[Primer] Elves!

[catmint]

Some Jaws will drop when you do that. :) But getting your Cradle sworded is less fun.

I played with the ultimate token a number of games and it was just beautiful.
1 mana more than Garruk is also relevant of course - especially in post sweeper situations, but the much more powerful effects are worth it imo.

[dte]

Of course its a "solved" deck. There are mere 2 variants (No or no NO) like in storm. The rest are just switched flexslots for metagaming

I fully disagree on that.

On the most basic level: you can play any number of NOs. When playing 3 or 4, it is better to add a second target MD as well (2nd hoof, ruric, other).

But you can also play many variants. I have tried to play Gb, Gbr, Gwb, Gub with equal success (the only thing that really did not work is when I tried a couple of times to play 4 colors).

On the cards, I think beside GSZ, DRS, WS and EV there is no cards that I have always played as a 4-ofs (I have played sometimes only 3 glimpse). Most other cards can be trimmed down to 1 or 2 copies.

[Prdgychild]

The most fun thing to do with Nissa? Untapping Gaea's Cradle with Wirewood Symbiote or Quirion Ranger ......

Despite not being able to kill a creature the turn it comes into play and costs one mana more I wonder if attacking with a 5/5 creature is also a successful way to pressure opponets. I really like the choas list you published Julian from the 12-3 and believe that build to be optimal but I am very curious about what led to the top8 elves deck to finish so well. Lucky draws? Matchups? Elves without NO though does lose the free wins that chaos just does not get.

[Julian23]

Something I love about Nissa, even though I have only very limited-to-none testing with it: without FoW, your opponent can not safely tap out for Jace, not even on an empty board as long as we have the mana to cast Nissa.

[catmint]

The human mind is a mystery.
Nissa is suggested and ignored/rejected.
After a GP top8 suddenly "attacking for 5 is pressure", "killing jace is nice", "untapping cradle" and "drawig cards" is fun.

What if the top8 would not have happened. Testing it over Garruk would not be something to consider?

The point of deck discussion is to be ahead of the curve! Sorry for lashing out, but came back after years to this great forum with so much hope...

[Julian23]

You shouldn't worry so much about what others think about crazy ideas. If I posted about every weird idea I have tested with this deck, you'd think I'm a madman as well.

Have I mentioned the utter failure that was Punishing Elves? God, that deck still haunts my dreams.

[catmint]

almost like IT Elves :)

[JankyDurdles]

Hey folks! I recently threw together a budget (As in, Cradle-less) version of Combo Elves, after pulling a 2 NO from EMA packs. Here's a list.
What would you guys recommend I improve on this? My main goal here is to focus on the combo, and use the sideboard to fight FoW and the like. I should mention this is my first entry into Legacy!
I see a lot of people running up to 4 Abrupt Decay. Against what cards is that relevant?

Also, how does this deck fight Sneak and Show? It just seems to have insanely early wins that I can't beat, not even by being faster with Cradle or discarding their stuff.

[Julian23]

Don't worry too much about Sneak Show. It's our worst matchup. Way worse than Miracles. Unless I was trapped in a local meta with a high penetration of it, I would just ignore it. But if I was, I would probably run a lot of Needles, probably Progenitus to drop with their Show and Tell and most importantly: use Surgical wisely. Sometimes you want to hit S&T, sometimes Sneak Attack, sometimes Emrakul. Hardly ever Griselbrand but there are cases. Also, if you know/sense they're going for just a random S&T'ld Griselbrand, Surgical Extracting Force helps with combo killing them.

*Shameless plug*
For a video of how to play against Sneak Show, I recommend my match in the Legacy Mediocre League against it.

[Prdgychild]

Julian, I have been an advocate of Chaos elves since I first saw it and do believe the deck to be a better overall magic deck than traditonal NO. But, and this is a big BUT, it seems like the free wins you get from NO out weighs the resilence of Chaos....

[Julian23]

Just wanted to share the fun with everyone who's not on Twitter. I just killed Miracles. On turn 2.

With a 42/42 Gaea's Cradle. #GektRekt

[Prdgychild]

Just wanted to share the fun with everyone who's not on Twitter. I just killed Miracles. On turn 2.

With a 42/42 Gaea's Cradle. #GektRekt

LMAO! Booom! Just ordered my Nissa's.

[amppyou]

Lost to dredge in the last round of my legacy weekly tonight.

I now want to find room in the sb for Thorn of Amethyst. The splash hate to dredge would be pretty good.

[catmint]

Thorn of Amethyst sounds wrong. Permanent based hate is something I am also using (and testing more slots), but Thorn can never make the cut.

My favorites
Null Rod: SD.Top, LED, Jitte, Vial
Choke
Pithing Needle: SD.Top, PW, Sneak, Dark Depths combo
City of Solitude

My thoughts are that the hate is as strong as possible against Miracles but also useful vs. other decks (combo). Currently testing a SB configuration of 1 Null Rod and 2 Choke.

Null Rod is good vs. Tendrils but not vs. Dredge as they play/activate it before Null Rod comes down. I would work with the tools we have and accept the negative matchup vs. dredge. However, if you want to play more Dredge specific hate I think more surgical is the best option.

[mistercakes]

as also a dredge player there's only a few cards to be afraid of:

grafdigger's cage (which isn't great as an elf player)
surgical extraction (you'll need to practice to know when to hit the correct card, as most inexperienced in the matchup just go for bridges or narcomoeba's immediately)
rest in peace (pretty hard to cast, but if you are running the savannah/teeg thing then you could go for this. prob want some reanimator in your meta to justify this)
leyline of the void (i could justify boarding 4 if you have around a 30% metagame of dredge & reanimator, but otherwise don't try this)
relic of progenitus (sometimes too slow, but it's fine...also bad for your deathrite shaman)
chalice of the void (if you're on the play, dropping it for 0 can slow the game down a bit. also useful vs storm (dte's suggestion)
tormod's crypt (weaker than relic, but faster)
faerie macabre (kind of a gamble, but still castable due to bayous. would be an odd way to win with an elf deck)


you can also approach it from a different perspective and run things like ensnaring bridge, peacekeeper, containment priest (not good for elf).

best of luck!

[MegaManR]

I've been wanting to test with Nissa since the spoiler. I'm finally getting around to test this coming weekend. I'll be running 2 Nissa and 1 Leovold.

Goldfishing by myself has shown that Leovold is definitely hard to cast reliably, but Nissa is sweet. I do worry that it might be a win-more type card, but having it maindeck against Miracles seems awesome to kill a Jace and then next turn, get the emblem. It's also kind of great during a glimpse chain to untap your cradle for more mana or to give it haste if you don't have enough attack ready elves. It's very versatile, especially with the -3 choice.

jjkbb2005 - you mention that -3 ability in regards to getting back sideboard cards and 1-of silver bullets. This is something that will affect decision making for sure. I'm a big fan of that.

catmint - I totally agree with you about cutting down to 6 fetches, only 1 arbor and 1 cavern and 1 Quirion Ranger. Going down to that low of a land count is rough. I also have a soft spot for Sylvan Library and Jitte, so it's REALLY hard cutting those after being on Chaos for a while, but doing horribly with it makes me want to go back to Natural Order and this new stuff. I think the low land count will be fine, but I'll see when I test this weekend. It's really hard to cut, but that's always been the case in this deck. Our slots are super tight. However, the -3 might be helpful in getting those things back if we need them, no?
To answer your question on pulse, I'm a fan if you seem to be facing lots of Pyromancers and Mentors, but it is sorcery speed and can be countered. I don't have tons of experience with it, though it is versatile.

julian, are you testing the top 8 Elves list now?

[haganbmj]

Against dredge just make lots of mana and zenith for an ooze.

There's no way I'd want to play all that extra grave hate.

[catmint]

Nissa win more?

If you drop her during combo - most of the time she is win more because if you can spare the 5 mana to untap cradle you might as well just use the 5 mana to keep comboing. But if you fizzle with 5 mana she is a nice finish that provides win options after a potential sweeper.

In the maindeck it is about increasing the threat density a bit on top of Glimpse & NO. 5 mana is not nothing so I would streamline the rest of the deck to make sure I have turn 3 Glimpse/NO/Nissa regularly. So again, not sure if adding more clunky stuff and cutting 1 drops and lands is the best approach.

If it’s about threat density in the 5 mana segment there is of course an argument to use GSZ silver bullets with higher CMC instead of Nissa, but I guess that misses the point of non creature based threat. Also I just love to GSZ for Visionary/symbiote, so I don’t find that option to be too important.

If you want to play the GP top8 list with 2 Nissa and on top of ooze another threat like Leovold at some point I would consider cutting 1 glimpse (since it is weakened a lot) before I cut a quirion, a dryad or a land.
If disrupted GSZ for 0 is an important way to get going and if 1 dryad is removed or in hand the 2nd one is golden. Quirion adds mana and I already talked about how not having a 2nd land drop loses games.

The danger is of course 1 land in play, no board and a hand with a clunky mix of glimpse, Cradle, NO, leovold, visionary, Ooze, Craterhoof, Nissa. (yes that should have been a mulligan but you get the idea of a bad starting hand on 5 or 6 cards, then disrupted by the opponent, followed by a clunky draw)

Circling back to the claim the deck is solved. I also disagree, but these are the exciting times compared to everything plays more or less the same list.
NO or Chaos and everything in between is on the table to be evaluated.

[Prdgychild]

Nissa win more?


The danger is of course 1 land in play, no board and a hand with a clunky mix of glimpse, Cradle, NO, leovold, visionary, Ooze, Craterhoof, Nissa. (yes that should have been a mulligan but you get the idea of a bad starting hand on 5 or 6 cards, then disrupted by the opponent, followed by a clunky draw)

Circling back to the claim the deck is solved. I also disagree, but these are the exciting times compared to everything plays more or less the same list.
NO or Chaos and everything in between is on the table to be evaluated.

Catmint: thank you for the depth and thought that goes into your replies. That said, I do believe you and a good portion of the elves community believes the elf deck to be overly-fragile or potentially objectifiable. The point in moving away from the tradtional combo build, i believe, is to allow for it to deal with issues mid game better. top decks become much better in these lists because you dont run the risk of top decking a lack luster card. Yes, the deck does run the risk of folding to itself maybe 2-3% more in these builds but the overall power of the deck I believe does go up.

It really is a question about pro's and con's. We cannot mitigate the risk and/or downside of running one version over the other all the time and we have to make choices based on what we believe is the best option. There is no objectively best elves deck and because of this people will cut lands/dryads dispite the very strong arguments agsint those choices to increase thier chances of other situations coming about.

[Lemnear]

Circling back to the claim the deck is solved. I also disagree, but these are the exciting times compared to everything plays more or less the same list.
NO or Chaos and everything in between is on the table to be evaluated.

I beg to pardon. About 50 cards in the maindeck are pretty much carved into stone since the printing of DRS and all what is done with the remaining slots is pure metagame adjustments, not different from ANT to GrindingStation with the core of the deck "solved". If you play NO/Hoof to combo-stomp enemy aggro or go with the grinding variants is the same question as within the storm supertype. Its still the same deck with the same fundamental plan/weaknesses, so please let us not act as if something groundbreaking happened here by adding Nissa as another non-creature element of pressure against Miracles like we tried many in the past.

In terms of Nissa herself, she can do cool tricks animating Cradle so Quirion can untap it, make Nissa potentially a free-play and generate mana beyond. We are also aware that Nissa can recycle Cradles and destroyed Nissas from your graveyard, but all these shenanaigans require you to HAVE A FIELD, which is the same problem against Miracles since years.

If your opponent is not sweeping your board, you dont NEED her to win and if your board gets swept, you are unlikely to have the mana to cast Nissa. That two states are the same people have to reconsider for running NO or leaving it in the binder. Unlike NO Nissa has the advantage of being no 2-for-1 and not getting removed by Terminus, but you pay for it with the loss of the alpha strike and paying 5 mana instead of 4. Its valid to consider her the middle ground between hoofing and grinding, but that doesnt mean that she a) alters the solved deck around her or b) gets around the problems of resolving the spell against Miracles also under the aspect of Mentor tokens blocking for ages