[Primer] Elves!

[square_two]

So...for someone new trying to get into Elves for the first time, much less Legacy as a whole - I can't help but want a bit more understanding. I can see that it could be annoying for someone who's been around for several years to really want to go through all the mess of explaining why X or Y won't work, but is it really that difficult to explain succinctly why the builds from 2012 aren't viable anymore? Seems to me that Ralf's build has to commit even more presence to the field over the course of multiple turns. It's hard for me to see how it could be faster than the current Combo(?) Elfball(?). I also don't really grasp the role of Selvala.

I enjoyed Zombie's explanation here of what we need to work to overcome. It assumes we stay within a certain framework though - obviously we'd have less tension if we changed some of the major structure of the deck. Makes me wonder to what degree we need to innovate.

Elves, as a deck, has three core issues that need solving if you want to take the deck to the next level:

1. It only natively interacts on the board. If the opposing deck does bad things on the stack fast (combo) or can stop your bad things and do their own overwhelming evil things that can only really be dealt on the stack (Entreat from Miracles) you're shit out of luck.

1b. It does not compensate for this with enough speed - it's about as fast as ANT but without the maindeck disruption integrated. This is fine in fair matchups, but in combo mirrors it is very troublesome because the opponent can slow you down and you can't slow him down.

2. The core engines have immense tension with each other and with the best potential hate cards to solve problem 1. (eg. Glimpse wants creatures in hand, GSZ/NO in play, they all want you to play lots of creatures which clashes with sideboarded discard against combo and the search effects clash with Gaddock Teeg).

3. The deck is prone to suffering a bunch of splash damage from hate cards intended for things like Young Pyromancer and Death & Taxes.

[Ralf]

So...for someone new trying to get into Elves for the first time, much less Legacy as a whole - I can't help but want a bit more understanding. I can see that it could be annoying for someone who's been around for several years to really want to go through all the mess of explaining why X or Y won't work, but is it really that difficult to explain succinctly why the builds from 2012 aren't viable anymore? Seems to me that Ralf's build has to commit even more presence to the field over the course of multiple turns. It's hard for me to see how it could be faster than the current Combo(?) Elfball(?). I also don't really grasp the role of Selvala.

I enjoyed Zombie's explanation here of what we need to work to overcome. It assumes we stay within a certain framework though - obviously we'd have less tension if we changed some of the major structure of the deck. Makes me wonder to what degree we need to innovate.

1) You don't especially have to overcommit. Identifying your opponent MU is key.
2) This version is a usually a turn slower than the NO version, so no it will never be faster than NO but yet you can still kill T3. Nevertheless, it is more resilient to standard hate/counterspells.
3) Don't underestimate Mirror Entity. It is an Elf and with a cavern of souls + cradle, it usually reads GG.
4) Vengevine is real. It usually wins the race with Delver.
5) Selvala's goal is twofold. She can help you win attrition games and improves your Tempo MU by a mile.
6) After board, you basically become an Elfbear hatedeck.

I can understand your qualm.
We can spend days about theory, but only practise matters.

We are proposing something different, not especially new, but different.
This list was created to beat Miracle & Omni in a GP perspective. Even if it has lost a few win % against the fair field, we have achieved to gain massive win % against Miracle & Omni (too bad there were collateral damages to other combo decks, such as Storm...) so that those MU switched from bad MU to slightly positive/positive ones.

@ doubtfully people:

Instead of moaning and complaining why don't you spend some hours with this list ?
At least we would have an interesting talk about the list and why you didn't/did like it instead of having trash talks like above ?

Cheers,

Here are some sideboard tables:

Omni : +4 Chalice +1 Iona +2 Thorn +2 Choke
-3 GSZ -3 Symbiote -2 Visionary -1 Selvala

Miracle : +4 Chalice +2 Choke +2 Thorn +1 Safekeeper +1 Gaddock
-2 Heritage Druid -3 Nettle -2 Chord -2 Birchlore -1 Cradle

Grixis Delver : +2 Choke +1 sylvan Safekeeper +1 Pontiff +1 Militant +1 Imperious +1 WRP
-3 Nettle -2 Heritage Druid -2 Birchlore

Jund : +1 Safekeeper +1 Militant +1 WRP +1 Imperious
-2 Heritage Druid -1 Sage -1 Birchlore

Burn : +1 safekeeper +4 chalice +1 Militant +2 Thorn
-1 Sage -3 Visionary -2 Symbiot -1 Heritage druid -1 birchlore

TT : +1 Safekeeper +2 choke +1 WRP +1 Imperious
-2 Heritage Druid -1 Chord -1 Birchlore -1 Nettle

Storm : +1 safekeeper +1 Gaddock +2 Thorn +4 Chalice +1 Militant +1 Pontif
-1 Sage -1 VV -2 Fauna -3 Visionary -2 symbiot -1 Selvala

[.Ix]

We are proposing something different, not especially new, but different.
This list was created to beat Miracle & Omni in a GP perspective. Even if it has lost a few win % against the fair field, we have achieved to gain massive win % against Miracle & Omni (too bad there were collateral damages to other combo decks, such as Storm...) so that those MU switched from bad MU to slightly positive/positive ones.

I have been thinking about how mediocre Glimpse has been for me recently. I haven't won any combo races with the card in a while, and I'm boarding out several copies against many decks anyway. I really like what your list is trying to do. I think it is definitely worth testing and is being (awkwardly) misunderstood so far, mostly because Chord is in it lol. I will try to test it and see what I find, as I think the usual elves build isn't particularly good in my really annoying meta of miracles, chalice decks, and budget reanimator lists.

Does the mana ever get awkward, though? Your list has 7 fetches and only 4 fetchable lands (including Dryad Arbor!). It seems to be geared to play a midrange game, too, so I think you could run out of fetchable lands fairly often.

[Ralf]

I have been thinking about how mediocre Glimpse has been for me recently. I haven't won any combo races with the card in a while, and I'm boarding out several copies against many decks anyway. I really like what your list is trying to do. I think it is definitely worth testing and is being (awkwardly) misunderstood so far, mostly because Chord is in it lol. I will try to test it and see what I find, as I think the usual elves build isn't particularly good in my really annoying meta of miracles, chalice decks, and budget reanimator lists.

Does the mana ever get awkward, though? Your list has 7 fetches and only 4 fetchable lands (including Dryad Arbor!). It seems to be geared to play a midrange game, too, so I think you could run out of fetchable lands fairly often.

You might be right concerning the "fetch" thing. For now, this corner case didn't happen yet. We might be geared toward the midgame but games have a tendancy to go fast, except against heavy controls. Against miracle, a terminused dryad can be fetched back again anyway !
The initial list was only playing 3 cradle but once we have felt the power & speed provided by cradle, we have cut the 2nd forest for the 4th cradle.

By no means, this list is set in stone.
We have tested it a sheer amount of games against the actual meta so that we are confident it is not crap and deserves being posted.
GP Lille results, without being oustanding, have proven (3/1 for 1st trial, 5/0 for 2nd trial, 6/2/1 for Main event) that the list might not be finished yet but at least is competitive enough to be mentioned.

[IMarques]

a giant chord ? I don't see any "giant" creature in this list.
Iona is purely for the Omni MU.

Either you go for the good old aggro route.
Either you insta kill with Mirror Entity.

Is this a "question code" for telling us you are bad at reading a deck list ?

As Cord already costs GGG plus the CC of whatever else you're fetching (Entity at 3 or Fuana Shaman at 2?), yes I think pretty much any chord counts as gigantic. I remind you we're playing Legacy here, where anything costing more than 4 better just straight win me the game.

My question is not "code" for not reading. I read the list. My problem is that A) It looks like you're trying to play D&T without the T and with much weaker (albeit tutorable) creatures and B) I don't really see where you're getting your claims at being so good against Omni and Miracles from. Your philosophy of just dumping the list and expecting people to pick it up is unhelpful. What would be helpful is to explain why you think its good and what cards are doing what for you.

As far as I have been able to tell, the plan against Miracles is to Vengevine or to Cavern of Souls. But my problem so far is that Vengevine (played out a different list) tends to eat Terminus or StP. You need a sac outlet to make it a reliable weapon. Cavern of Souls is more reasonable. I haven't tested it and would be curious how much it helps. Accommodating it seems to make the deck really vulnerable to mana disruption followed by Burn. Not sure that's where I want to be if 4-Color Delver is the aggro deck of choice in this format. I'm also sort of amused by cutting Glimpse in this case, since it seems like you want to ensure a steady stream of creatures to cast with it.

For the Omni-tell match, am I right that your plan is to Fauna for an Iona and drop it into play for the SnT? My experience is that this plan tends to be ambitious against a deck that is dropping SnT on Turn 2 or 3 most of the time.

So...for someone new trying to get into Elves for the first time, much less Legacy as a whole - I can't help but want a bit more understanding. I can see that it could be annoying for someone who's been around for several years to really want to go through all the mess of explaining why X or Y won't work, but is it really that difficult to explain succinctly why the builds from 2012 aren't viable anymore? Seems to me that Ralf's build has to commit even more presence to the field over the course of multiple turns. It's hard for me to see how it could be faster than the current Combo(?) Elfball(?). I also don't really grasp the role of Selvala.

Ralf actually explained part of the problem with the deck in his own post. It's a turn slower than the stock list. I've played a hundred some odd games with this list (just started Legacy earlier this year) and the number of times I win on turn 3 or 4 a turn before someone kills me/locks me out with mass removal is pretty substantial. Maybe I'm playing wrong, but I don't get that feeling. Being a turn slower loses you a lot of match percentage versus stupid stuff like Delver and D&T that shouldn't be a problem.

The second problem I see is that the list is really dependent on Mirror Entity to get out of ground stalls. The problem with him is that you need to untap with him in play to grow your dudes to a reasonable size. You also (as your rightly point out) need enough dudes to matter. The untapping part is also hard in a format full of ways to counter the EoT Chord and to just burn/StP the Entity out.

The final problem I see is that the manabase is sort of all over the place. The deck simultaneously wants a lot of mana (for Chord/Entity) and a lot of guys (for the Cradles and fuel the beatdown plan). How it does this in the face of things like Wasteland, Stifle, and Port is a mystery to me. Caves help, I suppose, but only if you weren't planning on tutoring and only if you don't get locked out of your relatively small number of unconditional green sources.

[Ralf]

As Cord already costs GGG plus the CC of whatever else you're fetching (Entity at 3 or Fuana Shaman at 2?), yes I think pretty much any chord counts as gigantic. I remind you we're playing Legacy here, where anything costing more than 4 better just straight win me the game.

My question is not "code" for not reading. I read the list. My problem is that A) It looks like you're trying to play D&T without the T and with much weaker (albeit tutorable) creatures and B) I don't really see where you're getting your claims at being so good against Omni and Miracles from. Your philosophy of just dumping the list and expecting people to pick it up is unhelpful. What would be helpful is to explain why you think its good and what cards are doing what for you.

As far as I have been able to tell, the plan against Miracles is to Vengevine or to Cavern of Souls. But my problem so far is that Vengevine (played out a different list) tends to eat Terminus or StP. You need a sac outlet to make it a reliable weapon. Cavern of Souls is more reasonable. I haven't tested it and would be curious how much it helps. Accommodating it seems to make the deck really vulnerable to mana disruption followed by Burn. Not sure that's where I want to be if 4-Color Delver is the aggro deck of choice in this format. I'm also sort of amused by cutting Glimpse in this case, since it seems like you want to ensure a steady stream of creatures to cast with it.

For the Omni-tell match, am I right that your plan is to Fauna for an Iona and drop it into play for the SnT? My experience is that this plan tends to be ambitious against a deck that is dropping SnT on Turn 2 or 3 most of the time.



Ralf actually explained part of the problem with the deck in his own post. It's a turn slower than the stock list. I've played a hundred some odd games with this list (just started Legacy earlier this year) and the number of times I win on turn 3 or 4 a turn before someone kills me/locks me out with mass removal is pretty substantial. Maybe I'm playing wrong, but I don't get that feeling. Being a turn slower loses you a lot of match percentage versus stupid stuff like Delver and D&T that shouldn't be a problem.

The second problem I see is that the list is really dependent on Mirror Entity to get out of ground stalls. The problem with him is that you need to untap with him in play to grow your dudes to a reasonable size. You also (as your rightly point out) need enough dudes to matter. The untapping part is also hard in a format full of ways to counter the EoT Chord and to just burn/StP the Entity out.

The final problem I see is that the manabase is sort of all over the place. The deck simultaneously wants a lot of mana (for Chord/Entity) and a lot of guys (for the Cradles and fuel the beatdown plan). How it does this in the face of things like Wasteland, Stifle, and Port is a mystery to me. Caves help, I suppose, but only if you weren't planning on tutoring and only if you don't get locked out of your relatively small number of unconditional green sources.

Chord cost GGG but has "convoke".
I'm very amused that someone playing a standard list, which is by the way, trying to resolve a spell at sorcery speed that costs 2GG and requires you to sacrifice a creature is speaking about CMC.
What you don't understand is that Chord is not the Plan A nor B nor C... You can chord for a symbiot just to save an elf from a burn or a STP, for example.

What you will achieve with this deck is pretty simple:
1) Overwhelm your opponent with cheap creature that can go crazy (DRS, fauna, hivemaster, selvala, VV, Entity are a must answer)
2) You still have the tools to go for billions of mana and draw plenty of cards
3) You don't give a fuck about counters & chalice except for chord and GSZ.
4) Your primary draw condition (visionary) is usually unstoppable unlike glimpse.
5) Your topdecks are just plain better when your board & hand are empty and you don't clog your hands with huge monsters until you can cast them.
6) You have access to a true dedicated anti combo/anti control sideboard which is a haymaker against those decks, even more if they have sided out counters because of cavern of souls.
7) You are more resilient to standard hate (cage, priest, -1/-1 effect, counters) and you recover faster from sweepers (less dead topdecks)

I'm not telling you this is the way to go.
I'm just inviting you to test something different and see by yourself if your usual difficult MUs get better and if your usual good MUs stay the same.

Your games will be slightly longer but, the more Magic you play, the more fun !

[.Ix]

IMarques, neither chord nor Entity are as narrow as you think. Chord rarely costs more than two land taps in this deck (or any deck designed to support it) and it is usually a toolbox card like Zenith. Mirror Entity needs just 4 dudes and a cradle, about the same things you'd need to have a lethal NO, and it will never 2-for-1 you if it gets countered. I dont see why you need to untap with it at all as long as you have mana for it. Also, it enables a bunch of infinites with symbiote.

The deck is definitely slower, but that doesn't matter against combo or terminus. I will need to test against Delver decks to see if the matchup gets worse. The sideboard Chalices should be huge against Delver.

[Lemnear]

You argue for Chord as if this deck casually has 4-6 mana available at instant speed to react and fetch stuff, acting as is keeping crestures in play isn't the FUCKING CORE PROBLEM AGAINST MIRACLES.

You guys lost me, if your arguments root on "Miracles will never sweep my board so I can durdle with Chord, Hivemaster and Fauna", "Combo sure won't kill me before my own turn 3 or 4" or "slower games are more fun".

Arguing with better topdecks is pretty ballsy if I look at Fauna, Hivemaster, Birchlores, Vengevine and stuff which you can draw into right after a Terminus and do more or less nothing or are uncastable due to 4cmc and especially right after I argued to cut Birchlores and stuff to have better topdecks which aren't 1cmc 1/1s

[Echelon]

@the Vengevine/Chord crew: I say enjoy your testing, I wish you the best of luck. I'll be happy to hear from you when you manage to win anything major.

Until then, I won't be taking part in this discussion any further.

[IMarques]

You argue for Chord as if this deck casually has 4-6 mana available at instant speed to react and fetch stuff, acting as is keeping crestures in play isn't the FUCKING CORE PROBLEM AGAINST MIRACLES.

You guys lost me, if your arguments root on "Miracles will never sweep my board so I can durdle with Chord, Hivemaster and Fauna", "Combo sure won't kill me before my own turn 3 or 4" or "slower games are more fun".

Arguing with better topdecks is pretty ballsy if I look at Fauna, Hivemaster, Birchlores, Vengevine and stuff which you can draw into right after a Terminus and do more or less nothing or are uncastable due to 4cmc and especially right after I argued to cut Birchlores and stuff to have better topdecks which aren't 1cmc 1/1s

I was going to write a more diplomatic version of this, but Lemnear as usual is on point. This might work well against bad Miracles players, but against people that know what they're doing I have a hard time thinking that you would stick Fauna/Vengevine, etc. for long past the first Terminus. If you had some way to sacrifice your dudes in response, I could see something happening, which is why I liked Evolutionary Leap (slow as it is).

I'm also relatively sure that this list gives up a ton of percentage to delver, which is otherwise a great match-up, because you no longer have any oops I win spells. I think going forward there are some elements of this list that might pass muster, but I think we need to think hard about how/when a Vengevine and friends sideboard could solve the Miracles problem. It also leaves the combo match as a wide open question, though, since going slower is not really helpful and I am skeptical if this Iona plan is anything more than a cute trick. It just doesn't seem consistent and is easy to play around.

[Ralf]

IMarques, neither chord nor Entity are as narrow as you think. Chord rarely costs more than two land taps in this deck (or any deck designed to support it) and it is usually a toolbox card like Zenith. Mirror Entity needs just 4 dudes and a cradle, about the same things you'd need to have a lethal NO, and it will never 2-for-1 you if it gets countered. I dont see why you need to untap with it at all as long as you have mana for it. Also, it enables a bunch of infinites with symbiote.

The deck is definitely slower, but that doesn't matter against combo or terminus. I will need to test against Delver decks to see if the matchup gets worse. The sideboard Chalices should be huge against Delver.

We don't even side in chalice against tempo, but you can definitely try. I have aforementioned some sideboard tables that can be used for most archetype.
Resolving a Selvala will most likely be game as she can gain you a lot of life and draw you many cards that are just plain better that the ones the tempo player has access too.
G2 is far more interesting as they have access to some sweepers.

[Ralf]

IMarques, neither chord nor Entity are as narrow as you think. Chord rarely costs more than two land taps in this deck (or any deck designed to support it) and it is usually a toolbox card like Zenith. Mirror Entity needs just 4 dudes and a cradle, about the same things you'd need to have a lethal NO, and it will never 2-for-1 you if it gets countered. I dont see why you need to untap with it at all as long as you have mana for it. Also, it enables a bunch of infinites with symbiote.

The deck is definitely slower, but that doesn't matter against combo or terminus. I will need to test against Delver decks to see if the matchup gets worse. The sideboard Chalices should be huge against Delver.

We don't even side in chalice against tempo, but you can definitely try. I have aforementioned some sideboard tables that can be used for most archetype.
Resolving a Selvala (against tempo with reach) will most likely be game as she can gain you a lot of life and draw you many cards that are just plain better that the ones the tempo player has access too.
G2 is far more interesting as they have access to some sweepers.

[Lemnear]

We don't even side in chalice against tempo, but you can definitely try. I have aforementioned some sideboard tables that can be used for most archetype.
Resolving a Selvala will most likely be game as she can gain you a lot of life and draw you many cards that are just plain better that the ones the tempo player has access too.
G2 is far more interesting as they have access to some sweepers.

If lifegain would do anything, we would have played these two for years, but unlike you, I don't assume my opponents are all idiots pointing their Lightning Bolts and Forked Bolts to my face rather than at my board while attacking with Delver and friends.

[.Ix]

IMarques, i agree the Iona plan seems unlikely to be consistent, but the chalice plan as well as choke+teeg+safekeeper in conjuction might be good enough. This is definitely a weird list and it probably doesn't belong in this thread. I'm happy to give up a ton of percentage against delver though, (if that assumption is even true) because nobody plays delver here. Weird, I know.

[HdH_Cthulhu]

Maybe we should play them :P Gaining life is underrated!

[Lemnear]

IMarques, i agree the Iona plan seems unlikely to be consistent, but the chalice plan as well as choke+teeg+safekeeper in conjuction might be good enough. This is definitely a weird list and it probably doesn't belong in this thread. I'm happy to give up a ton of percentage against delver though, (if that assumption is even true) because nobody plays delver here. Weird, I know.

What does this imply? Your local area has surprisingly no Delver variants (completely different: GP Lille), so it's fine to promote lists which give up this matchup without the context of this local anomaly?

So far there was no talk about these lists in anomalous environment only, but was undestood as a general proposal for the average unknown metagame.

[blind]

If lifegain would do anything

Funny when you say Scavenging Ooze is probably the best card Vs Delver Deck.

What does this imply? Your local area has surprisingly no Delver variants (completely different: GP Lille), so it's fine to promote lists which give up this matchup without the context of this local anomaly?

He has build this decklist for win Vs Miracle, Grixis and Omnishow. Please read.

[Zombie]

Funny when you say Scavenging Ooze is probably the best card Vs Delver Deck.

Lifegain is good when it is in such large amounts that it can't be overcome, or the lifegain card does something else. Ooze's main function is that it dominates the board vs. Delver, RUG especially. The lifegain just buys it time to do its thing.

[Lemnear]

Funny when you say Scavenging Ooze is probably the best card Vs Delver Deck.

Please show me where I said this. Putting words in my mouth will really improve the discussion /sarcasm

Ooze suffers from a similar problem like the Wellwisher: It eats a Lightning Bolt/Forked Bolt/Golgari Charm/Zealous Persecution/Electrickery/etc. before it grows out of the range of removal.

He has build this decklist for win Vs Miracle, Grixis and Omnishow. Please read.

Except that there is a big question mark about Miracles and OmniTell and the mechanics that he implied would trump both decks like hoping to assemble Chalice + Cavern naturally by turn 2

Edit: i have troubles to see why Caverns plus Chalice is better than Canonist or Thalia if you are already runnin white

[uncletiggy]

Was there any discussion on shaman of the pack? Seems good with symbiote for situations involving glacial chasm or moat maybe too situational but those two cards pushed me away from the deck after three losses to them in one open pre sage printing.