I think the hype is real. This presents a very real clock without relying on the Ezuri combo. Elves I believe will have a more consistent turn 3-4 kill now (drop this in a field of elves and then Shaman before/after attacks).
The deck has a gap in the 2 cmc slot. (Which makes sense since you're ramping 1 drops into 3 drops as the tribe's theme). Playable 2 drops on tribe are really dwynen's elite, elvish visonary, and devoted Druid? You could make an argument for a few others like coiling oracle but they require specific builds.
I'm not sure what it gives the deck though. I would have much preferred the activated ability not require a tap or be cheaper.
marwyn, the nurterer acts like a pseudo archdruid #5 for ramp and lets the deck go tall to survive damage based removal or combat better. Clancaller gives the deck access to archdruids pump effect and a late game sink, but is otherwise quite weak - sorta like a weak archdruid/ezuri combination? I think if the deck wanted the pump effect we turn to elvish champion, joraga warcaller, or something along those lines. I'm not sure the tutor is powerful enough at 6 mana to put this on par with the others?
It's hard to evaluate for me really. Maybe an elf beatdown deck comes around if we get enough lord effects (clancaller, archdruid, champion warcaller gives the deck 4 solid lords at 1-3 cmc, one of which is scalable). I'm not really sure, but two of these off a coco is fine, not exciting but fine.
I'd love to see an on tribe dork that makes G or B...would really love that.
I'd love to see an on tribe dork that makes G or B...would really love that.
there is one but it's banned, i'd say there's safe design space in ravnica to make another fairer edition of deathrite shaman.
Alternatively, you could go Arbor elf + appropriate manabase, so that arbor elf produces any colour of mana
Yeah deathrite was an obvious mistake, but there is plenty of design space left for the mana dork slot. I'm not sure they'd want 8 dorks in standard though. I just want an elf that can splash into other colors easily. Elves are one of the few tribes that seeps out into literally every color pair on a routine basis.
I would also love to see another decent token producer for the deck. On an unrelated note, clancaller does increase marwyn's mana production by 2, making her essentially a free cast after a marwyn.
Clancaller isn't usable in the vizier or g/b decks because those are combo decks.
Making an all aggro elf deck also isn't viable to me because not only you are more susceptible to board wipes, you are relying on clancaller to keep the 2cmc train rolling to get a good clock a.k.a one mana dork + clancaller + nettle to keep the train going. If you are going to heritage druid into clancaller with no other one drop, it might have well just been joraga warcaller and that isn't even seeing a ton of play atm. The most important thing that separates elves and merfolk is just having access to landwalk. Evasion is important to continue beating down their life total despite them having creatures to block in these sort of all creature based decks.
Maybe when elves get another 2 Mana lord, we can see an aethervial approach over just collected company with chord getting better because we have untapped Mana +, aethervial gives us access to another devotion to green.
I still do not like marwyn as an "archdruid" because you need to commit more to the board than you already have with just archdruid in play.
How do I play against control decks? Do I flood the board as soon as possible and hope they dont have Supreme Verdict? Or should I just have a couple creatures and continue to ping them until they remove them, and then put another couple on and rinse/repeat?
The combination of clancaller+steel leaf champion begins to open a green devotion path that just wan't interesting before. Rather than talk about trying to fit clancaller into GB and GW which are already tight, I'd rather explore a new dimension for the tribe where these new tools actually get to shine.
In this new dimension, visionary may not be as attractive, and you might still possibly want shaman. But the deck most certainly has to make space for pay-offs such as Aspect of Hydra for that quick kill, which would probably be the pull factor for G devotion, aside from the mid-late game Nyx ramp, which will let you power out ezuri+activation at once, or simply craterhoof. I haven't really had the time to mull this over, but it'll be something to ponder on the drive home from work.
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It's your call what you want to do vs. control decks. I think the mid-range game plan is better, making g/w elves shine over g/b elves in these sort of match ups because selfless spirit helps a lot to keep your board presence. G/b elves uses timely TS to disrupt the hand and along with relics to get rid of snap plays.
You still want to reach the min. Threshold to build ezuri and use ezuri regeration.
As for clancaller, is opens up a new dimension of elves. But my quote still stands, it needs another 2 Mana lord as well as evasion. You aren't going to play mutavaults and hope it doesn't get blocked, you want to play elvish champion, play mutavaults, play aethervial, and play cards that say turn target land into a forest. If you play 100 games with the deck, you will see why evasion is so important for creature based tempo decks like merfolk.
I have already considered a nykthos type of build, and honestly it might shoot off if they don't just remove everything. We are in a heavy removal type format, so you would need hexproof spells like blossoming defense. You aren't going to play aspect of the Hydra because it doesn't give evasion from spells or creatures.
Just play fetches and green wheel liberator if you are going to go talara's battalion.not playing dwynen's elite is just gimping yourself with nettle sentinel. Just cut the nettle sentinels for another Mana dork like Boreal druid. There is also the fact you need a certain threshold of one drops to make clancaller + dork + nettle possible to play cards like LTS on the same turn.
The combination of clancaller+steel leaf champion begins to open a green devotion path that just wan't interesting before. Rather than talk about trying to fit clancaller into GB and GW which are already tight, I'd rather explore a new dimension for the tribe where these new tools actually get to shine.
In this new dimension, visionary may not be as attractive, and you might still possibly want shaman. But the deck most certainly has to make space for pay-offs such as Aspect of Hydra for that quick kill, which would probably be the pull factor for G devotion, aside from the mid-late game Nyx ramp, which will let you power out ezuri+activation at once, or simply craterhoof. I haven't really had the time to mull this over, but it'll be something to ponder on the drive home from work.
Way back when (when I was OP and before we separated them; which was absolutely the right call given the cards printed) all I played was Elf Devotion. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one; but I loved it.
It’s really a blast and it makes for some interesting choices (Genesis Wave, etc.)
Before I go down the rabbit hole though :)....Elf Devotion absolutely can be a deck (I’ve played it in multiple periods over the last few years) and I would love to see your thoughts on it and how the new cards effect the build (I only recently started working with Steel-Leaf Champion).
Essentially 20 lords, 12 of which cost 2 and one being scalable. Only cards that don't benefit from paragon are archdruid and heritage.
Narnam could be imperious perfect to up the lord count and give you some staying power. G: spit out a 2/2-5/5 token seems fine to me.
It's slower than the other builds, but it's quite the board state by turn 4.
T1 vial, t2 paragon and vial in warcaller, t3 anything else really...swing for at least 7+? That's not even an explosive start since you have the nettle/Druid package.
I was playing the GW list at first but i missed the reach, which Shaman of the pack provides. Plus the combo did not feel that consistent, at least in my current meta.
Since I did not wanna lose the white sideboard cards I kept playing in Abzan colours.
Feeling Pretty confident so far with my current list.
You can check it out in my profile!
Best regards
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Currently Playing Modern and Pauper and Pauper cmdr
Modern:
Heartless Gitrog
Hello everyone! I recently bought into Elves and am very new to the archetype. Which is according to you guys better, G/W or G/B? What are you guys on right now, would love to get your insight!
Be me, be greedy, keep BOTH shaman and the combo.
Leads in the side so I can go full on GB shaman attrition grindy mode.
White chord targets in the side in case I meet another ship sailing in the night (eg. kataki for affinity, mindcensor + BFT for valakut etc) keep the combo
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I'm actually thinking that it can replace visionaries. I believe that it allows for a quick beatdown clock while still threatening the Ezuri combo. Many times I've dropped so many elves into play with no way to get Ezuri and attack for enough damage. This card adds significant power to your board if you have 3 or more elves (which is almost always), and you can suddenly threaten lethal attacks in 2 turns. Curving this into an Archdruid will be quite common and I can imagine winning a ton of games this way.
It also gives you a powerful 2 drop to chord/coco into that can give you the win. Again speaking from experience, there are many scenarios where I've found that I could only chord for 2 and neither elite or visionary would have helped much.
Another scenario that I've come across quite often is that I have mana for Ezuri and can attack for just slightly shy of lethal (three/four 1/1's). If any one of the elves was a clancaller, it would have been enough.
All in all, I'm just saying that the beatdown angle might become a lot better with clancaller.
But all this is speculation of course without actually trying it out.
I really like the whole elves beatdown idea and wanna throw my two cents in. In my opinion, as an aggro deck with even less ways than fishes to give evasion to our troops we need some reach, similarly to Goblins or Zoo. So we should go either G/b for Shaman (probably still dropping Chord for LtS) or G/R for BBE and Bolt, maybe going as far as replacing CoCo, which plays poorly with the Red splash.
Then, while Steel Leaf Champion seems good is it batter than another 3 mana lord?
Last, but nor least, today we received a new tool in the shape of a 2/3 elf warrior for 1G, with a minor resilience to removal. It's not particularly exciting, but it's another nice addition to the list of elves boosted by Bramblewood Paragon.
Thorn lieutenant just got spoiled, and I am all up for the "elf warrior" tribal deck now. Maybe not with aethervial still, but this is the two drop that is better than clancaller and helps with reaching critical mass for elves. Definitely a staple 4 of.
Going the elf warrior tribal still means no aethervial imo, too many 1 drops in elves that matter to play over it.
Thorn lieutenant just got spoiled, and I am all up for the "elf warrior" tribal deck now. Maybe not with aethervial still, but this is the two drop that is better than clancaller and helps with reaching critical mass for elves. Definitely a staple 4 of.
Going the elf warrior tribal still means no aethervial imo, too many 1 drops in elves that matter to play over it.
Thorn Lieutenent just seems like a bad version of Dwynen’s Elite. Offers no real advantage unless someone targets it, which will most likely kill it. Or it can never get targeted because why would they when they can target an actual useful elf.
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The deck has a gap in the 2 cmc slot. (Which makes sense since you're ramping 1 drops into 3 drops as the tribe's theme). Playable 2 drops on tribe are really dwynen's elite, elvish visonary, and devoted Druid? You could make an argument for a few others like coiling oracle but they require specific builds.
I'm not sure what it gives the deck though. I would have much preferred the activated ability not require a tap or be cheaper.
marwyn, the nurterer acts like a pseudo archdruid #5 for ramp and lets the deck go tall to survive damage based removal or combat better. Clancaller gives the deck access to archdruids pump effect and a late game sink, but is otherwise quite weak - sorta like a weak archdruid/ezuri combination? I think if the deck wanted the pump effect we turn to elvish champion, joraga warcaller, or something along those lines. I'm not sure the tutor is powerful enough at 6 mana to put this on par with the others?
It's hard to evaluate for me really. Maybe an elf beatdown deck comes around if we get enough lord effects (clancaller, archdruid, champion warcaller gives the deck 4 solid lords at 1-3 cmc, one of which is scalable). I'm not really sure, but two of these off a coco is fine, not exciting but fine.
I'd love to see an on tribe dork that makes G or B...would really love that.
I'll be testing Clancaller in mono-G beatdown elves, but skeptical of it being better than GB-shaman or GW-vizier builds:
4x llanowar elves
4x elvish mystic
2x arbor elf
4x nettle sentinel
4x heritage druid
4x dwynen's elite
4x elvish clancaller
2x elvish visionary
4x elvish archdruid
4x ezuri, renegade leader
2x joraga warcaller
4x collected company
15 forests
2 nykthos
1 pendelhaven
Yeah deathrite was an obvious mistake, but there is plenty of design space left for the mana dork slot. I'm not sure they'd want 8 dorks in standard though. I just want an elf that can splash into other colors easily. Elves are one of the few tribes that seeps out into literally every color pair on a routine basis.
I would also love to see another decent token producer for the deck. On an unrelated note, clancaller does increase marwyn's mana production by 2, making her essentially a free cast after a marwyn.
Making an all aggro elf deck also isn't viable to me because not only you are more susceptible to board wipes, you are relying on clancaller to keep the 2cmc train rolling to get a good clock a.k.a one mana dork + clancaller + nettle to keep the train going. If you are going to heritage druid into clancaller with no other one drop, it might have well just been joraga warcaller and that isn't even seeing a ton of play atm. The most important thing that separates elves and merfolk is just having access to landwalk. Evasion is important to continue beating down their life total despite them having creatures to block in these sort of all creature based decks.
Maybe when elves get another 2 Mana lord, we can see an aethervial approach over just collected company with chord getting better because we have untapped Mana +, aethervial gives us access to another devotion to green.
I still do not like marwyn as an "archdruid" because you need to commit more to the board than you already have with just archdruid in play.
In this new dimension, visionary may not be as attractive, and you might still possibly want shaman. But the deck most certainly has to make space for pay-offs such as Aspect of Hydra for that quick kill, which would probably be the pull factor for G devotion, aside from the mid-late game Nyx ramp, which will let you power out ezuri+activation at once, or simply craterhoof. I haven't really had the time to mull this over, but it'll be something to ponder on the drive home from work.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
You still want to reach the min. Threshold to build ezuri and use ezuri regeration.
As for clancaller, is opens up a new dimension of elves. But my quote still stands, it needs another 2 Mana lord as well as evasion. You aren't going to play mutavaults and hope it doesn't get blocked, you want to play elvish champion, play mutavaults, play aethervial, and play cards that say turn target land into a forest. If you play 100 games with the deck, you will see why evasion is so important for creature based tempo decks like merfolk.
I have already considered a nykthos type of build, and honestly it might shoot off if they don't just remove everything. We are in a heavy removal type format, so you would need hexproof spells like blossoming defense. You aren't going to play aspect of the Hydra because it doesn't give evasion from spells or creatures.
Way back when (when I was OP and before we separated them; which was absolutely the right call given the cards printed) all I played was Elf Devotion. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one; but I loved it.
It’s really a blast and it makes for some interesting choices (Genesis Wave, etc.)
Before I go down the rabbit hole though :)....Elf Devotion absolutely can be a deck (I’ve played it in multiple periods over the last few years) and I would love to see your thoughts on it and how the new cards effect the build (I only recently started working with Steel-Leaf Champion).
Excited to see your list and thoughts.
4 aethervial
2 lead the stampede
4 heritage Druid
4 nettle sentinel
2 narnam renegade
4 joraga warcaller
4 bramblewood paragon
4 metallic mimic
4 elvish clancaller
4 dwynen's elite
2 ezuri, renegade leader
4 elvish archdruid
Essentially 20 lords, 12 of which cost 2 and one being scalable. Only cards that don't benefit from paragon are archdruid and heritage.
Narnam could be imperious perfect to up the lord count and give you some staying power. G: spit out a 2/2-5/5 token seems fine to me.
It's slower than the other builds, but it's quite the board state by turn 4.
T1 vial, t2 paragon and vial in warcaller, t3 anything else really...swing for at least 7+? That's not even an explosive start since you have the nettle/Druid package.
I was playing the GW list at first but i missed the reach, which Shaman of the pack provides. Plus the combo did not feel that consistent, at least in my current meta.
Since I did not wanna lose the white sideboard cards I kept playing in Abzan colours.
Feeling Pretty confident so far with my current list.
You can check it out in my profile!
Best regards
Modern:
Heartless Gitrog
Pauper:
Zombies
Delve
Canadian Thresh
Be me, be greedy, keep BOTH shaman and the combo.
Leads in the side so I can go full on GB shaman attrition grindy mode.
White chord targets in the side in case I meet another ship sailing in the night (eg. kataki for affinity, mindcensor + BFT for valakut etc) keep the combo
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
It also gives you a powerful 2 drop to chord/coco into that can give you the win. Again speaking from experience, there are many scenarios where I've found that I could only chord for 2 and neither elite or visionary would have helped much.
Another scenario that I've come across quite often is that I have mana for Ezuri and can attack for just slightly shy of lethal (three/four 1/1's). If any one of the elves was a clancaller, it would have been enough.
All in all, I'm just saying that the beatdown angle might become a lot better with clancaller.
But all this is speculation of course without actually trying it out.
Then, while Steel Leaf Champion seems good is it batter than another 3 mana lord?
Last, but nor least, today we received a new tool in the shape of a 2/3 elf warrior for 1G, with a minor resilience to removal. It's not particularly exciting, but it's another nice addition to the list of elves boosted by Bramblewood Paragon.
Going the elf warrior tribal still means no aethervial imo, too many 1 drops in elves that matter to play over it.
4 Coco
4 LTS
Creatures: 34
4 elvish mystic
4 joraga warcaller
4 heritage druid
4 nettle senitnel
4 bramblewood paragon
4 dwynen's elite
4 thorn lieutenent
4 elvish archdruid
2 ezuri, renegade leader
The only problem I would have is wanting to cut an LTS for 19 lands. Since we cut 4 doeks for essentially 4 vanilla creatures.
Thorn Lieutenent just seems like a bad version of Dwynen’s Elite. Offers no real advantage unless someone targets it, which will most likely kill it. Or it can never get targeted because why would they when they can target an actual useful elf.