[Primer] Elves!

[dte]

Versus Miracle, rod is good because it stop top and EE.
Vs storm, it shut down LED, petal and moxes.

These are the most important pros because these 2 decks are bad MUs and represented.

Otherwise:
Vs affinity, it is almost an insta win, vs MUD it's quite good too. Vs D&T it stops both vial and jitte.

[Duker99]

As a new elves pilot... What is a sideboard plan against sneak & show. My local meta has about 4-5 guys that play the deck and I have a really hard time beating it. Thanks

[Koopa]

I have tried looking for info on Packmaster but couldn't find anything. What application does he have?

[Blastoderm]

As a new elves pilot... What is a sideboard plan against sneak & show. My local meta has about 4-5 guys that play the deck and I have a really hard time beating it. Thanks

You might need to consider a blue splash for swan song.

[Julian23]

As a new elves pilot... What is a sideboard plan against sneak & show. My local meta has about 4-5 guys that play the deck and I have a really hard time beating it. Thanks

If your meta is THAT rich with Sneak Show (assuming it's your average 20 people weakly Legacy and you expect to run into these guys), you might want to look into having 2-3 Pithing Needles as well as a real Show and Tell hooser such as Confusion in the ranks or Worldspine Wurm; probably the later. Also always side in Progenitus. On top of that, Discard works pretty well against them.

Cards to take out are more long-term oriented stuff such as Scavening Ooze, Wren's Run Packmaster, 1-2 Wirewood Symbiote and Virdian Shaman unless they have Grafdigger's cage. Once Reclamation Sage becomes legal, you obviously wanna keep that. I also usually like going down to 2 Natural Orders despite siding in big dudes; unlike in other matchups, you are very happy to naturally draw them into your hand.

[Dice_Box]

Sage is legal now Julian.

[dte]

I'm a bit surprise by your siding out of 2 NO: in this MU, I try to be as fast as possible, and to achieve that I like to keep NOs.
I think (now that sage is legal) I will do:
+10:
+6 discard (3/3)
+ proge
+ worldspine
+ needle
+ 4th NO

-10:
-3 visio
-3 wirewood symbiot
- ooze
- WRP
-1 nettle
-1 llano

I play 3NO/1WRP, 1 sage, 1 ooze, 1 craterhoof/1 regal, 4/4 heritage/nettle, 1 arbor MD (60 cards)
4th NO in SB, 1/1 needle/rod

Note that in this specific MU, the craterhoof/regal split is especially interesting as dropping regal from S&T is really good. If you play 2 arbor main, you can easily side one out too.

Maybe I like the 3/4th NO because I play the wurm, which cannot be raced too.

But I would really like if you developp a bit more the siding out of NO as I'm sure you have tested the MU much more than me.

[Lemnear]

Elves are more often slipping in & out of the DtB section than tourists do in Berlin's red light district...

[Duker99]

Hi Guys this is great.. I will give it a try tomorrow night

[Lord_of_Rivendell]

Elves are more often slipping in & out of the DtB section than tourists do in Berlin's red light district...

No kidding. I guess we like an edgy deck.

[Dice_Box]

Hopefully Sage will help stop the Rotations. It really does a ton for us.

I was watching an guy open a box of M15, he put sage in the rare pile intentionally. I laughed.

[Zombie]

So, report on Ye Olde Test Build vs. LED Dredge.

It's horrible. Insanely, godawfully horrible. Probably worse than Reanimator. I'd rather play against Miracles all day.
The evening really hammered down what the problem is. It is card logistics. Elves is fundamentally a set up T1, do stuff T2/T3 deck with a 7 card hand that draws 1 card per turn. LED Dredge is fundamentally a T1-T2 go nuts deck with a hand size of 30 that draws 5-6 cards a turn. Our hate is delayed or massively expensive spot discard, basically. Which does jack against 30 card hands.

Observations:
Cabal Therapy from us is a boss. Therapy on LED T1 is huge, huge, huge and flashback can attack Bridge easily while stripping them of Breakthrough and LEDs.
Breakthrough is so disgustingly broken I want to punch people.
Dryad Militant would be good, but Dredge usually already has something in the yard we need to deal with already.
T2 DRS is too slow.
T1 DRS, T2 GSZ(Dryad) is entirely too slow.
T2 Ooze with a mana or two up is kinda good.
T2 GSZ for Ooze leaves us with no mana to do things with barring some nutdraw.
LED Dredge casts a surprising number of spells. A quick Ruric would probably be great if you can get it.
Flayer is scary, but only super scary if they can get a big troll afterwards.
Attacking Bridge+Narcomoebas is surprisingly profitable and essentially blanks their other stuff.
T1 Dryad => T1 Firestorm is horrible for us. Grab your cards if that happens, you're not winning it unless the Dredge player's draw is plain godawful.

On GSZ:
GSZ is a horrible card. This matchup is defined by a complete and utter lack of time, and cards need to have impact and be efficient as hell. GSZ is just way, way too slow to do anything meaningful here. It retards doing stuff with Therapy while progressing a board, it retards use of T1 Deathrites or T2 Oozes, and it just doesn't remotely threaten a kill. Usually Visionary gets sided out in combo matchups and GSZ stays in, in this case I'd suggest the reverse. GSZ out, Therapy in. T2 Visionary, grab a card, feed the drawn Elf or Visionary itself to Therapy is solid. GSZ is not.

Conclusion: I'm going back to Surgical Extraction for graveyard hate. Dryad could and probably does good work against ANT and Manaless, but against LED Dredge it just doesn't work out due to our card and mana logistics. The GSZ-ability just isn't a factor. Whatever hate we bring in either needs to be free (Surgical, Faerie Macabre, Tormod's Crypt) so we can have that precious setup turn and do what little we're able to disruption-wise or to prep a combo kill, or it needs to be so crushingly strong they're crying for mommy (RIP, Ruric Thar). Tormod's Crypt would probably be better than Surgical but Dredge is such a small player in the meta it's just not worth it, and Surgical does more work in matchups like Miracles, Delver and Storm which are prevalent atm.

The Surgicals will be on Bridge duty, probably. Fuck Bridge.

New Sideboard, roughly
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
1 Progenitus
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Null Rod
2 Bitterblossom
3 Abrupt Decay


Thoughtseize could maybe even just be another Surgical, or a Needle, or something. Maybe the discard split should be 3/2, dunno. If you want game against LED Dredge, you need 4 Therapy.

Rough SB plan vs. LED Dredge, codename Fuckthisshit:
-4 GSZ
-1 Packmaster
-1 Reclamation Sage
(-1 Dryad Arbor)
+4 Therapy
+2 Surgical
(+1 Thoughtseize)

[Havoc]

So, report on Ye Olde Test Build vs. LED Dredge.

It's horrible. Insanely, godawfully horrible. Probably worse than Reanimator. I'd rather play against Miracles all day.
The evening really hammered down what the problem is. It is card logistics. Elves is fundamentally a set up T1, do stuff T2/T3 deck with a 7 card hand that draws 1 card per turn. LED Dredge is fundamentally a T1-T2 go nuts deck with a hand size of 30 that draws 5-6 cards a turn. Our hate is delayed or massively expensive spot discard, basically. Which does jack against 30 card hands.

Observations:
Cabal Therapy from us is a boss. Therapy on LED T1 is huge, huge, huge and flashback can attack Bridge easily while stripping them of Breakthrough and LEDs.
Breakthrough is so disgustingly broken I want to punch people.
Dryad Militant would be good, but Dredge usually already has something in the yard we need to deal with already.
T2 DRS is too slow.
T1 DRS, T2 GSZ(Dryad) is entirely too slow.
T2 Ooze with a mana or two up is kinda good.
T2 GSZ for Ooze leaves us with no mana to do things with barring some nutdraw.
LED Dredge casts a surprising number of spells. A quick Ruric would probably be great if you can get it.
Flayer is scary, but only super scary if they can get a big troll afterwards.
Attacking Bridge+Narcomoebas is surprisingly profitable and essentially blanks their other stuff.
T1 Dryad => T1 Firestorm is horrible for us. Grab your cards if that happens, you're not winning it unless the Dredge player's draw is plain godawful.

On GSZ:
GSZ is a horrible card. This matchup is defined by a complete and utter lack of time, and cards need to have impact and be efficient as hell. GSZ is just way, way too slow to do anything meaningful here. It retards doing stuff with Therapy while progressing a board, it retards use of T1 Deathrites or T2 Oozes, and it just doesn't remotely threaten a kill. Usually Visionary gets sided out in combo matchups and GSZ stays in, in this case I'd suggest the reverse. GSZ out, Therapy in. T2 Visionary, grab a card, feed the drawn Elf or Visionary itself to Therapy is solid. GSZ is not.

Conclusion: I'm going back to Surgical Extraction for graveyard hate. Dryad could and probably does good work against ANT and Manaless, but against LED Dredge it just doesn't work out due to our card and mana logistics. The GSZ-ability just isn't a factor. Whatever hate we bring in either needs to be free (Surgical, Faerie Macabre, Tormod's Crypt) so we can have that precious setup turn and do what little we're able to disruption-wise or to prep a combo kill, or it needs to be so crushingly strong they're crying for mommy (RIP, Ruric Thar). Tormod's Crypt would probably be better than Surgical but Dredge is such a small player in the meta it's just not worth it, and Surgical does more work in matchups like Miracles, Delver and Storm which are prevalent atm.

The Surgicals will be on Bridge duty, probably. Fuck Bridge.

New Sideboard, roughly
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
1 Progenitus
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Null Rod
2 Bitterblossom
3 Abrupt Decay


Thoughtseize could maybe even just be another Surgical, or a Needle, or something. Maybe the discard split should be 3/2, dunno. If you want game against LED Dredge, you need 4 Therapy.

Rough SB plan vs. LED Dredge, codename Fuckthisshit:
-4 GSZ
-1 Packmaster
-1 Reclamation Sage
(-1 Dryad Arbor)
+4 Therapy
+2 Surgical
(+1 Thoughtseize)

Dredge is always a bad match for us. They durdle until they win way better than we do. Improving that matchup to me doesn't seem all that important because dredge has fallen out of favor recently. It's not a bad deck just not played. I've been trying your list and that war caller has been winning me games against rug and esper death blade online for the past 2 days. Miracles is still tricky but if you stop their top and just overwhelm them with little guys they have to win on luck alone. And with sage, they can't protect their counterbalance as well. I don't run the bitterblossoms because I don't own any so I still run 2 chokes.

[sawatarix]

is there any combodeck which has a bad elves matchup? i guess not :D
i played elves yesterday in the weekly legacy tournament in berlin in a metagame full of fast combodecks like ant,reanimator,sneakshow and on the other side a ton of miracles.
yeah there were also a few good matchups like shardless bug and rug delver (although i still believe that this matchup is stillnot fantastic)
finally didn't finished well,obviously.
the biggest probolem i see against fast combodecks is the absence of cantrips such as brainstorm to dig for disruption or to hide them against opposing discard.Instead we have to draw them naturally...have to find a solution for these matchup somehow.

[Zombie]

is there any combodeck which has a bad elves matchup? i guess not :D
i played elves yesterday in the weekly legacy tournament in berlin in a metagame full of fast combodecks like ant,reanimator,sneakshow and on the other side a ton of miracles.
yeah there were also a few good matchups like shardless bug and rug delver (although i still believe that this matchup is stillnot fantastic)
finally didn't finished well,obviously.
the biggest probolem i see against fast combodecks is the absence of cantrips such as brainstorm to dig for disruption or to hide them against opposing discard.Instead we have to draw them naturally...have to find a solution for these matchup somehow.

High Tide is disadvantaged vs. Elves. That's the only one I'm aware of though. Maybe Painter or something, but I have no experience against it so I'll keep my mouth shut.

What kind of list did you play, and what kind of sideboard? I think we can make many of those matchups not-horrible if we make a good sideboard.
What was your plan/mentality against other fast combo decks? I find we have to stop thinking of ourselves as combo, really. The playstyle is much more in the vein of some weird delver/MUD hybrid where the aim is to beat down and play hate pieces. Random blowouts with Glimpse/Hoof are just accidental nic stuff. NO=>Thar is just a prison element, as is Null Rod, Thorn and the like. Speaking of which I would never ever play Elves in the current European metagame without Ruric maindeck. That's just asking to lose.

Try the test build I posted earlier. It's aimed squarely at a metagame full of Miracles, fast combo and Delver, and should even fare OK against Sneak & Show if they don't run Leylines (if they do we're fucked).

[Rook1e]

Hi guys. I'm normally just lurking around in here, but Wren's Run Packmaster caught my attention. Can someone tell me why people are playing him? Thanks

[264505]

Hi guys. I'm normally just lurking around in here, but Wren's Run Packmaster caught my attention. Can someone tell me why people are playing him? Thanks

Its a game ending threat that doesn't force you to commit additional cards to the board into a sweeper while leaving you with something after the board is wiped. It also seems pretty useful against decks playing things like Abrupt decay and Golgari Charm in hopes of dealing with your board.

[Lemnear]

Its a game ending threat that doesn't force you to commit additional cards to the board into a sweeper while leaving you with something after the board is wiped. It also seems pretty useful against decks playing things like Abrupt decay and Golgari Charm in hopes of dealing with your board.

Not to forget: it absolutely dominates ground combat and creates commulative Wolfs with Cradle

[Zombie]

Not to forget: it absolutely dominates ground combat and creates commulative Wolfs with Cradle

Yeah, the big thing is that it's a resistant source of card advantage, leaving you to accumulate cards in hand for if/when it gets answered - which is hard because it's Bolt-proof, Decay-proof and Symbiote-able. It's just an all-star in grindy creature-based matchups and can do work against Miracles.

[sawatarix]

@ Zombie:

my Sideboard is an overload on disruption:

4 thoughtseize
3 duress
2 flusterstorm
1 null rod
1 pithin needle
3 abrupt decay
1 bitterblossom

and i still lose too many games against combodecks.
my feeling: