This deck is a blast to play... For me. It's pretty much entirely composed of cheap combos that make me hard to kill while keeping my opponents down. The only thing I commonly see people bring to the table that consistently beats it are burn decks, but who plays burn in multiplayer anyway?
As you can see, it's slow, and land-heavy. Maybe a little too slow, but it usually doesn't matter, if I have to I can usually get out some kind of combo by turn 3. Ornithopter is basically there to block in case someone gets cute. I have had to tutor for one before, believe it or not.
The game typically drags on, and by the time I win I've got the Stuffy Doll/Pariah's Shield combo redirecting any damage I may take, Caltrops/Death Pits of Rath keeping anyone from attacking, 2-3 of Lux Cannon to ping any troublesome artifacts (or suppress lands if I have a surplus of counters), and a Pestilence with one more in-hand in case it gets nuked. More often than not it's Drain Life that actually wins the game (I know Exsanguinate is better for multiplayer but I don't own any).
This is my wife's elf deck, it's done pretty well playing with friends and such. Typically the way most games go, she gets the Arbor Elf or Llanowar Elves out on turn 1, then an Elvish Visionary, then from there hangs back and grows on the next turn or two and ends up winning in one huge attack. It works pretty well unless they've got a lot of creature hate, but typically that just slows down the game until she eventually draws Eldrazi Monument.
Lately she's been getting more serious about the game and looking for ways to improve. There's no sideboard currently, so I thought that might be a good place to start. Any suggestions?
One thing to note, we've been playing with the mana lately and with three full sets of creatures that all produce mana, we're pretty sure there's one or two forests too many. So as long as the CMC is low enough she could probably stand to have something else in the maindeck too.
2 Lake of the Dead
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Drain Life
3 Pestilence
4 Stuffy Doll
3 Darksteel Myr
3 Ornithopter
3 Pariah's Shield
3 Caltrops
2 Death Pits of Rath
4 Lux Cannon
As you can see, it's slow, and land-heavy. Maybe a little too slow, but it usually doesn't matter, if I have to I can usually get out some kind of combo by turn 3. Ornithopter is basically there to block in case someone gets cute. I have had to tutor for one before, believe it or not.
The game typically drags on, and by the time I win I've got the Stuffy Doll/Pariah's Shield combo redirecting any damage I may take, Caltrops/Death Pits of Rath keeping anyone from attacking, 2-3 of Lux Cannon to ping any troublesome artifacts (or suppress lands if I have a surplus of counters), and a Pestilence with one more in-hand in case it gets nuked. More often than not it's Drain Life that actually wins the game (I know Exsanguinate is better for multiplayer but I don't own any).
Lately she's been getting more serious about the game and looking for ways to improve. There's no sideboard currently, so I thought that might be a good place to start. Any suggestions?
One thing to note, we've been playing with the mana lately and with three full sets of creatures that all produce mana, we're pretty sure there's one or two forests too many. So as long as the CMC is low enough she could probably stand to have something else in the maindeck too.
3 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
4 Arbor Elf
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Nissa's Chosen
3 Lys Alana Huntmaster
3 Eldrazi Monument
4 Quest for the Gemblades
3 Overrun
1 Vines of Vastwood