[Primer] Elves!

[venice]

Great explanation, Dan.

Note that I also like siding in Progenitus against Imperial Painter; it kinda acts like a poor-man's Final Fortune that's being casted from your deck and allows to strike them one more time. Because of that, you can sometime tap out aggressively to setup a kill on the next turn while they tap out for Grindstone. Also note that you can do cute tricks like Cabal Therapy/Thoughtseize yourself for Progenitus to get even another turn.

Btw, 4-0'ed (8-1 in games) the Legacy DE tonight:
R1: Junk 2-0
R2: Team America 2-1
R3: Esperblade 2-0
R4: Death & Taxes 2-0

Will be streaming on Sunday, potentially both DEs at 4pm and 8pm (CET) with some Mario Kart and other SNES goodies inbetween rounds. Feel free to join us at http://twitch.tv/itsJulian.

Glad to see you stream again on a regular basis! Will be joining in!

[Julian23]

Guess I'm on a roll this weekend as I also just 6-0'ed the monthly Nuremberg Legacy Event. I played my completly standard maindeck (1 Taiga, 9 Fetchlands) with the following sideboard:

3 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Mindbreak Trap
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Pithing Needle
1 Progenitus
1 Natural Order


R1: Elves, 2-0
R2: Esper Stoneblade, 2-0
R3: Death & Taxes, 2-1
R4: Esper Stoneblade, 2-0
R5: MUD, 2-0
R6: Shardless Bant, 2-1

As usual, the deck felt like an absoltue blast to play. I dropped one game against D&T because I kept a very slow hand and had him delay me long enough with Swords to get Jitte online. Other than that, hardly any of the games were really close as I also just easily played through a 1st turn Chalice@1 and other stuff. It really felt like being totally on fire today.

See you guys at Paris!

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Nice. Any depth you could add to the esper matches you played would be highly appreciated.

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[Julian23]

I'm afraid there's very little depth to it. Both matches were over in less than 10 minutes. Esperblade is so incredibly clunky and although the 2nd guy was splashing DRS, spotremoval and point discard just can't keep up with explosive mana + Visionary. After sideboarding they get access to Zealous Persecution but even that is a little bit clunky and usually only kills half our guys, probably even less. Because they're so clunky, they will more often than not have to FoW Visionary and eventually die to NO or GSZ for Behemoth off double Cradle. Also note that Esper can also run into issues regarding the blue-count for FoW..or just play them in the sb like the 1st guy.

I feel before boarding, the matchup is very heavily in Elves favor and there's little they can do besides to hope for the broken start with StP, FoW, SFM, TNN + 2nd StP + 2nd FoW.

The matchup felt really really good especially since Perish has pretty much vanished. If you see SCM, all the better as that makes Canonist less likely although I should add that they will probably side that one out against it as it just adds to their already pretty problematic clunkyness. Right now I really feel they will need Needle or something to deal with the BFT-team. Saving your discard and FoW for just NO will make you fall behind so hard, especially since Abrupt Decay is an awesome answer to their Jitte, which is pretty much the only card they can actually ride to victory on its own.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

So basically, if I want to have a chance against elves, I need some number of Perish? Is EE a decent choice to be more well-rounded? Against elves, is Meddling Mage worth boarding in? If so, what do I need to name? I agree elves isn't my best match, but I do okay against it.

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[catmint]

We figured out a boarding plan with esper that beats elves even without Perish. As Julian said esper is very clunky, so what you have to do is to board out TNN, SFM, jitte, batterskull and everything else that is not disruption or Jace. It looks counter-intuitive since "jitte is nuts" right. If you read through the elves thread you will find out jitte costs a lot of tempo (clunky) and there are plenty of answers. Concerning disruption zealous persection should be in your board anyway and depending on your build/boarding plans you might want to include some engineered explosives or supreme verdict. Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm are obviously very good if you kill the creatures. Grafdiggers cage and pithing needle (for wirewood) might look tempting but since most elves players will prepare for jitte with viridian shaman/decay or whatever that might not be the best idea. Of course you need to play very tight with your disruption and don't forget about wirewood/visionary being a combo as well. As for actually winning the game the snapcaster and clique shall do the job so you don't have to jace ultimate.

[lordofthepit]

So basically, if I want to have a chance against elves, I need some number of Perish? Is EE a decent choice to be more well-rounded? Against elves, is Meddling Mage worth boarding in? If so, what do I need to name? I agree elves isn't my best match, but I do okay against it.

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When I play Esper versus Elves, I feel like I'm favored. There may be variations based on the exact decklists, player skill level, and luck of the draw, but even accounting for those, I certainly don't feel so far behind that I need Perish. Can anyone else chime in?

[Secretly.A.Bee]

We figured out a boarding plan with esper that beats elves even without Perish. As Julian said esper is very clunky, so what you have to do is to board out TNN, SFM, jitte, batterskull and everything else that is not disruption or Jace. It looks counter-intuitive since "jitte is nuts" right. If you read through the elves thread you will find out jitte costs a lot of tempo (clunky) and there are plenty of answers. Concerning disruption zealous persection should be in your board anyway and depending on your build/boarding plans you might want to include some engineered explosives or supreme verdict. Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm are obviously very good if you kill the creatures. Grafdiggers cage and pithing needle (for wirewood) might look tempting but since most elves players will prepare for jitte with viridian shaman/decay or whatever that might not be the best idea. Of course you need to play very tight with your disruption and don't forget about wirewood/visionary being a combo as well. As for actually winning the game the snapcaster and clique shall do the job so you don't have to jace ultimate.

And what exactly does this sideboard plan look like? I can see no reason to exclude jitte from games 2 and 3. Honestly I will need some serious reasons and the large majority of elves players to concur to that stipulation before I can even try to wrap my head around this concept. I play SoFI as well, rather than SoFF, and I can see how it could be boarded out along with batterskull, but that seems nonsensical.

I play 2 snaps md and a clique, with another clique in the side. 2 ZP, 1 EE and a Cage. I actually just posted my current sb over in blade control if you need to reference it. This is a match up I've been working on lately and I feel like I'm all over the place. I win several in a row, but then for no apparent reason, it just completely turns around and I lose terribly, even with multiple pieces of hate. It's just so inconsistent. Any idea on what the deal is?

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[Julian23]

Will be streaming the Legacy Daily Event that starts in 8 minutes.

Come over and join us at www.twitch.tv/itsjulian!

[dte]

Hello,

First post on TheSource here, after reading for a while.
Thanks to all the contributors for the reading and my apologies for grammatical and spelling mistakes / awkward phrasing, I'm not a native English speaker.

I will put several questons in this thread soon, but something just took me aback: I was watching Julian Knab with the link on his post above and G2 against Miracle, and he kept both Scavenging Ooze and Viridian Shaman. Why? And Why not putting Ruric in?

Thanks and have a nice day

[Eternal]

Thanks for your stream Julian.

Why did you stop to play swan songs in sideboard ? I play them atm and am very happy of them.

[Julian23]

Hey dte, welcome and thanks for tuning in! When I'm eventually able to resolve NO, I'd much rather have Progenitus since it forces them into finding Terminus, whichen then again enables future NOs; it's a game of ressources and not having your future NOs blanked. Ruric on the other hand, while dealing 6 damage is also handled by more than twice as many cards and super heavily blanked by Karakas.

Scavenging Ooze however can be sided out if need be, especially on the draw if you got some more discard to bring it. I don't really like Therapy against Miracles, but it's still a valid card. It also depends on whether he has Snapcaster Mage. When I saw E-Tutor in g2, I sided out Ooze because that's a bit of an indidactor that they are rather on RiP(+potentially Helm) and thus no SCM.
Viridian Shaman can be sided out as well, no big deal but it's still got some little value by forcing them to flip Top or kill an EE that was dropped but not yet activated (although that's a rare scenario).

[dte]

Thanks for the answer Julian.

It makes perfect sense for Progenitus vs ruric, that's right. And Ooze vs SCM as well, thanks for the E-tutor explanation, that's interesting.

But I still find it hard to understand that you find more value in Viridian than in the third Glimpse (which could bait fow) or third quirion.

Most probably I need more playtesting, for next times I will just try your in/outs until I find some value in Viridian.

[Julian23]

It's honestly not that big of a difference. Putting it head-to-head against the 3rd Glimpse, the later might actually be a more solid choice.

[mariobross]

Hello Julian,

thanks for the many tips that you give us for this deck, you are helping us very much.

I am also very curious why you do not play more than the Swan Song.
also intrigues me that you have returned to the usual side you had to annecy, so I guess that even the side-in and side-out remained approximately the usual that we had indicated in the annecy report?

Thanks

[Zombie]

Madness?

3 Swan Song / 3 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
1 Progenitus
1 Natural Order
2 Pithing Needle
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Liliana of the Veil

[Echelon]

Against which MU's would you want to side in Lilliana? Anything playing SFM or something along those lines?

[Zombie]

The thought process behind that is largely:
Thorns/Mindbreak Traps only really do work against Storm. Storm is on the decline a bit, SnT/Patriot/Flyers.dec on the upswing.
Can we devote those slots to hate that works against other bad matchups, ideally without punting Storm too badly?
What decks do we have trouble against? Delver, Miracles, Storm, SnT, Reanimator, Dredge.
What would help in those matchups? In my mind:
Delver: More removal. Discard is fine as well since we have natural mass draw, they not so much.
Miracles: Hates planeswalkers, has no natural mass draw.
Storm: Has no natural mass draw, we do.
SnT: Powerful permanents to put in off SnT (like Cradle), discard (esp. if gets through Leyline)
Reanimator: Good removal that can kill big dudes.
Dredge: As above, ability to kill our own dudes to kill Bridges.

Liliana works beneficially in just about all those cases, and is on color. Basically just replace Thorns with it in the anti-Storm boarding plan, but now you have extra hate pieces vs. SnT. If we prefer removal to Thoughtseize vs. Delver, now we can do that. Miracles needs all the help it can get.

[AlexF13]

I suppose Liliana is supposed to be sided in vs delver decks. In this case, Meekstone seems more appropriate.
The upside is that it comes in vs miracles too I assume. About this I don't know: maybe it is the tool we need vs miracles, but I am sceptical. I do not have Julian's expertise on the subject, but in his article he made it pretty clear he tried out many times to grind miracles, and did not succeed. Personally it seems very clunky to me, but if you have time, give it a try!

Edit crosspost: Liliana seems much too slow vs Storm, so this argument doesn't hold. Against Sneak&Show it seems ok. Maybe worth a try.

[Echelon]

I wonder how useful it'll be against Delver.dec, since (depending on the variant you're facing) they can either Lightning Bolt or Abrupt Decay your Liliana to bits.

At least Meekstone can only be hit by Abrupt Decay, which due to the colour combination is only played by BUG Delver, an already quite favorable MU.