Not sure how to retitle a thread so this should really be called 4 land combo elves. :)
***New Current Decklist 10/15/2010***Originally Posted by from orginal post
Deck: Elves Combo (Mr8658)
//Lands
4x Forest
//Creatures
4x Joraga Warcaller
1x Regal Force
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Nettle Sentinel
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Heritage Druid
4x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Visionary
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
//Spells
1x Concordant Crossroads
4x Lotus Petal
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Summoner's Pact
4x Cloudstone Curio
4x Genesis Wave
4x Chrome Mox
1x Goblin Charbelcher
Display Deck Statistics
Last edited by Shadowdale; 10-15-2010 at 08:22 AM. Reason: Cleaning up the thread
Why would you play this over 'traditional' elf combo? And weird harvast is not really played in elf combo... Is genesis wave really that good for you? Yet then why you run only 1 copy of it?
~Maarten
Hey Maarten,
I play this version as its my own creation. That is half the fun of MtG. Anyways I do not like playing a deck that is just a copy paste of someone elses "proven to win" deck. I enjoy the challenge of trying to find a different way to win with my own ideas. Gensis Wave has been amazing for me in testing it fills the board and gets Crossroads Cloudstone pretty much any perms in the deck. And with so many perms in the deck it drops lots.
The deck needs to be tweaked but it can win on turn 1 as with most combo elves its more likely on 2-5. I was only playing the one copy because that is all I had. Now I have a full play set. So 4 have been included.
I understand what your saying :) Seems like fun, but could you post an ''ideal'' build, so with no restrictions if you have the cards or not?
Arbor Elf seems horrible with only 1 (or 5 counting Land Grants) Forest. Tendrils of Corruption should be Tendrils of Agony.
Recross the Paths and Goblin Charbelcher could be interesting cards for you.
You don't run Belcher nor Chrome Mox, so Land Grant is strictly worse than basic forest. Good luck fighting through hate without permanent non-creature mana sources.
Combo elves is turn 2-4 without Survival, and turn 2-3 with Survival. So that is what you want to match.
As for your deck, Land Grant is way worse than fetchlands for you. And I would increase the Forest count a tad bit (you can still keep it significantly smaller than traditional elves combo though). If you do this right though, you should be able to increase your turn 2 chances at the expense of some consistency, since you are less reliant on lands.
Regardless of Threshold variant though, CB =,
, and
.
Thanks for all the help and ideas guys. The deck is much improved using some of your suggestiong posted here. The newest version really rocks for me so far in goldfish testing. It is almost time to take this baby to the dojo.
I took out Brainfreeze or any other storm card as it doesnt seem to be needed anymore. I added in the Eldrazi because he is an absolute game winner. So now there are three different way to win with the deck. Eldrazi, elf beats, or charbelcher. Would there be any benifit to adding Eladamri, Lord of Leaves in the deck, giving all my elves shroud? Do i need to worry about getting in blood moons in the deck? It seems pretty consistant on turn 3 now. I removed the storm as it doesnt seem to get any benifit from Genesis Wave as I am not really casting the cards as they come into play. Any futher thoughts?
***Current Decklist in OP***
Last edited by Shadowdale; 10-15-2010 at 07:54 AM. Reason: Cleaning up thread making it more readable
Where is recross the paths? Seems quite good to me when you can choose whatever card gets to be where :). But maybe its too random now that you play 4 lands.
I played around with my deck today to do some testing. Got owned, I was always one elf off of winning. So frustrating. Argh! back to the drawing board. As an aside from any of you elf players can you give some examples of what hands to keep and what hands to mulligan?
I don't recommend copy/pasting traditional combo elves lists either (you don't learn, and its boring :P), but its definitely a good idea to consider their engines and compare them to your potential alternatives.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of elf combo and I have a lot of practice with my personal take on the deck. Just 3 days ago I finished 4th at a 30-man legacy tournament of decently high caliber. It was a good time :D
Here are some of my favorite elf engines, followed by random comments, followed by my personal elves combo list, hope it gives you some ideas:
1. glimpse of nature: this one is pretty straight forward, and you seem to have got the gist of it in your deck. The only thing I would recommend is to add 4 birchlore ranger, nettle+birchlore is a good backup to nettle+heritage.
2. survival of the fittest: this one is extremely open-ended, meaning there is ton of ways to play with it. My personal favorite is with the not-so-conventional masked admirers. Basically, as long as you keep casting each creature for +2 mana, he comes back to your hand, and you can get another creature. This combo goes infinite in a fairly similar way the glimpse combo does, but it requires a bit more practice. Ideally you want to set up 2-3 nettles and a heritage first, then fetch all your wirewood symbiotes (huge mana boosters), until you ramp to and fetch regal force, then its just a matter of time until emrakul inevitably hits the board. This combo is a bit slower than the glimpse combo, but its still fairly consistent on turn 3. Other advantages of survival include getting rid of unwanted fatties in your hand (emrakul for example), amplifying the glimpse combo, fetching joraga for the beatdown when combo is no longer an option, and increasing the value of sideboard cards like viridian shaman.
3. natural order: this is so helpful. I wasn't the biggest fan at first, but after I tried it I was sold. Ideally you want a progenitus in your deck, and then you have the alternate win condition "reach 4 mana" -> progenitus. One nice thing about elves combo is that even if you unluckily draw into progenitus, you still have regal force as an excellent backup fetch. The best part of natural order is that it helps you is so many situations where you would be completely fucked otherwise. For example: your glimpse combo fizzles naturally, opponent has too much removal for any combo, engineered plague, trinisphere, chalice for 1, and the list goes on.
4. weird harvest: weird harvest works best with priest of titania or elvish archdruid. Either of them tapping for a decent chunck of mana will end the game the same turn you cast weird harvest, you just need practice as to how to select your creatures given the circumstances. Example: make 8 mana, cast weird harvest for x=5 (1 mana left), fetch 1-2 quirion, 1-2 symbiote, 1 regal force. The quirions and symbiote will make you another 10+ mana, play regal force, and if you draw into something nice, you combo off. Often you can even skip the regal force completely and go directly into emrakul, I've done it several times when I used to play weird harvest a while ago.
5. chord of calling another good choice, especially neat because the of the instant speed. Chord of calling is decent fuel on its own but it is especially powerful when combined with "silver bullet" maindeck and sideboard creatures. Examples include magnus of the moon, harmonic sliver, etc.
Random comments:
-don't bother playing genesis wave, there are plenty of better options. Even the mediocre weird harvest is A LOT better.
-4 cloudstone curio seems a bit excessive, but I'll admit I have little experience with the card.
-summoner's pact is good, especially if you are all-in on your cloudstone or glimpse path, but if you have many diverse combo options, it becomes less good, I personally found 4 to be unecessary. If you have too many pacts in your hand, you get forced into win-now or lose-now situations, and this isn't good considering how many things can go wrong. Generally one pact in your hand is perfect.
-you probably don't wanna hear this, but you'll need more land :P
-why play with concordant crossroads when you have emrakul? I feel like its one or the other, and emrakul does the job much better. This card could be put to better use.
This is the deck I played at the tournament:
***ELVES COMBO***
***1cc creatures*** 25
4 nettle sentinel
4 heritage druid
4 birchlore ranger
3 Quirion Ranger
3 wirewood symbiote
3 fyndhorn elves
3 lanawar elves
1 joraga warcaller
***2cc creatures*** 3
3 elvish visionary
***utility creatures*** 2
1 masked admirers
1 regal force
1 progenitus
1 emrakul, the aeons torn
***spells*** 13
2 summoner's pact
4 glimpse of nature
3 survival of the fittest
4 natural order
***mana base*** 15
1 pendelhaven
14 forest
--
Hope my rambling was helpful, and good luck fellow elf enthusiast! :D
That's a tough one. Deciding which hands to keep and which to mulligan is probably one of the most challenging parts of magic, since it relies on vaguely estimating probability, and human intuition doesn't fair too well with that.
For my deck, this is roughly the guideline I use:
***If against fast and consistent-enough deck (fast means turn 3 or faster with no protection, or turn 4 with protection, examples: belcher, ANT, dream halls, etc.)
Keep hand if:
1. at least 1 land.
2. a few elves. (depends on which engine)
3. at least 1 engine card capable of turn 3-4 or faster.
so for example, I would not keep a "godly" no-land hand and hope to draw a land or a strong no-engine hand and hope to draw an engine, because both these cards are not very likely to come up (close to 1/4 for both).
After I mulligan once, then this is roughly my criteria to mulligan again:
1. at least 1 land.
2. a few elves.
If I don't have the engine card here, I will probably still keep, because the odds of drawing a better 5 card hand is probably smaller than the odds of me drawing what I need in the first few turns.
***If against pretty much any other deck (or if I don't know what I'm up against):
1. at least 1 land
2. a few elves
3. any engine card, pact, joraga, or visionary
The main difference from before is that condition #3 is more relaxed, because I expect the game to give me a bit more time to come up with a solution. I might even keep a hand with none of the #3 conditions depending on how good the mix of elves is, but generally I need at least 1 card to set my hopes on to keep a hand. Very rarely I would keep a "godly" no land hand, but I have done it before. For example, I was against merfolk and I had a hand with essentially the best elves + glimpse + natural order and I was on the draw. My reasoning was that merfolk would have counterspells so even an otherwise good 6 card hand would probably be mediocre compared to this hand if I draw into a single land. And I could still combo by turn 5 or so, even if it took 2-3 turns to draw into the land I needed. (Luckily for me, the top card of my library was a land, w00t! :P)
After I mulligan once, then this is roughly my criteria:
1. at least 1 land.
2. a few elves.
The reasoning for the second mulligan is pretty much the same as before. Since we are running a low land deck, mulligan down to 5 is not really recommended unless you are sitting on a 6 card dead hand.
***note: I will gladly keep a glimpse hand even though I know it is likely fizzle (example: no pact, heritage or nettle), because even if it does, while doing the mini combo, I am likely to draw into another engine card and be set up to finish the game on the next turn.
***note2: after sideboarding, mulligan decisions become drastically different depending on the matchup and what you sideboard... for example: 1 jitte + a few elves + a land against burn? KEEP PLEASE! :P
Wow thank you so much SpeedofDark that is great information to process.
Yeah the no land elves was always off by one green mana or a elf. Very frustrating but it did play. You just had to win on turn 4. So not consistant enough to warrent it. I still love Genesis wave. I see what you are saying with Wierd Harvest but the wave is just so damn nice. With more lands and a landfall elf maybe it would be better.
masked admirers is interesting. Yours is the first thread to include it that I have read.
Sadly Natural Order and Survival of the fittest need to to wait so I will have to ghetto it for a bit untill I can get those cards.
Curio I must say is good but you are right not a 4 of good. It lets you do amazing things such as infinate mana and infinate card draw incase you dont get a glimpse.
What are your thoughts on these guys...
Avenger of Zendikar great synergy with genesis wave Think about it :)
Sylvan Messenger I have found this card to be ok not great but ok
Also since I kinda really want to break Genisis Wave what about adding Khalni Heart Expedition I like to play the wacky! your responses are really apperciated.
you're welcome :D
Indeed, well it was a good attempt. The main problem with super-fast all-in combo decks is that if they aren't faster than belcher (which is almost always the case), it's kind of hard to justify playing them.
Genesis wave is pretty damn cool, but like I said, its usually worst than other options because it can't "win now" while many others can. However, there may yet be a way to abuse it, so its worth keeping an eye on.
yeah its kind of neat, I actually got the idea from another poster on mtgthesource. But unfortunately, it only really works well with survival :P
Yeah don't blame ya, that shit is expensive. I didn't own my copies until very recently. Before that I played combo elves with 4 glimpse, 4 pacts, 4 weird harvests (along with 3 titanias). I called it the poor man's combo elves :P
Well I have to say thats pretty damn funny, and I'd love to cast it to see my opponent's face! :P But once again we run into the same problem, you pay 10+ mana and your opponent still has 1 turn left to live, no fun :(
Yeah he's pretty decent, and actually very strong if combined with symbiote. Top heavy for a glimpse deck, but a nice fit in other elf decks.
lol nah, I think that's probably cuter than it is good :P
Well, if you really want to break genesis wave so bad I think you have to do a few things:
1. you need a deck with mostly permenants (for maximum genesis waves obviously)
2. you need to have several ways of making tons of mana
3. you need to find a way to gain from your casted spell immediately
I'm not sure exactly how to do this, but here's what a rough draft could look like:
1cc 18
4 llanowar
3 fyndhorn
3 quirion
4 symbiote
4 joraga
2cc 8
4 visionary
4 titania
3cc 6
4 archdruid
2 imperious perfect
4cc 4
4 messenger
crazy stuff 7
4 genesis wave
3 concordant crossroads
1 regal force
lands 17
2 gaea's
15 forest
crazy mana sources: 4 titania, 4 archdruid, 2 gaea's cradle (titania and archdruid further amplified by quirion and symbiote)
mini card draw engine: 4 symbiote + 4 visionary OR 4 messenger
mana sinks: 4 genesis wave, 4 joraga, 1 regal force
elf lords: 4 joraga, 4 archdruid, 2 imperious perfect
cool stuff that can happen when you cast genesis wave:
1. if you hit messenger or visionary you will draw extra cards
2. of you hit regal force, you will draw an assload of cards
3. if you have or hit crossroads, everything that went in play can attack (or tap for mana) immediately
Just an idea, although I do suspect concordant crossroads + elves is the right path if you want to break it.
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