[Primer] Elves!

[danyul]

@Goblins

I board in all copies of Decay and sometimes the 4th Natural Order. I hold Decay for the Goblin Sharpshooter and pray that they aren't smart enough to hold the Sharpshooter in hand until it can be hasty via Warchief. Otherwise I feel that the matchup is very much in our favor. As long as you don't let them get Sharpshooter active, you can typically assemble a lethal Hoof before they can overwhelm you. Also, be careful about the very first turn. If they lead with Lackey, things can be tricky. I will be more than happy to trade my 1 drop for their Lackey, or I'll just LUL as I drop a Nettle Sentinel/DRS and make them cry.

Lackey and Sharpshooter. That's all you need to be paranoid about.

@Painter

I tested this matchup a little bit after its recent strong finishes. Only for like an hour or something. But I found that I need to dodge the early Blood Moon and the naturally drawn Painter+Stone combo. If they don't have those godhands, then they take a bit too much time to assemble their combo and our fundamental turn happens a turn before theirs. I also have 1 maindeck Viridian Shaman which was useful in slowing them down. You do autolose to a turn 1 Blood Moon though.

@Fetchlands

I run 8 but am looking to go up to 9, if not 10. The biggest issue here is that I'm a spoiled brat and play fully foiled and finding two more foil fetches is a pain in my ass. But I fully understand the grok the merits of playing 8+ fetches. Also, going past 8 fetches for me would involve cutting my 2nd basic Forest or my Savannah or the 2nd Dryad Arbor. None of those seem like exciting cuts at the moment so I'm a bit indecisive right now on where I want to go IRT to the 9th fetch. Also, there have been *plenty* of times when I play a DRS and just have to pray that my opponent has a couple fetches for me to eat. That never feels good.

@Birchlore+Reid Duke, The Guardian of Gaea

I tested 3 of these in my last big tourney (100 players). They were nice to have and definitely allowed me to do some stupid stuff earlier than I normally could. But I never actually felt they helped me win a game I wouldn't otherwise have already been able to win. What I mean by that it is they felt very Win-More. After Reid's finish I've been back to testing 2 Llanowar, 1 Birchlore. I really forgot how much I missed going Forest, Llanowar, go. I think I like it more than leading with Deathrite. The stability of always having a Turn 1 Manadork is just a timeless piece of tech.

Reid's deck was built to be more resilient than explosive. You can tell by the Llanowar count, the high land count, and the no-nonsense list full of 4-ofs. For the larger SCG meta, I think this is the correct way to build the deck. I think the deck designer, Mister Cuneo, wanted to be able to keep every opening 7 he could possibly draw. So he geared the deck to be as reliable as possible.

Also, upping the Llanowar count allows you to more easily recover from board wipes and win through grindy attrition matches. The difference is rather subtle, but in the matches where it counts, it really counts.

@ the SCG match right now

The player is clearly on a budget list. 2 Cradles. No arbor. No Crop Rotations to make up for the other Cradles missing. Fauna Shaman. Emrakul. I think he just borrowed the deck the day of the event. Or he just started playing the deck fairly recently. Or he is just a kitchen table dude. And all of those are okay. I still hope he X-0s the event with a suboptimal build and questionable plays. LOL. That would fill my heart with joy.

[Einherjer]

...and he still won...

[trevaftw]

@danyul

wrt Goblins - Don't forget Pyrokinesis. That can be devastating.

[Julian23]

The Goblin players in my meta started running Warren Weirdings and Pyrewild Shaman (go ahead, look it up!) to let their Turn1 Lackey connect through or at least kill a 1st turn DRS or Sentinel. I loled.

[danyul]

Right. I forgot to mention Pyrokinesis. I just play right through it. You can't really play around it so I just start going. Against Goblins you don't have the luxury of waiting around. They will outdraw you if you let them. The one thing I can say is to play out your elves as if your opponent has shown you a Lightning Bolt and always has a Mountain up. Play your Heritage Druids as late as possible. That way they need to shoot an inconsequential elf to keep you off 3, or they need to let it resolve and give you access to its mana before they get priority to shoot it. Stuff like that. Or play Visionary out before Wirewood, or the other way around, so they are forced to zap the one you care least about before the other resolves and gives you access to value via Visionary bounce. Stuff like that. Small stuff.

[Dice_Box]

What round was the Elf player in? Makes life easy once I am home to know? Thanks.

Sent from my mobile, forgive spelling and grammatical errors.

Edit.
The thing about Pryo, it's kind of like grave hate. You either mull for it hard in your opener, or you just pray to draw it. That's why I like to keep as many cards in my hand as I can and go off at once. Because if they did not start with a god hand or mull hard, they are unlikely to wipe your board but you still have options. If they do have it they have to keep something in their hand to use it with and you offer few choice targets. But as you set up they have to slow you down some how so the card will end up used.

[danyul]

Round 4. The first round of Legacy coverage for the day.

[Einherjer]

Second round, actually. We've had Merfolk vs Grixis in R3.

Greetings

[Dice_Box]

K thanks.

Sent from my mobile, forgive spelling and grammatical errors.

[danyul]

Ooh. My bad. LOL I woke up just as the Round 4 coverage began so I'm a bit loopy this morning.

[trevaftw]

another elves feature match! and, lo and behold, versus goblins.

round 5, legacy open, 2013, atlanta

[danyul]

This guy has a proper build too. I think he's on Reid's list. The guy had a grip full of lands and gets overrun by red dudes. :(

[Dice_Box]

What colour is the Goblin build?

Sent from my mobile, forgive spelling and grammatical errors.

[danyul]

Looks monored.

The misplay daggers from that last missed bounce may haunt this guy if he doesn't win.

[yuMi-]

Another bad elves player.

Jeff King and Joel Wright

[danyul]

Another bad elves player.

Jeff King and Joel Wright

LOL what is with this public shaming shit? No need to write their names down like you are going to exile them from the Elven Alliance. The deck is fairly complex and the guy may be nervous from being on camera. And everybody makes mistakes. This game is hard. It's easy to be a bully when you aren't the one playing. He made a misplay in that one moment. I'm sure he will watch the coverage later and never make that mistake again.

[Lord_of_Rivendell]

LOL what is with this public shaming shit? No need to write their names down like you are going to exile them from the Elven Alliance. The deck is fairly complex and the guy may be nervous from being on camera. And everybody makes mistakes. This game is hard. It's easy to be a bully when you aren't the one playing. He made a misplay in that one moment. I'm sure he will watch the coverage later and never make that mistake again.

An excellent point. We're all learning . . . some of us--read as especially me--have a lot more learning to do than others. I am always glad to see people piloting versions of our deck. When they play well, I learn. When they play poorly, I learn. Of course, when they play better, they usually play longer, which means I learn more.

I'd love to see a post here that includes links to recorded games of people piloting the deck. I know that there are some links throughout the pages, but ti would be nice to have a section in the OP, perhaps, that includes links (and perhaps the minutes where the elves mage is playing.)

Edit: Here, for example, is one link (forgive me if this has already been posted elsewhere, as I know chrandersen posts here): http://www.twitch.tv/chris_vanmeter/b/459597137
Edit2: The link is dead. Apparently they took what was quite a nice twitch video down.

[Dice_Box]

Elves are on, they do not have "Repeat" on the screen so it seems to be live. King is playing.

Elves lost.

[LeoCop 90]

Jeff King ( the guy with the budget list i suppose) is 6-0 playing against shardless bug, near to 6-1 anyway. how is possible that people obtain such results with bad lists and playskills ?

[Dice_Box]

Jeff King ( the guy with the budget list i suppose) is 6-0 playing against shardless bug, near to 6-1 anyway. how is possible that people obtain such results with bad lists and playskills ?

Luck and redundancy in the deck? How many other combo decks have so many options of play to them?