So back to the old Vengivine/Intuition build, things do really come back around full circle. I've basically been running the (classic?) Chris Anderson/Caleb build that had a good run in SCG tounrys a few months back. I think trying to go BG for decay or some other SB tech is a losing proposition. Unless you completely change the gamplan of the deck (such as Vengivine build) you really aren't doing much for your EV (Terminus still a card) and your sacrificing the speed and consistency that GW has IMO. A few Elves players still creep into the top 16 even with all these miracle decks floating around. The most recent top 16 at Providence ran 3 Vengevines in the SB and 2 Living Wish MB. Perhaps a transformative SB into the Vengivine package is an option as well (depending on your meta).
As for Craterhoof at least in the GW version he usually is just a win-more. I've tested it and when hes castable I have another avenue to win anyways, I mean when this deck has 9 mana available for a GSZ its gg anyways. That said he's not bad and I'd certainly run him over Ezuri.
I'm still a fan of the GW version mainly because our meta is basicly combo.
There are a pretty big amount of Miracles, but I feel Pithing Needle turn 1 and a well planned Armaggedon should get you there.
edit: I am considering maindecking Qasali Pridemage though, instead of Viridian Shaman. It stops Counterbalance, Energy Field and Omniscience. Also thinking of going to 2 Cavern of Souls instead of 1
I have a question about the various win conditions for Elves!
With Birchlores Rangers, one should already have access to all 5 colors post-combo, so any wincon becomes possible even without splashing in the manabase.
I've seen as win conditions (that I can remember, there's probably more):
Grape Shot/Brainfreeze/Tendrils of Agony
Ezuri
Mirror Entity
Banefire/Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Emrakul [this is what I use]
Akroma's Memorial
Craterhoof Behemoth [debating this too]
Why would you choose one over another? Obv haste granting permanents can be removed before combat, so triggers are preferred. Some wincons can be easily countered (not Emmy or the storm spells), but I suppose if you had a counterspell, you aren't going to go off in the first place.
I ask because It seems unnecessary to have more than 1 slot devoted to a wincon, since if you've gone off, you get to draw your whole deck. (GSZ with 0 cards in library is tech) Ideally, you'd want something that wins 100% of the time, while also being playable if you happen to just draw it. I know what I think works best, what do you guys think?
You forgot Mortarpod, which allows you to go infinite with Mirror Entity and kill same turn without needing creatures able to attack. This is mainly why I prefer Mirror Entity, but its also just an awesome topdeck at any moment in the game.Originally Posted by ThePrevailer
Generally speaking, Mirror Entity and Ezuri are the best. They are still very strong cards even when you're not comboing off, whereas the other cards are just a mulligan. I haven't tested Craterhoof yet, so I won't write him off. He's actually castable without comboing too.
- Birchlore Rangers isn't a great color filter. Elf-Storm is a unanimously bad deck. It requires virtually nothing going wrong in your combo (which is 100% possible) and finding all the right shit. You can't just tutor it and win.
- Ezuri feels strictly worse than Craterhoof Behemoth; he requires either a decent amount of mana and a lot of elves, or a ton of mana and a few elves.
- Mirror entity isn't bad. It feels cutesy and in order to go infinite requires quite a few things to land into place.
- Banefire / Maga whatever -- No. These cards are totally useless in your hand and are hard to cast without a birchlore ranger.
- Emrakul -- A lot of people do this, this is a no-no. There's no reason to run this card with the printing of Behemoth. What purpose is there when he can't be tutored and Craterhoof Behemoth: costs less, is tutorable, and applies a buff to all your creatures, so even if they DO kill him it doesn't matter. They need to have instant speed board wipe or they lose.
- Akroma's Memorial - Not tutorable, not guaranteed.
- Craterhoof Behemoth -- Every should just play this card somewhere. Every other win condition is crap compared to this card. It's tutorable, it's of a reasonable casting cost, it wins the game on the spot every time (seriously, I've never dropped it and not swung for at least 160% of their life), even if it dies you still win, it has haste to swing with your dudes, it's just insane.
Ezuri, for a similar effect, requires 4-5 more mana. Ezuri is castable early, but if you cast him early it's very likely they're going to just kill him. He's probably really sick against RUG--maybe I'll board him for that matchup, but against white deck's he's useless compared to Behemoth. My combo is about a turn slower on average than the hardcore elf combo lists (the inclusion of Cabal Therapy and fewer tutors for the added consistency), but even then my turn 3 combos (with or without glimpse) swing for lethal with Behemoth. It's easily hard castable with a mana lord out or a cradle, it's just insane.
I'd also like to speak to the idea that when comboing off you'll draw your entire deck. This is only true in very rare circumstances. The Elf Combo is actually entirely prone to fail occasionally. If you don't find Nettle Sentinels, for instance, or hit a land one too many times, you actually just run out of mana and dudes to play. Without Nettle Sentinels your combo suffers immensely--any non 1 mana elf hurts your next round of tapping by a lot, any land you hit instead of a creature can set you back and force you to burn measures that you wanted to hold out longer on (symbiotes / tutoring). I mean yeah there comes a point once the engine really starts rolling and you're gaining mana with three nettles down you can probably draw your entire deck, but these is immensely over-kill and a time-sink, which many elf decks fall prey to.
You don't have to beat your opponent by a lot, you just need to beat them. If you're combo'd sufficiently to kill them, stop and just kill them. If they're a deck with answers--sure, sculpt a perfect "just in case" hand and win the next turn but there's no need to go crazy with it. For one, killing them quickly saves time (Emrakul decks with no Fierce Empath tutor for instance, can often take forever to find him) on the round and relieves some stress from you. Playing elves and keeping track of everything is stressful and time consuming, faster kill cons reduce both stress and time.
I disagree about behemoth. He can be countered and he has protection from nothing. The important thing is the countered portion. This is a big disadvantage when compared to emrakul. And honestly, if you can generate 8 mana, GSZ for Regal Force is going to win you the game anyway, you might as well make sure that when you combo you WILL win that turn, since the difference in ability to cast Emrakul and behemoth is negligible once you factor in GSZ for Regal Force.
Edit: That being said, Ezuri and Mirror Entity are still better than both...
It's unlikely that by the time you can generate that mana that they still have a counter-spell. The protection from nothing is pointless since it matters far more that he buffs the rest of the elves and that circumstance only occurs trying to hardcast him with no combo preceding him. They would counter regal force as well leaving you in the same position, so it's functionally identical, except regal force might not win you the game and behemoth will every single time.
Craterhoof behemoth is poopstains. It takes a million mana to cast, and is a mulligan when you cant go off with it. If you green sun for it, then just get a regal force instead and you win anyways.
The reason Mirror Entity is the best win condition is because when you draw it you can cast it, and if they dont deal with it the next turn, they just die. There is a reason I play two of them. You only need one to win the game the turn you combo off. The second one is purely for value. He's just an awesome draw.
Regal force is pointless to run in the face of Craterhoof Behemoth. You only ever need to cast Regal Force when you're behind and unless you can produce further mana after casting Regal Force (which isn't always possible, you don't need Regal Force when your combo is doing fine).
If you can produce 9 mana (sorry, read: Million mana) then you just win on turn 3. Even under less ideal condition. If you have an untapper and a mana lord out, they're dead on turn 3. If you're generating mana in the glimpse combo, separate your creatures without summoning sickness, generate 9 mana, then kill them. You don't even need to go that long, 2-3 creatures who can swing and 5-9 creatures total in play, and you win. I'm also running 2 living wish to get him from the sideboard if the situation calls for it.
I've completely dropped Regal Force from my list, because if I can search for Regal Force and draw cards, I could just search for Behemoth and kill them.
Eeeeehhhh. I dunno about ^that^. I don't even know about like the last page and a half of this thread. As soon as Chris Anderson, THE PATRON SAINT OF ELVES, stopped playing Elves, I went and picked up a different deck too. I love Elves. I even have the damn deck foiled out. I'm invested in that shiz. But right now the meta isn't kind. So I'm playing something else until things change. No shame in that. But you guys keep chugging along with Behemoths and Whatever. I'll be convinced when I see some Top 8s.
This is an incredibly unproductive post that does nothing to further the discussion of Elves. It'd be excellent if we could prevent further posts like this that unfortunately require posts like mine to fill up space in an otherwise healthy discussion.
If you wanted to ask the question "Is the metagame unhealthy for elves right now?" then there's a discussion in that, and I need to wake up in 4 hours so I can't really get into it right now, but in short I would probably say that it's ok. Terminus and Sneak and Tell are pretty scary, but overall I think we're ok. I also believe Black/green versions to hold a higher power than other versions specifically for that reason--Cabal Therapy with aptly named targets can wipe out any relevant card in the opponent's hand to stop us from killing them. If you can protect a glimpse with a therapy, you'll probably win the game.
OKAY here's the scoop.
you CAN NOT EVER EVER EVER EVER beat miracles.
that's fine if people aren't playing the deck for the most part, which was the situation about 6 months ago.
Unfortunately, miracles is one of the three most played decks in the format. As much as I love this deck, I can't rationalize playing a deck that can't beat a deck that i should expect to face roughly twice an scg open MINIMUM.
Cut your llanowar elves for wild growths, your symbiotes for seal of removals, and your glimpses for argothian enchantresses.
UG combo enchantress plays out very similarly to combo elves. If you love playing elves, you will love this deck too.
UG enchantress beats the SHIT outta miracles
UG enchantress beats the SHIT outta stoneblade
you have reasonable blue deck matchups other than those with the exception of UR delver.
your creature deck matchups are pretty good other than death and taxes.
combo is meh, but thats always the case with slow combo.
Hopefully abrupt decay will bully miracles into a tier two deck over the next few months, but in the meantime, take my advise and start upheavaling people.
And for the love of god dont cut regal force.
@Kich. Posted at the same time as Chranderson.
Ha. Unproductive. Okay. I actually was furthering the discussion. Just not in the direction you would have liked.
Stoneblade decks are starting to play Supreme Verdict. BUG decks, with Pernicious Deed and Damnation, are rising up again. Goblins, with tutorable maindeck Sharpshooters, are becoming more and more popular as a foil to Miracle Control. And, of course, Miracle Control is everywhere and we all know how terrible that matchup is. I dunno what your meta is like, but where I play, Elves is a terrible, terrible choice right now.
Cabal Therapy is a fine card. But I don't think it's good enough to save us from all that collateral damage. Brainstorm is a thing. As are topdecks. And saccing one of your dudes to get a flashback, because of an initial whiff or to hit another card, is not always the best thing to do. You know as well as I do that Elves needs every last dude it has to get the combo rolling. Sometimes missing just one creature in the first few turns can screw you over. And what happens if you Therapy, see nothing, start to combo and get stopped by SDTop activation into Terminus?
If you are really afraid of the hate then play Gaddock Teeg. At least he stops topdecks and is somewhat preventative, whereas Therapy requires the hate to be in their hand that very moment for you to rip it out. Sure, Teeg has his own weaknesses, but he requires your opponent to have the spot removal. Where Therapy requires you to make the correct call, have enough shit to go off after maybe saccing a dude, and also requires your opponent to have the hate in hand at that very second, or to not have a Brainstorm.
When Elves was having the most success, nobody was posting in here. And now that the meta is like poison for us, suddenly everybody wants to talk about it. I guess it wasn't really prudent for me to come and rain on everybody's parade so I'll stop poopooing your Behemoth talk after this post. But if you want to be *truly productive*, you might want to hop onto a different deck for a little while.
*cough* Vengevine *cough*
For the record, I do agree with Chris on Regal Force. Don't cut that guy. Ever.
Gdamn this thread went to shit.
Time to start running Living Wish. No one plays Spell Snare anymore. It helps us to find Gaddock Teeg vs Miracles (eh...) but mostly it helps us find Cradle/win-con. In general being more versatile than strictly a combo piece or an accelerator alone.
Black splash gives us Buried Alive for Vengevine (heyy look how Terminus makes 2nd/3rd copies live again!). Intuition too.
EDIT: Some more thoughts, because it didn't feel like I made enough content.
Combo Elves lives and dies by its combo-ish nature. If you can't combo out, then your aggro plan better be solid enough to make it worthwhile to even pick up the deck. Against Miracles, both sides suck hard. With that consideration, it's better to run Emrakul for the combo plan (and the occasional backup - make 15 mana hardcast w/o combing off). Nevermind that Terminus wrecks the combo. Vengevine backup plan at least puts enough pressure immediately to make it worth the investment. It gets worse against Stoneforge versions, but that's the price we pay for playing a deck with 30 1/1s. Krosan Grip is at an all time high value for the deck, and I wouldn't play it without at least 3 copies n the sideboard.
Last edited by Koby; 10-19-2012 at 03:32 PM.
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Got 24th place at the Jupiter lands event with my dark elves list. The only decks I didn't neat had god hands against me or were just unbeatable. Lost to mud, bant, and turbo eldrazi. Back to back mud godhands locked me out, glacial chasm, and force + meddling mage + jitte + ethersworn =/
Hi there!
Care to post your list? Also, having a bit of an issue with SB'ing. Who's the first to come out? Visionary?
Hey! My list is posted on the page before this I believe, the main was the same, the sideboard was different a little bit..
Sideboarding for me is usually kind of arbitrary? I just thin numbers here and there. Against controlley decks, however, I opt to drop the combo for a much more grindy "blow up all your shit and play elves and beat you down" sort of thing. I only actually did this once and it worked out freakishly good, my opponent was deeply confused and had no idea this was coming, it ended up completely rocking him out of the game. This has inspired me to just build a legit old-style Rock deck but, I'm not sure yet. Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse are pretty good.. My rounds went to three games each time except for one (That MUD player legit had -god- hands: game 1: sol land > monolith > monolith > dynamo > Revoker on your deathrite shaman. I therapy and flashback to strip his hand, he rips karn off the top and exiles me land//game 2: turn one tomb > revoker on heritage, turn two tomb revoker on symbiote, turn 3: land into golem. I was actually one mana away from GSZ'ing for craterhoof and killing him right there, but the lodestone pushed me out of it, I died to an enormous board of robot dudes), so that's 20 rounds of magic and I only ever had a glimpse in my hand once. It was stunning. I drew more cards off just bouncing and replaying visionaries.
So I would never drop visionaries. They're huge, the interaction between them and symbiote is an interaction not to be fucked with. Sometimes you just need to draw 3 cards a turn to get there, and this lets you do it for mana pumping plus untapping stuff.
The lowest I ever swung tonight with a Craterhoof was 17, one point over lethal. I never played a single Glimpse of Nature (I literally never even attempted to cast it, the only time I saw one out of 7 rounds was against Turbo Eldrazi who had two (2) chalices on one...).
I had a bye, I beat BUG Control, BUG Control, and Manaless Dredge. BUG Control I fought through: 2x Golgari Charm, Pernicious Deed, Engineered Explosives, Jitte, and a whole lot of spot removal. The transformational sideboard was huge here. Turns out control decks have a hard time dealing with Garruk Relentless.
The deck felt good, I would have won more had I found glimpse fucking...ever...which makes me feel confident in the list. To put it bluntly, if I can go 4-3 with strictly the aggro plan and not even see glimpses, I can probably top 8 that same event.
Deathrite Shaman is backbreakingly good, maindeck Scavenging Ooze was so relevant it's stupid (a LOT of games were won off the back of a mana lord and this guy being like a 12/12..), Abrupt Decay is a badass sideboard card, Choke didn't perform, Craterhoof Behemoth is still obviously the best win condition (in 4 separate games I just ended up having enough mana to hardcast and kill them. At one point I was able to living wish for cradle to GSZ for him and blow them out. He's amazing.), the big contention here though, was Cabal Therapy. This card varied from useful to useless hard. It felt too swingy. It either wrecked them or I stared at it in my hand like "Be a creature.." I'm contemplating just moving it to the board and including more necessary dudes, like Artifact hate (which I was lacking) and maybe something else.. like.. Ulvenwald Tracker or something.
Took my Elves to a 48 man tournement on Sunday but went 3-3. Untill now my weakest performance with the deck, although I am still positive about it.
Round1: Worst match-up a.k.a UW Miracles.
Not much to be said. I play very safe keeping about 2-4 power on the table at most times and get him down to 5 game 1, and down to 6 game 2.
After siding in 8 cards, I believe Chris A. in saying Miracles being almost unwinnable. Your opponent would have to be really, really bad.
Round2: UR Delver with maindeck Volcanic Fallout.
So, I had never seen this before but as I announce it in the deckname you can imagine why I was facing a quick 0-2.
Round3: Merfolk.
Game 1 gets stolen by Mirror Entity and Cavern of Souls. Islandwalking Elves are cool.
Game 2 I loose to screw and just a good clock combined with dazes I am forced to run in else I die to beats.
Game 3 He goes turn 1 Pithing Needle on Mirror Entity, and FoW's my Green Sun's Zenith and turn after that my hardcast Regal Force leaving him cardless. When I topdeck my Umezawa's Jitte I go to town.
Round 4: Merfolk
Game 1 I combo off pretty late, after a wirewood boardstall.
Game 2 an uncounterable Mirror Entity turns my men into 5/5's. That was that.
Round 5 BUG Tempo
Game1 my opponent starts off with Creeping Tarpit. I immediately put him on some BUG list or lands, both not my favourite of match-ups.
His turn2 hymn gets two key pieces out of my hand, and because I don't see any threats of his other then Goyf, I play around Deeds. This was my mistake as he wasn't a control deck, just a tempo deck not showing much tempo. Eventually his removal and Tarpit get there while I fail to assemble an infinite combo.
Game2 come in the Deeds and his ridiculously lucky hymns knock the right cards iut of my hand, again :-)
Round6: Goblins
game 1 combo out turn 3, game 2 also :-)
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