[Primer] Elves!

[Tangente]

I agree too. Cards get banned when they broke entire format and not because they are strong in one specific deck. New legendary rule results into the Elves deck becomes a little bit faster and resilient and a little bit more expensive :) Now I just can't see any other deck that would abuse a power of Cradle.

[Fatal]

Maverick ? :]

[Lans89]

A lot of Maverick players don't even want to play 1 Cradle, so nothing changes (only vs Elves, but previously it wasn't bad to kill a cradle with your own!)

[Julian23]

Guys, these are not the droids you're looking for.

[SpencerS]

Moving along.

My former roommate and SCG top8'er, Ben (RUG DELVER) and I have been discussing matchup %'s lately. In the previous Chris Anderson Mirror entity version, Elves would tend to dominate RUG even post board. Now however with our beloved DRS and snapland base we are more reliant on our spells and lands. I have seen this match plummet after more RUG players start playing more chain lightning main and up to 3 rough/tumble in the board. We tend to win the grinder matches thanks to visionary, but post board they get to bring in a fair amount of hate in submerge and sweepers.

Typically assuming we win game one, what is you sideboard strategy for RUG Delver?

-Side in your hand attack?

-Side in just ooze and/or abrupt decay?

-Side in No/Pro plan?

Each of these has its merits, I will be testing them out to try and improve the post board game plan against RUG. would like some discussion on this then perhaps we can move to deathblade strategy etc?

[chinEsE girl]

Here's the list that I played this weekend for the NELC at Jupiter Games. There was only 59 players this month, so a nice easy 6 rounds of swiss, but I got paired down in the 5th round so I still had to go 5-0-1 to get in the top 8.

4 Nettle Sentinal
4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Llanowar Elves
1 Birchlore Rangers
4 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Viridian Shaman

4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Natural Order
2 Crop Rotation

9 Green fetches
2 Bayou
1 Savannah
2 Gaea's Cradle
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Forest

SB

4 Cabal Therepy
1 Ruric Thar
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Natural Order
1 Progenitus

My thoughts on the list, and the deck in general:

-The deck is absurd. Like really absurd. You get to have a fast kill condition that puts your opponent to zero pretty quickly if they don't disrupt you enough, and against the decks with a ton of disruption visionary + symbiote will take over any long game.

-That just leaves faster combo decks as the one problem. The one deck I lost to on the day was OmniTell, which is one of those faster combo decks. It just sucks that its more resilient to our disruption than other combo decks than say storm. Honestly if Show and Tell ever gets banned I think Elves would become the best deck in the format by a good sized margin.

-I think that the rotation package for the board has to go. It was cute at first, and actually good when sneak and show was popular, but right now it's not very good. There needs to be more cards to fight against things like OmniShow. I am definitely going to be making room for several thorn of amythest for the next event I play in. Plus I'll be playing 4 cradle when the new legendary rule changes, so rotation won't really be necessary anymore.

-Ruric Thar should have been in the main. If that had been the case, my turn 2 natural order against OmniShow in the top 8 would have won me the game on the spot. Instead, I had to get regal force and whiffed on the cards that I drew. The shaman was for the people I thought would play the UB tezzeret deck, but no one at the event was playing it. There were maybe 3 decks in the room with chalice vs the 8 or 9 players with fast combo. Bottom line I'm keeping Ruric in the main unless the shaman needs to come back in.

-I think my sideboard could use some more work, but I'm not sure exactly what direction I'm going to go with it. I'm at least cutting lands for thorns and then putting Ruric main and shaman side. After that I'm not really sure what I'll be doing with the list next.

[chinEsE girl]

Moving along.

My former roommate and SCG top8'er, Ben (RUG DELVER) and I have been discussing matchup %'s lately. In the previous Chris Anderson Mirror entity version, Elves would tend to dominate RUG even post board. Now however with our beloved DRS and snapland base we are more reliant on our spells and lands. I have seen this match plummet after more RUG players start playing more chain lightning main and up to 3 rough/tumble in the board. We tend to win the grinder matches thanks to visionary, but post board they get to bring in a fair amount of hate in submerge and sweepers.

Typically assuming we win game one, what is you sideboard strategy for RUG Delver?

-Side in your hand attack?

-Side in just ooze and/or abrupt decay?

-Side in No/Pro plan?

Each of these has its merits, I will be testing them out to try and improve the post board game plan against RUG. would like some discussion on this then perhaps we can move to deathblade strategy etc?

I'm personally a fan of ooze and/or decay. The games you lose are never to goyf or mongoose, it's always to delver of secrets. The other creatures get blanked very easily and give you a lot of time to set up the win. Delver on the other hand keeps the pressure on you and makes you have to go off to early and then often fizzle. If you have decay for delver their pressure pretty much vanishes. I'm not sure what the best answer to rough is, but there has to be something. If we can figure that out the matchup should become a whole lot easier post board.

[Alexeezay]

Same taste as chinese girl here, boarding in Decays & Ooze. I also board in the Progenitus for a Behemoth (running 2 atm) because they can't beat it.

[MD.Ghost]

Typically assuming we win game one, what is you sideboard strategy for RUG Delver?
-Side in your hand attack?
-Side in just ooze and/or abrupt decay?
-Side in No/Pro plan?

Each of these has its merits, I will be testing them out to try and improve the post board game plan against RUG. would like some discussion on this then perhaps we can move to deathblade strategy etc?

I play 1 Scavenging Ooze Main (because you often need it, if your opponent plays enough disruption game 1), my current Sideboard contains 1 Thrun, the Last Troll (+1 Jitte, instead the more common 4th NO+Progenitus). Thrun is good enough against Tempo, contains the ground, attack for more than Delver/Nimble, works with your untap Creatures and you don´t need any Setup (Natural Order) and also don´t have to worry about any Counter or Submerges, Roughs etc. If you include Ruric, you can try to fight Delvers too.

With Ooze (and Ruric Main)

I typically board:

+1 Bojuka Bog
+1 Thrun
+2 Abrupt Decay
+1 Jitte (if i play it over Mortarpod)

works good so far.

-Ruric Thar should have been in the main. If that had been the case, my turn 2 natural order against OmniShow in the top 8 would have won me the game on the spot. Instead, I had to get regal force and whiffed on the cards that I drew. The shaman was for the people I thought would play the UB tezzeret deck, but no one at the event was playing it. There were maybe 3 decks in the room with chalice vs the 8 or 9 players with fast combo. Bottom line I'm keeping Ruric in the main unless the shaman needs to come back in.

As i said before.

Last Week during a small local tournament, me and another Elves Player also tried the Mainboard Ruric Thar, the Unbowed (instead of Regal Force) and beat various common Decks like Tempo and Storm. So we obviously had to play the Mirrormatch, after the dust settled, we got the first and second place. Ruric works great so far and nobody expected the raging Oger.

[feline]

Dang, top 8'ing SCG Seattle, an awesome new primer, Danyul you're tearing it up around here! Nicely done.

[unemployer]

How are your matches lately? Anyway, I removed the Regal Force in my MD and placed a 2nd Hoof and so far, it surprised a lot of players. I don't usually play a second Hoof but I never play the Regal either. But if you ask me, having a 2nd Hoof for me is way better than a Regal Force. I had 3 games where I had the hoof and Nat.O in my hand and couldn't cast it because I can only generate 5 at that moment. It took me 3-5 turns before I had to cast it and had a lot shenanigans

[catmint]

I certainly agree that a primer should be "open" and not stick to player specific choices. However the reason for a new primer is to get a good picture of the current best/most popular option. The option which has been "established as optimal" and there is no space for emrakul or living wish.

The points you brought up could be mentioned in a "historic review" or "past variations which might come back or might be good depending on meta/playstyle". If so then mirror entity should also be mentioned. :)

[danyul]

Thanks for all the praise, and let's call it constructive criticism, about the primer. I have been busy with IRL stuff (transitioning from one job to another, trying to be a real person, blah blah) so I haven't had many chances to really dig in and make edits, address concerns, or make all you weirdos happy, but it's on my to-do list. Trust, my bruddah.

To any haters sippin' on that haterade, go look at other primers. I would argue that this one is a *marked* improvement over the previous one and that, in general, it is on the high end of primers you will see on this site. That said, it could use some work. All of them could. I put maybe 10 real hours into it, if you don't count all the time I spent just staring at it, hating my life. But these random kids making accounts just to pee in my coffee need to slow their roll, brah. If you want to make a primer and include *every* subpar card choice that this archetype has ever seen, then sure, be my guest. But know that people will call you a stinky weirdo for playing those cards.

I will say right now that I don't see the merit of discussing Intruder Alarm in a serious primer. I wrote a primer for the Gbw iteration of the deck. I appreciate your extremely high standards in casually-written Magical card game strategy guides, but I am not at all interested in writing a primer about Elves as a creature-type, and all the various iterations of decks that may incidentally include cards with the creature type - Elf. You may want to hit up Craigslist if you need a pro-bono writer for your Legolas fanfic.

As far as playstyle choices, I just wrote how I play the deck. I tend to do fairly well with it and people had been asking for a primer so, BLADAOW, primer. I agree that I could buff up probably every section of this primer, and it is on my ever-expanding to-do list, but calm down guys. The world isn't ending tomorrow. We have plenty of time to get things done.

Also, can we stop talking about the primer and start talking about the deck? I tried MD Ruric Thar. I hated it. I think I'll toss it in the SB because it may still have merit there. I'm also testing 2x Reverent Silence to address the UW Miracles/Helm Combo matchup. We'll see how it goes.

[Koby]

Also, can we stop talking about the primer and start talking about the deck? I tried MD Ruric Thar. I hated it. I think I'll toss it in the SB because it may still have merit there. I'm also testing 2x Reverent Silence to address the UW Miracles/Helm Combo matchup. We'll see how it goes.

Daniel, I'm confused. Why play Reverent Silence when it only answers one matchup, when Abrupt Decay exists and has absolutely no chance of being countered? The RIP is going to be a hinderance to DRS regardless, so it stands to reason that removing it with Abrupt Decay not only breaks up the Helm combo, but also re-enables DRS. Now Counterbalance is still a concern, so going to more Abrupt Decay makes sense if this deck is prevalent in your metagame. Alternatively, GSZ is the best course of action against such a deck.

I've come around to the idea of Natural Order in the deck; but I'm only going to play two copies. The sideboard will still be boarding into combo-hate so there's no sense to add further copies of NO when the deck is already so greatly favored against fair decks.

[danyul]

Those 2 Reverent Silence are accompanying 3 Abrupt Decay. I have been seeing a lot of Humility and Moat lately, which Decay cannot touch. Also, let's just say I'm a bit of a dreamer. They can randomly hit Dream Halls, Sneak Attack, and Omniscience sometimes. But by the time those land, we might already be dead.

The card might be a terrible idea. But I cut the MD Crop Rotations and SB Karakas/Bojuka Bog and wanted to test some flex slots. I expect we will see a lot more of that OmniShow deck and I couldn't think of another card to help that matchup and Miracles at the same time. I guess Krosan Grip is still a card but having to have the 3 mana up all the time is a pain. I appreciate your hesitation IRT my card choices here. Sometimes I get a little wishy washy.

[Absolutflipz]

I'm currently trying out a few Wirewood Hivemasters in the sideboard to bring in against the fair matchups, as I think he better replaces something like Sylvan Library. I also play with 2x Beck//Call which he is obviously absurd with.

In the games I've cast him, he's performed very well and provides an immediate threat and army with only a few cards invested.

I think he also begs the question of being tried out in a deck with Mirror Entity.

I definitely believe he deserves consideration somewhere given how well he performs in the fair/grindy matchups.

[Julian23]

Ive gone from MD Ruric Thar to no Ruric Thar at all. In the end, I think I still want it in the sideboard since turn2 NO for Ruric Thar is often a better play than Gaddock Teeg against Storm combo, considering the greatly increased clock and their inability to play anymore cantrips. I'll still keep Teeg around to have even more outs to combo like GSZing into it.

[Dice_Box]

You may want to hit up Craigslist if you need a pro-bono writer for your Legolas fanfic.

Sig'd.

Also when I played again on tuesday I learnt something. I am not anywhere near as good with this deck as I am the goblins. I consistently find myself thinking in a "Beatdown" mindset. In short I am now at the point where I want to start either playing more than once a week to get the hang of it, or change some of the deck to meet my half combo half agro play style. My question to everyone, what did you play before this and how long did it take for you to change your viewpoint when playing? For me it has been 11 years with red agro decks. Switching to combo, while rewarding, is challenging.

Also if you managed to change how you think, what did it take? How did you do it?

[Koby]

Elves has two modes:

Mode 1: Draw a bunch of cards and combo thru with Glimpse of Nature.

Mode 2: Turn sideways and activate it's Power & Toughness settings in an all out brawl.

Mode 1 is always the preferred method. Mode 2 is backup. Drawing cards is almost always the correct plan (including the Wirewood/Visionary tricks)

[igri_is_a_bk]

Those 2 Reverent Silence are accompanying 3 Abrupt Decay. I have been seeing a lot of Humility and Moat lately, which Decay cannot touch.

My favorite way to beat Humility is with Jitte. I haven't had any in my sb for a while, but I used to play two, and they were obviously very back-breaking in those situations. But yeah, it's not helpful against Moat. Sometimes I wish we had Jitte again so we could go into beat down mode without overextending as much as we have to. Even getting out the minimum amount of pressure with this deck is usually ~3 creatures since so many only get in for one.

Anyways, for those two cards, good ol' K-Grip may be your best bet.