[Primer] Elves!

[Shagstaman]

what is this craziness on SCG today. an elf mirror and then elves with main deck probes and sideboard bloodmoons

I don't know why all the elf-love all of a sudden, but I kinda love/hate it!

lol...steve's list is insane tho. what a madman. I've tested both blood moon and probe but hated both, I guess maybe together it works tho!!

[Dice_Box]

Looking at Bloodmoon though the eyes of someone that plays Painter as my primary deck, I am not sure I like it here. But I will watch the vids before I honesty cast judgement. While I can see it's use, I think if Moon is what you think will hate out the format, you have better choices of decks.

[Dzra]

I could be wrong, but I have to think that the only reason Blood Moon worked was because no one expected an Elves deck to disrupt their mana. There's possibly an opportunity for one, maybe two, more Elves decks to do well by jamming Blood Moon into unsuspecting non-basics. I'm always surprised by how bad people are, but you'd think that it wouldn't take too long for players to wise up to the possibility that they might get Mooned and play around it accordingly. The Probes are equally, if not more, confusing.

[Lemnear]

So this elf deck made top 8, and just won and will be at least top 4:

1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Heritage Druid
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Nettle Sentinel
3 Quirion Ranger
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
2 Dryad Arbor

2 Forest
2 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Taiga
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Gaea's Cradle

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Natural Order

Sideboard
4 Blood Moon
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Progenitus
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Natural Order
3 Thoughtseize

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=72577

Well, thinning the deck and help aiming Therapies while cutting redundant combo parts like Heritages or manadork 6+ isn't groundbreaking new tech, even for elves. The Problem is that it is nothing else than cycling for two lifepoints game 1 and that space is already tight in the Maindeck (he even cutted a Quirion). The Bloodmoon idea is total nonsense. Blocking your Fetches, Duals and Cradles while hoping that your opponent isn't Bolting your sole green Source

[P-E]

you even forgot the 2 dryads ^^
but it worked well for him haha

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Well, thinning the deck and help aiming Therapies while cutting redundant combo parts like Heritages or manadork 6+ isn't groundbreaking new tech, even for elves. The Problem is that it is nothing else than cycling for two lifepoints game 1 and that space is already tight in the Maindeck (he even cutted a Quirion). The Bloodmoon idea is total nonsense. Blocking your Fetches, Duals and Cradles while hoping that your opponent isn't Bolting your sole green Source

Gitaxian Probes are always good - they are an often free cantrip since life often is irrelevant. At that point you have to look at a Probe as being the best card in your deck since it can be any card and gives you information. If you think the 2 life are not going to be relevant than you have to run Gitaxian Probe in any deck. You can replace the 4 weakest cards with Probes and have a better deck since drawing 1 for free is always going to give you a better card basically. Plus seeing the hand is incredible since you can lay out your game plan and see how much time you have etc.
Since he is playing Cabal Therapies instead of Thoughtseize it seems to be a no-brainer to run the Probes. Even the life issues is equal then since TS loses you 2 also. Only problem is of course when you draw CT and have no Probe.

The same can be said of Streeth Wraith except there is no additional benefit.

I don't think Blood Moon is non-sense at all, it is absolutely valid. Who cares if your fetches, duals and Cradles are blocked? When you run it you go for forests first obviously and you don't need more than that to still operate while decks like Delver are drawing dead against a resolved blood moon. It's a metagame decision clearly.

I certainly think it is 100x better than Choke which I don't even think is any good against miracles since they only really need the blue mana to deploy counterbalance and beyond that their white source for terminus is more relevant.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

you even forgot the 2 dryads ^^
but it worked well for him haha

Dryad Arbor is still a 1/1 creature under blood moon.

[Julian23]

Gitaxian Probes are always good -

Except in your starting hand.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

Except in your starting hand.

Only when you determine whether to mulligan or not and you risk that decision based on the Probe cantripping into a very specific card. Other than that why would you not want a Probe in your starting hand.

[PaulJordan]

Re: gitaxian probe, against decks with counters, would you hold it until your presumed go-off turn to make sure you're safe or burn it early to dig and get an early look at their hands?

[Julian23]

Only when you determine whether to mulligan or not and you risk that decision based on the Probe cantripping into a very specific card. Other than that why would you not want a Probe in your starting hand.

You just listed the big reason why playing Probe hurts your consistency. Having it in your deck/opening hand leads to even more mulligans than this deck already takes due to mana issues.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

You just listed the big reason why playing Probe hurts your consistency. Having it in your deck/opening hand leads to even more mulligans than this deck already takes due to mana issues.

On average it shouldn't hurt consistency at all really but improve it by removing the weakest cards.

Would you mulligan the same hand if you held one of the your weakest 4 cards in the deck instead of the Probe? If the answer is yes then I don't see the point.

One way to look at Probe (or Street Wraith for that matter) is that it effectively makes you have to play with just 56 cards which should make for a better and more consistent deck automatically. The downside is only that it is harder to evaluate a starting hand not knowing what the Probe will turn into but as I said above, your mulligan decision would probably be the same if you drew one of the 4 cards you cut for Probe instead.
I suppose the first cards to cut for 4 Probes would be a fetchland, a nettle, a heritage druid and sth else.

So if you estimate that your life total doesn't matter I think Gitaxian Probe is good in the deck. Street Wraith probably not for the reasons you listed and not having any additional benefit to it.

And back to Blood Moon - the only problem I see with it in Elves is that unlike other decks using it to lockout opponents Elves have little ways to interact with the board if there is already a threat in play like Delver of Secrets who could race you easily after being locked out from anything but Lightning Bolt.
Still I think it is worth it since I don't believe the miracle matchup can be turned into a good one without assigning the entire sideboard to it pretty much. So better hope to feast on the other popular decks in the format.

[Julian23]

First of all: the concept of "the weakest" card is just ideological bullshit. It's a simplified concept that, while cute, bears little value for actual gameplay. I agree that Heritage Druid in a vacuum is probably the weakest card. The very moment I sit down and draw my opening hand, "the weakest card" is exposed to a variety of factors and changes not only every single turn but often even every single phase.

Probes hurts consistency because stumbling on mana in a non-combo Legacy deck is a death sentence. Stumbling on anything else is much less harsh. For a deck with one of the best lategames in the format, i see no need to expose yourself to variance even more that our 14 initial mana sources already do.

That doesn't mean that I will "judge" you for trying Probe. I've tried more weird shit in Elves than one would like to admit

[EluThingol]

Re: gitaxian probe, against decks with counters, would you hold it until your presumed go-off turn to make sure you're safe or burn it early to dig and get an early look at their hands?

That's often the idea, but for me it depends on the deck. Speaking for myself, if I was worried about playing around soft permission like Daze I would fire it off on T1/T2, just because when the coast is clear to tap out, you can develop your board so much more efficiently. If you're running 4 copies like Medanic did, you will probably draw into another one before your kill-shot anyway. Probe is much more situational than it's given credit for.

I still would rather run more Elves any day, but I've tried it as a 2-of and it wasn't bad.

[EluThingol]

Gitaxian Probes are always good - they are an often free cantrip since life often is irrelevant. At that point you have to look at a Probe as being the best card in your deck since it can be any card and gives you information. If you think the 2 life are not going to be relevant than you have to run Gitaxian Probe in any deck. You can replace the 4 weakest cards with Probes and have a better deck since drawing 1 for free is always going to give you a better card basically. Plus seeing the hand is incredible since you can lay out your game plan and see how much time you have etc.
Since he is playing Cabal Therapies instead of Thoughtseize it seems to be a no-brainer to run the Probes. Even the life issues is equal then since TS loses you 2 also. Only problem is of course when you draw CT and have no Probe.

The same can be said of Streeth Wraith except there is no additional benefit.

I don't think Blood Moon is non-sense at all, it is absolutely valid. Who cares if your fetches, duals and Cradles are blocked? When you run it you go for forests first obviously and you don't need more than that to still operate while decks like Delver are drawing dead against a resolved blood moon. It's a metagame decision clearly.

I certainly think it is 100x better than Choke which I don't even think is any good against miracles since they only really need the blue mana to deploy counterbalance and beyond that their white source for terminus is more relevant.

I'm not on board with all of this, but I think you're exactly right about Blood Moon--it's a card I've considered running before but never had the stones to give it a go. It's key that you can produce lots of G any time you want as long as your board is reasonably well-developed, and once Moon is in play your opponent isn't going to have lots of ways of removing your mana-creatures (unless you're dumb enough to board it in against decks with red sweepers in the board, like S&T and Affinity). Any spells in the deck you want to cast require just one G anyway, and if you can't come up with that then you're in serious trouble regardless.

Though if I were running 4 Probes and 4 Blood Moon, I'd favor an additional Birchlore over the 2nd Llanowar in Medanic's list every time.

[EluThingol]

Well, thinning the deck and help aiming Therapies while cutting redundant combo parts like Heritages or manadork 6+ isn't groundbreaking new tech, even for elves. The Problem is that it is nothing else than cycling for two lifepoints game 1 and that space is already tight in the Maindeck (he even cutted a Quirion). The Bloodmoon idea is total nonsense. Blocking your Fetches, Duals and Cradles while hoping that your opponent isn't Bolting your sole green Source

Your argument assumes that the Elves player is very stupid and is casting Blood Moon when he needs an active Cradle to win, or worse, is playing it against an opponent with Lightning Bolts when he has one mana dork as his only source of G.

In that case, yeah, casting Blood Moon is nonsense. But your position just boils down to saying that Blood Moon is bad because bad players will play it badly.

[Julian23]

Talking about consistency with Probe, there's this huge issue of what to cut. You cut spells, you end up drawing more lands than usual which is bad. You cut lands, you will end up taking more mulligans. You cut lands and spells, you will still take more mulligans. It's a death trap.

It's undeniable that Probe of course also adds something to the deck (like pretty much every card except for stuff like Great Wall). What I'm saying is that this gain is far from being worth the decreased consistency by being forced into additional mulligans.

[Quizzlemanizzle]

I still would rather run more Elves any day, but I've tried it as a 2-of and it wasn't bad.

I can see Julian's argument about mulligans since it is harder to evaluate a starting hand with a Probe instead of knowing all cards you have at hand.

But this reason I can't understand at all. If you run 4 Probes, you are not running less elves since the Probe has a XX% chance to cantrip into an elf.

For example if you run 30 Creatures (not including Arbor) in 60 cards. You run 50% creatures.
If you put in 4 Probes and remove a fetch and 3 cards - maybe Heritage, Nettle and Glimpse (just an example) you would effectively run 28 creatures in 56 cards so the ratio is the same.
Lands you would be down to 16 (not including Arbor) in 56 _ 28.5%_ instead of 17 in 60 _28.3%. So your land ratio with Gitaxian Probe is actually slightly higher still after cutting 1 fetch.

Maybe I am just spoiled by Probe and Street Wraith since I often sleeve up Oops all Spells and it seems like cantripping into something you need usually works.

[PaulJordan]

I think people should stop viewing Probe as deck thinning that can sometimes help me out by telling me what my opponent has and start viewing it as a spell that can give me vital information about my opponent's hand that has a cantrip which can be burned for card selection if necessary. It isn't really useful in multiples, though it isn't necessarily bad (minor negative in that you don't know the card you'll draw and you have to pay 2 life, minor positive in that you see an extra card or two from you what you saw from the first one). I'm guessing if you play these that 2 is the 'right' number, though obviously the more therapies you play the better they get.

[Julian23]

The deck you describe will take more mulligans on average. That to me is the biggest reason why I don't like Probe in Land-light, long-term-oriented decks like Elves.

Maybe I am just spoiled by Probe and Street Wraith since I often sleeve up Oops all Spells and it seems like cantripping into something you need usually works.

The difference being that Ooops-all-Spells et al don't care about Tempo and the battlefield. It is an inherently different approach that doesn't require using your mana each turn. It requires using your mana. Once.