[Primer] Elves!

[Zombie]

@ 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:

Hehe. Maindeck and boarding plan?

[sawatarix]

maindeck has 4 birchlore Rangers,Ruric Thar and Scavenging Ooze main.

i board out all slow elves like visionary+wirewood symbiote and 1 dryad arbor,should be alright i guess.

[Julian23]

If you really want to make Ruric work, you want to look into Mindbreak Traps. Makes it much easier to turn2 Natural Order. Unfortunately, MB Trap doesn't do anything against the Elves and Sneak Attack.

[dte]

MBT is playable against only few MUs (ANT, TES, belcher), which is not that common, easy to play around and is not tutorable. I will play more discard, Gaddock or envelopp/swan song/flusterstorm, needle/rod before MBT as they cover more very bad MUs.

If storm is more than 15% of any meta, Ruric main and MBT sounds nice. But then playing another deck will sound way better.

[Ornament]

I'm ready to bite the bullet and pick up a tropical island....i tried splashing white for teeg and pridemage but felt it was lackluster. My playgroup consists of miracles, reanimator and other random jank. Would envelop/swan song be worth it?

[Echelon]

Wonderful analysis

Flayer is scary, but only super scary if they can get a big troll afterwards.

More wonderful analysis

You're mixing Manaless and LED-dredge here - Flayer is only run by Manaless, LED just goes for the zombie-token/Ichorid beats at Mach 23.9.

The problem with LED is that after SB they not only have their crazy speed but also Firestorm and Dread Return to Elesh Norn. Dodging the Firestorms is mostly about pressuring them to dredge rather then draw (by say removing their Ichorids and Bridges so they have to find new ones) and dodging Elesh... Well... Just try to exile any Dread Return/Elesh Norn on sight.

Manaless doesn't present you with this problem after SB'ing, if they DR they'll just go for Balustrady Spy and directly close the game so you know they're not wasting time to find answers.

LED-dredge often will be the tougher one to beat, but it honestly isn't that impossible. Try Abrupt Decay-ing one of your own dorks or flasbacking a Cabal Therapy whenever they have 1 or 2 Bridges in their graveyard, for instance. Also, LED-dredge doesn't have that much food for it's Ichorids - force them to have to keep returnng them (because say their Bridges are dead) and they'll run out of food soon enough. Take note though - this doesn't work quite as well against Manaless, they have more then enough black creatures to feed the Ichorids for several weeks. I also think Swan Song can help us tremendously against LED-dredge. Swan Song-ing their first draw/discard spell might be able to buy you the time you need to find the next piece of hate (be it Dryad Millitant, get a DRS active, freeing the mana for your Scavenging Ooze or draw into that Tormod's Crypt you boarded in) and keep slowing them down enough up to the point where you can overun them with Hoof.

[Zombie]

The guy I played had Flayer in his deck. But he's an old Manaless player so I guess that's why his deck is like a hybrid of the two versions / just old.

I'm skeptical about Swan Song in the matchup because it costs mana, and we need that setup turn for which we really wouldn't have time for already. Therapy is only OK because it pulls double duty by disrupting the blazing fast LED starts and kills Bridges.

I didn't side in Decays, why would you? They're even more horribly slow than 1-mana spells and only really do work vs. Bridge, and for 2 mana that is kind of poor IMO.

[Elfkid]

Another weekend without elves on top16 D:

There are a lot of rug,shardless and taxes that there are good matchups for elves IMO

What so you think about this situation?

Also, about the dredge pair, they are not going to kill us on turn 2-3 always, and, if we start with a deathrite shaman we can win a lot of time to beat them with a natural order or something

I prefer the GB version, I was playing the GBw for the pridemage and gaddock, but now with the reclamation sage we can play more disruption In place of the gaddock (IMO the surgical it's nice vs combo and dredge too)

And how are the bitterblossom? I never tried and I'm interested :P

But as I said is only my opinion haha, I will wait to Julian's new deck list :>

Best Regards!!

[Echelon]

I didn't side in Decays, why would you? They're even more horribly slow than 1-mana spells and only really do work vs. Bridge, and for 2 mana that is kind of poor IMO.

Sure, they're slow but that can help you when you get the opportunity to cast them. Just assuming you'll never get the opportunity to do so seems silly to me. If you extend that line of thought to say the ANT MU, we might as well not SB at all because we'll never get past turn 2 anyway and they'll always have the discard to take our Mindbreak Trap. You know just as well as I do Magic doesn't work like that .

AD might not be the best card to deal with Dredge but can it help us? Yes, it can. And if you have them in your board anyway, why not use them? Heck, even blasting away something seemingly silly like a Narcomoeba might prevent them from being able to DR an Elesh Norn so you can exile that Norn with your DRS during your next turn (it was summoning sick/tapped the turn you blew up the Narcomoeba, obviously ).

[Dice_Box]

MBT is playable against only few MUs (ANT, TES, belcher), which is not that common, easy to play around and is not tutorable. I will play more discard, Gaddock or envelopp/swan song/flusterstorm, needle/rod before MBT as they cover more very bad MUs.

If storm is more than 15% of any meta, Ruric main and MBT sounds nice. But then playing another deck will sound way better.

If you are beating Storm players regularly with MBT then they need to get a new deck.

[Julian23]

If you are beating Storm players regularly with MBT then they need to get a new deck.

If you think that you are *beating* a Storm deck with Mindbreak Trap, then you do not understand what role it plays in the matchup.

It's not there to randomly get them, although it sometimes does. It's there to speed you up by a whole turn, allowing for a much quicker kill / Ruric Thar.

[Echelon]

It allows you to buy more time. When you get Probe'd and they see the MBT, you know they won't go off until they have an answer to your MBT, giving you the time to assemble more hate or to get that extra turn you needed to drop Ruric Thar or go for the lethal Hoof.

And that is just what our SB does (mainly) - hold back the opponent a bit so we can get to the point where we can do what we need to do to take the game.

[dte]

MBT gives you time because the storm player should discard it. So if you have a hand with MBT + Glimpse or NO, he have to make a choice when he sees it (either by probe, seize or cabal).
And there is chances that the proper choice (assuming your opponent is not able to go off this very turn) is to let the MBT into your hand.

About dredge, I played a lot versus Manaless and will never play the AD in the MU. You need speed here and not to overSB. I do not see how it could be different vs LED dredge (I never tried AD there).


Otherwise, I still have this question: how many NOs in G2/3 vs S&S? And why?

[Duker99]

Im sure Julian knows best... But i am also interested in why he would side out NOs in the S&S match up.

Btw... went 1-1 against S&S decks over the weekend.

[starfox444]

Otherwise, I still have this question: how many NOs in G2/3 vs S&S? And why?

Depends on how prepared your sideboard is in the matchup, when I was badly prepared for it I would go up to 4 and try to beat them with velocity with either lots of elves or just the hydra based on the texture of hand they are representing, but that was mostly because my sideboard was bad and I couldn't imagine winning any sort of protracted game.

Since there's a lot of it locally I added extra needles and a worldspine wurm so I can imagine being happy with 2-3 NO (personally happy with 3 since they are clunkers in multiples as always) since the needles disable sneak and having wurm/hydra/hoof allows my NOs to always be fine and their show and tells not great. Then you only have to be worried about through the breach coming in which we can't really do anything about. On the upside, breach is slow enough that it seems like a fine thing to have to race and we can point discard spells at it if need be so while breach still puts them at the strategic advantage it just horrible tactically.

[dte]

Since there's a lot of it locally I added extra needles and a worldspine wurm so I can imagine being happy with 2-3 NO

That's something I do not quite understand. With worldspine, a NO is almost gg (pretty much as Ruric vs storm or proge vs D&T before the printing of council's judgment) so one of my main plans is to NO T2/3. Thus I want 4 NOs. Are you not finding this plan good enough because of FoW?

I didn't played the MU a lot (not really represented here, which is great), so I guess you have better experience/understanding on this specific MU. But I really want to be convinced before using someone else SB plan, otherwise I could make strategical mistakes during the game.

Thanks.

[starfox444]

That's something I do not quite understand. With worldspine, a NO is almost gg (pretty much as Ruric vs storm or proge vs D&T before the printing of council's judgment) so one of my main plans is to NO T2/3. Thus I want 4 NOs. Are you not finding this plan good enough because of FoW?

I didn't played the MU a lot (not really represented here, which is great), so I guess you have better experience/understanding on this specific MU. But I really want to be convinced before using someone else SB plan, otherwise I could make strategical mistakes during the game.

Thanks.

I'm just a little on the conservative side and NO is clunkers (4 mana, requires a creature, terrible in multiples, you know the drill). It is probably quite reasonable to plan to NO aggressively, if not correct if you are on the wurmy wurm plan.

[danbuster35]

Don't know if this has already been mentioned, but has anyone tried Reclamation Sage in the place of Viridian/Qasali/Harmonic?

[Zombie]

Don't know if this has already been mentioned, but has anyone tried Reclamation Sage in the place of Viridian/Qasali/Harmonic?

There is no "try". There is only "play" because it's better in like 95%+ cases than the existing cards. That is why there is no discussion, because none is needed.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Sarnath'ed.