[Primer] Elves!

[Togores]

i think the card is just really good. Is what elves has been wating for a lot.
Its just THE CARD in the delver matchup.

[Echelon]

i think the card is just really good. Is what elves has been wating for a lot.
Its just THE CARD in the delver matchup.

It's a 4-mana card that doesn't win you the game on the spot. Also, good luck getting to 5+1/2 mana to safely GSZ for it.

[QBChaz]

It is the whole package of stats together that makes this interesting. It shores up Delver and Burn match-ups and assists in match-ups where we find ourselves going for beats more often. It is not the bullet we need to stand up in the current meta against Miracles and Know & Tell but in a meta where I am considering WRP I would want to try this card out. As has been mentioned if we are feeling squeezed on how many Decays we can afford, one of this card could turn the tide against Delver as well as 3 Decays could.

Obviously I don't think she is a mainstay in every main deck but in the right meta (heavy Delver and Burn) she could be considered. I have put 3 Rec. Sages and 1 Ruric main deck in here to help against the current two monsters of the meta. I probably have the 4th Sage in the board. It feels wrong to only have one Birchlore and three Visionaries but Sage fills a similar role to Visionary by being a recurrable card advantage engine in the right match-ups so it feels like one slot comes from there.

Main Deck:
4 DRS
1 Fyndhorn
1 Birchlore
4 Quirion
4 Wirewood
3 Visionary
3 Nettle
3 Heritage
3 Rec. Sage
1 New Welsh Elf
1 Ruric
1 'Hoof

4 GSZ
4 Glimpse
3 Natural Order

20 Lands

[Zombie]

is that one unreasonable? Delver? Burn?

It looks a bit like Courser of Kruphix: A bunch of effects that aren't really worth it on their own, but address a bunch of small problems and is hard to get rid of. I don't know if it will be huge, but I'll definitely test it out. Does work on enough angles for that.


Speaking of an odd card solving problems, has anyone thought of EE? If you look at it, what we have problems with are things like Delver, Entreat and Chalice, which all get hit by EE@0. Arbor can just be bounced back probably. Hard to Pierce, can't be Flustered, if they spend a FoW on it so much the better.

[Dice_Box]

Three Rec Sage and 3 Visionary? Um... Your doing it wrong.

I feel like it will make a splash in Modern, not betting in it for Legacy. Not going to say it's not going to end up in sideboards here and there but I don't think it's going to set the world on fire.

Edit:
EE does not effect Dryad. No need to bounce.

[QBChaz]

Three Rec Sage and 3 Visionary? Um... Your doing it wrong.

I feel like it will make a splash in Modern, not betting in it for Legacy. Not going to say it's not going to end up in sideboards here and there but I don't think it's going to set the world on fire.

Edit:
EE does not effect Dryad. No need to bounce.

The goal was to fit in more Sages because we need weapons against our bad match-ups that are running all over the meta at the moment. This is built along the lines Lemnear was discussing a couple of pages ago, willing to kill some sacred cows to actually help us be effective in the meta rather than giving up and resigning ourselves to tier 2.

[Lemnear]

It looks a bit like Courser of Kruphix: A bunch of effects that aren't really worth it on their own, but address a bunch of small problems and is hard to get rid of. I don't know if it will be huge, but I'll definitely test it out. Does work on enough angles for that.


Speaking of an odd card solving problems, has anyone thought of EE? If you look at it, what we have problems with are things like Delver, Entreat and Chalice, which all get hit by EE@0. Arbor can just be bounced back probably. Hard to Pierce, can't be Flustered, if they spend a FoW on it so much the better.

Getting a 0cc card resolved against Counterbalance + SDT + up to 23 lands sounds wack. They also run EE themselves. I doubt that gets you anywhere, not only because I consider attacking the killoption of a deck to be the wrong end of the handle. It sounds as dropping Meddling Mage @ ToA, if you know what I mean

[Zombie]

Getting a 0cc card resolved against Counterbalance + SDT + up to 23 lands sounds wack. They also run EE themselves. I doubt that gets you anywhere, not only because I consider attacking the killoption of a deck to be the wrong end of the handle. It sounds as dropping Meddling Mage @ ToA, if you know what I mean

Yeah, not trying to suggest it as a primary angle of attack, more as oh nice stuff to maybe bring in. KGrip and Choke are the backbone, EE for spice if testing says it's worth jack.

[Lemnear]

Yeah, not trying to suggest it as a primary angle of attack, more as oh nice stuff to maybe bring in. KGrip and Choke are the backbone, EE for spice if testing says it's worth jack.

Fair. I'm just covering the angles of a theory before investing time for testing ;)

[Shagstaman]

Speaking of an odd card solving problems, has anyone thought of EE? If you look at it, what we have problems with are things like Delver, Entreat and Chalice, which all get hit by EE@0. Arbor can just be bounced back probably. Hard to Pierce, can't be Flustered, if they spend a FoW on it so much the better.

EE and Glissa (conveniently an elf)? now we're talkin ^.~

[Echelon]

I just saw the spoiled Elemental Bond (enchantment, 2G, draw a card whenever a creature with power 3 or greater enters the battlefield under your control) and I think I'll be brewing with it a bit in the near feature.

Perhaps some shenanigans with multiple lords (if that works). Or focus on an augmented Best Friends Team in combining it with beaters like Talaria's Battalion and/or Wren Run's Vanquisher. It'll probably be too cute and/or slow, but what the hell.

At first I thought it said "3 power or less", lol.

[Lemnear]

I just saw the spoiled Elemental Bond (enchantment, 2G, draw a card whenever a creature with power 3 or greater enters the battlefield under your control) and I think I'll be brewing with it a bit in the near feature.

Perhaps some shenanigans with multiple lords (if that works). Or focus on an augmented Best Friends Team in combining it with beaters like Talaria's Battalion and/or Wren Run's Vanquisher. It'll probably be too cute and/or slow, but what the hell.

At first I thought it said "3 power or less", lol.

So you need three mana for the damn enchantment, a Lord-effect and then you draw a card for each other 2/x elf you play in the face of terminus and punishing fire....

I'm not even convinced the card was playable it it said "3 power or less" tbh

[Echelon]

So you need three mana for the damn enchantment, a Lord-effect and then you draw a card for each other 2/x elf you play in the face of terminus and punishing fire....

Yes! And it'll be glorious! Lol.

I like testing weird shit like that

[MD.Ghost]

I like testing weird shit like that

Than you should test our new 4cc Elf-dude first

[Echelon]

Meh, that's just a single card in the standard build.

[dte]

I'm not even convinced the card was playable it it said "3 power or less" tbh

It would be more than playable, even broken: every fetch a dryad + cantrip, permanent glimpse, every elf a visionary, BFT²

I will even try this one in a multilord list (but in modern - I think it will be very bad thought).

[Echelon]

It would be more than playable, even broken: every fetch a dryad + cantrip, permanent glimpse, every elf a visionary, BFT²

Try GSZ . Tutor + cantrip!

You get Terminus'd? Ok, crack a fetch (for Arbor, draw a card..?), shuffle your library, drop a creature, draw a card and chain on, etc.

@power 3 or lower it would have been broken. But alas, we weren't so lucky/Wizards learned their lesson after Skullclamp.

[Lemnear]

@power 3 or lower it would have been broken. But alas, we weren't so lucky/Wizards learned their lesson after Skullclamp.

That's missing the point: You need to invest three mana and a card first to create cardadvantage later. If that was really a concept these days we would have seen stuff like the Ascensions or Mentor of the Meek doing anything.



w/o the 4/4 body

[square_two]

Hi all, I'm a Standard player looking to finally venture into Legacy for the first time (deciding to skip over Modern), and Elves seems like a deck I could really enjoy. I proxied up a Greed Stasis deck and seeing how Quirion and Scryb Rangers work was a blast. That, and it was just destroyed by a friend's elf deck.

I've started work on sleeving up a build (Elves, that is) and goldfishing it, as well as watching matchups. Is there a good way to catch up on the current meta and latest conversations and ideas about Elves without slogging through dozens of pages? Sorry if that's the best way to go about it, I don't mind doing the work. If there are guides/primers most up to date that would help, although I imagine things haven't changed too much over the years.

Current discussions seem to be about multiple copies of Rec Sage in the main/side, how to improve matchups against Miracles and OmniTell (which are prevalent currently), and any spoilers for the upcoming set - that about right?

Thanks all.

I can't help but think that a Living Wish package could work in Elves. Have there been any builds to try it?

[Shagstaman]

if you're picking up elves, my best advice is simply get as many games in as possible. even goldfishing counts.. the key is to learn everything there is to know about the interactions between not only your opponents cards and your own, but within your own deck!

as far as the current meta...yes, it is more miracle/omnitell heavy than ever--but one of the beautiful things about legacy is that there are so many decks. That's why the sb plan consists of multi-purpose cards such as pithing needle, discard, and decay. You can metagame vs th popular decks and never face them once at a large event.. I remember when BUG delver was the big thing, I played it ONCE in 9 rounds...lost to MUD, storm, miracles, and mono black pox. In other words, metagaming should be low on the priority list, especially for a newbie.

tldr version: steal a recent winning decklist, learn the deck inside and out, worry about metagaming last.

PS: learn how quirion ranger works...the #1 difference between scrubs with the deck and the pros is the correct use of this card.