[Primer] Elves!

[Tormod]

Mini NO?

Apparently theres a buy out on Allosaurus Rider to power out Griselbrand

Seems bad

[snorlaxcom]

Mini NO?

Sure, for modern, but doesn't legacy already have GSZ and NO competing for deck space? It's a worse version of both cards lol.

[dte]

I never thought I was going to read it in my life.

I disagree 100 % of that and I think do not need many arguments for it.

You do need arguments. I have a question thought, did you try to play miracle (vs elf and other decks)?

[square_two]

Sure, for modern, but doesn't legacy already have GSZ and NO competing for deck space? It's a worse version of both cards lol.

I would say it is a different version of both cards. Viable in the right setting - the lack of color restriction is huge. Probably not here since there is nothing to connect it to Craterhoof, and GSZ is cheaper for our little green guys. Nic fit though...

[AznSeal]

I want to continue the bad cards discussion. Natural Order seems to not be good for this meta because 1) it only helps our already good matchups 2) it's bad against miracles, delver, or any deck that threatens to 2-for-1 us and 3) it's too slow for storm

I think Natural Order, in a vacuum, is a stronger card than Chord of Calling. But would adding Chord over NO as a meta-dependent card work? It allows us to tutor for Gaddock or other bullets. Hell, we can even play Sylvan Messenger as card advantage to recover from terminus.

[Diogo37]

You do need arguments. I have a question thought, did you try to play miracle (vs elf and other decks)?

Counter top is terrible
Terminus is terrible (even if not played all hand)
Natural Order is very bad against

Caos elves is good though

I played miracles for a short time , was training for a good tournament in Brazil but I realized that would not have time to be an average player with the deck and went back to playing with elves.

Play with the deck has a 2 years and always had horrible games against , no matter what line to take and that's why I played Chaos Elves for a while, but I think neither is well positioned in the Brazilian goal when.

Sorry for my english.

[dte]

Counter top is terrible
Terminus is terrible (even if not played all hand)
Natural Order is very bad against

Caos elves is good though

I believe the last sentence of yours in my quote almost says it all. I will detail on the three cards you mentioned, and why I do not think that miracle is globally a bad MU, but rather is dependent of which lists are played on both sides.

Counter-top: The dominating control deck is miracle, and the dominating aggro deck is Eldrazi.
Both decks have success because they generate an enormous virtual CA via hating 1cc spells via CB-top and CotV.
We have to be ready for that. And we can: MD we have GSZ, Sage and cavern; and can have decay and/or play more spells at more than 1cc.
Full sets of nettle and/or heritage are also very bad here.

Terminus: if you do not have to worry about CB, you can play a slow game, and do not have to overextend into it. If I had to make a list of the cards I fear in the miracle MU, I would not have pointed to counterbalance or terminus, but to monastery mentor (MD) and staticaster (SB). Both are answered by decay, which is why playing the full set in SB and have cavern (to avoid to have our decay overloaded by targets) is important.

NO: the easy answer is to not play it, or only 1 copy, if you expect a lot of miracles in your meta. Because yes, NO is not a great card against them, at all.

We have our share of good cards against them (Sylvan library is an excellent card in the MU, and so are GSZ, visio and symbiote, CoS, DRS, Ooze), and they have their share of bad cards against us. In my opinion, it all comes down to what you expect to see, and then you twist the deck to beat it. So if miracle/Eldrazi is very represented in your meta, do not play too many nettle or heritage, but rather cards which break or do not care about their locks.
And you hope that they do not play too many monastery mentors. What you really want to see are clique and venser. A list like Joe Losset's one (maybe not in his hands) is something you can be really happy to face all day with elves: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12681&d=273541

Btw, I think your English is fine, at least for this forum's standards :)

[chewemy]

Choas elves lost in the semi of BOM Starsbourg against miracles. Game 2, he tried to cast 2 armarguedon after a resolved garruk

list : Chaos elves

[lowpass]

If anyone's interested in watching:

vs Opposition

vs Miracles

[dte]

Armageddon is quite a sweet idea.
I ill try that, and would love to read the Bartl's feedback.

[Noctalor]

The game against Miracles tells me that no matter what version we play, we cant really beat that deck if played correctly.

Do you actually think that we can beat Miracles by grinding it?
In my opinion the slow grind gameplan is no longer working, mentor punishes it incredibly hard, casting random bombs such as garruck and armageddons could be a plan, but seems a bit too narrow, having better bombs is kinda impossible against miracle anyway, and our problem is mainly getting tempo-ed out of the game by a terminus into a quick jace/mentor, once that happens nothing we can do is enough to stay relevant in my experience.

This leads me to think that Order Elves is still better given how the deck has a much better MU against eldrazi, punishing/land decks and all combo losing not that much against delvers and shardless.

[Lemnear]

The game against Miracles tells me that no matter what version we play, we cant really beat that deck if played correctly.

This leads me to think that Order Elves is still better given how the deck has a much better MU against eldrazi, punishing/land decks and all combo losing not that much against delvers and shardless.

Strange conclusion from the miracles matchup displayed. He got overwhelmed by the cardadvantage twice because of his plays/sideboarding. I am also puzzled how your last sentence should be even close to true.

[Noctalor]

Strange conclusion from the miracles matchup displayed. He got overwhelmed by the cardadvantage twice because of his plays/sideboarding. I am also puzzled how your last sentence should be even close to true.

He lost both games getting Terminus-ed into a bomb, I haven't saw a single moment where the game was by far in the hands of the Elves player, the only chance he had was the craterhoof attack that got the miracle pilot down to 1, he probably had to tap at least one elf to hardcast/zenith into it, so if he had had an order instead he would have won that game1 most likely.

Well, tell me how the combo mu get worse by having order into ruric thar / order into lethal, how eldrazi get worse by having order into proggy/elderscale, how lands and BGx get worse by having order into progenitus, there is no real reason to state that order is not extremely good against any deck that has no counterspell.

[Lemnear]

He lost both games getting Terminus-ed into a bomb, I haven't saw a single moment where the game was by far in the hands of the Elves player, the only chance he had was the craterhoof attack that got the miracle pilot down to 1, he probably had to tap at least one elf to hardcast/zenith into it, so if he had had an order instead he would have won that game1 most likely.

just to clear up the rules of discussion: You point me to a single situation he MAY have won IF he had RUN & DRAW Natural Order, so you conclude that the Natural Order build is better against Miracles ALL THE TIME IN EVERY SITUATION? I hope you don't or I dig up videos where the NO->Hoof was countered/uncastable/foiled/etc.

The way I see it, he overextended twice right into Terminus with no option to make up for potential losses to the miracle spell. There is zero need to dump your hand on the field if you are already drop wolf tokens on the field to apply pressure. Next, he didn't get anything on the board to fight back Jace & Snapcaster, because of the pointless Armageddon and Abrupt Decay @ counterbalance (rather than Snapcaster) which did nothing to stop Johannes from shredding his Garruk and taking over the board and game, promptly finding CB #2 for the lockout.

Again: The problems here were threefold. Overextending, no cardadvantage, bad boarding. Would have been good if the Armageddon/Decay would have besn creatures like R.Sage, which would have dealt with the Counterbalance AND Jace/Snapcaster, but yeah ... hivemind feat fancy bullshit like Armageddon.

Well, tell me how the combo mu get worse by having order into ruric thar / order into lethal, how eldrazi get worse by having order into proggy/elderscale, how lands and BGx get worse by having order into progenitus, there is no real reason to state that order is not extremely good against any deck that has no counterspell.

You are aware that GSZ->Teeg is also available and a mana cheaper than the NO into uncastable fatty plan? Do you think combo has no answers to that or can combo off before you can pull that off? Does Eldrazi suddenly play no more Chalice so you can actually drop your 1cc elves to ramp into NO? Do you miss the fact that Lands can drop a 20/20 against your 10/10 with intent?

What kind of non-combo, non-counterspell deck do you have in mind that has a mentionable metagame presence to make NO worthwhile?

[Noctalor]

just to clear up the rules of discussion: You point me to a single situation he MAY have won IF he had RUN & DRAW Natural Order, so you conclude that the Natural Order build is better against Miracles ALL THE TIME IN EVERY SITUATION? I hope you don't or I dig up videos where the NO->Hoof was countered/uncastable/foiled/etc.

No, of course is anecdotal evidence right there, but that was an instance where having burst could have helped him.
I do think that Order is not that bad in G1 against miracles, in most games trying to go for pressure helps more than sitting with 2 1/1 trying to do chip damage.
What you get playing caos elves instead of NO is:
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Shaman of the Pack
2 Abrupt Decay

Ooze tend to not have enough impact in this mu to deserve a zenith, is pretty decent if drawn, Gaddock is reasonably good, but having no moms probably menans that we have to hold him playing around snapcaster, and the endless flow of plowshares and snapcasters is always there, our gaddock is easily worse than maverik's, shaman could add the burst needed to end a grindy game it usually is a decent late game finisher, but we usually tent to have little to no board in the endgame most of the times so it could fail aswell, the 2 decays are pretty good here, but in my experience our problem is mainly terminus, we can deal with counterbalance much better anyway.


So lets talk about those games, in the first one he went for a burst kill, he was i damage short but putting miracles to 1 is still pretty decent, he likely had craterhoof in hand so im pretty sure his best line was the one he took, waiting would have lost to terminus most likely, not overextending that game would have meant do nothing waiting for a topdeck, being 1 short is also a bit unlucky but after he got terminus-ed the game was over.
We havent seen the full game so we cant really tell if he ever miss a point of damage and stuff like that, lets talk about the second game.

The way I see it, he overextended twice right into Terminus with no option to make up for potential losses to the miracle spell. There is zero need to dump your hand on the field if you are already drop wolf tokens on the field to apply pressure.

This is the first terminus, and deathrite was casted before garruk

And this the second


Zero creatures in the first one and two in the latter, one of which is a visionary.
I think that calling that overestending is a strech, he chould have saved a birchlore at best, and he couldnt know the amount of pressure he needed in advance, the second terminus was also forced in combat, so he was able to put into play a wolf right after.

The game ends with the plow snap plow right after and the jace unchecked.
If there is a mistake to point out it was the decay on cb while sitting on a cavern, having it could have done good, but id say that the game was pretty much over when johannes untapped with a jace like 80% of the times

Again: The problems here were threefold. Overextending, no cardadvantage, bad boarding. Would have been good if the Armageddon/Decay would have besn creatures like R.Sage, which would have dealt with the Counterbalance AND Jace/Snapcaster, but yeah ... hivemind feat fancy bullshit like Armageddon.

Card advantage can be obtained in those ways:
Visionary getting a trade
Visionary + simbio
Packmaster
Glimpse
He didnt drawn any combination able to put him ahead in that game, he could have kept the second zenith instead of fetching a deathrite, but I think that line was much better, getting the garruk online was the only thing that kept him relevant for a while

You are aware that GSZ->Teeg is also available and a mana cheaper than the NO into uncastable fatty plan?

I do, but you sure know that gaddock is a joke for storm to deal with, that having no order most likely slows down our goldfish and we cant sit on a decay-able hatebear for long, arguing that zenith into gaddock is even on the same planet as order a ruric thar is honestly just laughtable, geddock isnt even a card against omnitell, is blank against storm until they want to go off.
Also if you think ruric thar is far from uncastable, 6 mana is not much, and can be kept vs show and tell.

Do you think combo has no answers to that or can combo off before you can pull that off?

Ruric + disruption easily wins postboard games vs combo, storm is also cutting on chain of vapors and they insta scoop to it if they dont have the solution already in hand, gaddock is a nice grizzly bear that will get a decay while you beat them with a bunch of creatures unless you draw your fuel, and having no orders cuts it in half

Does Eldrazi suddenly play no more Chalice so you can actually drop your 1cc elves to ramp into NO?

You have to not have tested the mu at all, order elves is easily able to generate a board that leads to a lethal order even through a chalice, yesterday i played an eldrazi and beast a turn 1 chalice ino turn 2 knot into turn 3 chalice on 2 into turn 4 endbringer, i would love to se no order elves play that game for example

Do you miss the fact that Lands can drop a 20/20 against your 10/10 with intent?

You dont really lose to lands getting a fast combo, the main problem is being locked by an early tabernacle/chasm/punishing, you cant do much about chasm anyway, but order beats both tabernacle and punishing, and you cant do much anyway if they get a super fast marit lage, unless you are able to go off faster and again you are cutthing half your business...

What kind of non-combo, non-counterspell deck do you have in mind that has a mentionable metagame presence to make NO worthwhile?

Eldrazi, Lands, Aggro Loam, Jund, Death and taxes, Painters, there are other non blue decks relevant right now?

[Zombie]

I do, but you sure know that gaddock is a joke for storm to deal with, that having no order most likely slows down our goldfish and we cant sit on a decay-able hatebear for long, arguing that zenith into gaddock is even on the same planet as order a ruric thar is honestly just laughtable, geddock isnt even a card against omnitell, is blank against storm until they want to go off.
Also if you think ruric thar is far from uncastable, 6 mana is not much, and can be kept vs show and tell.

Ruric + disruption easily wins postboard games vs combo, storm is also cutting on chain of vapors and they insta scoop to it if they dont have the solution already in hand, gaddock is a nice grizzly bear that will get a decay while you beat them with a bunch of creatures unless you draw your fuel, and having no orders cuts it in half

The big thing about Teeg is that he flat out ends Game 1 against ANT. That's the biggest hurdle - postboard we have beaters and discard and maybe a prison piece or two which you can play with: Teeg plays into that plan just fine G2/G3 where he doesn't have to carry the whole show alone.

But if you're on the NO=>Ruric plan G1, you're basically racing a deck that's just as fast as yours but plays maindeck disruption. ANT can just discard the NO to buy more time for them than playing the Duress costs them. And just as in the Elves mirror, who draws the nuts wins. Not like we have a lot of say against them going off on T3. Teeg increases Elves' fundamental turn a lot and it's easier to play out Glimpses into GSZ@2 than NO, which further adds to the consistent early kills the deck needs to compete with Storm.

The S&T/Reanimator blindspot is very real, though. But Teeg is way, way better vs. Storm/Belcher and incidentally the mirror.


That said, I'm not super worried about those MUs - right now I have nightmares about the new Thalia and want maindeck removal. Good ol' Proggy will probably become more valuable again with that.

[Zombie]

Eldrazi, Lands, Aggro Loam, Jund, Death and taxes, Painters, there are other non blue decks relevant right now?

If I remember people's reports correctly, Chaos Elves has a better Lands matchup than the Order Elves.

[jjkbb2005]

I am also not a big fan of NO into Ruric Thar, way too slow most of the time, and as stated by Zombie ANT will easily strip the NO in your hand before you are able to cast it. (Gaddock *Teeg has been excellent for me against ANT as well POST-sideboard and forces ANT to board in abrupt decay to take care of it.)

As for the Chaos Elves v. NO Elves, I find NO Elves to be much stronger in terms of consistency and its ability to prey on fair decks. I think a lot of Chaos Elves' success can be attribbuted to the fact that it still remains a somewhat unknown entity at the moment which allows it to steal games. The power of NO simply put wins games and has allowed me and I'm sure other pilots to finish off opponents in games they had no business winning.

[Lemnear]

No, of course is anecdotal evidence right there, but that was an instance where having burst could have helped him.
I do think that Order is not that bad in G1 against miracles, in most games trying to go for pressure helps more than sitting with 2 1/1 trying to do chip damage.
What you get playing caos elves instead of NO is:
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Shaman of the Pack
2 Abrupt Decay

Ooze tend to not have enough impact in this mu to deserve a zenith, is pretty decent if drawn, Gaddock is reasonably good, but having no moms probably menans that we have to hold him playing around snapcaster, and the endless flow of plowshares and snapcasters is always there, our gaddock is easily worse than maverik's, shaman could add the burst needed to end a grindy game it usually is a decent late game finisher, but we usually tent to have little to no board in the endgame most of the times so it could fail aswell, the 2 decays are pretty good here, but in my experience our problem is mainly terminus, we can deal with counterbalance much better anyway.

Lets please not start a strawman discussion about a random setup tried for the slots free'd by cutting the NO package and pretend Shaman of the Pack is the best these slots can offer to fight Miracles, because we both know that Shaman/Ooze/Decay don't beat Terminus nor create the needed cardadvantage to made up for the inevitable Terminus.

You need to include cards which come with a clock AND create some form of cardadvantage, not the either/or nonsense we saw the video. Gaddock Teeg, R.Sage, Phyrexian Revoker and similar creatures fit the bill of creating actual or virtual Cardadvantage while also presenting a clock, so I think we should look at how these kind of cards perform against Miracles compared to NO rather than at some vanillas in this matchup like Shaman or nonsense like Armageddon. Even a jitte would have been worlds better

So lets talk about those games, in the first one he went for a burst kill, he was i damage short but putting miracles to 1 is still pretty decent, he likely had craterhoof in hand so im pretty sure his best line was the one he took, waiting would have lost to terminus most likely, not overextending that game would have meant do nothing waiting for a topdeck, being 1 short is also a bit unlucky but after he got terminus-ed the game was over.
We havent seen the full game so we cant really tell if he ever miss a point of damage and stuff like that, lets talk about the second game.

Agree

This is the first terminus, and deathrite was casted before garruk

And this the second


Zero creatures in the first one and two in the latter, one of which is a visionary.
I think that calling that overestending is a strech, he chould have saved a birchlore at best, and he couldnt know the amount of pressure he needed in advance, the second terminus was also forced in combat, so he was able to put into play a wolf right after.

Except he essentially binned a Symbiote, a Decay and an Armageddon in the meantime without getting any value out of the cards. He also had the chance to return the DRS to rebuild in case a terminus can handle the 2+ wolves, but was greedy with the Symbiote AND the DRS

The game ends with the plow snap plow right after and the jace unchecked.
If there is a mistake to point out it was the decay on cb while sitting on a cavern, having it could have done good, but id say that the game was pretty much over when johannes untapped with a jace like 80% of the times

The issue occured becauce he had no creatures left to rebuild the board after Jace + Snapcaster to back up the Garruk. He didn't even saw the need to save a fetch for Dryad Arbor but grabbed the second Bayou immediately and without reason.

With so many mistakes, having to read his own Garruk and wasted cards for yolo, its no wonder he lost.

Card advantage can be obtained in those ways:
Visionary getting a trade
Visionary + simbio
Packmaster
Glimpse
He didnt drawn any combination able to put him ahead in that game, he could have kept the second zenith instead of fetching a deathrite, but I think that line was much better, getting the garruk online was the only thing that kept him relevant for a while

Misses R.Sage, just like many of possible options we haven't even talked about. If Julian is so impressed about Jitte, I wonder why we don't also take a look at the Mirrodin swords like Fire&Ice, Light&Shadow and Body&Mind.

I do, but you sure know that gaddock is a joke for storm to deal with, that having no order most likely slows down our goldfish and we cant sit on a decay-able hatebear for long, arguing that zenith into gaddock is even on the same planet as order a ruric thar is honestly just laughtable, geddock isnt even a card against omnitell, is blank against storm until they want to go off.
Also if you think ruric thar is far from uncastable, 6 mana is not much, and can be kept vs show and tell.

Chain of Vapor is a card. Which storm player boards decays against elves?

Ruric + disruption easily wins postboard games vs combo, storm is also cutting on chain of vapors and they insta scoop to it if they dont have the solution already in hand, gaddock is a nice grizzly bear that will get a decay while you beat them with a bunch of creatures unless you draw your fuel, and having no orders cuts it in half

Don't tell me what storm plays and boards. You need a perfect hand to drop NO into Ruric turn 2 as turn 3 can be too slow; Storm plays discard to foil that plan; they have plenty of time to find a CoV with the cantrips unless one opts to win with Ad Nauseam lol

You have to not have tested the mu at all, order elves is easily able to generate a board that leads to a lethal order even through a chalice, yesterday i played an eldrazi and beast a turn 1 chalice ino turn 2 knot into turn 3 chalice on 2 into turn 4 endbringer, i would love to se no order elves play that game for example :eyebrow:

You mean like shredding the Chalice/Thorn/Jitte bullshit with multiple sages in the deck for cardadvantage and infinite chumpblock if paired with Symbiote?

You dont really lose to lands getting a fast combo, the main problem is being locked by an early tabernacle/chasm/punishing, you cant do much about chasm anyway, but order beats both tabernacle and punishing, and you cant do much anyway if they get a super fast marit lage, unless you are able to go off faster and again you are cutthing half your business...

Funny that you meantion stuff like Ooze against Miracles, but opt to not mention the graveyard-hate when talking about Lands.dec. Without doing into details about whats possible (btw DRS beats Chasm), realize that cutting NO opens a shitload of slots in the 75 to include specific countermeasures too

Eldrazi, Lands, Aggro Loam, Jund, Death and taxes, Painters, there are other non blue decks relevant right now?

Please .... Jund is currently 1,33% and Painter 0,93% of the metagame according to mtgTop8 and D&T just gets this:

[Lemnear]

Gaddock Teeg has been excellent for me against ANT as well POST-sideboard and forces ANT to board in abrupt decay to take care of it.