[Primer] Elves!

[PendelSteven]

Creatures
...
1 Priest of Titania
1 Viridian Shaman
...

This is my current list. My issue seems to be that I can always produce 6-7 mana but don’t have a bomb I can hardcast or green sun for. Regal force is ok but if they're just going to verdict anyway seems kind of weak. Any thoughts

-1 Priest of Titania
+1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader

Incidently Ezuri is great vs Supreme Verdict with mana open, which will be helpful untill TNN is banned.

[PendelSteven]

seems like esper stoneblade should be on that list.

last night's scg open finals was an example of one such slaughter.. (altho I think elves sideboarded wrong, aren't you supposed to bring in cabal therapy or thoughtseize vs esper??)

thoughts?

Cuneo would've most probably sideboarded like this:
+3 Thoughtseize
+1 Pithing Needle
+1 Abrupt Decay
-1 2nd Craterhoof
-1 Natural Order
-1 Heritage Druid
-1 Quirion Ranger
-1 Nettle Sentinel

[Havoc]

-1 Priest of Titania
+1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader

Incidently Ezuri is great vs Supreme Verdict with mana open, which will be helpful untill TNN is banned.

dont know if TNN will get banned but i see why having him can help in matches where im just trying to get damage thru

[PendelSteven]

Yeah, since last night I wanted to post an overview of what can help vs the splash damage that other decks pack to combat TNN.

It's mostly centered around four cards: Engineered Explosives, Toxic Deluge, Golgari Charm and Supreme Verdict. Let's look at these in detail:


Note that Engineered Explosives will be featured in decks that can generate three different mana easy, aka Junk, Jund, Bant and of course: Esper Stoneblade. Funnily enough Toxic Deluge go in Junk, Jund and Esper, Golgari Charm fits in Junk, Junk and Esper (the Deathblade variant), Supreme Verdict can be used by Bant, Esper and Miracles.

This makes our matches vs Esper Deathblade and U/W Miracles more difficult especially. And you can sort of expect three of four of these in every control deck.


So. What's bad about these cards?



Well. Supreme can't be countered, but it ain't no Wrath: you can regenerate your whole team in response and you'll be fine.
Cards that give you regeneration: Ezuri, Renegade Leader and Golgari Charm (ironicly enough also good vs TNN). Chris Anderson has been packing Ezuri since months maindeck, so it's not without precedent.

Golgari Charm is bad vs x/2+x's. Like Deathrite Shaman, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Viridian Shaman, Scavenging Ooze and Craterhoof Behemoth.
Of course you could pack any lord vs it, since well, turns out Elvish Archdruid is a 2/2 himself, so they cannot Charm him to death!

EE is bad vs CC<>1's. Like Elvish Visionary, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Viridian Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Craterhoof Behemoth and Elvish Ardruid.

Toxic Deluge, well, is a mistake. Obviously meant for Commander, just like TNN. Actually, Commander has given us Legacyplayers many problems, from that make rediculous card advantage in the right deck (Shardless BUG) to less availibility of cards and thus driving up the prices.

But okay. Toxic Deluge. Well. Whatcha gonna do? Be glad you're running 4 Deathrite Shamans and a Scavenging Ooze in the sideboard, I guess.



And well, if everything fails, we could still opt to put Unburial Rites in the deck or something, I suppose :P. And while we're at that point, I guess we could even combine Reanimate with Fauna Shaman (it itself an Elf) and these cards:

Say what you will: that's a three-card combo that nets you infinite +X/+X on your creatures and infinite life. The funny part is that every counter on the Warcaller gives the other elves +1/+1 extra, which is totally useless once you'r going infite, but anyway :P


For now, I won't fault anyone packing Ezuri and an Archdruid maindeck. Actually, you might wanna try it out. Cut a Quirion and a Heritage / Birchlore and see how you fare. But be sure not to overcommit like in the old days, you know?


Oh yeah. Let me just post a card which may help vs these controlling decks actually which we could try:

Sure. Wrath me. I will +1 my Garruk... Think about it. The emblem quite is game over in this deck...

[Atikin]

My god this deck can just come back out of nowhere. Just had crazy 3rd game against esper stoneblade where I won although I should have lost. The scenario is as follows:

Up to this point he has pretty much answered everything Ive played. Every creature has been sent plowing, zealous persecutioned, or supreme verdicted. My only business spell thus far was countered with a force. Any card advantage that I had been gaining was nullified with zealous persecution and supreme verdict hitting multiple creatures.

So the scenario comes up like this.

He has 6 lands on the field, a jitte, and a batterskull + 1 other card that I dont know in hand. He has just had the jitte equipped to a snap caster mage which i blocked and and killed with a 1/1 and he used the counters to kill 2 other creatures i had in play.

He passes the turn to me and all I have left is 2 lands and a dryad arbor in play after the jitte nuked what was left of my board. My only card in hand is a lonely glimpse with nothing to power it.

I end up drawing deathrite shaman, casting glimpse, casting deathrite, drawing quirion, casting quirion, drawing visionary, and using quirion to untap the arbor and replay a land in order to cast visionary. The 2 draws? Viridian shaman and wirewood symbiote. That second card in his hand? Another stoneforge. Needless to say I went on to close the game out with wirewood not only making sweet love to viridian shaman to keep his artifacts at bay, but also bouncing visionary to draw into a finisher.

From a board state of a 3 lands and and a woefully useless glimpse that i had top decked the turn prior, I went to a solid board presence with the perfect cards in hand to lock him out. Never in a game of magic before have my emotions changed so near instantaneously from despair to joy with each draw off the glimpse.

I love this deck.

[Julian23]

Because it was mentioned earlier, I myself considered adding 2 Planeswalkers to the sideboard for the Miracles matchup. Looked at something like Garruk Relentless but never got to really test it.

[Admiral_Arzar]

If you're going to discuss six-mana planeswalkers as a solution to control decks, you might as well party like it's 2003 and play Patriarch's Bidding. Obviously does nothing against Terminus or grave hate, but who boards grave hate against this deck anyways?

[Dice_Box]

Miracles does.

[Zombie]

If you're going to discuss six-mana planeswalkers

[Havoc]

Yeah, since last night I wanted to post an overview of what can help vs the splash damage that other decks pack to combat TNN.

It's mostly centered around four cards: Engineered Explosives, Toxic Deluge, Golgari Charm and Supreme Verdict. Let's look at these in detail:


Note that Engineered Explosives will be featured in decks that can generate three different mana easy, aka Junk, Jund, Bant and of course: Esper Stoneblade. Funnily enough Toxic Deluge go in Junk, Jund and Esper, Golgari Charm fits in Junk, Junk and Esper (the Deathblade variant), Supreme Verdict can be used by Bant, Esper and Miracles.

This makes our matches vs Esper Deathblade and U/W Miracles more difficult especially. And you can sort of expect three of four of these in every control deck.


So. What's bad about these cards?



Well. Supreme can't be countered, but it ain't no Wrath: you can regenerate your whole team in response and you'll be fine.
Cards that give you regeneration: Ezuri, Renegade Leader and Golgari Charm (ironicly enough also good vs TNN). Chris Anderson has been packing Ezuri since months maindeck, so it's not without precedent.

Golgari Charm is bad vs x/2+x's. Like Deathrite Shaman, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Viridian Shaman, Scavenging Ooze and Craterhoof Behemoth.
Of course you could pack any lord vs it, since well, turns out Elvish Archdruid is a 2/2 himself, so they cannot Charm him to death!

EE is bad vs CC<>1's. Like Elvish Visionary, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Viridian Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Craterhoof Behemoth and Elvish Ardruid.

Toxic Deluge, well, is a mistake. Obviously meant for Commander, just like TNN. Actually, Commander has given us Legacyplayers many problems, from that make rediculous card advantage in the right deck (Shardless BUG) to less availibility of cards and thus driving up the prices.

But okay. Toxic Deluge. Well. Whatcha gonna do? Be glad you're running 4 Deathrite Shamans and a Scavenging Ooze in the sideboard, I guess.



And well, if everything fails, we could still opt to put Unburial Rites in the deck or something, I suppose :P. And while we're at that point, I guess we could even combine Reanimate with Fauna Shaman (it itself an Elf) and these cards:

Say what you will: that's a three-card combo that nets you infinite +X/+X on your creatures and infinite life. The funny part is that every counter on the Warcaller gives the other elves +1/+1 extra, which is totally useless once you'r going infite, but anyway :P


For now, I won't fault anyone packing Ezuri and an Archdruid maindeck. Actually, you might wanna try it out. Cut a Quirion and a Heritage / Birchlore and see how you fare. But be sure not to overcommit like in the old days, you know?


Oh yeah. Let me just post a card which may help vs these controlling decks actually which we could try:

Sure. Wrath me. I will +1 my Garruk... Think about it. The emblem quite is game over in this deck...

I can see why you would use the planeswalker against control but putting him main-board and not side seems impossible since all you spells go get creatures and not him. and with TNN you cant protect him so he doesn't seem all that useful. as for the combo again its not that its bad but not something you want to side into and hope to get. ill probably find a spot for the ezuri and maybe the archdruid

[Echelon]

Hello there,

I have a question - what has been the reasoning behind playing 14 "real" lands? I've been running a build with only 12 for some time now and am enjoying it quite a bit. Being a programmer by trade, I have spent some of my spare time writing a bit of software that runs simple Monte Carlo goldfishing simulations (it can determine which (fetch)land to play next, what spell/creature to play next to best stimulate either mana growth or board presence and how much mana at least the for elf decks important X mana-producers makes at any given time) to determine how the landspread in my opening hand would look like when any deck would contain anything from 10 to 27 lands.

Gathering the results from these simulations, I managed to determine that when running only 12 lands we have the highest probability of starting with either 1 or 2 lands in our opening hand, which I'd consider to be optimal. Admittedly it does cause you to have 5% more chance have an opening hand containing no land at all, I honestly think the extra slots and the higher probability of having only 1 or 2 non-Cradle/Arbor lands in your opening hand are worth the risk.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? If necessary, I can post the actual numbers.

Also - I have been thinking the last couple of days about adding an Elvish Pioneer to my decklist in favor of a mana dork. When going off with a combination of Quirion Rangers and Wirewood Symbiotes, it turns itself into a neat little engine piece (since when running only 12 lands, you only get to use 1 or 2 Quirion Ranger untaps a turn for a limited amount of turns), netting at least 1 mana each cycle when paired with a mana dork as untap target.

How do you guys feel about that inclusion?

[Lemnear]

Hello there,

I have a question - what has been the reasoning behind playing 14 "real" lands? I've been running a build with only 12 for some time now and am enjoying it quite a bit. Being a programmer by trade, I have spent some of my spare time writing a bit of software that runs simple Monte Carlo goldfishing simulations (it can determine which (fetch)land to play next, what spell/creature to play next to best stimulate either mana growth or board presence and how much mana at least the for elf decks important X mana-producers makes at any given time) to determine how the landspread in my opening hand would look like when any deck would contain anything from 10 to 27 lands.

Gathering the results from these simulations, I managed to determine that when running only 12 lands we have the highest probability of starting with either 1 or 2 lands in our opening hand, which I'd consider to be optimal. Admittedly it does cause you to have 5% more chance have an opening hand containing no land at all, I honestly think the extra slots and the higher probability of having only 1 or 2 non-Cradle/Arbor lands in your opening hand are worth the risk.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? If necessary, I can post the actual numbers.

Also - I have been thinking the last couple of days about adding an Elvish Pioneer to my decklist in favor of a mana dork. When going off with a combination of Quirion Rangers and Wirewood Symbiotes, it turns itself into a neat little engine piece (since when running only 12 lands, you only get to use 1 or 2 Quirion Ranger untaps a turn for a limited amount of turns), netting at least 1 mana each cycle when paired with a mana dork as untap target.

How do you guys feel about that inclusion?

It makes a difference for mulligans and you want a second land in every opener not containing Quirion.

[Echelon]

It makes a difference for mulligans and you want a second land in every opener not containing Quirion.

I beg to differ :). A GSZ instead of a Quirion Ranger in a one land openinghand works just as well, meaning that in hands containing at least a first land, you either want one of your remaining eleven lands, a GSZ, a Quirion Ranger or a Cradle to be in your hand. That's 23 out of the remaining 59 cards to be one of your remaining 6 :).

Besides, it works both ways for mulligans - it also trims down the number of times you have too many lands on hand.

[Julian23]

Hi Echelon, welcome to the thread!

Elvish Pioneer has "omg opportunity cost" written all over him. He doesn't do anything except generate a little tempo which fades out once you miss your first landdrop. In this deck, you will start missing land drops pretty soon and at that moment he's just a vanilla Elf that taps for Heritage Druid. You might mention the interaction with Wirewood Symbiote but that's just the same with any other mana dork you'd have cut for him.

Also, and this is the most important point: cutting a mana dork to make Quirion Ranger better defeats the whole purpose of it. Quirion Ranger desperately wants a mana dork to untap to get full use out of it.

Elvish Pioneer just doesn't really help. It's like a mana dork that just loses its ability to tap for mana the first time you miss a land drop. That's in most ways just plain worse than Llanowar Elves which is a much better turn1 play. It also doesn't help with a hand that contain a lot of lands as the hand not only sucks but now sucks even more because you just added an Elf that doesn't do anything instead of at least one that will continously tap for mana and have way better interaction with Quirion and Symbiote later on.

[Echelon]

@Julian: Thank you for the welcome, and I agree with your premise wholeheartedly :).

I wanted to bring it up in combination with the consideration of dropping to 12 real lands, opening up 2 new slots. It would allow you to keep the same number of manadorks you're currently running whilst adding a small mid-combo engine piece and still giving you an additional slot to say run a sideboard-GSZ target in (Scavenging Ooze, perhaps, depending on the meta?).

The Pioneer is definetely a card you wouldn't want to have in your opening hand but would allow for some nice interactions during the early stages of a Glimpse chain, where you might want to rely a bit more on Quirion Rangers whilst not yet having enough mana to bounce an Elvish Visionary with the Symbiote . If played, it should be as a utility creature and not a tempo card. It can make for some nice resource management (it can tap for Heritage just like any summoning sick manadork, but also allows an additional Quirion Ranger to untap something after already having played your land that turn and gains some value when getting returned to your hand by a Symbiote where a manadork does neither).

Also, in general, please don't take my posts as offensive or anything, I just like these types of discussions . Heck, without discussion the elf deck might not even have been where it is today .

[MD.Ghost]

Because it was mentioned earlier, I myself considered adding 2 Planeswalkers to the sideboard for the Miracles matchup. Looked at something like Garruk Relentless but never got to really test it.

Me and some other german Players tested - Garruk Wildspeaker as a 1 or 2 off, for Sideboard or even Maindeck (in place of 4th Natural Order) - this summer. Pee-Dee-2 get some good results. Myself switched back to the maintech (3+1 NO + Progenitus). Played with Garruk only in one local tournament, he won me a game vs UR Delver.

Besides other Walkers, i think Wildspeaker fits good enough in our game plan:
+Finish with Overrun
+Tokens against Control/Sweeper
+sick Combo Turns with Cradle
(laugh about Envelope and Cabal Therapy as a secret tech)

I think Elves will adapt to the meta changes (more TNN, more Sweepers). I think we have a lot of options: Maindeck Ooze, or good old Archdruid along with some other Green Dudes.

Most builds tends to be as fast as possible, maybe more Resistance is the new direction. A Meta with TNN (+Equipment) will also have enough Counters (and Discard) to disrupt fast and fragile deck builds.

[Kayradis]

I dont know why I just don't wanna join that conversation...

[Lemnear]

I'm confused, why you think we need to adapt to Golgari Charm or stuff. In my experience, you can just ride a single DRS + Quirion/Symbiote + random stuff to victory against most of the Legacy metagame, while refilling your hand and battlefield with Visionary + Symbiote or Glimpse + creatures after each sweeper pretty easily. On top of that you still have NO into Progenitus available.

Boarding more 4cc+ cards in for situations, in which your Arbor already died and not even your Cradle produces any (mentionable) mana anymore, doesn't make sense for me.

[Echelon]

Also, has anyone ever considered playing a Fierce Empath over the fourth Elvish Visionary? Yes, it costs one more mana but in return it does let you "draw" your kill card for sure, easily setting up a kill for the following turn. I've been running the 3-1 configuration for some time now and have actually won a number of games thanks to the silly Empath fetching me the fattie I so desperately needed in drawn-out matches where a lone Visionary wouldn't have done all that much on acount of all my Symbiotes being as dead as can be.

Thoughts, anyone?

P.s. Yes, I do like me my novelties, lol.

[Dice_Box]

Empath looks interesting but I would rather have my NO targets where I can target them.

In the land discussion, GSZ is not a replacement for lands. Yes GSZ will ramp, but you will always get more use out of it if you can target something that's going to push a combo play. I would not say "12 lands is ok, I can Green Sun's for Dryad" because there are better uses for Green Sun's and while Dryad is an option, the card has better uses that first turn ramp.

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