I've been running 17 lands recently. I haven't noticed much difference between 18 lands. What sort of sample size do we think would be necessary to see some sort of detrimental (or beneficial) effect? 1000 games maybe?
Also I'm totes on the UG list again with sideboard negates to just stomp tron/storm/ad naus etc.
My man. Would love to see the list. I'll be testing UG or maybe BUG list (for Shamans) with the new Nissa and Coiling Oracles along with some counterspells in SB.
I've been running 17 lands recently. I haven't noticed much difference between 18 lands. What sort of sample size do we think would be necessary to see some sort of detrimental (or beneficial) effect? 1000 games maybe?
Also I'm totes on the UG list again with sideboard negates to just stomp tron/storm/ad naus etc.
My man. Would love to see the list. I'll be testing UG or maybe BUG list (for Shamans) with the new Nissa and Coiling Oracles along with some counterspells in SB.
Sure thing bud. Here's my current (untested) starting point. You'll notice 2 white cards in the side, and that's kind of in-line with my old testing build which worked well.
You'll notice a couple of cards which I may change around:
- Pendelhaven; great card, unclear whether the benefits outweigh the losses in terms of manabase. I stuck with it because it seems like an obvious choice but I'll be watching it closely when I test.
- Maindeck rec sage; many times in recent months I've wished for a maindeck piece of utility & feel like I need it without having shaman to beat ensnaring bridge.
this deck plays out differently to the standard GB version we're used to seeing, and you need to actively play the deck with different sequencing otherwise it comes out as being much worse. this deck is a full-on sprint to achieve a critical mass, and this means casting a lot of main-phase collected companies and snapping cantrip elves over almost anything else, and hoping to hit a Summoner's Pact or Craterhoof. it aims to leverage the extra velocity from more card draw significantly better, requiring a lower ceiling of mana to drop a quick craterhoof (8 total with summoner's pact, for a pretty much guaranteed win, vs total of 14 mana for chord->ezuri->activate which most decks are resigned to and even then whon't necessarily seal the deal). This cheaper ceiling makes the deck significantly faster when it's goldfishing. there's a (fairly easy to sequence but rare) turn 2 kill to be had. I've pulled it off in tournaments before. as a result, you quite often want to prioritise card-draw elves over lords or similar, and aim to chain multiple collected companies over a single turn to achieve a critical mass of mana and eventually draw a summoner's pact.
this strategy opens up the deck to sweepers a bit more, and can't beat ensnaring bridge without rec-sage. the former is a problem, but is solved by simply sequencing your spells better, and the latter is fine because I run a single maindeck spicy reclamation sage. it also can surprise people who aren't expecting enchantment/artifact hate from the maindeck.
the maindeck elvish champion is a concession to the fact that sometimes (opening hand dependent) you want to go for the ordinary beatdown plan, so I wanted a 5th lord to hit off a CoCo to make the beatdown plan strong as a plan B.
it's a fun list. I mainly appreciate the ability to counter powerful spells that our opponents cast, especially from the likes of ad nauseam, tron, storm or whatever you're up against. Unified will seems OK, I guess it's a matter of testing, but I have been using Negate so far, as I can't imagine bringing counterspells in against any creature decks (we simply want to race & trample over them).
I've been running 17 lands recently. I haven't noticed much difference between 18 lands. What sort of sample size do we think would be necessary to see some sort of detrimental (or beneficial) effect? 1000 games maybe?
Also I'm totes on the UG list again with sideboard negates to just stomp tron/storm/ad naus etc.
I've been running 17 lands for my past approximately 60 games.
I have not felt much impact on starting hands. However 60 isn't a very large sample size. What happened was I realized that I wanted more room for stuff like Lifecrafter's Bestiary over my colorless land slot, so it was a natural swap.
No intention of returning to 18 lands presently.
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Hey guys. So I just bought into this deck the past week, intending to start with a budget beatdown build and upgrade as I learn it over the summer. Well, I splurged instead, and now I have a fully sleeved deck that is comparable to some of the GB lists. I'm super excited to begin playing, but I'm wondering mainly what you guys would recommend with the mana base? I already have my palaces, fastlands, and a Pendelhaven, I'm mainly wondering about the number of fetches and shock that are seen as optimal, and how I can fit in Cavern of Souls also. I've been theory-crafting and reformatting my list on and off here all week since I've yet been unable to actually play.
Pretty easy, just cut some Forests from your list and shove in Caverns. You can run fetches, if you want. You will probably want at least 2-3 basic Forests.
In my opinion with 4 cavern of souls you can run 3-4 shamans of the pack in a gw/toolbox version without too much problems, the real difference is that you can't run discard spells.
I think shamans of the pack are strong enough to justify running 4 cavern of souls just to be able to hardcast them in addition to fetching for them through Coco and chord
I agree with this dude. I've been running a greedy list of 4 Shamans main and a variety of white/black spells in the side depending on the meta. Here's my landbase:
I switch the number of Blooming Marsh and Razorverge whenever I need to put in Stony Silence in the board. Never had problems casting Shaman due to the abundance of black sources i.e. Caverns and Palaces
Pretty easy, just cut some Forests from your list and shove in Caverns. You can run fetches, if you want. You will probably want at least 2-3 basic Forests.
With Caverns, is it an all-or-nothing for the full playset? Is it worth running them alongside fetches? I would guess that because we run cards like Chord and Company, we have such a strong ability to tutor a silver bullet or dig through the deck that fetches for thinning are a bit redundant.I'm guessing a cleaner mana base for BG variants as per the primer's OP is like so:
Positives: Pain Free land source, chosen creature can't be countered.
Negatives: can't be fetched, only taps for colored mana when casting creatures of the chosen type,
You don't have to run a playset if people aren't playing a lot of counter magic. You certainly could add in fetches in place of them. Personally, I like the pain free aspect of it. I don't run fetches in my list. I run a playset of Horizon Canopy though, which can be painful. But I also run abzan so...
I've found after playing many (frustrating) games against Tron that my best chance is to simply go wide and try to Plan A my opponent quickly. "Not over-extending", "playing conservatively", "baiting the wipe", these don't end well. The Tron wants to go long and sometimes they get the ramp cards but no pyroclasms or o stones.
Lead the Stampede sounds like a good plan but it's never actually helped me turn a game around, it just makes me not scoop and then get wiped a second time, because the first wipe has already bought the opponent time, and the 3-4 creatures off of Lead aren't going to overwhelm that Wurmcoil Engine.
From what I've experienced, I try to win on turn 4. If they Tron on turn 3 and get Ugin turn 4, I lose. If they don't, I win. O-Stone and Pyroclasm? Can I chord for Burrenton or Selfless? Yes = Win, No = Lose.
At least the games go by quicker. Attrition games with Tron are clinically proven to increase salt build-up.
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Yes, people have lists involving Eldritch Evolution. As with a lot of cards, some people like it while others don't. The argument can be had that we lose another elf to net another, making shaman "less" effective. And if someone where to counter Evolution you are down three mana and an elf. That's not to say that the card is bad. It has positives, which I feel are pretty apparent.
Has people tried using Eldritch Evolution ?
Could imagine it could be useful to quickly switch out the 1 offs out with Archmage/Ezuri/Shamans.
Any thoughts about that?
I know it is not and instant, but so is Lead the Stampede..
The correct card for comparison in the main board is Chord of calling not lead the stampede ( lead serves a different purpose).
The times where we would prefer EE are limited and in my opinion not worth losing instant speed.
The 1 drops end up being win our condition so losing one to play a 3 drop hurts you more than you would think. I would also consider fauna shaman if EE interests uou
Favourite Deck: Elves (Modern & Legacy)
Standard: New Perspectives Combo
Modern: GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Eldrazi and Taxes | Abzan Liege | Abzan Company
Commander: The Gitrog Monster (Combo) | Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper (Control) | RIP Leovold Sultai (Elvestorm, no unfair locks) | Mono G (Yisan or Titania)
Tiny Leaders: Too many decks to keep track of
Pauper: RIP UR Drake | Mono B | GBx Goodstuff | Jund "Melira"
I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion on the new Nissa. I believe it is viable. It helps our plan to get more dorks down, it is hard to kill for control and it helps our consistency. I feel that it could replace Lead the Stampede for those who are pushing that. I'd start with 1 or 2 in maindeck.
@Treefolkmania
I really thing UG can become an option once we see if Nissa is good enough to switch colors. I have my doubts in dropping Shaman of the Pack and going three colors seems difficult. Perhaps Nissa plus Oracle would make it worth it, especially if we can bring in counters to protect us. Who knows.
Haven't posted in a while - just got back from visiting Austria for a month to see the missus.
Just an update for you all, I haven't really played Elves since crumbling in the last four rounds of the GP (Still haunted by the 10-1 to 10-5 bomb out).
I'm back though! And for the first time in a verrrry long time, I will be adding black back into my maindeck! I'm normally not an advocate of Abzan manabases, but i've never really tried them either. I've seen quite a few 5-0 lists on MODO running "Abzan" manabases that I can agree with. Aka 5 fetches, 3 forests, 1 tomb and 1 garden. I think this is the correct way to go about it rather than a mish mash of Palace/Razorverge/Blooming.
It will also be the first time trialling "Lead the Stampede" in Elves after 2 years on the deck. I'm so high on Chord of Calling, so this card has some work to do to impress me. I guess the 2/2 split is a combination of a meta call as well as a give to playing 10 Non-Creature spells in the SB (I.E. Less Chord targets).
If you guys like, I can provide a match report with sideboarding involved - this "local" has really decent players so I usually make the 40 minute trek to compete their most Wednesdays.
Unsure if this has been mentioned before. Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid are pretty sweet together. In the past 2x Devoted Druid and 1x Ezuri on the board have won many games.
Unsure if this has been mentioned before. Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid are pretty sweet together. In the past 2x Devoted Druid and 1x Ezuri on the board have won many games.
Yea, I was having this thought as well. In GW/Abzan builds is it worth it to just add one or 2 of each of those since Ezuri plus that with any of them not being summoning sick = game. Seems like it would be more worth it in the pure GW builds with 3+ Ezuri that don't run shaman but I definitely am intrigued.
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Unsure if this has been mentioned before. Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid are pretty sweet together. In the past 2x Devoted Druid and 1x Ezuri on the board have won many games.
Yea, I was having this thought as well. In GW/Abzan builds is it worth it to just add one or 2 of each of those since Ezuri plus that with any of them not being summoning sick = game. Seems like it would be more worth it in the pure GW builds with 3+ Ezuri that don't run shaman but I definitely am intrigued.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion on the new Nissa. I believe it is viable. It helps our plan to get more dorks down, it is hard to kill for control and it helps our consistency. I feel that it could replace Lead the Stampede for those who are pushing that. I'd start with 1 or 2 in maindeck.
@Treefolkmania
I really thing UG can become an option once we see if Nissa is good enough to switch colors. I have my doubts in dropping Shaman of the Pack and going three colors seems difficult. Perhaps Nissa plus Oracle would make it worth it, especially if we can bring in counters to protect us. Who knows.
Either going UG and lose the Shaman or like Abzan version go Sultai to keep the Shaman. I think she fits great in an elf deck. Scry is very valuable to us as it filters our deck, her -0 already works well with our deck since it's built around CoCo and therefore very low on curve. It's also a great late game topdeck which allows us to dump our mana into her and attack for 10 straight away.
Another option if we're going just UG is to replace Shaman with the new Throne of the God-Pharaoh. It doesn't play well with Nissa/CoCo but since we're tapping our elves a lot of the time, it could provide that extra reach that Shaman gives us in black.
Unsure if this has been mentioned before. Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid are pretty sweet together. In the past 2x Devoted Druid and 1x Ezuri on the board have won many games.
Maybe in SB against combo decks with little to no interaction, so we can go infinite asap. But other than that, I don't think it's a good fit. Not an elf and does nothing on it's own.
My man. Would love to see the list. I'll be testing UG or maybe BUG list (for Shamans) with the new Nissa and Coiling Oracles along with some counterspells in SB.
WBG Elves WBG
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EDH:
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage RG || GWUB Atraxa, Praetors' Voice GWUB
R Zo-Zu the Punisher R || WU Brago, King Eternal WU
UB Gisa and Geralf UB || BGW Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW
Sure thing bud. Here's my current (untested) starting point. You'll notice 2 white cards in the side, and that's kind of in-line with my old testing build which worked well.
4x heritage druid
4x llanowar elves
4x nettle sentinel
3x coiling oracle
4x elvish visionary
2x dwynen's elite
4x elvish archdruid
1x elvish champion
2x ezuri, renegade leader
1x reclamation sage
1x craterhoof behemoth
1x chord of calling
4x collected company
2x botanical sanctum
2x breeding pool
2x cavern of souls
2x nykthos, shrine to nyx
1x pendelhaven
1x temple garden
4x forest
4x misty rainforest
1x kataki, war's wage
1x phyrexian revoker
1x scavenging ooze
1x selfless spirit
1x acidic slime (MVP)
1x thragtusk
4x negate (could be Unified Will)
1x chord of calling (generally to help fund our hate-cards)
3x lead the stampede (midrange matchups)
1x fracturing gust
You'll notice a couple of cards which I may change around:
- Pendelhaven; great card, unclear whether the benefits outweigh the losses in terms of manabase. I stuck with it because it seems like an obvious choice but I'll be watching it closely when I test.
- Maindeck rec sage; many times in recent months I've wished for a maindeck piece of utility & feel like I need it without having shaman to beat ensnaring bridge.
this deck plays out differently to the standard GB version we're used to seeing, and you need to actively play the deck with different sequencing otherwise it comes out as being much worse. this deck is a full-on sprint to achieve a critical mass, and this means casting a lot of main-phase collected companies and snapping cantrip elves over almost anything else, and hoping to hit a Summoner's Pact or Craterhoof. it aims to leverage the extra velocity from more card draw significantly better, requiring a lower ceiling of mana to drop a quick craterhoof (8 total with summoner's pact, for a pretty much guaranteed win, vs total of 14 mana for chord->ezuri->activate which most decks are resigned to and even then whon't necessarily seal the deal). This cheaper ceiling makes the deck significantly faster when it's goldfishing. there's a (fairly easy to sequence but rare) turn 2 kill to be had. I've pulled it off in tournaments before. as a result, you quite often want to prioritise card-draw elves over lords or similar, and aim to chain multiple collected companies over a single turn to achieve a critical mass of mana and eventually draw a summoner's pact.
this strategy opens up the deck to sweepers a bit more, and can't beat ensnaring bridge without rec-sage. the former is a problem, but is solved by simply sequencing your spells better, and the latter is fine because I run a single maindeck spicy reclamation sage. it also can surprise people who aren't expecting enchantment/artifact hate from the maindeck.
the maindeck elvish champion is a concession to the fact that sometimes (opening hand dependent) you want to go for the ordinary beatdown plan, so I wanted a 5th lord to hit off a CoCo to make the beatdown plan strong as a plan B.
it's a fun list. I mainly appreciate the ability to counter powerful spells that our opponents cast, especially from the likes of ad nauseam, tron, storm or whatever you're up against. Unified will seems OK, I guess it's a matter of testing, but I have been using Negate so far, as I can't imagine bringing counterspells in against any creature decks (we simply want to race & trample over them).
I've been running 17 lands for my past approximately 60 games.
I have not felt much impact on starting hands. However 60 isn't a very large sample size. What happened was I realized that I wanted more room for stuff like Lifecrafter's Bestiary over my colorless land slot, so it was a natural swap.
No intention of returning to 18 lands presently.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
My Modern Playlist:
BWTokens | GBElves
I agree with this dude. I've been running a greedy list of 4 Shamans main and a variety of white/black spells in the side depending on the meta. Here's my landbase:
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
3 Blooming Marsh
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Razorverge Thicket
1 Nykthos
3 Forest
I switch the number of Blooming Marsh and Razorverge whenever I need to put in Stony Silence in the board. Never had problems casting Shaman due to the abundance of black sources i.e. Caverns and Palaces
It only stops All is Dust/Batterskull and not all lists run Karn or Ugin.
With Caverns, is it an all-or-nothing for the full playset? Is it worth running them alongside fetches? I would guess that because we run cards like Chord and Company, we have such a strong ability to tutor a silver bullet or dig through the deck that fetches for thinning are a bit redundant.I'm guessing a cleaner mana base for BG variants as per the primer's OP is like so:
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Forest
My Modern Playlist:
BWTokens | GBElves
Positives: Pain Free land source, chosen creature can't be countered.
Negatives: can't be fetched, only taps for colored mana when casting creatures of the chosen type,
You don't have to run a playset if people aren't playing a lot of counter magic. You certainly could add in fetches in place of them. Personally, I like the pain free aspect of it. I don't run fetches in my list. I run a playset of Horizon Canopy though, which can be painful. But I also run abzan so...
Lead the Stampede sounds like a good plan but it's never actually helped me turn a game around, it just makes me not scoop and then get wiped a second time, because the first wipe has already bought the opponent time, and the 3-4 creatures off of Lead aren't going to overwhelm that Wurmcoil Engine.
From what I've experienced, I try to win on turn 4. If they Tron on turn 3 and get Ugin turn 4, I lose. If they don't, I win. O-Stone and Pyroclasm? Can I chord for Burrenton or Selfless? Yes = Win, No = Lose.
At least the games go by quicker. Attrition games with Tron are clinically proven to increase salt build-up.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
The correct card for comparison in the main board is Chord of calling not lead the stampede ( lead serves a different purpose).
The times where we would prefer EE are limited and in my opinion not worth losing instant speed.
The 1 drops end up being win our condition so losing one to play a 3 drop hurts you more than you would think. I would also consider fauna shaman if EE interests uou
Favourite Deck: Elves (Modern & Legacy)
Standard: New Perspectives Combo
Modern: GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Eldrazi and Taxes | Abzan Liege | Abzan Company
Commander: The Gitrog Monster (Combo) | Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper (Control) | RIP Leovold Sultai (Elvestorm, no unfair locks) | Mono G (Yisan or Titania)
Tiny Leaders: Too many decks to keep track of
Pauper: RIP UR Drake | Mono B | GBx Goodstuff | Jund "Melira"
@Treefolkmania
I really thing UG can become an option once we see if Nissa is good enough to switch colors. I have my doubts in dropping Shaman of the Pack and going three colors seems difficult. Perhaps Nissa plus Oracle would make it worth it, especially if we can bring in counters to protect us. Who knows.
BGElvesBG and BUGNissa ElvesBUG Faithful Elfer since May 1st, 2015
Results: SCG IQ Top 8, Monthly Modern Masters Top 4
Haven't posted in a while - just got back from visiting Austria for a month to see the missus.
Just an update for you all, I haven't really played Elves since crumbling in the last four rounds of the GP (Still haunted by the 10-1 to 10-5 bomb out).
I'm back though! And for the first time in a verrrry long time, I will be adding black back into my maindeck! I'm normally not an advocate of Abzan manabases, but i've never really tried them either. I've seen quite a few 5-0 lists on MODO running "Abzan" manabases that I can agree with. Aka 5 fetches, 3 forests, 1 tomb and 1 garden. I think this is the correct way to go about it rather than a mish mash of Palace/Razorverge/Blooming.
It will also be the first time trialling "Lead the Stampede" in Elves after 2 years on the deck. I'm so high on Chord of Calling, so this card has some work to do to impress me. I guess the 2/2 split is a combination of a meta call as well as a give to playing 10 Non-Creature spells in the SB (I.E. Less Chord targets).
Here is the list I will be playing tonight at a local event:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/611409#online
- 1 Gaddock Teeg
+ 1 Nissa, Vital Force
If you guys like, I can provide a match report with sideboarding involved - this "local" has really decent players so I usually make the 40 minute trek to compete their most Wednesdays.
Cheers.
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Ooooh, now that's a spicy taco.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
Either going UG and lose the Shaman or like Abzan version go Sultai to keep the Shaman. I think she fits great in an elf deck. Scry is very valuable to us as it filters our deck, her -0 already works well with our deck since it's built around CoCo and therefore very low on curve. It's also a great late game topdeck which allows us to dump our mana into her and attack for 10 straight away.
Another option if we're going just UG is to replace Shaman with the new Throne of the God-Pharaoh. It doesn't play well with Nissa/CoCo but since we're tapping our elves a lot of the time, it could provide that extra reach that Shaman gives us in black.
Maybe in SB against combo decks with little to no interaction, so we can go infinite asap. But other than that, I don't think it's a good fit. Not an elf and does nothing on it's own.
WBG Elves WBG
Cheeri0s
EDH:
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage RG || GWUB Atraxa, Praetors' Voice GWUB
R Zo-Zu the Punisher R || WU Brago, King Eternal WU
UB Gisa and Geralf UB || BGW Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW