have, plus green is what I do almost universally for all of my decks, in the end, Elf Combo makes far more sense for me to play.
However, I've been testing builds in a proxy setting of essential magic, just drawing hands and playing them out in my head through their deck analysis function, but I actually see myself running into this issue where I have everything necessary to go off, but not the thing that sets me off--glimpse or a green sun into regal force.
So this is more of a play question than a deck building question (as the list I intend to work with is a little unorthodox and resembles a more oldschool elf-ball style deck, with elf combo to ramp the mana). The deck analysis shows you every card you will be drawing in a supposedly randomly setup list (though I question how effective it actually is at randomizing the cards), and I'll occasionally see a fantastic hand--but nothing to win with for 12 turns.
Do you just mulligan into a glimpse? Or try to ramp enough mana to pump out a Green sun for Regal and aim to go off the turn after / that turn if you can produce the mana? Like, do you not keep a hand that doesn't have a card that you can win down the line with? Perhaps it's just bad luck in the goldfishing environment, but I keep running into situations where I won't be seeing a glimpse for many turns and what looks solid initially won't actually end up being able to pump out an 8 mana green sun's for 4-5 turns.
The core of my deck is pretty standard: Now, understandably I don't run any +lords so the aggro plan is basically non-existent, but is that essentially the only other option in the face of just not finding shit? I'm probably overstating this, since it's really not that common at all, but it just happened 2-3 times in a row in my last few goldfishing attempts where my opening hand seemed perfectly usable, but it just never found a glimpse or a green sun to really get things going. Are hands without one of those two unkeepable?
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Heritage Druid
4x Birchlore Ranger
4x Priest of Titania
2x Llanowar Elves
2x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Wirewood Symbiote
2x Quirion Sentinel
1x Regal Force
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Banefire
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Druid Arbor
1x Taiga
1x Gaea's Cradle
11x Forest
Hands without Glimpse or GSZ are not auto-mulligans. But it all depends on what you have in hand. Try cutting 2 Birchlore & Quirion Sentinel. Replace those with the 4th symbiote and QRanger and 2 extra Llanowars. This should improve your goldfishing since you will have more ways to bounce visionaries. But try it and tell us your findings. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Welcome to Elf-combo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
As already mention many times and actually also on this page the plan is to cast regal force in turn 3 or 4, draw many cards which hopefully includes a glimpse for the win in the same turn.
The problem you are facing is because you don't have enough tutors.
There are different routes you can go as you will find if you read the last 20+ pages of thread. I suggest you work through some crap posts to find the different approaches.
A very common way to do is to play 8 mana! lords, 8 untappers and 7-8 tutors (Summoners Pact, GSZ, Living Wish - depending on your strategy). In this configuration you will very consistently have the mana and the cards to go off in turn 3.
What I play at the moment is a version without archdruid, so only 4 mana lords and natural order. It makes the deck more versatile to either go for a Progenitus if he wins or use NO as a 4 mana Regal force to go for the combo win.
Some comments to your list.
Quirion Ranger is on of key cards. you will understand if you learn how to play the deck correclty: you need 4!
Birchlore is cuttable. He pushes your turn 2 wins a little, but looses value in longer and tougher games (as they are played today)
emrakul > banefire. I often cast him without glimpse...
Quirion Sentinel is just bad. there are many good elves, tutors and lands fighting for a space in the deck.
6-7 mana-elfs has been proven as good by many guys in the forum to ensure proper acceleration
17 lands is too much for a tight combo lists like yours. 13-15 is enough!
Summoners pact is the best elf and sometimes a regal force while comboing and ensures you finish when you start! GSZ has not good value while comboing tight because you dont draw a card and it costs 1 more.
___________
Personally I don't play elves these days because it is no fun to have so many highly interactive decks out there with ton's of combo-slasher like x-still, BUG variants, U/W control or RUG tempo decks with lavamancers, B/W hymns followed by stoneforge and jitte or just a faster combo deck with disruption like hive mind. Many popular things that can break your neck. Hell even Merfolk have game against us now with MM.
If you like to play elves I would go for a more aggro version with Vengevines and Intuition, where the glimpse kill is the 2nd win-con. But to buy into this deck you need Vengevinse, more cradles & intution... If money is a consideration that might be a problem though!
It has been said many times that this deck really needs getting used to it, for playing it well, more than most people imagine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Apart from that, sticking to a pure combo list is unthinkable of at the time. Mental misstep fucks that up. So we need to have a second route for the win.
Options: A more aggro maindeck (+1 Lords, Vengevines), more mana producing for Regal (8 manalords, 8 untappers), or maybe a second combo (NO+Prog+Regal).
As everyone said, you need at least 6 Llanowars, 4 Symbiote and 4 Quirion. Cut lands down to 14 max., birchlore, and banefire, and Do Not play Quirion Sentinel, and read a few pages of the thread.
Test and post results ;)
I disagree with most of what is advised here. With GSZ he has an effective 8 llanowar elf cards which I have found the be enough. Moreover, playing more lands is an effective way to play through mental misstep, since it allows one to build a mana base while having the creature based mana-engine disrupted. For reasons I've expounded on earlier in this thread, I would advocate moving to 4 gaea's cradle. I do agree that Birchlore, Q Sentinel, and Banefire are not optimal, although a single birchlore can be effective against Hive Mind. I would also suggest moving to 4 each of Symbiote and Quirion Ranger even if you don't run extra lords since both contribute to the deck's power and resiliency---a rare combination.Quote:
Originally Posted by NihilObstat
As to whether or not a streamlined combo list is most effective, the answer clearly lies in the expected metagame. I found recently at Jupiter that the number of Grim Lavamancers and cheap, efficient removal increased dramatically, making a list with MD Vengevine optimal. However, SCG Denver saw an increase in other combo decks such as ANT and Hive Mind, and while elves is simply not a good choice in metagames defined by these such decks, a successful list must be as explosive as possible. I would also note that the presence of Mental Misstep does not in and of itself make a streamlined combo version of the deck obsolete, as the easiest way to play around the card is to play through it and overload on one drops. Incidentally, this plan also preys on the decision of many players to cut down on Force of Will due to its aggressiveness. However, I see these practices leading to a return of combo decks to the metagame, and I would submit SCG Denver as an example of this shift already taking place.