MTG Salvation

Walking Ballista: Ballista is our Swiss Army knife of sorts. With enough mana, or a few experience counters, we can control a board full of little guys for a while. We do have the ability to generate infinite experience counters, and with that, we can ping the entire board to death.

Arbor Elf/Birds of Paradise/Elvish Mystic/Fyndhorn Elves/Llanowar Elves: Our 1-CMC mana dorks. These guys help power out all of our spells, and enable us for a turn three Ezuri. All but one of these are Elf creatures, so they will also help power up Priest of Titania/Elvish Archdruid.

Joraga Treespeaker: Another mana dork. She takes an additional 1G in order for her to start creating mana, but after that initial investment, she makes GG. If you have mana to spare, you can keep leveling her up in order for all Elves to generate GG.

Joraga Warcaller: One of our Elf lords. With Ezuri out, you only really want to use his Multikicker once in order to get an Experience counter. You can continue to dump +1/+1 counters on him from Ezuri, and in turn he will boost all of your Elf creatures.

Shrieking Drake: This guy is an experience-generating monster! As long as you have blue mana open, you can keep bouncing him repeatedly to gain experience. He is part of a combo, which will be discussed in the Combo section below.

Sylvan Safekeeper: One card of our protection suite. The sacrifice of a land is a downside, but being able to protect Ezuri or one of our combo creatures from removal is necessary. With the number of mana dorks we run, this cost shouldn't get too out of hand.

Wirewood Symbiote: We use this card to untap one of our mana dorks that produce a ton of mana in order to cast more spells. However, we can also use it to protect Ezuri or another Elf in a pinch. Returning an Elf is the cost to activate the ability, so it can't be responded to, which means we can protect any Elf without fear of them playing another piece of removal.

Bloom Tender: Another one of our mana dorks. Tender can produce UG as long as you have a permanent of those colors. Tender is definitely one of the slower mana dorks, and won't accelerate us too much.

Devoted Druid: A mana dork that deals in counters. She can tap for GG on her own by adding a -1/-1 counter to untap herself. When you add Ezuri into the mix with a bunch of experience counters, she can tap for far more than that.

Eladamri, Lord of Leaves: Another Elf lord, although he does something a bit different. He doesn't boost power/toughness like a normal lord does. He grants forestwalk, but more importantly, shroud. He protects Ezuri and our other Elves from spells and abilities that target. Do note, however, the Ezuri's ability also targets, so you won't be able to target an Elf to add counters to as long as Eladamri is out.

Fauna Shaman: Survival of the Fittest on a body. One of the downfalls of her ability is that she has to tap, so you cannot activate her the turn she comes down, and is therefore susceptible to removal. If she does stick, she can tutor for any creature in your deck at the cost of one creature from your hand. Most of the time she will try to go for Sage of Hours in order to go for the win, but she can tutor up whatever you need for the situation at hand.

Gyre Sage: A mana dork with the Evolve ability. Not many creatures will cause Sage to Evolve, but once you put enough counters on it, it can tap for a lot of mana.

Kiora's Follower: Follower can untap any permanent, whether it's Gaea's Cradle, Priest of Titania, Birthing Pod, or even a creature for a surprise blocker.

Plaxmanta: Another key piece to our protection suite. Grants all creatures shroud, and is a creature so it can trigger Ezuri if he is out.

Priest of Titania/Elvish Archdruid/Marwyn, the Nurturer: Our big-mana producing dorks. Titania adds mana for each Elf on the battlefield, Archdruid adds mana for each Elf you control, and Marwyn adds mana equal to her power. Her power grows each time an Elf enters under our control, and Ezuri can increase her power with counters.

Sage of Hours: Our main win condition. Once we have four experience counters and Ezuri out, we can get him onto the battlefield, gain our 5th experience, head to combat, add the counters and then take an extra turn. If left unanswered, we can take an infinite amount of turns, and slowly build up our army, and swing for lethal.

Sakura-Tribe Elder/Farhaven Elf/Wood Elves: Our land-fetching creatures. Not much to be said about these, except they gives us mana in the form of lands, which are most of the time longer lasting than creatures. They will also trigger Ezuri upon entering.

Thrummingbird: Cheap flyer that helps proliferate our experience and +1/+1 counters. Can also help increase Poison our -1/-1 counters if anything has them.

Vedalken Aethermage: Mainly used to tutor for Sage of Hours, but it can also grab Sylvan Safekeeper, Cephalid Constable, and Fathom Mage. It is also almost uncounterable, as it is an ability, and would need a Stifle-like effect for it to be countered.

Cephalid Constable: One of our backup win conditions. If we put a bunch of counters on him, and make him unblockable via Rogue's Passage or Whirler Rogue, we can start setting our opponent's back far enough that it becomes almost impossible for them to make a comeback.

Cold-Eyed Selkie: Card draw creature. In order to draw, we have to connect with damage. It has islandwalk, so this helps a little bit if anyone has an Islandout. With enough counters on it, however, we can draw an absurd amount of cards, especially if we are able to make it unblockable another way in case the islandwalk ability won't work.

Eternal Witness: A staple card for the green color. Regrowth on a 2/2 body for 1GG is nothing to scoff at. She can be tutored up via one of our many available tutors. Ideally, we'd want to save her in case one of our win conditions ends up in the graveyard.

Manglehorn/Reclamation Sage: Our ETB artifact removal. Sage will also hit enchantments, while Manglehorn causes all opponents artifacts to enter tapped. This is especially useful for any artifact ramp or artifacts that require tapping to activate.

Rishkar, Peema Renegade: A psuedo-mana dork. He can add a +1/+1 counter to any two creatures, and with his static ability, turn any creature with a +1/+1 counter on it into a mana dork.

Trygon Predator: Another piece of artifact/enchantment removal. It will have to deal combat damage in order to remove something, but it has built-in evasion in the form of Flying, so it shouldn't be too difficult to connect.

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard: Another tutor for us, Yisan is a different kind of tutor. He can only tutor creatures based on the number of verse counters on him. With one verse counter, we usually want to find some sort of cheap protection such as Wirewood Symbiote or Sylvan Safekeeper. If protection isn't needed, we can access a mana dork or another utility creature. On two verse counters, we will almost always want to grab Sage of Hours, as long as have enough experience counters to take an extra turn. On three verse counters and on, we will usually just grab whatever it is we need, whether it's more ramp, removal, evasion, protection, draw, etc.

Beast Whisperer: One of the newest additions to the deck. We run a high creature count, so we can essentially draw a good amount of cards off of this guy. It's also nice to not have to go to combat like you would if we ran Edric, Spymaster of Trest or something similar.

Fathom Mage: Fathom Mage is the ideal draw engine in this deck. Our deck is based on +1/+1 counters, and so is her draw ability. She also has Evolve, so she will gain a few counters and card draws off of that alone, but when we have a high number of experience counters, she can draw a ton of cards.

Mystic Snake: Counter spell on a body. Will trigger Ezuri if he's out and counter a spell at the same time. Can be tutored via Chord of Calling/Yisan, the Wanderer Bard directly to the battlefield for a surprise counter.

Spike Weaver: Weaver is our combat damage prevention technician. As long as we can keep putting counters on him and leaving up enough mana, we can fog all combat until we find a way to win the game.

Whirler Rogue: Rogue is currently a flex spot in the deck for me. It can gain us three experience counters, gives us flying attackers/blockers, and allows some unblockability, but other than that, doesn't do much else.

Cultivator of Blades: Another combat win condition. With the Fabricate ability, we get three experience counters. This in turn will give our creatures +4/+4 during combat with Cultivator alone, but by the time he comes down, we should have more than 3 experience.

Craterhoof Behemoth: The big game ender. Craterhoof gives all of our creatures +X/+X for each creature we control on the battlefield. If that wasn't enough, he also gives them trample, so the excess damage will go through. We can easily tutor him out with Chord of Calling or Natural Order, making him the perfect way to end a game, especially with the number of creatures we run.

Mana Crypt/Sol Ring/Simic Signet: The mana rocks of the deck. Crypt/Ring will allow us to facilitate a turn 2 Ezuri, while Signet will allow for turn 3, unless combined with one of the other two rocks or Ancient Tomb.

Skullclamp: We run a lot of x/1 creatures, between mana dorks and tokens that can be produced, so this will be good card draw for us.

Birthing Pod: Another tutor card that will bring the creature directly to the battlefield. You are able to search for a creature that has CMC equal to the sacrificed creature's CMC +1, so we are limited in our choices, so it's a great idea to know exactly what you have in your deck to see if you even have a tutor option left.

Green Sun's Zenith:

Eldritch Evolution:

Natural Order:

Triumph of the Hordes:

Mystical Tutor:

Swan Song/Arcane Denial/Counterspell/Mana Drain:

Worldly Tutor:

Cyclonic Rift:

Heroic Intervention:

Muddle the Mixture:

Chord of Calling:

Earthcraft:

Survival of the Fittest:

Sylvan Library:

Dense Foliage:

Growing Rites of Itlimoc:

Squirrel Nest:

Nissa, Voice of Zendikar:

Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury:

Ancient Tomb:

Botanical Sanctum/Command Tower/Flooded Grove/Hinterland Harbor/Yavimaya Coast:

Breeding Pool/Tropical Island:

Cavern of Souls:

Dryad Arbor:

Flooded Strand/Misty Rainforest/Polluted Delta/Scalding Tarn/Verdant Catacombs/Windswept Heath/Wooded Foothills:

Forest/Island:

Gaea's Cradle:

Inkmoth Nexus:

Rogue's Passage: