Anyone tested Shalai, Voice of Plenty ?
I was testing Shalai in G/W shell, as a 4rd Ezuri (previously I ran Mirror Entity in this slot). I have to admit, it's bonkers. It is a win condition with Vizier/Devoted, and can protect the team from spot removals. It's also decisive against some 'hard' match ups. (She slows down Storm, outgrind Burn, disable scapeshift, can block/trade affinity's flyers...)
Even if we don't end up running damping sphere ourselves, its mere presence as a sideboard option in the format will drive down the number of storm and tron players out there, which helps our deck.
Need your opinions. My elf deck is pretty much all foiled out except for Cavern of Souls. My current Llanowar Elves are the Gateway promos and the original foil Ezuri. Now my questions are;
1) Which do you prefer, Gateway Promo or the new full art promo from Dominaria Llanowar Elves?
2) Which do you prefer, original foil Ezuri or the new Duel deck foil Ezuri?
Basically trying to determine if it’s worth shelling out the extra cash for additional foils or not. Lol.
Is Damping Sphere really an upgrade over Thorn of Amethyst here?
The Amethyst doesn't slow you down too.
Amethyst doesn't seem very good. Storm counteracts it with one Baral/electromancer and it doesn't bother tron enough.
Damping sphere has more value against amulet & tron while being a harder hoser against storm and KCI. It hurts yourself more though but I think that's worth it as these matchups are quite a bit of a race and you can drop the sphere after dumping your hand mostly. Overall though I doubt you want the sphere. If you play white I still prefer eidolon, if you play black I prefer thoughtseize and potentially stain the mind I think.
Damping sphere looks to have a pretty strong effect on the metagame though which could be good or bad for elves. Storm, KCI and tron are hurt quite a bit by damping sphere as often it's a hatecard that attacks from a completely different angle, especially from creature decks like humans it's very tough to deal with.
Also- anyone still attempting Jund elves or is that hype over now? I messed with Jund for a while, the mana always felt so awkward. All our elves produce green but we need red and black as well.
if you want only Shaman of the pack => you can run 11-12 sources of black
if you want thoughtseize and white spell (stony silence) => 11 fetchlands, 2 shocklands at LEAST
if you want thoughtseize => blooming marsh. cavern of souls, gilt leaf palace
if you want to only cast creature spells in the abzan colours (as part of a toolbox) => you can afford not running 10 fetches
it's so simple but everyoone here seems to not understand this. I hope Kizzel posts something about this matter in the sideboard
In my experience, I have never had any issues casting Shaman nor Thoughtseize.
For Shaman, we have 4 Caverns, 4 Gilt Leaf Palace, 4 Blooming Marsh, 4 Collected Company.
For Thoughtseize, we have 4 Gilt-Leaf and 4 Blooming Marsh.
Now, if you seem to be having issues casting Thoughtseize, you could always run Overgrown Tomb in the land flex spots. Or, you could drop 2 Nettle Sentinels in favor of Elves of Deep Shadow.
On top of that, you need to be playing Thoughtseize correctly. In our deck, it’s not always the turn one play we want. In most cases, we hold it until we want to “go off” and play it that turn, so you don’t really need turn 1 black mana. It really depends on the match up. It’s a catch all sort of spell so I always side 4. If sweepers are all you are afraid of, just run Heroic Intervention instead and be reactive. Thoughtseize almost always comes in game 2 for me. Besides Shaman, it’s the reason to play GB elves.
I never play more/less than 18 lands in GB and I strongly value pain free mana setups. My land base looks like this:
4 Forest
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gilt Leaf Palace
4 Blooming Marsh
1 Pendelhaven
1 Westvale Abbey
I run Westvale as a plan C emergency situation. But like I said, the flex spots can be changed to whatever your preferences are.
I had 2 Abrupt Decays in the side for a while but would rarely side them in. I found Rec Sage was able to hit all the same things so I dropped them altogether. The Wardens are for any heavy creature matchups/burn. If they are wasting a burn spell on Warden, I’m winning. Maybe one day we will get an Elf version of Kitesail! Wishful.. I know.
Side question for all you Elf obsessed like myself.
What is your companion deck? I’ve been trying for over 3 years to find a 2nd deck I truly enjoy. I’ve gone through well over 12 decks, just nothing seems to be as enjoyable as my precious elves. So I’m curious to see what all of you play when you take a short break from Elves to change things up.
My other modern deck is Merfolk. Everyone at my LGS gives me crap about Merfolk and Elves being the same deck because you're turning creatures sideways, but I think they play out quite differently.
Side question for all you Elf obsessed like myself.
What is your companion deck? I’ve been trying for over 3 years to find a 2nd deck I truly enjoy. I’ve gone through well over 12 decks, just nothing seems to be as enjoyable as my precious elves. So I’m curious to see what all of you play when you take a short break from Elves to change things up.
Thanks!
I have two companion decks alongside elves. I have the As Foretold / Living End combo deck because it's just plain fun to do and pleases my control side. I also have the Counters Company deck. Thought is was an easy transition considering I had most of the cards already
Side question for all you Elf obsessed like myself.
What is your companion deck? I’ve been trying for over 3 years to find a 2nd deck I truly enjoy. I’ve gone through well over 12 decks, just nothing seems to be as enjoyable as my precious elves. So I’m curious to see what all of you play when you take a short break from Elves to change things up.
Thanks!
I'm on mono black infect. Since Elves is pretty non-interactive, I felt the need to have a partner deck that disrupts opponents heavily. And also a budget one lol.
Side question for all you Elf obsessed like myself.
What is your companion deck? I’ve been trying for over 3 years to find a 2nd deck I truly enjoy. I’ve gone through well over 12 decks, just nothing seems to be as enjoyable as my precious elves. So I’m curious to see what all of you play when you take a short break from Elves to change things up.
Thanks!
Jund. Jund never gets old. You always have to know the meta, and you have to be prepared by adjusting your deck accordingly as well as knowing how to screw up their gameplan. It’s super interactive. Also, the whole “rolling the dice” thing with Bob and BBE is a blast. And you really don’t have any outright awful MUs.
Living End (in Jund colors) is also a great deck. The lands have gotten expensive though. The deck used to be way cheaper. Still, it’s way more interactive and way less linear than most people think, and it grinds WAY harder and is WAY more resilient than most people realize. There’s so many cool, yet many of them nuanced, interactions.
I recently acquired Bogles because I already had most of the money cards besides the Leylines, and I wanted those anyway because they’re modern staples. Essentially I wanted a deck I could take to an FNM drunk and win it. Is there a more linear deck? NEVER have Bogles be your only deck. It would get old so fast. At least to me. But hey, everyone’s different.
I bought a ****-ton of goblins recently, hoping they’ll get broken with the couple of bones they got thrown recently. So far no luck. I’ve been driving myself insane trying to figure out how to break Goblin Storm with Fecundity, or make a grindier Midrange/combo deck with the Skirk Prospector/Metallic Mimic/Murderous Redcap combo. So far no luck with either, so I can’t suggest them. 8whack is still probably the best Goblin build and UR Storm is still the best Storm build. At least til they throw us some more bones.
Wilted Abzan/Little Kid Abzan/Whatever you want to call it is always fun. I’d even go as far as to say I think it decent right now. Wilt-Leaf Liege has always been one of my favorite cards, Junk has always been one of my favorite archetypes, and I was playing hatebears before they were ever good. I’m a little biased. But I still think it’s a great deck. There’s a lot of different ways to build it too.
Honestly if I had to recommend a companion deck for Elves it would be Jund or LE. I bet Tron could be a fun companion deck just because it’s so much different than Elves, but personally I’ve never had the slightest interest or inclination in playing the deck. Just not my style.
Oh oh oh! Mardu Pyromancer looks like a ******* blast too. I doubt you could go wrong running that one.
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Horizon canopy I can get by if you needed CA. Fetches to shuffle doesn't matter really since elves don't have scry effects, thinking the deck is fine. But you are still leaving it up to statistics to pop off the top with Coco and LTS.
Cavern is 4 of or 0 imo. Having one doesn't let you see it enough for control matches and it fixes g/b mana as an alternative painless source. It is also based on whether your REL tournaments or locals is control heavy. You can just cut the card for something else or just basics since it doesn't matter if you have CoS for jund/Tron/etc.
The recent GPs alwere aggressive/tempo decks, so having cavern didn't matter that much for that tournament besides blue moon?
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-abzan-elvish-throne/ here is my abzan list I've been piloting. Out of all the decks I've played against storm is the only deck I've had a struggle with if I don't have a god hand or miss a land drop on turn 3
My other modern deck is Merfolk. Everyone at my LGS gives me crap about Merfolk and Elves being the same deck because you're turning creatures sideways, but I think they play out quite differently.
Same here! I play Elves and Merfolk primarily, but also Eldrazi Tron. Some people tell me that they're all just tribal decks, and I partially agree...I really enjoy tribal decks! But they each play very differently and give me a nice variety of playstyles to pick from when I'm heading off to the card shop.
The only way you can interact with storm is eidolon of rhetoric, I would take out dosan the falling leaf because it doesn't help you against storm or control for that matter. I think blessed alliance is okay, it's not better than forge because u can't chord it, I would opt 2 forges or 2 blessed alliance, albiet one essence Warden and a tender works as well for life gain against burn.
Throne seems better SB than MB. Alternative win cons are better post board vs. pre board because the game plan G1 is always elfball since you should be theoretically faster.
What is revoker naming usually and what match ups? I don't think revoker is good atm since k command is running rampant and you get 2-4-1.
Changes imo:
-1 revoker
-1 dosan
-1 forge
+3 thoughtseize or IoK
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I was testing Shalai in G/W shell, as a 4rd Ezuri (previously I ran Mirror Entity in this slot). I have to admit, it's bonkers. It is a win condition with Vizier/Devoted, and can protect the team from spot removals. It's also decisive against some 'hard' match ups. (She slows down Storm, outgrind Burn, disable scapeshift, can block/trade affinity's flyers...)
Palefang Dawnfall
The Amethyst doesn't slow you down too.
1) Which do you prefer, Gateway Promo or the new full art promo from Dominaria Llanowar Elves?
2) Which do you prefer, original foil Ezuri or the new Duel deck foil Ezuri?
Basically trying to determine if it’s worth shelling out the extra cash for additional foils or not. Lol.
Amethyst doesn't seem very good. Storm counteracts it with one Baral/electromancer and it doesn't bother tron enough.
Damping sphere has more value against amulet & tron while being a harder hoser against storm and KCI. It hurts yourself more though but I think that's worth it as these matchups are quite a bit of a race and you can drop the sphere after dumping your hand mostly. Overall though I doubt you want the sphere. If you play white I still prefer eidolon, if you play black I prefer thoughtseize and potentially stain the mind I think.
Damping sphere looks to have a pretty strong effect on the metagame though which could be good or bad for elves. Storm, KCI and tron are hurt quite a bit by damping sphere as often it's a hatecard that attacks from a completely different angle, especially from creature decks like humans it's very tough to deal with.
That would drive me crazy haha. I’m a matching set kind of guy. Playing different arts bothers me.
In my experience, I have never had any issues casting Shaman nor Thoughtseize.
For Shaman, we have 4 Caverns, 4 Gilt Leaf Palace, 4 Blooming Marsh, 4 Collected Company.
For Thoughtseize, we have 4 Gilt-Leaf and 4 Blooming Marsh.
Now, if you seem to be having issues casting Thoughtseize, you could always run Overgrown Tomb in the land flex spots. Or, you could drop 2 Nettle Sentinels in favor of Elves of Deep Shadow.
On top of that, you need to be playing Thoughtseize correctly. In our deck, it’s not always the turn one play we want. In most cases, we hold it until we want to “go off” and play it that turn, so you don’t really need turn 1 black mana. It really depends on the match up. It’s a catch all sort of spell so I always side 4. If sweepers are all you are afraid of, just run Heroic Intervention instead and be reactive. Thoughtseize almost always comes in game 2 for me. Besides Shaman, it’s the reason to play GB elves.
I never play more/less than 18 lands in GB and I strongly value pain free mana setups. My land base looks like this:
4 Forest
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gilt Leaf Palace
4 Blooming Marsh
1 Pendelhaven
1 Westvale Abbey
I run Westvale as a plan C emergency situation. But like I said, the flex spots can be changed to whatever your preferences are.
My current sideboard looks like this:
2 Fracturing Gust
2 Reclamation Sage
2 Elvish Champion
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Essence Warden
4 Thoughtseize
I had 2 Abrupt Decays in the side for a while but would rarely side them in. I found Rec Sage was able to hit all the same things so I dropped them altogether. The Wardens are for any heavy creature matchups/burn. If they are wasting a burn spell on Warden, I’m winning. Maybe one day we will get an Elf version of Kitesail! Wishful.. I know.
What is your companion deck? I’ve been trying for over 3 years to find a 2nd deck I truly enjoy. I’ve gone through well over 12 decks, just nothing seems to be as enjoyable as my precious elves. So I’m curious to see what all of you play when you take a short break from Elves to change things up.
Thanks!
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
I have two companion decks alongside elves. I have the As Foretold / Living End combo deck because it's just plain fun to do and pleases my control side. I also have the Counters Company deck. Thought is was an easy transition considering I had most of the cards already
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
Jund. Jund never gets old. You always have to know the meta, and you have to be prepared by adjusting your deck accordingly as well as knowing how to screw up their gameplan. It’s super interactive. Also, the whole “rolling the dice” thing with Bob and BBE is a blast. And you really don’t have any outright awful MUs.
Living End (in Jund colors) is also a great deck. The lands have gotten expensive though. The deck used to be way cheaper. Still, it’s way more interactive and way less linear than most people think, and it grinds WAY harder and is WAY more resilient than most people realize. There’s so many cool, yet many of them nuanced, interactions.
I recently acquired Bogles because I already had most of the money cards besides the Leylines, and I wanted those anyway because they’re modern staples. Essentially I wanted a deck I could take to an FNM drunk and win it. Is there a more linear deck? NEVER have Bogles be your only deck. It would get old so fast. At least to me. But hey, everyone’s different.
I bought a ****-ton of goblins recently, hoping they’ll get broken with the couple of bones they got thrown recently. So far no luck. I’ve been driving myself insane trying to figure out how to break Goblin Storm with Fecundity, or make a grindier Midrange/combo deck with the Skirk Prospector/Metallic Mimic/Murderous Redcap combo. So far no luck with either, so I can’t suggest them. 8whack is still probably the best Goblin build and UR Storm is still the best Storm build. At least til they throw us some more bones.
Wilted Abzan/Little Kid Abzan/Whatever you want to call it is always fun. I’d even go as far as to say I think it decent right now. Wilt-Leaf Liege has always been one of my favorite cards, Junk has always been one of my favorite archetypes, and I was playing hatebears before they were ever good. I’m a little biased. But I still think it’s a great deck. There’s a lot of different ways to build it too.
Honestly if I had to recommend a companion deck for Elves it would be Jund or LE. I bet Tron could be a fun companion deck just because it’s so much different than Elves, but personally I’ve never had the slightest interest or inclination in playing the deck. Just not my style.
Oh oh oh! Mardu Pyromancer looks like a ******* blast too. I doubt you could go wrong running that one.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
Cavern is 4 of or 0 imo. Having one doesn't let you see it enough for control matches and it fixes g/b mana as an alternative painless source. It is also based on whether your REL tournaments or locals is control heavy. You can just cut the card for something else or just basics since it doesn't matter if you have CoS for jund/Tron/etc.
The recent GPs alwere aggressive/tempo decks, so having cavern didn't matter that much for that tournament besides blue moon?
Same here! I play Elves and Merfolk primarily, but also Eldrazi Tron. Some people tell me that they're all just tribal decks, and I partially agree...I really enjoy tribal decks! But they each play very differently and give me a nice variety of playstyles to pick from when I'm heading off to the card shop.
Throne seems better SB than MB. Alternative win cons are better post board vs. pre board because the game plan G1 is always elfball since you should be theoretically faster.
What is revoker naming usually and what match ups? I don't think revoker is good atm since k command is running rampant and you get 2-4-1.
Changes imo:
-1 revoker
-1 dosan
-1 forge
+3 thoughtseize or IoK