[Deck] The EPIC Elf Survival

[Di]

So, I apologize with not reading this thread much, but the deck has interested me. Mostly, I'm curious if it's possible to run 1-2 survivals. I feel like that they wouldn't clog up your hand, and you wouldn't need to run specific cards to abuse its power, since basically just being able to fetch messengers and lords seems good enough. You could also recycle progenitus if you really needed to.

Just a thought.

Survival itself wasn't the entire reason for clunky draws, it was moreso on Squee, Anger, and to a lesser extent Viridian Zealot (just a weak creature despite lord buffs). Opening a hand with either of those red cards essentially turned it into a mulligan, and they were terrible topdecks. Running only 1-2 of Survival won't really add much to the deck as you still need to add the additional red cards to supplement it, and it won't be consistent enough to have much of an impact. Worse of all, with only 2 Survival you'd have fewer outs to do anything with a drawn Squee or Anger, which was the issue in the first place. Right now it just doesn't offer anything that we don't already have to improve our bad matchups, so it isn't worth running.

You are correct, a land is missing, more exact a Bayou. To be quite honest I tested one of your previous takes on the switch from SotF to black with Therapy and worked from that. Mainly adressing to the sideboard and testing the maindeck.
I think the maindeck runs pretty well except for some occational mana screw with wastes. The creature I feel have the least impact on the game are the playset of Elvish Champions. I've been thinking of a 10 lord list, decreasing the Elvish Champions to two and instead put in two Wren Run's Packmasters. They can simply win games and have a 5/5 body to go with, and the champion an elf isn't that bad if you have success in championing a Messenger. I'd rather have more beef than +1/+1 and forestwalk, since I think that the Champion is one of the least effective lords in the deck. But that's just my opinion.
The packmaster would satisfy my deathtouch desire aswell since wolves gets deathtouch and could easily take out those fatties that I simply hate. And even coming in at cmc 4, it's a bit hard for Counterbalance to hit it if I'm not misstaken?
The Priest of Titania and Archdruid could easily fuel the Packmaster with mana to produce these wicked wolves, since we have no other place to put our massive mana production.

And since you mention that you're suprised that people won't even try out the list without SotF, it may be because of the "versitility" that SotF gives the deck. I can only speak for myself, but I want tempo and I personally felt that the SotF engine was too slow and only worked well while the opponent had a bad hand or draw or if I myself was winning.
Against decks like Tempothresh, Zoo and other fast decks that can control you easily, it felt like a dead draw and was very unimpressive.

Elvish Champion is easily the weakest lord in the deck, no argument there. Forestwalk is decent but isn't gamebreaking compared to the abilities of the other two. I myself went down to 3 in favor of the 8th Llanowar Elf as I wanted more consistent turn 1 accelerants, and I've been liking it a lot. Wren's Run Packmaster is a solid replacement as well. It can be a bit slow because of its high casting cost and occasionally be a bad topdeck, but I can contest that it's amazing at virtually all aspects of the game. I'm a bit wary to run them as I've been trying to keep the curve as low as possible and these are more expensive than their replacements, but it's a solid card, much better than Vanquisher imo.

Your analysis on the weakness of Survival is also echoes my statements pretty much verbatim on the subject. I found it to be great in matchups that were in my favor or I was already winning, but in the tough, fast matchups it was far too slow to make an impact, thus I cut it in favor of a much faster, more aggressive card engine, and the deck's worked much, much better as a result.

- my experience with the deck could be caused by the above (players are just better than me) or by my playing style and especially mulligan style. I find myself often really doubting about keeping a hand and I think I should more often mulligan, but to be honest ... I lack the balls ... :s
- the option of including 2 packmasters indeed looks good, I really liked the card in the survival build, however, we should be carefull about to many 3CC and 4CC creatures/spells. Having an opening hand with 2 land, 3 3CC and 2 4CC creatures is no good ...
- what do you guys do about chalice @ 1? I really hate it and there is not a lot to be done about it i guess (except SB, but that alreasy slows you down a lot). any thoughts?

@ Di, you said you were tweaking your deck after your top 8, care for any insights?

- I know the champions are the weakest of the lords, but I just like to be able to cast lord after lord after lord ... (when the first and second get countered or blown away you can just keep getting them out) I am afraid that when cutting 1 or 2 lords, we will loose some of that pressure.

The issue with mulligans and keeping potentially risky hands comes down to experience with the deck. It's just a matter of testing the deck enough to be aware of what you can do in certain situations, such as open a one-land hand, or open a hand without a turn one play, and calculate odds on what you can draw to help the situation out within the next 1-2 turns. If it isn't in your favor, then it's probably best to ship it back. Just play with the deck more and more to figure out exactly what to do in these situations, and it'll eventually come natural to you.

The Wren's Run Packmaster concern with CC is an issue I've mentioned a bit without it even in the deck. The deck can occasionally open a hand clogged with lords, Messengers, and Orders and be forced to ship it back because it won't have a turn 1-2 play. Adding another expensive threat can potentially add to this problem, but testing the deck a bit more will tell us what we can do. However I will add that in a build featuring Packmaster, I'd be inclined to add another mana source or two to make up for the additional weight in casting cost.

Chalice of the Void can be an issue, but it is really only strong against you if it's @ 1 on turn 1 when they're on the play. If they get it down before you have a turn 1 mana elf, then it could be an issue, but if you have one down before that, then you'll be ok because you can still hit 3 mana by turn 2. Otherwise, it can only be an issue if you happen to have a hand cluttered with 1cc cards, which can happen given 1/3 of the deck is them, but the important thing is that you still have access to 3cc. As long as you hit 3cc against a Chalice deck, you're in good hands. Plus if it's that big of an issue, you can always sideboard Krosan Grip to help deal with it.


Regarding my list changes, the only maindeck change I've really worked on and like is +1 Llanowar Elves -1 Elvish Champion. It frees up some of the lord-clogged hands, while giving me more consistent turn 1 elves. The power decrease from losing that elf is really minimal though, so it isn't something to worry about. The sideboard, as always, is still in a state of flux. It's changing around to tailor what I predict the metagame to be like, so I don't really have any comments regarding that.