[Primer] Elves!

[Julian23]

[Lemnear]

In your special case it's the RED Baron ;)

I'll keep the "Mad" for myself as it should be phrased "Not sure if MAD, GENIUS or RED BARON"

[Kayradis]

Julian, face it. You're the Red Baron

[Zombie]

@Kayradis - Nice tatts man. You picked a good artist.

@Shang - the Charms are probably for the Leylines Zombie was anticipating out of Show and Tell decks, as he mentioned. It also directly zaps the new hatecat, as it is an enchantment too.

Actually, no. I anticipate they'll drop the Leylines if SotL becomes a big player in the format, and play more removal. Thus, discard plan, mom-proof SotL removal, reg against more sweepers. Dread of Night is probably the better idea though because we can deploy our own team more liberally.

Not saying my predictions are necessarily correct, but that's the rationale anyway. I will definitely want white cards maindeck though, as sad as the loss of Swan Song/fetchland tricks is.

A singleton Hivemaster might also be pertinent. Never got to play around with them back in the day and I really want an excuse to :P

[danyul]

Gotcha. My apologies. My reading comprehension sometimes sucks.

And I have toyed around with Hivemasters. Mind you this was well before the Mirror Entity build was a thing. They are super fun. I tried out a singleton on a whim a few months ago. They make Gaea's Cradle even more stupid. You should give it a shot in a low-risk weekly event.

[Julian23]

You should give it a shot in a low-risk weekly event.

Roger that, Captain! I've tried a lot of weird stuff lately, so keep these suggestions coming. Coolest one thus far was maindeck Hornet Queen that completly destroyed Emrakul:

Proof:

Another one was the ever-clunky Thornscape Battlemage for funsies. Don't try this at home, children!

[matty]

Roger that, Captain! I've tried a lot of weird stuff lately, so keep these suggestions coming. Coolest one thus far was maindeck Hornet that completly destroyed Emrakul:

Proof:

Another one was the ever-clunky Thornscape Battlemage for funsies. Don't try this at home, children!

I wish there was a foil version :(

[Zombie]

...and I just remembered that Hivemaster synergises with Cabal Therapy. Time to place some orders <3.

[Lemnear]

...and I just remembered that Hivemaster synergises with Cabal Therapy. Time to place some orders <3.

Hey! Token Generator feat Cabal Therapy is my TES tech :/

[Benjammn]

Ill post more pics once its completed.
Still. I was talking with Lemnear this morning (gotta love the time zone difference since they bring amazing discussions about women, mtg and parties at coffee time!) and I think it's time for me to take a break from Elves.
There's a lot of hate coming (hate that is also relevant against TNN).

It isn't so much TNN hate, but deck choices to combat the TNN decks. More Dredge, TES/ANT, and new decks like Jund Depths are either too fast or really hateful against our strategy. At least that has been my experience.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[trevaftw]

This is the only thing I've seen so far that might be worth considering for elves sideboard. Probably not though

Skyreaping 1G
Sorcery
Skyreaping deals damage to each creature with flying equal to your devotion to green.

[Echelon]

The most likely targets for that would be Insectile Aberration, Tombstalker (SCG noted it was started to see some play again last week) and perhaps Griselbrand.

To handle these, we also have Meekstone in our SB. Also, the deck that might run Tombstalker (BUG Delver it was, I believe. Might be wrong though) is already a pretty good match-up. And when you have enough devotion to kill off a Griselbrand, you're probably already pretty close to winning anyway, eliminating the need to burn it down.

Concerning Wirewood Hivemaster: I love the card and I think it can be wonderful game 1, giving you something to do whenever you have it and any number of Wirewood Symbiotes on the battlefield, but when the sweepers come in for game 2 & 3, will it really be all that useful? Or would we be siding it out for games 2 and 3 anyway, when facing a MU we know runs sweepers post-board?

In addition - the Hivemaster is pretty silly when playing a mirrormatch.

I've been using an Essense Warden in my SB for similar means for some time now. I chose to go Warden over Hivemaster because the Warden is also pretty sweet against other decks that tend to make a lot of tokens (Goblins) or creatures in general and the Warden has also placed me just out of Tendrils-range once against an ANT-player (I gained 3 life off of it before he went for it. He came up 1 point short). It also makes it a little bit more difficult for an opposing Elves player to Hoof you to death (pretty much the same way a Hivemaster does, without the offensive benefits though). When used in combination with Hivemaster it boosts your long-term survivability even more.

[BJeagle]

The deck have seen some major changes the last years, from a pure Glimpsdeck, then Mirror Entity and now the NO/Hoof plan. For the last year the MD has more or less been locked except 2-3 slots... and the SB has been optimised with discard and counter spells.
Let’s play with this idea.
No more NO/Glimpse but NO/?, if we take out 4 Heritage Druid, 4 Nettle Sentinel and 4 Glimpse from MD, that 12 new slots that we can play with. What are the best/funniest options that we can make?

[Echelon]

The deck have seen some major changes the last years, from a pure Glimpsdeck, then Mirror Entity and now the NO/Hoof plan. For the last year the MD has more or less been locked except 2-3 slots... and the SB has been optimised with discard and counter spells.
Let’s play with this idea.
No more NO/Glimpse but NO/?, if we take out 4 Heritage Druid, 4 Nettle Sentinel and 4 Glimpse from MD, that 12 new slots that we can play with. What are the best/funniest options that we can make?

Why would we want to do that..? Cutting the Glimpse plan also hurts the NO-strategy unless you go purely to a NO-Pro package since Hoof is worthless without a horde of other creatures on the battlefield. Also, cutting the Glimpse plan makes it harder to dig for the NO in the first place.

If you purely want to go for the NO-Pro package, you could add 4 ESG and Lotus Petals to ensure you get your 4 mana on turn 2. Doing so causes the deck to not be able to win until turn 4 instead of 3 (or 2 with uber-chains), worsening your position vs. other combo-decks.

That being said, I don't see it being better then what we have now.

[Lemnear]

Cutting the Nettle/Hertiage/Glimpse engine pretty much locks you into stuff like Priest of Titania if you ask me and that topic dragged the whole previous Elven thread into the abyss.

I don't see a compelling argument to cut a working sub-engine and a super-ancestral-recall just for having "12 new slots that we can play with".

Feel free to make suggestions for these slots, give a reasoning, why you think that these suggested slots work better than the Glimpse-package and we gladly wage the benefits. Making such a radical cut in a working deck, that made the top spot of a 700 Player carnage and asking others to fill the 12-cards-gap is total nonsense

[Zombie]

Why would we want to do that..? Cutting the Glimpse plan also hurts the NO-strategy unless you go purely to a NO-Pro package since Hoof is worthless without a horde of other creatures on the battlefield. Also, cutting the Glimpse plan makes it harder to dig for the NO in the first place.

If you purely want to go for the NO-Pro package, you could add 4 ESG and Lotus Petals to ensure you get your 4 mana on turn 2. Doing so causes the deck to not be able to win until turn 4 instead of 3 (or 2 with uber-chains), worsening your position vs. other combo-decks.

That being said, I don't see it being better then what we have now.

If you cut Glimpses you'd pretty much have to replace them with blue cantrips to maintain deck consistency, which would do horrible things to our mana. Being a NO deck is valid, but then I'd rather look towards some kind of RUG/BUG concoction deliberately built for the purpose. You also don't really need a horde, per se, for Hoof - a couple mana dorks swinging alongside is already something like 17 points. Though I'd imagine the dedicated non-elf NO deck would only run Prog, it can slow people down, we don't. We just go faster.

[Echelon]

Are you sure you're quoting the right person? I'm against the plan entirely.

For reference:
2 untapped, non-summoning sick 1/1's + Hoof = 2*4 + 8 + 3*N = 16 plus 3 times the number of creatures you control that can't attack points of damage.
3 untapped, non-summoning sick 1/1's + Hoof = 3*5 + 9 + 4*N = 24 plus 4 times the number of creatures you control that can't attack points of damage.

[Kayradis]

*curling into a ball and sobbing quietly*

I QUIT

[Echelon]

*curling into a ball and sobbing quietly*

I QUIT

Regretting the tattoos yet?

[Kayradis]

Nope.
Regretting helping making such a wonderful deck fall prey to such bad ideas.