Driemer84 I do want a rec sage back in the main for sure, not sold on the champion main but im willing to try it out. 3 wardens in the board seems heavy maybe 2 essence wardens 1 scooze could work out well?
The post has been edited because my friends think my writing is an eyesore, so they helped me clean it up.
Kizzel I was never on stream and i have zero foils so that must have been a different elves player. the best hits were all of the three drops though hitting Elites was also huge for 4 mana 3 bodies and 6 power. shaman of the pack was probably the weakest of the 3 drops because it resolves before BBE but it was still nice to get the extra 3/2 body and the drain.
At GP phoenix I registered my first 4 red cards I've ever played in COMP Rel and went 12-3 in the main event. This was my first time going to a GP and it was a grind. Bloodbraid Elf is a blast to play, and here is the list of my matchups. Feel free to ask me anything and I will do my best to respond and answer any questions
EDIT: Edited in the list and SB notes plus a reason why I ran the deck in the bottom of the write up.
Sideboard(15)
* 2 Lead the Stampede
* 2 Relic of Progenitus
* 2 Thought seize
* 2 Shaper's Sanctuary
* 2 Abrupt Decay
* 1 Essence Warden
* 1 Elvish Champion
* 2 Reclamation Sage
* 1 Fracturing Gust
**Round 1: vs Jeskai Control/Tempo, 2-1**
I went 2-1 to start off the day. Blood Braid Elf is fantastic in control matchups.
SB Out: -1 Nettle Sentinel, -2 Lead the Stampede, -1 Ezuri
SB In: +2 Shaper's Sanctuary, +2 Thoughtseize
**Round 2: vs Dredge, 2-0**
He stumbled turn 2 both games getting poor setups for lootings allowing me to vomit my hands out and get into the red zone.
SB Out: -2 Lead the Stampede, -1 Elvish Visionary
SB In: +2 Relic of Progenitus, +1 Elvish Champion
**Round 3: Eldrazi Tron, 2-0**
In game 1, I beat him through an X=1 Chalice of the Void on turn 2, and beat him the second game through a Grafdigger's Cage turn 1. Archdruid Ezuri feels good man.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Llanowar Elves
SB In: +1 Abrupt decay, +1 Thoughtseize
**Round 4: Storm, 1-2**
This matchup goes with them sculpting their hand and bolting our dorks early to just cast Past in Flames for the win around turn 4/5. I kept a 1-lander with a Heritage Druid plus a dork. I need the dork to survive the Bolt he most likely had, since he decided to snap keep his first draw of 7. So I play Palace, revealing the Heritage druid, but I play Llanowar Elves instead, to show him what will happen if he wastes what I hope is his only Bolt in hand on my turn 1 play. It works he doesn’t Bolt it, so I vomit my hand turn on 3 with what proves to be lethal the following turn. It didn't matter since he won the match in the end, but I sure do love mind games.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Llanowar Elves, -2 Lead the Stampede, -1 Ezuri
Game one is quick, I just do the elf thing. In game 2 he Breaches me, leaving me at 3 life, but I have 2 dudes on field. He gets Anger of the Gods and clears the last 2 dudes, and I can’t draw enough gas to close it out from that point. In game 3 he Madcaps me and I don’t have Reclamation Sage, so that will end that.
I feel like I got a bit lucky on this one. I barley squeak out game 1, and he mulls to 4 cards in game 2.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -2 Lead the Stampede
SB In: +1 Essence Warden, +2 Reclamation Sage
**Round 7: Grixis Control, 2-0**
This write-up is really showing how tired I am with only 12 hours of sleep the last 72 hours. In my notes I made before writing this I totally thought he got a game off me but according to the DCI I got it 2-0. I end up getting him to 1, but he cleans up my elves, then lands a Tasigur. I’m sitting there with no black source with a Shaman of the Pack in hand after landing 3 during the game. I top deck a Cavern of Souls, slam the Shaman, and he extends the hand.
SB Out: -1 Nettle Sentinel, -1 Ezuri, -1 Lead the Stampede, -1 Llanowar Elves
SB In: +2 Relic of Progenitus, +2 Thoughtseize
**Round 8: Jund, 2-0**
Finally! This is the matchup I've wanted to play all day. Elf on elf violence! Who can Bloodbraid harder?! Turns out I can. Cascading into a Lead the Stampede is usually lights out for the 1-for-1 deck. With that, I'm off to play day 2 in my first ever GP.
Day 2 starts off vs. what I assumed was a decent matchup for me. Turns out with Lead the Stampede and Bloodbraid Elf, I was correct with my choices. Sideboarding went the same as in round 8.
I met this guy late at registration for a 3-round Modern event after the day 1 main event. He's a super nice guy and the matchup goes as I expect. He Bolts my mana dorks, then got in with his creatures. He used Searing Blaze and Lightning Helix to clean up my blockers. It was quick, and it was painless. At least he was a super nice guy, and I hope he did well for the rest of the event.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -2 Lead the Stampede
SB In: +1 Essence Warden, +2 Reclamation Sage
**Round 11: Mono Red Prison, 2-1**
In game one, he basically only shows me a foil Snow-Covered Mountain. I closed it out so quickly, I assumed he was on Skred Red, but I was wrong. In game 2 he gets Chalices of the Void and Ensnaring Bridges on board, (so I'm locked out of doing anything) with a Chandra about to ult and clean it up. Game 3 is a grind, but I eke it out in the end with some solid CoCo casts. Turns out he plays Elves, so he gave me some advice on the deck. Nice guy. I hope he sees this. I want his Abzan list he was telling me about.
SB Out: -1 Elvish visionary, -1 Nettle Sentinel
In: 2 Thoughtseize
I got locked out in Game 2 and figured out he was on Mono Red Prison so for game 3 I went with:
Oh boy, Jund again. Oh crap! He gets game 1 off me. Maybe it was a fluke beating Jund all those times. Nope! Turns out CoCo, BBE, and Stampede are great cards. I get the next two.
Eric is a super nice guy and I recognized the name right away as a high end magic player. He plays Goblin Lore, but ends up with nothing but air after. I slam in with the boys, and we're off to game 2. He fires off several Faithless Lootings and find some phoenixes and a Gurmag Angler. However, Shaman of the Pack is a hell of a drug, and I end up draining him for the win. The dream is alive! I'm off to round 14; can I prize my first GP?
I thought about going with 2 Relics, but it felt like it would be way to slow. I would rather snipe a Hollow One with a Sage while adding a body to the board, rather than worry about trying to pop Relics.
**Round 14: Jund, 2-0**
At this point I’m super excited to see turn 1 Raging Ravine tapped, then a pass. I do elf things he does elf things. My elf things hurt more and now I’m 11-3.
GOBLINS! We finally get to answer the age old question of which tribe is on top. Game one he savages me with a Bushwhacker swing for 10. I whiff on a CoCo (seeing 5 lands and a BBE) to make enough blocks. On the next turn he closes it out with Goblin Grenade and a swing for lethal. In Game 2 I do elf things and get the win. I open Game 3 with a nutty hand of Shaman of the Pack into making 4 green same turn. I cast CoCo and find 2 more Shamans, which is enough to seal the deal. He extends the hand, and I’m super excited! This is also the same guy who Goblin Grenade'd my buddy out of Day 2. It was also super cool to see another tribe in contention for Top 32. My goblins opponent was also a super nice guy as well. Go tribal violence!
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -2 Lead the Stampede
SB In: +1 Essence Warden, +1 Elvish Champion, 1 Reclamation Sage (I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down vs. a Blood Moon.)
My tie breakers were okay. I managed to squeeze into 25th place for my first GP.
There are some things I would change going forward. I don’t like Elvish Visionary in this list, as it felt weak in most Matchups. I even boarded it out vs Jund lists. BBE is amazing in against Control and Midrange, and is wildly okay versus Aggro. I found it was not so great against Combo Decks. Overall, it seems like a meta dependent call on GBr versus straight GB with Chords of Calling.
Things of note: I left my 4th Nettle Sentinel at home for some reason, otherwise I would have ran it over the first Visionary. I don’t like it in the list with BBE. It just feels bad to play for some reason. It’s no Silvergill Adept. (I’m a dirty Fish player as well.) The Deep shadow was fine for casting the black sideboard cards, but was also not really needed most of the time. It should probably have been main deck Reclamation Sage. The second Lead the Stampede in the mainboard could be pretty much anything you wanted it to be.
I ended up running Jund elves because I went to a modern staples event a week before the GP with a few friends. One of them plays a janky Enchantress pillow fort deck and he went to time at the lower table’s vs. an elves player. I watched him cast a BBE and I stopped for a moment and went yeah I’m going to try that too. I borrowed 4 Bloodbraid Elves and 1 stomping ground from a buddy. We played in 8 matches at two small weekday events before deciding it was good enough to take to the GP.
As you can see I didn’t do to well, but the deck felt fine. I cut a land from 19 and added in the Deep Shadow, and here we are.
*Edited because my teacher friend read the post and asked if his seventh graders wrote it for me. We are both working off four hours of sleep.
*Edited again, because my friends are anal-retentive.
I just posted about it in Modern magic reddit and the elves reddit i could try to post it here but im not sure the formatting would work well. should i post a link to it here or attempt to post it all here?
all we need is a blue green wanderwine hub in this next set and we can do the best of both worlds! a painless splash with a mostly mono blue plan! just with a wild nacatl beat down plan to force the opponent on the back foot sooner while we do our thing.
about 53 minutes in he talks about merfolk and on top of what he mentions in the chat he also mentioned on twitter that they will keep pushing merfolk in the next set and seem to be throwing a bone to the non rotating formats for merfolk.
I love how little attention Merfolk gets from pro level people but it also makes me sad because I love reading content. I'm grateful for nikachu, Roth and Joe among others who are able to keep a steady stream of content coming out for us. So thank you Merfolk community! Swim on
im in the same boat as you Nikname Zero! huge fan of everyone who posts here and its what makes Fish more of a home then just a tier deck to try to win with.
Kizzel I was never on stream and i have zero foils so that must have been a different elves player. the best hits were all of the three drops though hitting Elites was also huge for 4 mana 3 bodies and 6 power. shaman of the pack was probably the weakest of the 3 drops because it resolves before BBE but it was still nice to get the extra 3/2 body and the drain.
EDIT: Edited in the list and SB notes plus a reason why I ran the deck in the bottom of the write up.
Creature (36)
* 4 Llanowar Elves
* 4 Elvish Mystic
* 4 Heritage Druid
* 1 Elves of Deep Shadow
* 3 Nettle Sentinel
* 1 Elvish Visionary
* 4 Dwynen's Elite
* 4 Shaman of the Pack
* 3 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
* 4 Elvish Archdruid
* 4 Bloodbraid Elf
Sorcery (2)
* 2 Lead the Stampede
Instant (4)
* 4 Collected Company
Land (18)
* 4 Windswept Heath
* 4 Cavern of Souls
* 1 Stomping Ground
* 1 Overgrown Tomb
* 4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
* 1 Pendelhaven
* 3 Forest
Sideboard(15)
* 2 Lead the Stampede
* 2 Relic of Progenitus
* 2 Thought seize
* 2 Shaper's Sanctuary
* 2 Abrupt Decay
* 1 Essence Warden
* 1 Elvish Champion
* 2 Reclamation Sage
* 1 Fracturing Gust
**Round 1: vs Jeskai Control/Tempo, 2-1**
I went 2-1 to start off the day. Blood Braid Elf is fantastic in control matchups.
SB Out: -1 Nettle Sentinel, -2 Lead the Stampede, -1 Ezuri
SB In: +2 Shaper's Sanctuary, +2 Thoughtseize
**Round 2: vs Dredge, 2-0**
He stumbled turn 2 both games getting poor setups for lootings allowing me to vomit my hands out and get into the red zone.
SB Out: -2 Lead the Stampede, -1 Elvish Visionary
SB In: +2 Relic of Progenitus, +1 Elvish Champion
**Round 3: Eldrazi Tron, 2-0**
In game 1, I beat him through an X=1 Chalice of the Void on turn 2, and beat him the second game through a Grafdigger's Cage turn 1. Archdruid Ezuri feels good man.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Llanowar Elves
SB In: +1 Abrupt decay, +1 Thoughtseize
**Round 4: Storm, 1-2**
This matchup goes with them sculpting their hand and bolting our dorks early to just cast Past in Flames for the win around turn 4/5. I kept a 1-lander with a Heritage Druid plus a dork. I need the dork to survive the Bolt he most likely had, since he decided to snap keep his first draw of 7. So I play Palace, revealing the Heritage druid, but I play Llanowar Elves instead, to show him what will happen if he wastes what I hope is his only Bolt in hand on my turn 1 play. It works he doesn’t Bolt it, so I vomit my hand turn on 3 with what proves to be lethal the following turn. It didn't matter since he won the match in the end, but I sure do love mind games.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Llanowar Elves, -2 Lead the Stampede, -1 Ezuri
SB In: +2 Thoughtseize, +1 Abrupt Decay, +2 Relic of Progenitus
**Round 5: vs Breach Moon, 1-2**
Game one is quick, I just do the elf thing. In game 2 he Breaches me, leaving me at 3 life, but I have 2 dudes on field. He gets Anger of the Gods and clears the last 2 dudes, and I can’t draw enough gas to close it out from that point. In game 3 he Madcaps me and I don’t have Reclamation Sage, so that will end that.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Llanowar Elves, -1 Nettle Sentinel
SB In: +2 Thoughtseize, +1 Shaper's Sanctuary
**Round 6: Burn, 2-0**
I feel like I got a bit lucky on this one. I barley squeak out game 1, and he mulls to 4 cards in game 2.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -2 Lead the Stampede
SB In: +1 Essence Warden, +2 Reclamation Sage
**Round 7: Grixis Control, 2-0**
This write-up is really showing how tired I am with only 12 hours of sleep the last 72 hours. In my notes I made before writing this I totally thought he got a game off me but according to the DCI I got it 2-0. I end up getting him to 1, but he cleans up my elves, then lands a Tasigur. I’m sitting there with no black source with a Shaman of the Pack in hand after landing 3 during the game. I top deck a Cavern of Souls, slam the Shaman, and he extends the hand.
SB Out: -1 Nettle Sentinel, -1 Ezuri, -1 Lead the Stampede, -1 Llanowar Elves
SB In: +2 Relic of Progenitus, +2 Thoughtseize
**Round 8: Jund, 2-0**
Finally! This is the matchup I've wanted to play all day. Elf on elf violence! Who can Bloodbraid harder?! Turns out I can. Cascading into a Lead the Stampede is usually lights out for the 1-for-1 deck. With that, I'm off to play day 2 in my first ever GP.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Ezuri, -1 Nettle Sentinel
SB In: +1 Elvish Champion, +2 Lead the Stampede
**Round 9: vs Jund, 2-0**
Day 2 starts off vs. what I assumed was a decent matchup for me. Turns out with Lead the Stampede and Bloodbraid Elf, I was correct with my choices. Sideboarding went the same as in round 8.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Ezuri, -1 Nettle Sentinel
SB In: +1 Elvish Champion, +2 Lead the Stampede
**Round 10: Burn 0-2**
I met this guy late at registration for a 3-round Modern event after the day 1 main event. He's a super nice guy and the matchup goes as I expect. He Bolts my mana dorks, then got in with his creatures. He used Searing Blaze and Lightning Helix to clean up my blockers. It was quick, and it was painless. At least he was a super nice guy, and I hope he did well for the rest of the event.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -2 Lead the Stampede
SB In: +1 Essence Warden, +2 Reclamation Sage
**Round 11: Mono Red Prison, 2-1**
In game one, he basically only shows me a foil Snow-Covered Mountain. I closed it out so quickly, I assumed he was on Skred Red, but I was wrong. In game 2 he gets Chalices of the Void and Ensnaring Bridges on board, (so I'm locked out of doing anything) with a Chandra about to ult and clean it up. Game 3 is a grind, but I eke it out in the end with some solid CoCo casts. Turns out he plays Elves, so he gave me some advice on the deck. Nice guy. I hope he sees this. I want his Abzan list he was telling me about.
SB Out: -1 Elvish visionary, -1 Nettle Sentinel
In: 2 Thoughtseize
I got locked out in Game 2 and figured out he was on Mono Red Prison so for game 3 I went with:
SB Out: -1 Ezuri, -1 Llanowar Elves, -1 Thoughtseize
SB In: +2 Reclamation Sage, +1 Abrupt Decay
**Round 12: Jund, 2-1**
Oh boy, Jund again. Oh crap! He gets game 1 off me. Maybe it was a fluke beating Jund all those times. Nope! Turns out CoCo, BBE, and Stampede are great cards. I get the next two.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Ezuri, -1 Nettle Sentinel
SB In: +1 Elvish Champion, +2 Lead the Stampede
**Round 13: Hollow One, (vs. Eric Severson) 2-0**
Eric is a super nice guy and I recognized the name right away as a high end magic player. He plays Goblin Lore, but ends up with nothing but air after. I slam in with the boys, and we're off to game 2. He fires off several Faithless Lootings and find some phoenixes and a Gurmag Angler. However, Shaman of the Pack is a hell of a drug, and I end up draining him for the win. The dream is alive! I'm off to round 14; can I prize my first GP?
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Nettle Sentinel
SB In: +2 Reclamation Sage
I thought about going with 2 Relics, but it felt like it would be way to slow. I would rather snipe a Hollow One with a Sage while adding a body to the board, rather than worry about trying to pop Relics.
**Round 14: Jund, 2-0**
At this point I’m super excited to see turn 1 Raging Ravine tapped, then a pass. I do elf things he does elf things. My elf things hurt more and now I’m 11-3.
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -1 Ezuri, -1 Nettle Sentinel
SB In: +1 Elvish Champion, +2 Lead the Stampede
**Round 15: Goblins, 2-1**
GOBLINS! We finally get to answer the age old question of which tribe is on top. Game one he savages me with a Bushwhacker swing for 10. I whiff on a CoCo (seeing 5 lands and a BBE) to make enough blocks. On the next turn he closes it out with Goblin Grenade and a swing for lethal. In Game 2 I do elf things and get the win. I open Game 3 with a nutty hand of Shaman of the Pack into making 4 green same turn. I cast CoCo and find 2 more Shamans, which is enough to seal the deal. He extends the hand, and I’m super excited! This is also the same guy who Goblin Grenade'd my buddy out of Day 2. It was also super cool to see another tribe in contention for Top 32. My goblins opponent was also a super nice guy as well. Go tribal violence!
SB Out: -1 Elvish Visionary, -2 Lead the Stampede
SB In: +1 Essence Warden, +1 Elvish Champion, 1 Reclamation Sage (I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down vs. a Blood Moon.)
My tie breakers were okay. I managed to squeeze into 25th place for my first GP.
There are some things I would change going forward. I don’t like Elvish Visionary in this list, as it felt weak in most Matchups. I even boarded it out vs Jund lists. BBE is amazing in against Control and Midrange, and is wildly okay versus Aggro. I found it was not so great against Combo Decks. Overall, it seems like a meta dependent call on GBr versus straight GB with Chords of Calling.
Things of note: I left my 4th Nettle Sentinel at home for some reason, otherwise I would have ran it over the first Visionary. I don’t like it in the list with BBE. It just feels bad to play for some reason. It’s no Silvergill Adept. (I’m a dirty Fish player as well.) The Deep shadow was fine for casting the black sideboard cards, but was also not really needed most of the time. It should probably have been main deck Reclamation Sage. The second Lead the Stampede in the mainboard could be pretty much anything you wanted it to be.
I ended up running Jund elves because I went to a modern staples event a week before the GP with a few friends. One of them plays a janky Enchantress pillow fort deck and he went to time at the lower table’s vs. an elves player. I watched him cast a BBE and I stopped for a moment and went yeah I’m going to try that too. I borrowed 4 Bloodbraid Elves and 1 stomping ground from a buddy. We played in 8 matches at two small weekday events before deciding it was good enough to take to the GP.
During the weekday events I played against:
* Breach Moon (Loss)
* Jund Gitrog/Loam/Seismic Assault Brew (Win)
* Humans (Loss)
* Intruder Alarm/Jace Jank Brew (Win)
* Mill (Win)
* Counters Company (Win)
* RG Christmas Skred (Loss)
* RG Tron (Win)
As you can see I didn’t do to well, but the deck felt fine. I cut a land from 19 and added in the Deep Shadow, and here we are.
*Edited because my teacher friend read the post and asked if his seventh graders wrote it for me. We are both working off four hours of sleep.
*Edited again, because my friends are anal-retentive.
about 53 minutes in he talks about merfolk and on top of what he mentions in the chat he also mentioned on twitter that they will keep pushing merfolk in the next set and seem to be throwing a bone to the non rotating formats for merfolk.