[Primer] Elves!

[cheerios]

Do you guys think playing with 2 jitte's is overkill? I wanna try jitte but not sure if just 1 is enough. My meta is full of eldrazi, DNT, and punishing fire decks.

cheers

[mistercakes]

you should be able to beat death and taxes without needing jitte (although i can see how it can help). vs eldrazi their main way of beating you will be chalice, so you should just have a maindeck reclamation sage(s). punishing fire decks? how are these able to race you? i'd recommend just maximizing value on your glimpses and using your bounce elves wisely. after sb you'll have access to surgical extractions which should help this a bit.

you can also try a leovold as you'll draw a ton of cards in this kind of matchup.

[Darklingske]

If by Punishing Fire decks, he means Lands, I can see the difficulty with beating them. Maybe it's just my playgroup, but every time I play against Lands, he always seems to have the T2 Marit. What is the best way of beating them G2? I think it's Surgical, but if they have the combo in hand, then things get difficult. Am I doing things wrong or am I just very unlucky?

[catmint]

Did not play the matchup a ton, but don't underestimate the variance. In a different universe your friends are probably complaining why you seem to always Hoof them in turn 2/3.

We goldfish faster but they have better means of disrupting us.
Crop Roation - Tabernacle, Chasm Lock, Punishing Fire/Seismic Assault for the long game - Chalice Post Board

If you want to tune against them I guess Blood Moon is best, but that is overall a weaker slot for other decks.
Pithing Needle and Surgical Extraction are overall good cards. And of course Decays for Chalice and other stuff.

[Julian23]

Just Top8'ed the Legacy Challenge on Magic Online with this:

2-0 UR Delver
2-0 Shardless(?)
1-2 Grixis
2-0 Grixis
2-1 Painter
2-0 Grixis
2-0 Aluren
Quarters: 0-2 vs Miracles. Should have been on the play, but MTGO randomly put me on the draw. So frustrating.

[Curby]

@Julian: You seem to flip back and forth between Chaos and NO builds. Is each of these choices intended for the expected meta of the given event or are you honestly pitting both against each other and choosing somewhat randomly to give both of them time?

[cheerios]

I was pointing out to lands and aggro loam as the punishing fire decks.

I played in 2 local weekly tournaments this week and faced a ton of chalice and punishing fire decks. I managed to win game 1 against lands by hoofing them for just 10 damage on turn 2 and then continued to beat face with hoof before he lands a chasm. Managed to draw out game 2 thanks to surgical on wasteland and on rifstone portal preventing the thespian stage activation. I sideboard lightly against lands and try to combo ASAP usually.

I managed to win a round against aggro loam thanks to leovold shutting down his sylvan library and providing pseudo protection. I faced the same dude on the weekend tournament and he managed to turn 2 teeg with punishing fire me on games 1 and 2.

I'm still unsure on Leovold's effectiveness. I might add the jitte(s) since I've been seeing a surge on heretic cathar (white eldrazi and dnt) on my local meta. I'm also considering adding back the NO pro package or just jitte.

Cheers

[abombdiggity]

Just Top8'ed the Legacy Challenge on Magic Online with this:

2-0 UR Delver
2-0 Shardless(?)
1-2 Grixis
2-0 Grixis
2-1 Painter
2-0 Grixis
2-0 Aluren

Solid! I started out great, beating Sneak and Show and Miracles before losing twice to shardless, of all things- ended both matches with hands packed with glimpses but never drew the decays I needed to get out from underneath a leovold.

I've been having a bit of trouble getting around shardless, especially on the draw- what's everyone's thoughts on how we sideboard in the matchup? I find myself bringing in a couple decay, but that's about it. Nobody plays it locally, so I think I'm trying to hedge too much against older lists (ie meddling mage SB, Grafdiggers cage, etc)- is this a matchup jitte shines in?

[TGCRequiem]

There always needs to be consideration of the meta you're competing against when you're comparing cards. If the "main meta" is MTGO leagues that's quite a bit different than most FNM's or local playgroups. I have a lot of positive experience with Jitte myself because my local playgroup right now is (Burn, Burn, D&T, Affinity, Goblins, Reanimator, Shardless). So it is pretty good in 5 of the 7 matchups. I have no reason to run Nissa in that playgroup, though I often match my paper deck to my online version just to get a feel for how I would side with that configuration etc.

When I was able to put together the T16 at the Legacy Classic in SCG Columbus I ran into Elves, D&T, Grixis Delver, and a Maverick style list Jitte would have been good in vs 2 Eldrazi and a Turbo Depths it wouldn't have been. Also that T16 had FIVE Elves list. I don't know if that was a local Columbus meta thing or what.

The thing is I don't travel to high level events frequently. I have two young children (5 & 1.5 yrs) and so my buddies and I who are mostly in similar positions go to 2 GP or SCG opens a year. I go to 1 FNM a month which is 90% Modern since our local store doesn't consistently fire Legacy and I have to pick the week I go in advance.

I do play quite a bit on MTGO which feeds my competitiveness. If I look at the top page of Legacy decks (top 72% of the meta), from mtfgoldfish (heavily weighted towards online meta), I find Jitte looks Actively good against 30% of the meta, where Nissa looks Actively good against about 31% if the meta and Leovold looks Actively good against maybe 43% of the lists. Each of these cards shares a good 20%+ of overlap in terms of the matchups they are actively good in.

So Leovold offers the most but also asks for the most from a mana fixing perspective. In some of the matchups, Storm for example, you cannot reliably count on having the mana to get him in the game on time even through GSZ. So while it would be HIGHLY effective in the matchup it is probably terribly inefficient. In other matchups, Delver for example the mix of mana denial, removal and tempo beats again likely give you a narrow window that you could efficiently make use of him. While good versus Miracles it doesn't outright stop opponent from Topping into Terminus on your turn.

Nissa offers a similar issue. She costs the most mana and again several matchups will be trying to beat you on tempo with mana denial and removal before you can make efficient use of her. Potentially the best against Miracles if you can get her out early though and we all know how great percentage points are there.

Jitte is easy to cast and we almost always have bodies to make use of it, however it is the least effective of the three versus Miracles. Essentially this card is the most efficient of the three cards in all of the overlap matchups, many of which are close matchups, but it has the cost of being completely useless in some of our worst matchups.

My point of all this is when you ask if Jitte is worth it when you could have Nissa or Leovold, it's a matter of valuing the efficiency and effectiveness of the cards versus the metagame you expect to see. Then for each of these we are comparing them against what we remove for them. Is it the 4th NO or a Quirion Ranger which may be super efficient though lacks in the high end power of these 3 cards in the matchups we most need it etc. I personally am playing with all 3 in the 75 right now to test and don't have the perfect answer but I hope this helps make the question be thought of along other angles.

Sorry if I made errors in writing, did this over a long stretch on phone while playing Legos with 1.5 yrs old. Also I don't claim everything I said is 100% accurate but I think it gets 95% of the way to the point.

[Prdgychild]

Just Top8'ed the Legacy Challenge on Magic Online with this:

2-0 UR Delver
2-0 Shardless(?)
1-2 Grixis
2-0 Grixis
2-1 Painter
2-0 Grixis
2-0 Aluren
Quarters: 0-2 vs Miracles. Should have been on the play, but MTGO randomly put me on the draw. So frustrating.

How did nissa perform? What if any matches did you bRing her in for?

[blind]

Julian, now you are test (a few) Nissa, what is your feedback? Garruk Vs Nissa, what do you choose?

I have the feeling, Nissa is just a recent trend after GP Chiba. Yeah I think it's very good Vs Miracle (and you can instant kill Jace and we love that) but a 5ccm card is a real cost. Vs any other deck do you want really Nissa? Vs Garruck? Vs WRP? :)

I come back with Elves in 2017, I left my throne so long time :p

[JankyDurdles]

Has anyone experimented with Benefactor's Draught?

I'm very new to this deck, but it seems like a fitting card for an all-in combo Elves deck. I'm thinking of picking up a few copies and testing them.

[Echelon]

Has anyone experimented with Benefactor's Draught?

I'm very new to this deck, but it seems like a fitting card for an all-in combo Elves deck. I'm thinking of picking up a few copies and testing them.

Why..? I mean, the deck works just fine on Nettle Sentinel, Quirion Ranger and Wirewood Symbiote. Draught costs twice as much as any of those while doing nothing w/ an empty board and not being an elf (or creature at all).

And what cards would you take out of the list to accomodate them..?

[catmint]

Did not know this card existed, but which problem are you trying to solve and against which matchup?
If we face a lot of blockers like against shardles and cannot go off but want to push a couple of damage through and gain an advantage?

If I would look for such an effect (which I don't think is necessary) I would use caller of the claw as you can also use him in other situations like in anticipation of a non Terminus sweeper.

I am a fan in looking into new tech and trying out stuff but don't see the point yet.

[JankyDurdles]

The blockers clause isn't interesting, I agree and there's no specific matchup this helps with, but untapping a team of elves seems very powerful. Reminds me of high tide/turnabout.

When you're comboing off and hit a dead end, Draught becomes a Timewarp for 2 mana. But perhaps this is too narrow and win-more.

[Echelon]

When you're comboing off and hit a dead end, Draught becomes a Timewarp for 2 mana. But perhaps this is too narrow and win-more.

You usually hit a dead end b/c you don't draw into enough creatures to continue the Glimpse chain, not b/c you don't have mana or untapped creatures.

[Lemnear]

I would look on the card if it reads:

"Untap all creatures you control. Draw a card for each creature you untapped this way"

[mistercakes]

could be worth testing a single slot in a chaos elves build as this deck is attacking over several turns more frequently than NO build. then if it sucks we can cross that off the list.

[catmint]

I would look on the card if it reads:

"Untap all creatures you control. Draw a card for each creature you untapped this way"

Sounds nice...
How much more mana would you pay for that effect?
How much more for instant speed? :)

[Julian23]

I'd play it if it was for just . At I'm already not so sure anymore. Would require a pretty specific build to be good in. But I guess it would still be quite good as a 2-of. Maybe 4-of if it's a dedicated all-in combo build with Summoner's Pact.

I don't see too much of a difference between Instant and Sorcery speed with this.