Hello! This is Uri, your 2007 World Champion. I haven’t been able to play for a while because I’ve been busy with secret mysterious assignments and missions, but there is a really cool deck I wanted to share with you.
Nowadays, everyone is familiar with the Extended Elves deck.
A few months ago, there were several articles on this fair site trying to port the deck into Standard. All of these used Elvish Promenade and Coat of Arms to try to simulate the explosiveness of Extended Elves. Many of the authors of these articles tried several versions of this deck, and leaned more and more towards aggressiveness, including Wren’s Run Vanquisher and Bramblewood Paragon, because the pure combo version wasn’t consistent enough without Glimpse of Nature.
Aggro Elves is a good deck, but I think that Combo Elves can be much better. The Extended engine had two parts:
– The mana engine exists in Standard, but lacks Birchlore Rangers, making it less consistent. This can be made up with Ranger of Eos.
– The draw engine lacks Glimpse of Nature, but still has Regal Force. Add Primal Command, stir, and you have yourself an elf pie.
Here is my initial list, before Alara Reborn arrived. I had a great deal of success with this version, both online and in real life tournaments.
Standard Combo Elves!
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Devoted Druid
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Commune with Nature
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Primal Command
4 Regal Force
1 Elvish Promenade
1 Cloudthresher
1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
4 Windbrisk Heights
2 Mosswort Bridge
4 Wooded Bastion
4 Brushland
6 Forest
Sideboard:
3 Guttural Response
3 Cloudthresher
3 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
1 Mycoloth
1 Treetop Village
4 Chameleon Colossus
In Extended, people use all sorts of sophisticated kill mechanisms — Mirror Entity, Grapeshot, Brain Freeze. I’ve even seen Blasting Station. In Standard, people often use Roar of the Crowd. One of the beautiful things about this deck is that you don’t need to include a kill condition — while comboing off, you usually Primal Command your opponent around eight times, as well as putting all the creatures in your deck into play. If someone can still win against you when you have 30 creatures, 56+ life, and all their non-creature permanents are on top of their library, then maybe you should quit playing Magic. I’ve heard poker is a good game.
Here is the post-Alara Reborn decklist:
Creatures (33)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
- 1 Cloudthresher
- 4 Heritage Druid
- 4 Devoted Druid
- 4 Nettle Sentinel
- 4 Regal Force
- 4 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Elvish Visionary
- 2 Dauntless Escort
Lands (13)
Spells (14)
Card by Card Analysis
The Mana:
Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Llanowar Elves: These go without saying. If they’re good enough for Extended, they’re good enough for me.
Devoted Druid: This guy would be too slow in Extended, but in Standard his acceleration is priceless.
Birds of Paradise: Extra mana accelerators. They can also block oversized Faeries in a pinch. Not being an elf isn’t very significant.
Elvish Visionary: A very nice card. Helps to build up to three elves for Heritage Druid, or three attackers for Windbrisk Heights, without costing you a card.
The Engine:
Regal Force: The card drawing engine of the deck. The first will draw anything from 4 to 7 cards, and the second is usually game over, giving you enough velocity to draw your entire deck.
Ranger of Eos: The gas that jumpstarts the engine. The first Ranger fetches a Heritage Druid and a Nettle Sentinel, or two Nettles if you have a Heritage. This, combined with what you’ve already drawn, is enough to build enough creatures and Green mana to cast Regal Force, and often enough to just go off with one-mana Green spells.
Primal Command: This is the missing ingredient of the deck, one that everyone overlooked. An all-round amazing card; it is the deck’s kill condition, it searches for both parts of the engine, it gives Red decks a kick in the balls, and it’s generally a very powerful spell.
Elvish Promenade: This is not necessary at all in the deck. The combo and kill work smoothly without it. However, if you want to play the deck on Magic Online, I recommend you fit one or two in for time-saving purposes, as all the Nettle Sentinel triggers are enough to drive even relatively calm people quite insane.
Tutors:
Commune with Nature: You have to work with what you’ve got. Commune adds a lot of consistency to the deck.
Windbrisk Heights and Mosswort Bridge: These add much needed consistency to the deck. Getting three creatures is very easy, especially with Rangers and Visionaries. Ranger for 2 Nettle Sentinels is also seven power for Mosswort Bridge, so any Primal Command or Regal Force hidden under there is golden.
Bullets:
With Ranger of Eos, Primal Command and Commune with Nature in the deck, it is possible to run bullet creatures. These are, of course, metagame dependent, but we’ve found that having one Cloudthresher to tutor for against Faeries can make a big difference, and Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender goes without saying, especially with all the Volcanic Fallouts and Jund Charms flying around.
Alara Reborn Additions
2 Dauntless Escort: In the previous Standard format pre-Reborn, this was an excellent game 1 deck, but it often ran into trouble when all the aggro decks sideboarded Wrath of God against it. This card has me newly excited about the deck. 1GW for a 3/3 that can sacrifice itself to make all your guys indestructible… An aggressively-costed monster that protects you from mass removal while allowing you to keep building up pressure is just what the doctor ordered for this deck. Before, there was always a question in the back of my head when playing, even game 1… “what if he has mass removal in his deck?” With this guy, I don’t really care.
Try this deck a few times, and I think you’ll be very impressed. It goldfishes turn 4-5 very consistently, even through some resistance, and the Rangers and Primal Commands give you inherent resistance to mass removal effects.
Here is a sample game so that you understand how the deck works:
Turn 1: Forest, Llanowar Elves
Turn 2: Windbrisk Heights, Devoted Druid
Turn 3: Forest, Commune with Nature, Ranger of Eos fetching Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel
Turn 4: You now have 3 lands, Llanowar Elves and Devoted Druid in play. This is 5 mana, and no land has been played this turn.
Tap 3 lands for GGG, use GG to play Nettle Sentinel and Heritage Druid.
Tap Heritage, Nettle and Devoted Druid, GGGG in pool. Play Nettle, tap both Nettles and the Llanowar Elf, 7 mana in pool. Now any elf from your hand equals mana, and further cards from Regal Force. Primal Command can be played costing effectively 3 mana, Time Walking your opponent and fetching a Regal Force.
From this point you chain Elves, Regal Forces, and Primal Commands to draw your entire deck. It’s important to count to make sure Regal Force doesn’t deck you, but this part is usually very simple. The second or third Primal Command should shuffle your graveyard into your library, so you have an empty graveyard when your whole deck is in your hand. At this point, with more than enough mana to do anything you want and your whole deck in your hand, you play Primal Commands, shuffle them back, draw them again with Elvish Visionaries, play them again, shuffle again, etc. At some point this whole story ends because there are only 4 Visionaries in the deck, and you pass the turn with 40+ power of creatures, and a deck consisting of three Primal Commands.
It is customary to wish your opponent good luck at this point. (Hehe!)
Strategy Tips
The key to playing the deck is realizing how the engine functions, and this is the reason that a lot of people will misplay against you when you play it. What you want in a hand is a combination of two elements: mana and card draw. Card draw is usually Regal Force or Primal Command (for Regal Force). Mana is best managed through Ranger of Eos, although sometimes you will draw it naturally.
The way you want your games to play out is:
Turns 1 and 2: Play mana creatures. The best is Devoted Druid, but Llanowar Elves or, if you’re lucky, a Heritage Druid and two friends, are also fine.
Turns 3 and 4: Play Ranger of Eos and/or Primal Command. Ranger fetches Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel, which, combined with your board and hand, will usually allow you to reach seven mana on the following turn. Primal Command will get either Ranger or Regal Force most of the time, and with either the lifegain or the “put on top of library” ability, it also pretty much Time Walks your opponent.
Turns 4 and 5: Go off. This begins with a Regal Force, which will usually provide you with enough gas to get more mana and either play a Primal Command or another Force. Even if you can’t, against most decks you can easily wait a turn and finish them on the next one, whether it’s because you are missing mana or because some of your gas is under a tapped Bridge or Heights.
Sideboarding:
The sideboard is meant for three different matchups —
Against Faeries
You side in 3 Cloudthresher, 4 Chameleon Colossus, 3 Guttural Response, and one Treetop Village. Side out 4 Regal Force, 3 Heritage Druid, 1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, 1 Nettle Sentinel, 2 Elvish Visionary.
Because people will sideboard 4 Infests against you, it becomes very hard to go off in the traditional fashion. So instead, you morph into a fast mono-Green deck. This is the best strategy we found, and it lets the deck go 50-50 against Faeries both before and after sideboarding. This is definitely your hardest matchup.
Against Red
Side out the Cloudthresher, 1 Elvish Visionary, and 3 Regal Force for 3 Forge-Tender, one Treetop Village, and one Mycoloth. Commanding for Mycoloth is usually good enough against Red, and Ranger of Eos will often just fetch 2 Forge-Tenders, so going off is a bit harder. This is what the Mycoloth is there for. If they are playing R/B, bring in some Chameleon Colossuses instead of the Mycoloth as they could be running Deathmarks or Terrors.
Against Five-Color -Control
Side in the Guttural Responses, the Dauntless Escort, and maybe the Treetop/Forge-Tenders, depending on their build. Side out some mana acceleration. Cloudthresher is also decent here. Because their counters are expensive and it’s hard for them to clock you in the early game without tapping out, it isn’t very hard to play around mass removal in such a way that you go off in a single big turn. Windbrisk Heights also gives them fits, because if they Wrath your guys you can reload with Ranger or Primal Command. Volcanic Fallout is better, of course…
There is no sideboard against the various W/x decks. The main reason for this is that you don’t really need one. The matchups against both B/W Tokens and W/R Boat Brew are very very easy. Ranger of Eos and Primal Command give their creature control fits, and you goldfish several turns faster than they do. B/W can try to force you to discard your card draw with Scullers and Thoughtseizes, but with six Impulse lands as well as many cards to draw, and Communes and Visionaries, this plan usually fails. R/W can really only win if they manage to manascrew you, which is pretty difficult considering the number of mana sources in the deck. If you think they’re siding in Wraths, you can bring in the third Dauntless Escort for a Cloudthresher/Visionary/other random card.
This deck was borderline Tier 1 before the arrival of Alara Reborn — it really depended on the metagame. Generally, if there is a lot of Five-Color Control and Faeries, you can play with Gilt-Leaf Palaces and Thoughtseizes, and you will have a very good matchup against 5CC and a 50% matchup against Fae. -1 Forge-Tender, -1 Birds of Paradise, -1 Windbrisk Heights, +3 Thoughtseize. Replace basic lands with Gilt-Leaf Palaces and Llanowar Wastes.
Versus aggro decks, I prefer this configuration because you don’t really need Thoughtseizes there. This deck outclasses the aggro decks of the format on all fronts, and Thoughtseizes attack them on a front that you don’t really need to attack. There isn’t really much they can play that you care about. The reason is that, with Ranger of Eos and Primal Command (for Ranger if necessary), you never run out of combo pieces, and anyone trying to burn your Heritage Druids and Nettle Sentinels is fighting a losing battle.
The deck’s hardest matchups are decks with mass removal and counters: Faeries with Infest, or Five-Color Control with Volcanic Fallout and Wrath of God. Five-Color is not so hard because they do not apply much pressure, but Faeries can quickly take the game away with their deadly aerial assault. Dauntless Escort helps against Five-Color Control in this regard, of course.
In summary, this is a very good, very flexible deck. It has an inherent advantage versus anything not running mass removal, a decent fighting chance with Dauntless Escort, and, with easy access to Thoughtseize and other tools, can be configured to beat anything out there. I recommend you give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.
If you have any questions about the deck, feel free to ask in the forums. It’s a bit counter-intuitive at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a lot of fun, and very strong.
Good luck at Regionals this weekend!
Uri