ok this thread is specifically focused on the different possible combos with combo elves. this is a step by step breakdown on how they work and to become familiar with the combo pieces so that you can recognize right away what card you need to start and complete the combo and ultimately win. this thread is for questions and to even propose and suggest new combos with cards maybe not in most peoples' decks. if you have to ask something not specifically combo related, then go to the combo elves deck thread- this is a different thread for a reason.
The main combo card is cloudstone curio. This combo will almost always involve heritage druid. The idea is to have the curio in play while you have a heritage druid and another one drop mana elf in play. The combo starts when you play a third elf with your other elves untapped. Depending on what card the "third elf" is, you can have different limitless combos.
::THE CORE COMBOS::
Infinite Mana: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, one drop elf, and nettle sentinel. with this you will be net gaining one mana per cycle. if you have two nettle sentinels out (one being your one mana elf and the other being the third elf), even better because you be gaining two mana per cycle.
Infinite Cards: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, nettle sentinel, elvish visionary. with this you will be maintaining your current but be drawing a card each cycle. drawing cards for free is awesome.
Infinite Life: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, one drop elf, and essence warden. with this you will be net gaining two life per cycle. if you have two essence wardens out (one being your one mana elf and the other being the third elf), then you will be gaining four mana per cycle. an unnecessary win-more but what whatever.
Infinite Storm Count: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, and any two one drop elves. if you are running a grapeshot, all of these combos have infinite storm count, but this is the most general one. so if you had hdruid, and 2 arbor elves- you don't gain any mana, life, or draw cards but you do redundantly play cards over and over again.
Infinite Turns: cloudstone, creature card, emrakul, the aeons torn. yeah- nobody does this- but I did have to do it in order to win. If cases where even if you attacked with all your creatures and Emrakul you will lose that turn, there is a way to attack with all your creatures on each of your infinite turns. Basically, most people don't realize that you can bounce any of you creatures with another creature when you have cloudstone curio in play. You don't need just an elf to bounce an elf. The card reads permanent type. What permanent type? Creature... Each turn you will have to rack up 15 mana to play him each time. Fun. Hard. Redundant. Not too many cases where you don't win with an Emrakul cast.
*note* - if you have cloudstone, heritage druid, nettle sentinel, and essence warden, then each cycle you will be gaining one mana and one life.
These are the main combos being run in combo elves. note that it isn't really infinite, you just get to pick an arbitrarily large number, say- 5 billion. might as well be infinite but whatever.
How it works- in most cases when you play people you can just play it out once or twice to show opponent that you have net gains of (fill-in-the-blank) per cycle. But you need to know how to actually do the combo right? So here it goes. Cloudstone is out. You have your three elves, depending on each combo. Now it doesn't matter which order you play them in as long as you play them with forests of other sources of mana (as long as you aren't tapping your combo pieces). So your "third elf" doesn't actually need to be the third card to be played. So once you play all three: once you play the last card, cloudstone curio's ability trigger is on the stack and you can respond to that by tapping your three dudes for 3 mana and returning someone to your hand other than the one you most recently played. Then with 2 mana left, you play that same elf so you end up with 1 mana left in pool. For mana: obviously- don't pick up your nettle sentinel, that is how you are having net gains; the point is to pick up the tapped dudes so you can tap them again. For cards: you will play your elves down to stay at the same mana size(gaining three, losing three) while you draw a card each turn.
That is how the core combo works. So that is what you need to know by heart and know what you need to do with those tutor cards in your hand.
But wait- there's more.
::OTHER COMBOS::
Some people, like me, run intruder alarm. This adds to the brokenness and a huge amount of mana fast.
If you are running it, there is one combo that you can and should incorporate into your deck and meta.
Infinite Elf Tokens: intruder alarm, llanowar elves or arbor elf(with a forest obviously), and imperious perfect. the idea is to have them all in play, then next turn, when the mana dude and imperious perfect down have summoning sickness, tap mana dork for mana then use that to tap imperious perfect for his ability. this will make an elf token. yay. because intruder alarm is in play, llanowar elves and imperious perfect untap. I'm sure you see the combo. Just keep doing it or do one cycle and say you did it 5 billion times. The bad thing about this combo is that you have to wait until the turn after you played your elves so you can actually activate their abilities, then wait another turn to attack and win. So its definitely not as reliable as the core combos.
Infinite Life: cloudstone curio, tangleroot, essence warden, and one mana elf. for this combo, cloudstone curio and tangle root must be in play. then cast one of the elves then the other elf. again, with the cloudstone ability, you gain a life then you pull back a dude. so basically they are trading places but they are on the battlefield together before one returns to your hand so you gain a life. the way you are able to afford casting them a million times is all because of tangle root. all you need to do is pay for the first elf then you are set.
Infinite Storm still relies on having at least 1 Nettle Sentinel as well as two 1 drop elves, otherwise the combo doesnt go off that well.
t1: L + Mana dork
t2: L + Sentinel + Hdruid, tap the elves, drop curio
t3: L(if possible) + 1 Drop elf bounce mana dork, drop mana dork bounce 1 drop rinse repeat however many times, play Storm Card.
Infinite permanents put on top of library (+ infinite lifegain, graveyard destruction, or creature searching):
Note: infinite mana must be had before this combo works. Usually I just use it to make sure nobody can disrupt my win after I've done the infinite mana + draw my deck combo.
Infinite Storm still relies on having at least 1 Nettle Sentinel as well as two 1 drop elves, otherwise the combo doesnt go off that well.
t1: L + Mana dork
t2: L + Sentinel + Hdruid, tap the elves, drop curio
t3: L(if possible) + 1 Drop elf bounce mana dork, drop mana dork bounce 1 drop rinse repeat however many times, play Storm Card.
false- you don't need a nettle sentinel or 4 elves. all you need is hdruid and 2 one drops. once you play the 3rd one untapped(all being untapped), tap all three then bounce the 2nd one. you have 3 mana in pool then you bounce hdruid after playing the guy in hand. you now have 2 mana in pool. play hdruid to bounce last of three elves into hand to go to 1 mana. you then use that one mana to play him and repeat. you are simply getting three mana and using those 3 to recast the 3 one drops over and over again. so nettle sentinel is not needed. this is not useful of course unless you have a grapeshot or something else useful with storm.
false- you don't need a nettle sentinel or 4 elves. all you need is hdruid and 2 one drops. once you play the 3rd one untapped(all being untapped), tap all three then bounce the 2nd one. you have 3 mana in pool then you bounce hdruid after playing the guy in hand. you now have 2 mana in pool. play hdruid to bounce last of three elves into hand to go to 1 mana. you then use that one mana to play him and repeat. you are simply getting three mana and using those 3 to recast the 3 one drops over and over again. so nettle sentinel is not needed. this is not useful of course unless you have a grapeshot or something else useful with storm.
Didnt see that properly. Of course there is no need for NS to be there, but it makes it so much easier if its one of the one drops. However, if you are doing a storm,how are you going to play grapeshot? splashing red mana of some kind needs to happen, maybe Rootbound Crag or Stomping Grounds for the red splash. But in doing so you might hurt the combo thats supposed to go off..
Didnt see that properly. Of course there is no need for NS to be there, but it makes it so much easier if its one of the one drops. However, if you are doing a storm,how are you going to play grapeshot? splashing red mana of some kind needs to happen, maybe Rootbound Crag or Stomping Grounds for the red splash. But in doing so you might hurt the combo thats supposed to go off..
hmmmn- I would not because you wouldn't be playing anything but a land in your first turn. I would rather run a karplusan forest or a misty rainforest to fetch a stomping ground. I always thought of trying to splash some red for magus of the moon into my already UG build. thinking of it sounds really inconsistent though and harmful to the combo.
i think the combo is designed only for 1 or 2 colors and not a tri color deck them...
Its heavily green base. But splashing only one color is decent enough as long as it goes well with the combo, aka Storm,Fireball for red, Intruder Alarm for Blue.
Another thing thats come to mind with the UG combo, Jace's Erasure infinite draw and mill.
another combo I wanted to try out was the devoted druid and quillspike combo just because it was green and only a 2 card combo. they would be easy to search for but the problem is that it still isn't a guaranteed win the next turn and they aren't too cheap as creatures so it would be turn 4ish at the earliest (attacking on 4 and without ramps). plus they don't really help the other combos and the deck with their consistency. just another random combo that existed that seems feasible but don't want to use. haha
i was mulling over the infinite mill combo with the erasures, and its more or less situational. The thing is if it hits a deck that has an eldrazi in it, then the mill doesnt work, just proceed as normal. Storm decks it would hurt but you would have to survive first, RDW just as usual, zoo (struggling up hill battle), Hive Mind : Dont go there, Meli: well just wow...
This is more of a rogue combo deck (adding in the erasures that is) imho since it doesnt have answers to most decks without side boarding then hurting the combo
played in a modern tourney tonight and against affinity I came across a combo I never did before. Basically, our decks should be soooo much faster than their fast artifacts. Especially with minimal removal, playing out our hands is pretty easy. So I had Cloudstone Curio and Tanglerootalong with a bunch of random elves, but couldn't go infinite yet as there was no Heritage Druid. I drew a Gilt-leaf Archdruid and realized it was a game winner with Llanowar Elves and Arbor Elf already in play. So I played a druid and pulled a druid back to hand for infinite card draw. Then got heritage druid and got infinite mana and played Emrakul. Never thought a top-deck Gilt-leaf archdruid would be a game winner.
so if you have played this deck at all you have most likely learned all the key combo pieces- what exactly you need to combo off, what missing pieces you need to go off with a particular combo given your hand. But if you have played with this deck at all you have learned that you also need to improvise - doing comboes you have never done before but once you really think about the cards in your hand you think to yourself- "This could really work." This is what will win many of your matches. Sometimes you will overlook an obscure, winning hand while you are waiting for key pieces for a basic combo. With this deck, you really really need to think each turn, "Can I go off this round?" Knowing what your deck is capable of and creativity will truly help you win matches. I played in another modern tourney today and made it to top 4. Turns where you would lose next turn really pressure you to think hard of some possible way to combo off.
Some random combos I did today:
One game I had one nettle sentinel, heritage druid, llanowar elves and 2 lands. I top decked an intruder alarm and using my elves for the mana and a breeding pool. Played another elf to untap everyone so then I had 7 or so mana floating. With only weird harvest in hand, I got 4 creatures, making sure I had 1 left over to play a dude and keep the cycle going. 4 creatures were 3 1 mana elves and an emrakul. played an elf, no mana -> tapped for 4 (3 from Hdruid and one from llanowar elves). played another elf to go to 3 then tap for 6 to go to 9. played last elf to go to 8 then tap all for exactly 7 more mana = 15. emrakul in hand = win.
another game I was going to die next turn, even if I casted emrakul because they had more than 6 permanents and I could kill them in one turn(they were at 30ish and I was at 4). another problem was that all had in hand was chord of calling. I went infinite mana and chorded for emrakul. If I kept it at that I would have lost because I didn't cast him, so no extra turn and i would have lost to a huge vault skirge. So I pulled back an arbor elf from cloudstone trigger to cast him to pull back emrakul. Then i casted to get the extra turn. So I made sure to keep one creature in the hand at all times and proceeded to attack with everyone except Emrakul and keep geeting infinite mana and recasting Emrakul on my extra turns. In 4 turns the elves did enough damage to win. This turned a loss into a win. If I simply casted him and attacked with him and elves, I would have been open to flying damage. If I kept Emrakul on board to block flying, there were 2 vault skirges to do lethal with cranial plating.
Another game I couldn't go infinite and I had no cloudstone or intruder alarm but I had a tangleroot. I top decked a gilt-leaf archdruid and knew what to do with the weird harvest in hand. i hand 3 druids on board already and I had exactly 7 mana (from hdruid tapping non-druid elves and lands) to play weird harvest for 6, getting 4 creatures which were all druids. after playing the first elf with the last available mana in pool, tangleroot recycles that mana so I could cast the remaining 3 druids. With 7 druids untapped, zoo was no match without lands. Wild nacatyls were then destroyed in the face.
So besides simply relying on the basic infinite combos of mana, life, cards whatever you should also be thinking creatively with your hands. You shouldn't bank on hdruid or nettle sentinel surviving long. Ya you should recognize the basic comboes if you are close but sometimes there are quicker ways to the win. Save your weird harvests and primal commands to finish combos, unless you can afford to use that much mana to get 1 or a few necessary dudes to combo off.
hey its actually near the top of the 'decklist' thread. I am going to post my post-banned-GSZ version soon once I figure out the perfect ratio of chord of callings and summoner's pacts. Im thinking 3 summoner's pact and 2 chords and stay at 2 weird harvests and 1 primal command. this leaves one spot open to try something new or another just another land which is also good.
came across another infinite mana combo- yay. cloudstone curio, tangleroot, heritage druid, and 2 1-drop elves. Takes more mana than typical infinite mana combo with cloudstone,, hdruid, and nettle sentinel but this one can be use if you don't have nettle sentinel but you do have heritage druid and random 1 drops. so add it to your arsenal of possible comboes if you run tangleroot.
Ok, I've had some time to test out the newest combo to elves.
Staff of Domination+
a) 5 elves including archdruid = infinite cards/mana/turns/etc.
b) Also can work as a replacement for elvish visionary/essence warden when you have infinite mana.
c)Allows you to interact with the opponent's board.
Ex: My friend is playing esper faries, I'm manaflooded and can't draw combo pieces. I used the staff to shut down bolth his mistbind and vendillion clique for enough turns to draw a chord of calling to find an archdruid ftw.
I am having some issues fully understanding when the ability of Cloudstone Curio resolves on the stack during the elves combo infinite mana trick. If I have Cloudstone Curio , Heritage Druid , and Llanowar Elves out on the battlefield and play Nettle Sentinel won't the ability of Cloudstone Curio need to be resolved before I can use Heritage Druid's ability to tap all three for 3 mana added to my mana pool? Or am I able to delay the resolution of Cloudstone Curio until after I have tapped my 3 elves for mana? I have been play testing my elf deck on MTGO and I seem to only be able to make the infinite mana trick work if I have 3 elves in play and play a 4th elf because I can then allow Cloudstone Curio to resolve on the stack return one of the 4 elves to my hand and still have 3 I can tap for mana. I think I may just be not as well versed in how resolving the stack works as I need to be.
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The Breakdown:
so this deck is comprised of one drop elves: llanowar elves, arbor elf, heritage druid, and nettle sentinel in its core.
The main combo card is cloudstone curio. This combo will almost always involve heritage druid. The idea is to have the curio in play while you have a heritage druid and another one drop mana elf in play. The combo starts when you play a third elf with your other elves untapped. Depending on what card the "third elf" is, you can have different limitless combos.
::THE CORE COMBOS::
Infinite Mana: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, one drop elf, and nettle sentinel. with this you will be net gaining one mana per cycle. if you have two nettle sentinels out (one being your one mana elf and the other being the third elf), even better because you be gaining two mana per cycle.
Infinite Cards: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, nettle sentinel, elvish visionary. with this you will be maintaining your current but be drawing a card each cycle. drawing cards for free is awesome.
Infinite Life: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, one drop elf, and essence warden. with this you will be net gaining two life per cycle. if you have two essence wardens out (one being your one mana elf and the other being the third elf), then you will be gaining four mana per cycle. an unnecessary win-more but what whatever.
Infinite Storm Count: cloudstone curio, heritage druid, and any two one drop elves. if you are running a grapeshot, all of these combos have infinite storm count, but this is the most general one. so if you had hdruid, and 2 arbor elves- you don't gain any mana, life, or draw cards but you do redundantly play cards over and over again.
Infinite Turns: cloudstone, creature card, emrakul, the aeons torn. yeah- nobody does this- but I did have to do it in order to win. If cases where even if you attacked with all your creatures and Emrakul you will lose that turn, there is a way to attack with all your creatures on each of your infinite turns. Basically, most people don't realize that you can bounce any of you creatures with another creature when you have cloudstone curio in play. You don't need just an elf to bounce an elf. The card reads permanent type. What permanent type? Creature... Each turn you will have to rack up 15 mana to play him each time. Fun. Hard. Redundant. Not too many cases where you don't win with an Emrakul cast.
*note* - if you have cloudstone, heritage druid, nettle sentinel, and essence warden, then each cycle you will be gaining one mana and one life.
These are the main combos being run in combo elves. note that it isn't really infinite, you just get to pick an arbitrarily large number, say- 5 billion. might as well be infinite but whatever.
How it works- in most cases when you play people you can just play it out once or twice to show opponent that you have net gains of (fill-in-the-blank) per cycle. But you need to know how to actually do the combo right? So here it goes. Cloudstone is out. You have your three elves, depending on each combo. Now it doesn't matter which order you play them in as long as you play them with forests of other sources of mana (as long as you aren't tapping your combo pieces). So your "third elf" doesn't actually need to be the third card to be played. So once you play all three: once you play the last card, cloudstone curio's ability trigger is on the stack and you can respond to that by tapping your three dudes for 3 mana and returning someone to your hand other than the one you most recently played. Then with 2 mana left, you play that same elf so you end up with 1 mana left in pool. For mana: obviously- don't pick up your nettle sentinel, that is how you are having net gains; the point is to pick up the tapped dudes so you can tap them again. For cards: you will play your elves down to stay at the same mana size(gaining three, losing three) while you draw a card each turn.
That is how the core combo works. So that is what you need to know by heart and know what you need to do with those tutor cards in your hand.
But wait- there's more.
::OTHER COMBOS::
Some people, like me, run intruder alarm. This adds to the brokenness and a huge amount of mana fast.
If you are running it, there is one combo that you can and should incorporate into your deck and meta.
Infinite Elf Tokens: intruder alarm, llanowar elves or arbor elf(with a forest obviously), and imperious perfect. the idea is to have them all in play, then next turn, when the mana dude and imperious perfect down have summoning sickness, tap mana dork for mana then use that to tap imperious perfect for his ability. this will make an elf token. yay. because intruder alarm is in play, llanowar elves and imperious perfect untap. I'm sure you see the combo. Just keep doing it or do one cycle and say you did it 5 billion times. The bad thing about this combo is that you have to wait until the turn after you played your elves so you can actually activate their abilities, then wait another turn to attack and win. So its definitely not as reliable as the core combos.
Infinite Life: cloudstone curio, tangleroot, essence warden, and one mana elf. for this combo, cloudstone curio and tangle root must be in play. then cast one of the elves then the other elf. again, with the cloudstone ability, you gain a life then you pull back a dude. so basically they are trading places but they are on the battlefield together before one returns to your hand so you gain a life. the way you are able to afford casting them a million times is all because of tangle root. all you need to do is pay for the first elf then you are set.
post if you have anything to add!
t1: L + Mana dork
t2: L + Sentinel + Hdruid, tap the elves, drop curio
t3: L(if possible) + 1 Drop elf bounce mana dork, drop mana dork bounce 1 drop rinse repeat however many times, play Storm Card.
Note: infinite mana must be had before this combo works. Usually I just use it to make sure nobody can disrupt my win after I've done the infinite mana + draw my deck combo.
Primal Command + Cloudstone Curio + Eternal Witness + Creature.
false- you don't need a nettle sentinel or 4 elves. all you need is hdruid and 2 one drops. once you play the 3rd one untapped(all being untapped), tap all three then bounce the 2nd one. you have 3 mana in pool then you bounce hdruid after playing the guy in hand. you now have 2 mana in pool. play hdruid to bounce last of three elves into hand to go to 1 mana. you then use that one mana to play him and repeat. you are simply getting three mana and using those 3 to recast the 3 one drops over and over again. so nettle sentinel is not needed. this is not useful of course unless you have a grapeshot or something else useful with storm.
Didnt see that properly. Of course there is no need for NS to be there, but it makes it so much easier if its one of the one drops. However, if you are doing a storm,how are you going to play grapeshot? splashing red mana of some kind needs to happen, maybe Rootbound Crag or Stomping Grounds for the red splash. But in doing so you might hurt the combo thats supposed to go off..
For instance your opening hand might be
1 Hdruid
1 Mana Dork
1 Rootbound
1 Curio
1 Essence Warden
1 Elvish Vision
1 NS
Would you still play it?
hmmmn- I would not because you wouldn't be playing anything but a land in your first turn. I would rather run a karplusan forest or a misty rainforest to fetch a stomping ground. I always thought of trying to splash some red for magus of the moon into my already UG build. thinking of it sounds really inconsistent though and harmful to the combo.
Its heavily green base. But splashing only one color is decent enough as long as it goes well with the combo, aka Storm,Fireball for red, Intruder Alarm for Blue.
Another thing thats come to mind with the UG combo, Jace's Erasure infinite draw and mill.
This is more of a rogue combo deck (adding in the erasures that is) imho since it doesnt have answers to most decks without side boarding then hurting the combo
Some random combos I did today:
One game I had one nettle sentinel, heritage druid, llanowar elves and 2 lands. I top decked an intruder alarm and using my elves for the mana and a breeding pool. Played another elf to untap everyone so then I had 7 or so mana floating. With only weird harvest in hand, I got 4 creatures, making sure I had 1 left over to play a dude and keep the cycle going. 4 creatures were 3 1 mana elves and an emrakul. played an elf, no mana -> tapped for 4 (3 from Hdruid and one from llanowar elves). played another elf to go to 3 then tap for 6 to go to 9. played last elf to go to 8 then tap all for exactly 7 more mana = 15. emrakul in hand = win.
another game I was going to die next turn, even if I casted emrakul because they had more than 6 permanents and I could kill them in one turn(they were at 30ish and I was at 4). another problem was that all had in hand was chord of calling. I went infinite mana and chorded for emrakul. If I kept it at that I would have lost because I didn't cast him, so no extra turn and i would have lost to a huge vault skirge. So I pulled back an arbor elf from cloudstone trigger to cast him to pull back emrakul. Then i casted to get the extra turn. So I made sure to keep one creature in the hand at all times and proceeded to attack with everyone except Emrakul and keep geeting infinite mana and recasting Emrakul on my extra turns. In 4 turns the elves did enough damage to win. This turned a loss into a win. If I simply casted him and attacked with him and elves, I would have been open to flying damage. If I kept Emrakul on board to block flying, there were 2 vault skirges to do lethal with cranial plating.
Another game I couldn't go infinite and I had no cloudstone or intruder alarm but I had a tangleroot. I top decked a gilt-leaf archdruid and knew what to do with the weird harvest in hand. i hand 3 druids on board already and I had exactly 7 mana (from hdruid tapping non-druid elves and lands) to play weird harvest for 6, getting 4 creatures which were all druids. after playing the first elf with the last available mana in pool, tangleroot recycles that mana so I could cast the remaining 3 druids. With 7 druids untapped, zoo was no match without lands. Wild nacatyls were then destroyed in the face.
So besides simply relying on the basic infinite combos of mana, life, cards whatever you should also be thinking creatively with your hands. You shouldn't bank on hdruid or nettle sentinel surviving long. Ya you should recognize the basic comboes if you are close but sometimes there are quicker ways to the win. Save your weird harvests and primal commands to finish combos, unless you can afford to use that much mana to get 1 or a few necessary dudes to combo off.
How have your matches been going???
hey its actually near the top of the 'decklist' thread. I am going to post my post-banned-GSZ version soon once I figure out the perfect ratio of chord of callings and summoner's pacts. Im thinking 3 summoner's pact and 2 chords and stay at 2 weird harvests and 1 primal command. this leaves one spot open to try something new or another just another land which is also good.
Staff of Domination+
a) 5 elves including archdruid = infinite cards/mana/turns/etc.
b) Also can work as a replacement for elvish visionary/essence warden when you have infinite mana.
c)Allows you to interact with the opponent's board.
Ex: My friend is playing esper faries, I'm manaflooded and can't draw combo pieces. I used the staff to shut down bolth his mistbind and vendillion clique for enough turns to draw a chord of calling to find an archdruid ftw.