5 ParsleyOriginally Posted by Diogo37
12 Sage
10 Rosemary
7 Thyme
"I'm willing to imagine a TES where Past in Flames replaces Ill-Gotten Gains entirely, and we just don't play Diminishing Returns." - me, 29/09/2011
Founding member of Team Scrubbad: Legacy Legends
First post -- I apologize in advance if this is not the spot for this post.
So, I'm looking to build Elves. I play Elves in Modern, and outside of mana dorks, Nettle Sentinels, Heritage Druids, Cavern of Souls, Fetches, I'm going to building this thing from the ground up.
I would like to play legacy at my LGS in the meantime -- they do not allow proxies.
All of this to say, practically speaking, what would be the recommended purchase plan so that I may play the deck? I am looking at buying either a Cradle or Bayou, and trading into another of the two lands.
Thank you in advance. I am hoping to even out the list and then work my way to finalizing it.
I do not know what happened, now it is right.
Definitely Cradle. It is a very important piece. If you can buy two lands, go for two cradles and play an overgrown tomb.
And since you do not have the cradle playset, play some crop rotations and a SB bokuja bog.
Mana acceleration is really important.
Finally finished my tournament report for GP Prague. Check it out on my blog:
GP Prague — 226th with Elves
The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
1. Discuss the unbanning ofLand TaxEarthcraft.
2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
4. Stifle Standstill.
5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).
Great tournament report Julian. Any chance you could speak more to why you switched back to the order version. I am trying to decide which version to run next week on MTGO to try and qualify for the legacy championships.
The NO version is better against lesser skilled players, which makes it better for a GP IMO. It's also pretty good against Eldrazi.
Guys. What about Vexing Shusher? anybody tested it (as sideboard card)? Great against force of will, daze etc. But also get's us past Chalice on one (the vexing itself is two) and countertop...
Could be a nice addition to the deck. And.. IT MAKES NATURAL ORDER COME THROUGH!
Shusher gets past Chalice on 2, to be clear. But I have to wonder if it's really worth it.
1) We have few enough non-Elf spells that a sideboard card that only really adds benefit to non-Elf spells might be considered of too-low impact.
2) The fact that you can only afford to run one means you won't draw it naturally, and instead must fetch it with an unprotected GSZ/NO. Chicken and egg: who's going to protect the spell you use to get the Shusher you'll use to protect your spells?
3) Lastly, my sig. What other options exist, and would Shusher be better than those options? If you fear counterspells and the decks that run them, many people already run Ruric Thar, who has the additional benefit of attacking as well as impacting the cantrips that every non-Merfolk counterspell deck uses. Others use Teeg, who foils Chalice and Force.
I'd never discourage testing a neat idea, but I'd be surprised if this one panned out.
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
If you want to get through Chalice and Counterbalance, just up the Decay and Cavern count. Not like the deck breaks down and you gain oercentage vs. Delver etc. too.
I actually like Ezuri's idea, playing a GSZ for 2 to fetch Shusher is very unlikely to be countered by most players due to the fact it's largely expected that we would fetch up visionary (or if post-SB) Gaddock Teeg. With GSZ it gives us 5 copies. Unfortunately the biggest problem with Shusher is that it dies to a slew of things (StP, Decay, Dismember, etc.) and we have no way to protect it with something like Wirewood, also relying on our opponent to have no answer to it probably makes it too weak to warrant a spot in the SB.
Elves, especially of the Chaos variety, is at a point where people sometimes even side out Counterbalance against because we're so overly prepared for it. The big thing we still haven't found a really good way around is Terminus.
If I was concerned about Counterbalance, there's probably 5-10 other cards I'd include in the SB before turning to Vexing Shusher, which does almost nothing. And against Chalice, you're either heavily favored anyways (Merfolk, MUD) OR GSZ'ing for Vexing Shusher is WAY too slow anyways (Eldrazi). Hell, it's gotten to a point where Abrupt Decay(!) is often too slow vs Eldrazi when you're on the draw.
The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
1. Discuss the unbanning ofLand TaxEarthcraft.
2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
4. Stifle Standstill.
5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).
I really wonder whats fucking wrong with this thread to discuss the same issues every two pages and people coming up with hilarious idea to tackle issues we solved months ago.
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Vexing shusher would be fine if it was ONLY miracles we had to worry about..
but even then...it's not counterbalance that does us in normally...it's 1 mana wraths and 3 mana armies in a can.
for the purpose of not being toxic and inviting new/fresh ideas-- I like the thought of shusher. I've been known to cast that guy in modern before (uncounterable scapeshifts are fun...who needs boseju!?)...but he's just a BIT too slow for what we need in this deck imo.
Personally, Ima just keep on keeping on...my win % with the current version of the deck in the current meta is ridiculously high. IF they ban miracles like some pros are calling for-- I will win lots and lots of legacy tournaments, because the number of "horrendous" matchups will be sliced almost in half (since there's less reanimator/sneak/pox total than there is total# of miracles players). Until then however, we're in fine shape. No need for alarm/discord. elf power!
In order to being less toxic, I want to elaborate why I'd call Shusher a bad inclusion: It doesn't solve the Chalice/Counterbalance issue, but makes you pay extra mana every time you try to resolve a spell and you are back in a horrible position, if he eats Plowshares or the like. What is the exact advantage of this creature compared to R.Sage which simply geta rid of the permanent and works with Symbiote & GSZ too? Whats the advantage compared to discard against Counter (not that recent iterations of Elves do care much about counters at all)? These are fundamental questions which need to be asked before suggesting a card imo.
Raise the number of decays in your Sideboard first, if Counterbalance/Chalice is your concern. If 4 Decay is not enough, take a look at Sages/KrosanGrips in addition
Last edited by Lemnear; 06-22-2016 at 11:55 AM.
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I agree on all points with this analysis...good breakdown.
*hums Britney spears while at work*
Thanks for the respons. I agree on the input.
@ Julian: I am obviously wondering what those 5-10 other cards would be.
Indeed we only would need one susher (GSZ) and people aren't going to counter a GSZ on two mana I believe.
Problem with ruricThar is the fact that he requires a lot more mana to tutor. And a Ruric on hand isn't that nice. A susher can be played much easier.
I apologize for randomly suggesting a card. The idea just passed my mind.
Currently playing 2 caverns of souls and a reclamation sage MB and SB 3 decays and 2 thought seize, 2 cabal therapy and 2 surgical extraction.
Still running into lots of counter (daze and FoW) against NO.
Could be my meta, could be my play.
NO has a "COUNTER ME!" Las Vegas Casino sign on its back, so if you want to minimize the damage from 2-for-1'ing yourself in the face of counters, don't opt to beat the hate with Shusher/Discard, but sidestep it by not running such an obvious counter target in the first place. Don't fall into the trap of diluting your deck with fatties, NO, discard and stuff, if you could simply race them with a bunch of green creatures, rather than acting like a bad combo deck in that situation. Go make it hard for them to counter the right spell and apply pressure rather than fighting over NO, which you don't NEED to win.
TL;DR: NO was never the right choice to fight control decks.
P.S.: All your sideboard needs to cover atm is permanent hate and combo matchups.
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It probably is your play. Elves is a deck that can do a lot of things well, but not quite the best. The nature of the deck is that it's a proactive deck: You build your own resources to the point and in a way that the opponent can't deal with them and win from there. You can play like Shardless and wall people's attackers out while drawing a ton of cards, vomit out tons of dudes with Glimpse and Packmaster, field big bodies like Packmaster, NO targets, Ooze.If the opponent can't interact on the stack very well, you can just kill them. You can imitate a traditional Sligh deck (low-curve red aggro with a bunch of burn) by just playing little dudes, refueling with small Glimpses and using Deathrite and Shaman of the Pack as burn spells. You can do just about everything. Just about every deck has something it has a hard time dealing with. Find that thing and do it.
The reason I said it was probably your play was what Lemnear alluded to above: Countering single big spells that the opponent builds their gameplan around is something Daze decks are pretty much built to do: Storm decks fight through it by going in really quick (TES, Elves isn't that fast), or shredding their hand until they can punch the combo through (ANT, Elves is fast enough but can't include discard without making the combo unwieldy). You don't want to be a countermagic-less Tinker deck or a discardless Storm deck against Delver decks. That's just asking to get yourself killed.
What do Delver decks have trouble dealing with, then? Well, raw card advantage is one thing. Shardless wins against just about every Delver deck, Elves' strongest gameplan is grindy card advantage heavy board control. You can fog their attackers, Decay their attackers, draw tons of cards with small Glimpses, Visionary engine, Sylvan Library. Sounds good to me. What else do they have trouble with? Just about anything extreme, really. Delver decks win by keeping the board state in hand and winning on efficiency. So go out of hand. Nonwhite Delver decks have tons of problems dealing with big bodies - Packmaster and Ooze are fantastic. TES kills Delver by vomiting out a ton of Goblins. If you can play a lot of dudes quickly or spam tokens with Packmaster or Dwynen's Elite or a Planeswalker, do so. Delver players will hate you. Elves can do combo, but it isn't a capable combo deck in many matchups, and in those you absolutely should just play fair, which the deck is really good at.
NO is more for decks that just don't run much countermagic like nonblue midrange decks (inc. Shardless) and Eldrazi, where you can just end them on the spot, and is useful for racing opposing combo decks if you have it in the 75. It's the hammer in fair matchups when you've ground the opponent's resources out some. It's the threat that encourages them to kill your dudes to manage Hoof's instakill potential, a Damocles' sword forcing them into conservative play so you can beat them in the value game while they're busy shitting their pants. A lot like Infect's capability to just kill people out of the blue. If Infect is a RUG/Storm deck, Elves is a Shardless/Show and Tell/Storm deck. For both, the fair gameplan is Plan A.
I have had some success lately with Gaea's Herald in the board.
There is a decent number of CotV decks in my meta that this really helps against; I also sideboard this in versus miracles, although it is definitely less good there.
It will not help Natural Order resolve, but that is a terrible card against miracles anyway.
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