3-1 at tonight's FNM out of a field of 11. Decks included: RG Tooth and Nail, 4-Color CoCo Allies, RG Titanshift, UR Delver, Jund, Affinity, Abzan Hatebears, Isochron Lock, Tezzerator, and a couple others I didn't see.
I decided to cut the Elvish Visionaries outright for tonight, as I had been thinking about playing two but opted for the Spellskite and Scavenging Ooze mainboard instead. Sideboard is a bit of a grab bag as I haven't been to FNM in a while and wanted to try and cover everything. I'm obviously running the same spell loadout as ryansaxe, as I've found my local meta to be a little grindier with less emphasis on the blowout aggro decks like Infect and Jund. Report follows under the spoiler.
Match 1 - RG Tooth and Nail
0-2. This pilot has a tendency to play slightly more gimmicky decks and switched recently from pure Mono-G Devotion to this build, which has a lot more depth. He's a good player who plays (usually) bad decks, in other words. This match was also the only one where I lost the die roll.
These were short and to the point - he went off on turn three both games, which is something we can't really handle. For those of you who aren't familiar, these decks combine Enchant Lands like Utopia Sprawl and Overgrowth with land untappers like Voyaging Satyr and Arbor Elf to drop Tooth and Nail fast, usually going for an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Xenagod to swing with 30 hasty, annihilator 6 power. It feels to me like, short of an Aven Mindcensor, there is extremely little we can do against their nut draw. Fortunately, this deck is (like most pure ramp decks) prone to whiffing and drawing all fast mana or all business. The pilot was only able to go off at all in two other games all night. The deck is also fairly unpopular so trying to accommodate it is probably not in our best interest, usually.
Match 2 - 4-Color CoCo Allies
2-0. This pilot is honestly the weakest player in the local meta and has no head for combat math, frequently making mistakes that end up losing him the game. That being said, Allies are pretty linear and he gets wins on much better players with surprising frequency due to the deck's explosiveness.
Game 1: I lead with an Elvish Mystic into T2 Elite, Heritage Druid, and a 5-creature Lead the Stampede. Just about any deck would struggle against that, but he had almost stabilized before making a poor attack into a Chorded Archdruid and in-combat Ezuri pump (which he always forgets about). I destroyed all his attackers and swung back on my turn for about a billion damage.
In: 2 Chord, Forge-Tender (to block and kill Akoum Battlesingers), Phyrexian Revoker (for Vials). Out: 3 Leads, 1 Spellskite. Allies are deceptively fast and I want access to as much speed as possible here. He only plays two paths, I think, so Spellskite is fairly useless.
Game 2: This was much closer, as he was on the play and had some big early beaters (Allies have a surprising amount of juice), but I had an Archdruid and 3 dorks on T3, which let me CoCo during his attack step to find double Shaman of the Pack, nailing him for 12 and letting me counterattack on my T4 for exactly lethal despite losing all three of my dorks to stay alive.
Match 3 - RG Titanshift
2-0. This pilot is arguably the best player in the meta, but was having a bad night off a poor performance yesterday night as well. He had lost pretty badly in his second match and was tilted pretty hard, which I think led to him keeping some less than optimal hands.
Game 1: He draws no interaction and I Chord for an Ezuri at the end of his T3 to win T4.
In: 2 Chord, 1 Forge-Tender (for Angers), 1 Mindcensor (for Scapeshift and Titans), 1 Extraction (in case he discards a Valakut or just to get rid of all his wipes). Out: 3 Lead, 1 Shaman, 1 Nettle. This deck is not an attrition game and I just need to outspeed his combo and outplay boardwipes.
Game 2: He kept a hand with plenty of interaction but I was able to dump my hand T2 and had a lot of redundancy in threat protection, with a Selfless Spirit succeeded by a Forge-Tender and a Chorded Spellskite. He scooped to Elite beats.
Match 3 - UR Delver
2-1. This pilot played UR Pyro Ascension Storm before the Gitaxian Probe banning, and I suspect he switched to Delver as a result of said banning. He's very hard to read and very good at combat math, but has a tendency to underestimate how much mana he needs, which screwed him games 1 and 3 of this match.
Game 1: He bolts my t1 Mystic but I drop two more dorks T2 which he has no answer to, as he is stuck on one land until T4. He never flipped a Delver and the 7 damage he took from cracking and fetching was just too much for the pressure I could apply.
In: 2 Chord, 1 Forge-Tender, 1 Extraction (I always put this in against red decks because Extracting someone's other 3 bolts after they burn a dork is great). Out: 3 Lead, 1 Nettle. (I probably should have taken out a Heritage Druid as well to put in Revoker, for Lavamancers. Oh well.)
Game 2: He play a Delver T1, a Delver and a Lavamancer T2, and proceeds to keep everything I had off the board (even though his Delvers didn't flip for another 3 turns).
Game 3: He keeps another 1-land hand and drops a Lavamancer T1, but isn't able to draw into enough removal to slow down attack phases from several small elves.
Amusingly, despite my preference for Leads based on what is usually a slower meta, I always sided out the Leads for Chords in game 2. I ended up at 3rd overall, with 1st and 2nd going to an undefeated Affinity player and the Tezzerator player he beat in the last match.
I almost didn't notice the lack of Visionaries. However, I think I also lucked out with some of my post-board draws and with some of the bullets in game 1s. Definitely didn't miss having 4 chords, and am generally was much happier to see either 1 lead 1 chord or 2 leads. I need to stop keeping hands with 2 Shamans, though, because I keep doing it and it never works. Pretty happy with where the deck is at now, though I do intend to pick up 3 Caverns, replacing 2 Forests and Okina.
3-1 At FNM (this is a few months old but I've only just gotten around to writing this one down.)
M1: Infect
Game 1, kept a fast opening hand and was able to race.
Game 2, landed a turn 2 spellskite that was met with twisted image, otherwise his hand was slow and the game came down to a misplay where he didn't activate pendelhaven prior to his exalted buff. It felt bad to win off an opponent punt but I had already let him fix that very same mistake in game 1.
1-0
M2: Breach titan
Game 1: I was very lucky to have a fast start with lots of mana, when he eventually found his anger of the gods I was ready with a chord for ezuri pump to save my team, I won on the next turn.
Game 2: I played out my hand as best I could but hit turn 3 anger. He followed up with a titan the next turn for the game.
Game 3: This match was in the top two that I have ever played. The first few turns involve both of us developing our boards, and I am playing very cautiously to play around anger. He tries to anger twice in a row, but both times I am ready with a chord for burrenton-forge tender or selfless spirit. My opponent boarded in crumble to dust for some reason so I get hit with that to take out a land, meanwhile my mana dorks and shaman chip him down to 7 life. Opponent untaps and through the breach-emrakuls me, down to 3 life, no lands, and six power on board. I attack to put him to one and pass. He draws a primeval titan and through the breaches it and kills me with valakut. Losing that land to crumble actually won him the game. Great game
1-1
M3:soul sisters.
G1:My brother always plays soul sisters so I have a lot of experience with it, and I can honestly say its a coin flip, you absolutley need Ezuri for the kill (since you give them such a high life total), and ezuri pretty much always wins, but if they have more paths then your ezuris you will lose to serra ascendants. I was lucky game 1 and stuck my last ezuri for the win.
G2: My dumped out sisters and got to 30 life quickly turning on his serra ascendants. The beat downs insued and I nearly died but a chord for ezuri sealed the deal in my favor.
2-1
M4: Dredge (this was pre-ban)
G1: My opponents deck looked like a complete pile in this game, and I just killed him before he was able to do anything.
G2: My opponent didn't have a fast start, but he found all of his conflagrates quickly, I sanbagged my elves as long as possible until I eventually stuck a scavenging ooze with plenty of mana. I exiled all of the threats in his yard but still didn't have a way to end the game. My scooze worked its way up to a 27/27 before I finally found an ezuri and finished him off.
3-1
That was the last round of the night, I'll admit that I ran well and had some good luck, but the deck continued to impress me. I had a lot of fun and look forward to the next time I can get a friday off from school stuff to go play again.
I agree with the sisters sentiment. There is a guy at my LGS who runs them from time to time and it does require ezuri every game unless his deck just doesn't come together. 3-1 is a respectable finish through dredge and breach though. I always feel favored against infect, I've never been that afraid of the matchup.
I've gone back and forth running 2 to 4 Essence Wardens main over Nettles and have played a guy at my LGS who runs sisters several times. Each time I successfully out-sistered him - running even one Essence Warden probably can go a long way towards mitigating their beatdown.
I actually like Narnam Renegade a lot. At first I didn't think it would be too impressive when compared with the Soul Sister: Essence Warden or with our classic "combo piece": Nettle Sentinel. Then I considered the wider implications with chord and coco. It isn't infrequent to have your elvish officers bolts and terminated and then your grunts outsized by Goyfs and Ravines. Those would have been great times to chord for a Deathtouch creature. Prior to this guy, we haven't had another elf with deathtouch other than Glissa, the Traitor, whom incidentally was in my sideboard during the Eldrazi Winter (what better way to stop a Reality Smasher?).
Having these guys mainboard-able at cmc 1 with no real repercussions (beyond losing the tap-untap combo with heritage druid) is surely worth the ability to wall off, or better yet ambush via chord, big guys like Tasigur, Angler, Goyf, Glistener Elf, Titans. If we were sore about fatal push, surely this is our very own "fatal push".
Heck, I'd even run one or 2 in my sideboard as "removal" even if I weren't mainboarding.
Exactly. We got another option at 1CMC slot which only increases our flexibility. Its ability to kill opposing Snapcasters, Goblin Guides and trade with everything else for a mere G is more than welcome addition.
As for Cavern of Souls, I agree that we can cut down on them at the moment. Although there's Jeskai Nahiri and Grixis Control/Delver as well as Chalice of the Void to worry about, I'd much rather have coloured mana to cast my spells than the ability to maybe get one or two elves through uncountered.
Would you say switching Chords out with EE to be worth it to help trigger Narnam? EE can be cast a lot earlier than Chord. But Chord is instant speed and you don't lose a creature.
I ran Eldritch Evolution for a while before rounding out my Chords and I feel very strongly that it is just too vulnerable to removal or counterspells in a way that sometimes results in EE actually setting you back. Chords can also be pretty slow, but it's important to keep in mind that when chording, every creature you have is a mana dork. Not so with EE, and if you're running Narnams (and running EE with the specific intent to make buffed Narnams stronger) then your chances of dropping EE on turn two with a dork are surprisingly low. This goes double if you've got a lot of bolts in your meta (as good players will bolt your dork before you get to use it). Even worse, if they draw into a bolt then no matter what you pull out for CMC 3 is going to die, putting you down two cards and leaving you with an empty board turn two - which is really deadly for a deck like ours that's built around achieving a critical mass.
congrats on the top8! Can you recommend a abzan mana base if I do not have access to cavern and horizon canopy?
I'm currently thinking of the following:
6x Forest
4x Gilt-Leaf Palace
1x Pendelhaven
4x Wooded Foothills
1x Windswept Heath
1x Temple Garden
1x Overgrown Tomb
I'm considering cutting the overgrown tomb and maybe some fetches for blooming marshes and razorverge thickets as I feel the fetches hurts me more in a lot of games.
There's really no reason to run more than four Forests, I feel, and even then I only run four because I don't have Caverns. You should definitely pick up a Blooming Marsh and Razorverge Thicket and probably could go to two of each, cutting another Forest and one of the fetches.
congrats on the top8! Can you recommend a abzan mana base if I do not have access to cavern and horizon canopy?
I'm currently thinking of the following:
6x Forest
4x Gilt-Leaf Palace
1x Pendelhaven
4x Wooded Foothills
1x Windswept Heath
1x Overgrown Tomb
I'm considering cutting the overgrown tomb and maybe some fetches for blooming marshes and razorverge thickets as I feel the fetches hurts me more in a lot of games.
This brings up an interesting point regarding the Narnam Renegade: should decks that choose to run it drop some fastlands and run more fetches to more reliably drop the 2/3 on turn one?
First time posting here, though I've been following developments for a month or two now. Got back into magic over the summer with a budget mono-g elf deck that I've been gradually completing since and playing at FNM almost every week. At present, I'm running this list:
The 4/3/1 split on the spells is straight out of ryansaxe's article and I'm never going back. Being able to be slightly more reliable and able to flood the board game 1 has been really successful for me and being able to board in a toolbox when useful makes the deck feel more flexible than pure toolbox.
The only real place I still see where I'm planning to improve is adding in 3 Cavern of Souls to replace the Forests and Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers. This should improve my manabase, which is already pretty reliable, and I would recommend the fetch/shocks with a couple basics to anyone who's been unlucky mana-wise. Unfortunately, my base precludes Horizon Canopies, but to be honest they're well outside my price range anyway.
I run the Essence Wardens mainboard because I have been knocked from first to third twice now by a guy playing RG Titanshift and saw a couple of posters here running them for similar situations.
On the subject of the Shaman of the Pack discussion, I found that with three I was just not seeing them often enough. With four I sometimes end up in the awkward position of having one (or god forbid two) in hand, but I'd rather see them and have to hardcast than not see them at all.
This next bit is less relevant because Living End decks and Mono-U Tron are out of favor, but I have one of each floating around and run Tajuru Preserver to deal with both. While I know most people run Viscera Seer to counter the former, I would highly recommend the Preserver instead if you've got both decks in your meta. Yes, you miss out on the ETB triggers but I t allows you to deal with weird stuff like All is Dust.
I've also got Hushwing Gryff to counter Kiki-Chord but are there better options for us? I worry that it turns off one of our strongest wincons (Shamans) and deactivates two of our other strong cards (Elites and Visionaries), forcing us into winning through Ezuri.
I wish I'd been playing longer so I could feel more confident about contributing to the new primer but you guys do good work and I'm looking forward to the new edition!
I'm running the following list:
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Heritage Druid
3 Nettle Sentinel
2 Essence Warden
4 Dwynen's Elite
1 Selfless Spirit
1 Spellskite
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Elvish Archdruid
2 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
4 Shaman of the Pack
4 Collected Company
3 Lead the Stampede
1 Chord of Calling
Lands - 18
4 Forest
3 Blooming Marsh
2 Razorverge Thicket
2 Windswept Heath
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Temple Garden
1 Gilt-Leaf Palace
1 Pendelhaven
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Chord of Calling
1 Elvish Champion
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Path to Exile
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Tajuru Preserver
1 Yixlid Jailer
I decided to cut the Elvish Visionaries outright for tonight, as I had been thinking about playing two but opted for the Spellskite and Scavenging Ooze mainboard instead. Sideboard is a bit of a grab bag as I haven't been to FNM in a while and wanted to try and cover everything. I'm obviously running the same spell loadout as ryansaxe, as I've found my local meta to be a little grindier with less emphasis on the blowout aggro decks like Infect and Jund. Report follows under the spoiler.
0-2. This pilot has a tendency to play slightly more gimmicky decks and switched recently from pure Mono-G Devotion to this build, which has a lot more depth. He's a good player who plays (usually) bad decks, in other words. This match was also the only one where I lost the die roll.
These were short and to the point - he went off on turn three both games, which is something we can't really handle. For those of you who aren't familiar, these decks combine Enchant Lands like Utopia Sprawl and Overgrowth with land untappers like Voyaging Satyr and Arbor Elf to drop Tooth and Nail fast, usually going for an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Xenagod to swing with 30 hasty, annihilator 6 power. It feels to me like, short of an Aven Mindcensor, there is extremely little we can do against their nut draw. Fortunately, this deck is (like most pure ramp decks) prone to whiffing and drawing all fast mana or all business. The pilot was only able to go off at all in two other games all night. The deck is also fairly unpopular so trying to accommodate it is probably not in our best interest, usually.
Match 2 - 4-Color CoCo Allies
2-0. This pilot is honestly the weakest player in the local meta and has no head for combat math, frequently making mistakes that end up losing him the game. That being said, Allies are pretty linear and he gets wins on much better players with surprising frequency due to the deck's explosiveness.
Game 1: I lead with an Elvish Mystic into T2 Elite, Heritage Druid, and a 5-creature Lead the Stampede. Just about any deck would struggle against that, but he had almost stabilized before making a poor attack into a Chorded Archdruid and in-combat Ezuri pump (which he always forgets about). I destroyed all his attackers and swung back on my turn for about a billion damage.
In: 2 Chord, Forge-Tender (to block and kill Akoum Battlesingers), Phyrexian Revoker (for Vials). Out: 3 Leads, 1 Spellskite. Allies are deceptively fast and I want access to as much speed as possible here. He only plays two paths, I think, so Spellskite is fairly useless.
Game 2: This was much closer, as he was on the play and had some big early beaters (Allies have a surprising amount of juice), but I had an Archdruid and 3 dorks on T3, which let me CoCo during his attack step to find double Shaman of the Pack, nailing him for 12 and letting me counterattack on my T4 for exactly lethal despite losing all three of my dorks to stay alive.
Match 3 - RG Titanshift
2-0. This pilot is arguably the best player in the meta, but was having a bad night off a poor performance yesterday night as well. He had lost pretty badly in his second match and was tilted pretty hard, which I think led to him keeping some less than optimal hands.
Game 1: He draws no interaction and I Chord for an Ezuri at the end of his T3 to win T4.
In: 2 Chord, 1 Forge-Tender (for Angers), 1 Mindcensor (for Scapeshift and Titans), 1 Extraction (in case he discards a Valakut or just to get rid of all his wipes). Out: 3 Lead, 1 Shaman, 1 Nettle. This deck is not an attrition game and I just need to outspeed his combo and outplay boardwipes.
Game 2: He kept a hand with plenty of interaction but I was able to dump my hand T2 and had a lot of redundancy in threat protection, with a Selfless Spirit succeeded by a Forge-Tender and a Chorded Spellskite. He scooped to Elite beats.
Match 3 - UR Delver
2-1. This pilot played UR Pyro Ascension Storm before the Gitaxian Probe banning, and I suspect he switched to Delver as a result of said banning. He's very hard to read and very good at combat math, but has a tendency to underestimate how much mana he needs, which screwed him games 1 and 3 of this match.
Game 1: He bolts my t1 Mystic but I drop two more dorks T2 which he has no answer to, as he is stuck on one land until T4. He never flipped a Delver and the 7 damage he took from cracking and fetching was just too much for the pressure I could apply.
In: 2 Chord, 1 Forge-Tender, 1 Extraction (I always put this in against red decks because Extracting someone's other 3 bolts after they burn a dork is great). Out: 3 Lead, 1 Nettle. (I probably should have taken out a Heritage Druid as well to put in Revoker, for Lavamancers. Oh well.)
Game 2: He play a Delver T1, a Delver and a Lavamancer T2, and proceeds to keep everything I had off the board (even though his Delvers didn't flip for another 3 turns).
Game 3: He keeps another 1-land hand and drops a Lavamancer T1, but isn't able to draw into enough removal to slow down attack phases from several small elves.
Amusingly, despite my preference for Leads based on what is usually a slower meta, I always sided out the Leads for Chords in game 2. I ended up at 3rd overall, with 1st and 2nd going to an undefeated Affinity player and the Tezzerator player he beat in the last match.
I almost didn't notice the lack of Visionaries. However, I think I also lucked out with some of my post-board draws and with some of the bullets in game 1s. Definitely didn't miss having 4 chords, and am generally was much happier to see either 1 lead 1 chord or 2 leads. I need to stop keeping hands with 2 Shamans, though, because I keep doing it and it never works. Pretty happy with where the deck is at now, though I do intend to pick up 3 Caverns, replacing 2 Forests and Okina.
I've gone back and forth running 2 to 4 Essence Wardens main over Nettles and have played a guy at my LGS who runs sisters several times. Each time I successfully out-sistered him - running even one Essence Warden probably can go a long way towards mitigating their beatdown.
I ran Eldritch Evolution for a while before rounding out my Chords and I feel very strongly that it is just too vulnerable to removal or counterspells in a way that sometimes results in EE actually setting you back. Chords can also be pretty slow, but it's important to keep in mind that when chording, every creature you have is a mana dork. Not so with EE, and if you're running Narnams (and running EE with the specific intent to make buffed Narnams stronger) then your chances of dropping EE on turn two with a dork are surprisingly low. This goes double if you've got a lot of bolts in your meta (as good players will bolt your dork before you get to use it). Even worse, if they draw into a bolt then no matter what you pull out for CMC 3 is going to die, putting you down two cards and leaving you with an empty board turn two - which is really deadly for a deck like ours that's built around achieving a critical mass.
There's really no reason to run more than four Forests, I feel, and even then I only run four because I don't have Caverns. You should definitely pick up a Blooming Marsh and Razorverge Thicket and probably could go to two of each, cutting another Forest and one of the fetches.
This brings up an interesting point regarding the Narnam Renegade: should decks that choose to run it drop some fastlands and run more fetches to more reliably drop the 2/3 on turn one?
First time posting here, though I've been following developments for a month or two now. Got back into magic over the summer with a budget mono-g elf deck that I've been gradually completing since and playing at FNM almost every week. At present, I'm running this list:
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Essence Warden
4 Dwynen's Elite
3 Elvish Visionary
1 Selfless Spirit
4 Elvish Archdruid
2 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
4 Shaman of the Pack
Spells (8)
4 Collected Company
3 Lead the Stampede
1 Chord of Calling
3 Blooming Marsh
2 Razorverge Thicket
2 Windswept Heath
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Pendelhaven
1 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Forest
2 Chord of Calling
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Path to Exile
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Spellskite
I also have a separate set of assorted choices to fill the 6 flex board slots depending on the players I see in attendance, though mainstays include Surgical Extraction, Burrenton Forge-Tender, Yixlid Jailer, and Elvish Champion].
The 4/3/1 split on the spells is straight out of ryansaxe's article and I'm never going back. Being able to be slightly more reliable and able to flood the board game 1 has been really successful for me and being able to board in a toolbox when useful makes the deck feel more flexible than pure toolbox.
The only real place I still see where I'm planning to improve is adding in 3 Cavern of Souls to replace the Forests and Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers. This should improve my manabase, which is already pretty reliable, and I would recommend the fetch/shocks with a couple basics to anyone who's been unlucky mana-wise. Unfortunately, my base precludes Horizon Canopies, but to be honest they're well outside my price range anyway.
I run the Essence Wardens mainboard because I have been knocked from first to third twice now by a guy playing RG Titanshift and saw a couple of posters here running them for similar situations.
On the subject of the Shaman of the Pack discussion, I found that with three I was just not seeing them often enough. With four I sometimes end up in the awkward position of having one (or god forbid two) in hand, but I'd rather see them and have to hardcast than not see them at all.
This next bit is less relevant because Living End decks and Mono-U Tron are out of favor, but I have one of each floating around and run Tajuru Preserver to deal with both. While I know most people run Viscera Seer to counter the former, I would highly recommend the Preserver instead if you've got both decks in your meta. Yes, you miss out on the ETB triggers but I t allows you to deal with weird stuff like All is Dust.
I've also got Hushwing Gryff to counter Kiki-Chord but are there better options for us? I worry that it turns off one of our strongest wincons (Shamans) and deactivates two of our other strong cards (Elites and Visionaries), forcing us into winning through Ezuri.
I wish I'd been playing longer so I could feel more confident about contributing to the new primer but you guys do good work and I'm looking forward to the new edition!