The best time for Legacy videos is always while we’re waiting for the new set to come out since nothing else really matters, so today I figured I’d play some games with Elves, my current deck of choice in Legacy.
My list is a little unusual. I’m only playing two copies of Heritage Druid. I’ve never tried playing four, but I haven’t really felt like I want them more often since the games are rarely about going off with Glimpse of Nature.
I’m trying one Edric, Spymaster of Trest, which I haven’t played before but seemed interesting enough to make room for.
Creatures (29)
- 4 Wirewood Symbiote
- 4 Quirion Ranger
- 1 Viridian Shaman
- 2 Birchlore Rangers
- 2 Heritage Druid
- 4 Nettle Sentinel
- 4 Elvish Visionary
- 1 Progenitus
- 1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
- 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
- 4 Deathrite Shaman
- 1 Elvish Mystic
Lands (18)
Spells (13)
I felt pretty good when my opponent started out by using Chain Lightning on my Elvish Mystic. My hand wasn’t really vulnerable to spot removal, and that meant they weren’t going to be well positioned to race me. Game 2 was much closer since they started out with two copies of Goblin Guide on the play. They used Fireblast on my Heritage Druid because they felt like they were in a good position to win and were afraid of what I might be able to do. As it turned out, they lost the game because of that since they could have double Fireblasted me on their turn, but they had no way of knowing that.
I’ve generally done fairly well against the blue creature decks I’ve played with Elves, but Dark Confidant with all that removal and counters is exactly where they want to be. My opponent had everything during game 1, and I wasn’t able to put up much of a fight with five cards in the second game. But I think it was going to be hard to win that matchup no matter what.
I’m not sure what I was thinking the first time I sideboarded—obviously Show and Tell is going to come in against me when all the opponent saw was Deathrite Shaman. I think I should have brought in the fatties. I had to get pretty lucky to win games 2 and 3. I beat this opponent again after this match, but I didn’t want to include two videos of the same pairing. I’m not entirely sure how good or bad the matchup is at this point—I think it’s like the first two games showed, where someone just wins outright very quickly.
That matchup is difficult, and the play was just a series of errors on both sides, most of which I mentioned in the video. I’m not sure how I forgot to bring in Gaddock Teeg. The play was sloppy enough that I was tempted to scrap the video. But Miracles is a good matchup to show a wide range in this set, and I think it is reasonably clear how the games “should” have played out.
Elves is a remarkably difficult deck talk through playing. The number of actions per turn is high enough that it’s just hard to remember everything while focused on something else. I like Elves, but if there’s a lot of Miracles and Delver with Dark Confidant, this deck will definitely have problems.