After Pro Tour: Berlin, the Magic world was split into two camps. One declared that bannings were necessary, while the other camp claimed that Elves was a fair deck that took an unprepared field by surprise. When Worlds was over, everyone saw that Elves was indeed just another deck in the format, mostly due to the fact that Faeries destroys Elves. With the Fae gaining heavy popularity, the world seemed to forget about Elves.
After another one of LSV’s victories, this time in LA, TEPS was certainly going to be popular with the PTQ crowd. TEPS is fairly cheap to build, easy to play, and very powerful. Once someone gets the thrill from gambling on a Mind’s Desire and hitting, they are usually hooked. All of those reasons, plus the fact that one of the best players in the world is backing it, usually means that it will become popular overnight.
Elves has a great matchup against TEPS, while GB Loam, one of Elves’ worst matchups, has a terrible TEPS matchup. Intuitive Loam players might see the writing on the wall and audible out of their pet deck, which makes the environment even more Elf friendly.
Basically, what I’m getting at is now is a great time for a return of the Elves. Here is the maindeck I would play, which I am 100% certain is correct:
Creatures (31)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Wirewood Symbiote
- 4 Wirewood Hivemaster
- 1 Viridian Shaman
- 4 Birchlore Rangers
- 1 Mirror Entity
- 4 Heritage Druid
- 4 Nettle Sentinel
- 1 Regal Force
- 4 Elvish Visionary
Lands (17)
Spells (12)
By now, I assume almost all of you have the gist of what’s going on here. With a good draw, you can kill your opponent as early as turn 2 if you have a Glimpse of Nature. From my experience, the games where you draw Glimpse are extremely easy. With some practice, you should be able to flawlessly go through the motions. The games where you don’t draw the Glimpse, or are disrupted in some way, are the ones where you need some practice to know exactly what to do.
Post board, the majority of your matchups change dramatically. In fact, I rarely ever kill my opponents with the combo in games 2 or 3. Instead, it becomes an attrition war, and I will win with anemic beatdown from Nettle Sentinel or Wirewood Hivemaster.
I’ve seen many players in PTQs all ready to go. They have the turn 3 kill all set up, but their Glimpse falls victim to a Thoughtseize or Spellstutter Sprite. A look of confusion and bewilderment washes over their face. They go deep into the tank, and decide to go all in, as they feel like they have no options left, only to run headfirst into a Damnation or Engineered Explosives.
That game was lost before it even began because the Elf player didn’t know his backup plan. Truth is, you can put a clock on your opponent without overextending. You can grind them out with things like Symbiote, Visionary, and Hivemaster. Those are your backup plans, even if they do have some synergy with your main combo.
Initially, I disagreed with some of Frank Karsten’s choices from Worlds, but as I played the deck more and more, slowly I changed cards until I had nearly his original list.
I started with two Elvish Visionaries, as I wanted room for other things, like a maindeck Vexing Shusher. Not only did the Shusher not accomplish much, but Visionary was much better than I was giving it credit for. While Shusher may seem good at first glance because of your supposed poor Faerie matchup, in reality it doesn’t quite play out that way. Shusher can sort of protect your Glimpse from countermagic, but being down a mana the turn you are trying to combo can be devastating.
It’s kind of like playing Faeries and having your Elf opponent cast Glimpse with four mana total. Obviously you cast Mana Leak there, as that effectively counters the Glimpse. Shusher almost does the same thing to yourself. You need as much mana the turn you go off as possible, especially before you really get your engine going. If you cast Glimpse with Shusher in play, and they play a counterspell or two, your Glimpse will eventually resolve, but odds are you don’t have enough mana to combo them out that turn, so Shusher didn’t accomplish much.
As you can rarely kill on turn 2, Visionary is the perfect play for that turn, as on turn 3 you will have another Elf in play and have seen an extra card. At the same time, you don’t overextend into a Firespout or the like. Also, as I stated earlier, should your Glimpses not show up or simply get countered or discarded, Visionary plus Symbiote creates a solid replacement engine.
I was also skeptical of Mirror Entity at first, but now there is no doubt in my mind it is the superior win condition. Not only does it allow you to do all kinds of tricky things, but it allows you to go infinite, so you can still beat someone who gains a large amount of life with something like Martyr of Proclamation. It is also much better when you can’t combo, as sometimes an end of turn Chord for three just kills them on its own. Grapeshot, Brain Freeze, or Predator Dragon only win you the game when you are comboing, whereas Entity is a superior combo piece and it’s great to simply cast too.
There have been some concerns about the times where you start comboing with no creatures in play the turn before, meaning that you can’t activate Entity and attack for lethal, as none of your creatures are able to attack (or they just have blockers), but that simply isn’t relevant in the majority of cases. Even in game 1, you have a pair of Thoughtseizes maindeck to strip their hand, which should make it so they can’t beat you unless they get extremely lucky.
The only times that not being able to kill them right away matters when they:
A) Untap and kill you.
B) Rip something that either kills you or kills all of your permanents.
Scenario A seems only likely to occur if they are playing a burn deck, a combo deck, or already have lethal in play that somehow you can’t stop with a bunch of huge Elf blockers and up to five artifact removal options with Shaman/Symbiote. That means they are either playing a fringe deck like Swans and ripped the Chain of Plasma, had something like Progenitus that you just couldn’t stop, or drew a Mind’s Desire, cast it for a small amount, and hit what they needed.
Scenario B is basically when they rip the Damnation to kill your entire team, except you should have four Symbiotes in play and a full hand, and be able to just re combo again next turn. If they runner runner Damnation you, and you have nothing left somehow, you probably made a mistake.
Honestly, all of those scenarios are so rare that I don’t see any reason to justify something like an Essence Warden, which would solve all of those problems but be close to a blank in the majority of your matchups. In addition, post board, those types of situations don’t really happen, as against burn, you have Forge-Tenders to counter their topdecked burn spells
I’ve seen a lot of players with an Eternal Witness in their deck as a holdover from LSV’s original list, but it is completely useless. What do you need it for? There is almost never a situation in which your win condition (Mirror Entity) is exposed, or even if it is, you can still easily win without it. Witnessing anything else is too unimpressive for this deck. You would be better off keeping the deck sleek by including a synergetic combo piece.
The two maindeck Thoughtseizes might seem out of place, but once you cut the chaff like Essence Warden, Predator Dragon, and Elves of Deep Shadow, you have some slots. Thoughtseize helps your bad matchups, and are basically the way you lock the game up if you can’t kill them immediately with the Entity kill.
Weird Harvest is out of date. Post board, everyone tries to fight you with hate, and casting a Weird Harvest at that point will probably lose you the game. Your opponent will search up some Spellstutters or Fanatics and now you have no way to win. Weird Harvest just isn’t very good in an attrition battle, but Chord is. Chord also lets you fight the mirror more effectively with things like Orzhov Pontiff, or counter Firespouts with surprise Forge-Tenders.
You could play a fourth Summoner’s Pact or Chord of Calling, but those cards are kind of slow and bad in multiples, especially when you play against decks with disruption. You’ll end up with a slow draw in which you can’t effectively cast Pact, and Chord costs too much.
The manabase is pretty standard, although sometimes I see people with no fetchlands or not enough Horizon Canopies. You really want to get some extra value out of your lands. Thinning, while usually not mathematically worth it, really starts to matter when you are comboing but need to keep drawing into more creatures to continue.
While Stifle has understandably become more popular, with only five fetchlands you should be able to play around it.
The Canopies just give you something to do with your lands when you are semi-flooded, at very little cost. Blood Moons are almost entirely non-existent at this point, but even if you do play against them, you have eight pseudo basics and all of your guys make colored mana.
This is the sideboard I would run at the moment:
4 Fecundity
2 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
3 Viridian Shaman
2 Thoughtseize
2 Mycoloth
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Heartwood Storyteller
Faeries
While Fae is supposedly great against Elves, take this into consideration. At a recent 108 man PTQ in St. Louis, the metagame breakdown was:
Faeries — 20
TEPS – 17
Elves – 14
Prosak Zoo – 12
Affinity – 11
Loam – 8
Five-Color Zoo – 4
Burn – 3
Bant – 2
Tron – 3
Adrian – 1
Martyr – 1
AIR – 1
I don’t remember the rest of the breakdown as I threw away my notes, but all of the above is factual.
The Top 8 had 1 MJ Loam, 1 Death Cloud, 2 Prosak Zoo, 1 Five-Color Zoo, 1 Affinity, and 2 Elves. In the end, the very competent Adam Boyd took the slot with MJ Loam, defeating (what I assume based on matchups) Elves in the finals.
Faeries and TEPS were the two most popular decks and neither of them could crack the Top 8, while Elves had two Top 8s and a another person who IDed into 9th. I know several Elf players who had great records against Faeries on the day.
My roommate John Penick and I have had similar results on both sides of the matchup. It seems like we hold Faeries and Elves as a top priority, no matter which deck we are using, and it shows in our results. Similar Faerie players might just assume that they have a good matchup against Elves, or maybe they simply forgot Elves exists. They probably skimped on the hate or didn’t know how to play the matchup.
Faeries is definitely Elves’ worst matchup, but it might not be as bad as you think, especially if your opponents’ aren’t prepared.
+ 2 Thoughtseize, 3 Fecundity
– 3 Summoner’s Pact, 1 Regal Force, 1 Heritage Druid
As I said earlier, the post board games are more battles of attrition than anything else. Fecundity helps mitigate the damage done from Engineered Explosives, Firespout, and Jitte. Mycoloth is also a solid option, if you want to run more of an “all in” strategy against them. If they don’t have Sower, they probably lose, but if they do, you’ll be the one losing.
The Pacts are too risky when they have a bunch of sweepers. Regal Force is too slow. You often won’t have the mana to cast it when they keep blowing up your mana guys. Heritage Druid is a fine card to cut, as you often won’t have three Elves in play. Birchlore might seem like a better card to cut, but when you are sideboarding in some three-drops, Birchlore helps you cast them easily, whereas Heritage Druid won’t.
You should generally be on the beatdown plan. Don’t be afraid to burn a Glimpse if it lets you draw some cards and create a board situation in which you have spread casting costs, to play around Explosives. Firespout is a possibility, but I wouldn’t board in Forge-Tender without first seeing at least two Firespouts from them.
Jitte has been unimpressive for me. Rarely do you connect with it, and instead it plays like a Seal of Jitte. That by itself isn’t very impressive and wouldn’t be worth boarding in.
I played with Chokes for a while, and they were great against unprepared opponents. Today’s Fae players have some legendary Islands or a Black splash with Secluded Glen and River of Tears, which makes Choke nearly useless.
Another plan I briefly tried was going beatdown with some Imperious Perfects, as it’s a great threat by itself. For a three-drop, I wanted something more, and it doesn’t get much better than making all of your guys cantrip.
I’ve been told Tar Fiend is good against Faeries, but it seems a little unrealistic, both casting it and having enough of a board presence to use it profitably.
Gaddock Teeg might seem like a solid answer to Engineered Explosives, but either it gets Snared, they preemptively play Explosives on turn 1 (like they usually should), or they just have a Jitte or Firespout to kill it. It really doesn’t protect you from their deck as much as you think it would, and isn’t worth the slot. It doubles as TEPS hate, but TEPS is a great matchup already.
Proclamation of Rebirth is similar to Fecundity, in that it sort of counters mass removal, but I would much rather have the constant effect of Fecundity should I get to resolve it rather than the one shot effect from Proclamation.
At the PTQ, I saw a lot of players with Scattershot Archers somewhere in their 75, but I didn’t understand why. It doesn’t fit into your game plan at all. You really want to be the beatdown deck and not be overly concerned with what they are doing. Sure, by itself, it might stop Jitte from getting active, but they have still Venser and Mutavault, so it’s not like the Archers kolds them.
TEPS
You are heavily favored in this matchup, as your goldfish is a turn faster on average. In addition to that, you have Thoughtseizes, whereas their disruption is mostly terrible against you. Game 1 should be easy enough, as they only have Remand and a couple Electrolyzes to stop you. Honestly, I even prefer Repeal to Electrolyze.
Post board, you should only have to worry about Brain Freeze. Try to Thoughtseize them mid combo as soon as possible. As long as you don’t play into their tricks, you should definitely win two out of three games.
You could bring in stuff like Thorn of Amethyst or Ethersworn Canonist, but the matchup is so good that it shouldn’t matter.
+ 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
– 2 Wirewood Hivemaster, 1 Viridian Shaman
Forge-Tender is just in case they have Firespouts and can also stop Electrolyze. Hivemasters are mostly irrelevant, so you have to slots to bring in other cards just to be safe.
Elves
Thoughtseize is key here. If you start going off when they have a Hivemaster, be wary of their Chords for Pontiff. You can counter that with your own Chord for Pontiff. If that happens, you have to use Entity and Symbiote to return your Pontiff and wipe their board, so that you can attack for lethal.
+ 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Orzhov Pontiff
– 1 Viridian Shaman, 1 Elvish Visionary, 1 Wirewood Symbiote
Loam
This is your second worst matchup, but as I said earlier, I expect it to decline a bit in the coming weeks. Their plentiful removal is the main problem, but thankfully there are a few decent answers. Fecundity should keep your hand full, and consequently safe from Raven’s Crime. Heartwood Storyteller is also great against all of their recursive spells.
Steely Resolve is similar to Fecundity, but cheaper. However, it has some downsides. First of all, it can potentially turn off your Symbiotes if there isn’t a non-Elf in play to target. It used to be terrible with Jitte as well, but I no longer see any reason to play Jitte. It also doesn’t stop sweepers, which is the main downside.
+ 4 Fecundity, 1 Heartwood Storyteller, 2 Mycoloth
– 3 Summoner’s Pact, 1 Regal Force, 1 Viridian Shaman, 2 Thoughtseize
Unless they have Damnation, Thoughtseize is pretty loose against Loam. All of their cards are similar, and you would rather have any other card.
Prosak Zoo (and Burn)
Overall, a favorable matchup. They need pressure plus a ton of removal, but Symbiote, Visionary, and Hivemaster all give them headaches. Eventually, you’ll stick a threat and they’ll start to fall behind. Don’t be afraid to “burn” a Glimpse here, as if you create a decent board position, they’ll have a hard time winning.
+ 2 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender, 4 Fecundity, 2 Mycoloth
– 1 Viridian Shaman, 1 Regal Force, 3 Summoner’s Pact, 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Heritage Druid
If they have Goblin Sharpshooters, you may have to bring in a Pontiff, although you still have Forge-Tender to turn it off for a turn. Forge-Tender is also amazing against Pyrostatic Pillar if you are comboing.
Enchantments like Pillar typically aren’t a big deal, but there are a few out there that can give you trouble like Worship or Rule of Law. You can get around Worship by using Pontiff, Entity, and Symbiote, but Rule of Law might shut you down. If you are extremely worried about obscure enchantments, you could play a Harmonic Sliver instead of Viridian Shaman, but I would advise against it.
Affinity
Definitely a favorable matchup, but not quite the blowout everyone makes it out to be. If Affinity has a decent amount of sideboard hate, Elves could be in trouble. Expect Canonist, Krark Clan Shaman, Darkblast, and/or Thoughtseize.
+ 3 Viridian Shaman
– 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Elvish Visionary
While you don’t necessarily combo them out via Glimpse and Mirror Entity, although you do need to set up the combo of Symbiote and Shaman quickly. Sometimes, you need to Pact for Shaman or Symbiote with the other piece in play, block and return, and then fall behind because you have to pay for Pact while being too far behind. However, most of the time the combo will destroy them and is well worth having to use a Pact to get there.
Hopefully this has opened your eyes. Elves wasn’t a one trick pony, and it’s here to stay. Whether you are Faeries or Zoo, you will need to prepare to beat the Green Menace at your next PTQ. The Elves hate is at an all time low, so you can no longer rely on other people beating Elves for you.
GerryT