@maiden77 - Primeval Titan is a worthy suggestion. I'm sticking the big lunk on the sideboard, because while I cannot deny its effectiveness, it's not as removal-resistant as that lovely, excessive 4th Wurmcoil Engine, and is less effective against the Mirran Crusaders that are all over my meta.

@UniTheDino - I like Chancellor of the Tangle, but not as much for this deck. The first turn boost is nifty, but unless I include multiple copies, the boost will never be very consistent. And while it's certainly a nice big creature, it's kind of boring. I'll stash it away in my head for the next big green deck I build though!

Thanks thanks

I really love this deck and +1, but ow can you really protect your Elvish Archdruids when your Ezuri isnt around? Wouldnt losing him be very detrimental?

The Archdruid produces a very nice burst of speed if you can get him to stick around for a turn, which is sometimes enough to blow the other player out. BUT if you lose him, it's not really the end of the world. You can still ramp some with Llanowar Elves, or Viridian Emissary if they are fond of using sweepers. Or you can use solid blockers like Ezuri's Archers or Glissa to stall the game out until you can play lands the old fashion way.

If your opponent is using all of their mana and spells on removal, just play it out a bit more methodically and don't overcommit to the board, but make sure you've always got a threat. They'll eventually run out of hard removal, unless they're playing some kind of crazy deck with 20 varieties of Terror and no win condition. This deck can play like a midrange deck if it needs to slow down a bit. Karn Liberated actually prefers a slow game.

This is all from my experience, anyway. I'm seeing fewer heavy control decks in my meta, as everyone goes more aggro or aggro-control. Yer mileage may vary.

Wow, that was a very methodical and well thought out answer. I didn't expect such an explanation xD, thank you though. So I might as well ask one more to gauge your opinion on this. If this deck would be turned into solely a mono green deck, what can you see happening with it's effectiveness?

Oh yeah, and before I forget lol, where are the Naturalizes? Helps shut down Mage Blade by killing swords, ends anyone who dares play a Tempered Steel deck, kills Honor of the Pure and not to mention Oblivion Ring, and most importantly, kills the pesky curses everyone is seeing this metagame (obviously). But it's a great cheap artifact and enchantment remover so you can have your Acidic Slime destroy all of their dual lands (aim for blue!)

I guess I view Karn Liberated and sideboard Beast Within as my Naturalizes. They aren't as cheap, mana-wise, and Karn is much slower, but they're also more versatile than Naturalize, in that they can also snipe lands, creatures, even planeswalkers. Acidic Slime I use on lands if they are having difficulty making early land drops, or if I'm staring down Moorland Haunt or Kessig Wolf Run, etc., but I'm otherwise happy to blow up a sword with it. Green has lots of answers, thankfully, and Naturalize is a very good one, so it's mostly personal preference, I think. My sideboard could probably use Creeping Corrosion for Tempered Steel, in all honestly. I may look into that.

If you went mono-green, I'd do something like:

-3 Go for the Throat, -2 Glissa, the Traitor

+3 Beast Within, +2 Copperhorn Scout

The deck would still play very similarly, but you'd lose some of your efficient creature kill. Beast Within would do the trick for big threats, and instant speed is very nice, but you'd still be giving them a 3/3 body in the process, and with Glissa gone, you'd have fewer deathtouch blockers. You could add extra Acidic Slime, but just be careful your elf count doesn't get so low that the Elvish Archdruid is only ever making green mana for itself.

@ItsAshcanPete okay yeah, Creeping Corrosion is in the sideboard now. Thanks for reminding me about Tempered Steel!

Thank you very much dorminjake!

Just looking at this deck makes me angry lol. I would hate to play against it +1.

Check out my Zombies with a Vengeance! and tell me what you think.

Have you had to face any control heavy decks because in my store's meta that has run rampant. If so, how have you dealt with it?

@ItsAshcanPete I've faced one or two traditional control decks, but my opponents had some bad mana draws, so I can't really give an accurate answer to that question. But I can wildly guess!

I actually built this deck thinking more about control decks than any other archetype, just because they used to run rampant in my meta. Certain cards, like Thrun, the Last Troll , Wurmcoil Engine, Karn Liberated, and Garruk, Primal Hunter do terrible things to control decks, because they all present big threats, and they are all difficult to remove.

One issue, of course, is countermagic(Thrun still laughs at this), but the common Mana Leak is actually not all that great against this deck, just because one of the deck's key strategies is to produce lots of mana. You may have to play the biggest threats a bit more slowly against control, but if you're able to stick a Wurmcoil or planeswalker, then you put some serious pressure on them.

The other key thing is to save your own removal for their big threats. This deck has multiple ways of killing things, and the sideboard has more, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Or you can get lucky and kill them with elves.

Oh, and sideboarding Autumn's Veil is an option. Also: Surgical Extraction on their countermagic and/or Day of Judgment is hilarious.

Hope that helps!

I love this deck. I've been playing elves since I started Magic, but my current standard deck isn't quite up to scratch. My old elf deck (which is now extended) had a similar line up, but ran powerful zendikar stuff like Joraga Warcaller. The next plan for that deck includes the rather despicable combination of Primordial Hydra and Increasing Savagery with elf ramp. evil laughter

I love the black splash and Karn in particular, very nice, especially reading all the above reasons you've kept him in. You like a card, keep him regardless. I'm still trying to make a Myr deck work. I desperately want to help you improve the deck, but at such a high win ratio, not sure what else to say!

A couple of suggestions crossed my mind though. The new Deadly Allure looks fun. I'm having fun just looking at the artwork... Crushing Vines seems like a nice, versatile sideboard, and I've always found a use for Witchbane Orb in my sideboard (there's a particular red mage I know who gives up when that hits the table, screaming 'Broken bullshit! Fuck wizards and fuck that card!'). It's also not always obvious that witchbane also stops cards like Tribute to Hunger from killing your otherwise untouchable troll. Melira, Sylvok Outcast is the final ingredient for a 3-card combo that withstands just about all removal.

Oh, and then there's the phyrexian cards, Surgical Extraction and Gitaxian Probe. These can go in any deck, and the loss of life isn't much worry if you have a Wurmcoil Engine at the ready. Looking at what removal your opponent has for 2 life can give you a huge tactical advantage against control. Also on the subject of screwing control, one word. Asceticism.

You say you haven't tested properly against control decks, but why not improvise and add control yourself? Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger on turn 4/5. You'd only need one with GSZ (green mages everywhere love GSZ...). He pretty much ruins Wolf Run decks. Praetor's Counsel is also nice if your creatures have been blown to bits the entire game. Final suggestion comes from my personal favourite black card, Sorin's Vengeance. Nothing has quite the same demoralising effect as a potential one shot kill card, and if you cast it just once you can scare the shit out of your opponent that you'll do it again. You could even bluff your way into a victory..."and now I play, Sorin's Vengeance!" slams Llanowar Elves onto the table. Opponent doesn't look at the card and simply runs away screaming.

@OrgasmAndTea These are all great suggestions, and as soon as I finish typing out this comment, Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger are definitely going into my sideboard. Black Sun's Zenith has had a huge surge in popularity of late, and it's nice to have an advantage over other ramp decks.

For the others, I'm just going to have to see how much of an impact DKA has on the format. Crushing Vines, for example, could surpass Beast Within if the meta is right, but right now the ability to target lands is crucially important, and planeswalker targets are gravy. If RDW comes back (I haven't seen it in weeks. I kind of miss it!), Witchbane Orb will find a way into my 75 cards, and if super-heavy control decks have a renaisssance, I'd love to have Praetor's Counsel.

Sorin's Vengeance is a card I like, but it's very black intensive. I'm probably going to be playing with some heavy black post-DKA, so this may see the light of day (the dark of night?) soon. Asceticism is cool, but I wish it did more than just sit there. I'll Maybeboard it for now.

As for Surgical Extraction, I'm already using it! I LOVE Surgical Extraction! It's extremely fun to play, which MAY make me a sadist, I dunno.

Thank you for your help! I may have a high win ratio now, but nine rounds from two separate FNMs does not really make for statistically significant data. Also: I've been feeling like my sideboard is lackluster. I'm always interested in sideboard advice. Thank you very much!

FNM tonight, FNM tonight, woooo gonna get me some FNM

Tree of Redemption enters the sideboard. The crowd roars, only to be stifled by the strangling nooses of potentially fantastic and highly situational life-gain.

any thoughts of what you might adjust with Dark Ascension's release?

General notice: I've added an update above to include my newest changes. Hint: I added Phyrexian Metamorph.

@kmard80 - I'm not sure what to expect out of DKA yet, as far as standard metagame changes are concerned. This Friday will be the first time the set is officially legal, and I'm sure it will take at least a couple of weeks before changes really start to happen. For now, I think I'm feeling reasonably safe, but only time will tell.

Personally, I think elves > zombies, but the possible return of full-on monoblack control? Kind of scary, to be honest.

@dorminjake

I've finally finished my G/W variant of this deck, and started play testing tonight. I've only played against Haunted Humans and G/R Werewolves. As of yet, the deck played no differently than it did versus Haunted Humans, but against the Werewolves, the deck certainly made an impact, and the most impressive play I made was casting Genesis Wave for 7, revealing 7 permanents(2 Primeval Titan, 1 Sun Titan, 1 Thrun, the Last Troll , 1 Llanowar Elves, 1 Copperhorn Scout, 1 Forest).

After more play testing against a wider variety of decks(and more decks from the meta, especially the ones here at my local FNM) and get a better idea of what works and what doesn't, I'll post it on here with a link to your deck as inspiration and will let you know. =D

@Grizzly92 - I look forward to seeing it! Two titans, a Thrun, some elves, and some land is some ridiculous card advantage to come out of just one spell. I like the inclusion of Sun Titan with the elves as well, seeing as how he resurrects pretty much every elvish elven-y elf to ever come out of Elf Town.

Good luck with the playtesting! I will likewise link to yours once you've got a deck posted.

I wasn't sure about the blue adittion but the metamorphs do fit well with the flow. +1 great deck, inspires me to work on my own green black deck.

This is a very solid build the synergy in the deck you have here works very well in the tapped out function however I believer that you should include copperhorn scout into the side board because of her ability +1 from me Do me a favor and check out my blood rain deck on my page I personally prefer vampires over elves

ok i'm a green guy and i'm making a black green undying deck so i know the feeling of seeing a mirran crusader coming head on with an angelic destiny.....which is were i say that four beast within is the better substitue instead of the go for the throat. they equip angelic destiny attempt to swing for 12....you respond buy blowing up the enchantment and he becomes a weenie again and they are tapped out and u should have a wurm out by then. Plus its permanent not just creatures....yes its one more mana but its every permanent, that means you just got ride of something before karn hits or you save your butt from a mirran and your main mana base is green you have eight black sources and i don't know if you ever have problems. so tell me what you think and check out my decks rwestbrook_78 tell me what you think.

Re: Copperhorn Scout - She's in my maybeboard. I'll include her in my deck if I ever have room, but for now she's on the bench. The biggest problem with her is that she is best used when you have both Elvish Archdruid AND Ezuri out, and while this does happen from time to time, it's kind of an ideal situation. If I were runnIng even MORE elves and Ezuri was my main win condition, she'd be an auto-include. She's more of a simple convenience in this deck, rather than a necessity.

Re: Beast Within is in my sideboard. Go for the Throat is handier for everyday situations.

Hey there jake - I finally got around to putting my variation of your deck up, but it won a FNM for me last week. I'm properly giving you credit here for the inspiration and seriously, thank you. http://tappedout.net/users/Cassiel/I tried a straight up mono green elf run with Ezuri as really the only win condition, needless to say after finally breaking down and spending some money on the Wurmcoils I started seeing immediate improvements. My deck is lacking a few of the expensive rares, I've only got 3x Wurmcoils, and I'm using Lead the Stampede as a ghetto card draw version of Garruk. Other than that, our decks are pretty much the same.

Anyway, with DKA out now, I had a few critiques and suggestions about our beloved elf ramp deck. To start off with, I'm going to take the deck in a more defensive direction. The one single biggest change I suggest is adding 4x Undying Evil, even at the expense of Go for the Throat. If you think about it, IMO, it just seems like protecting my own valueble creatures is a better play than taking out one of theirs, and spot removal does not work against what we hate the most, aka Geist of St. Traft + Mirran Crusader. Another silly side benefit is if they kill off Wurmcoil and we Undying Evil it - that is a late game unlikely scenario though, I just think protecting our Archdruids and Glissa is so much more important. The worst creatures we have to deal with, are dealt with by getting lots of mana and better creatures/Karn, and for that we need to keep our rampers alive long enough at least.

As long as we have Glissa on the field, they are scared shitless to actually attack us. They GftT her or Tragic Slip her? Okay, I'll leave a black untapped, oh hello Undying Evil, she doesn't die. AND, what's best about it, it allows us to cheat Black Sun Z. Where Apostle's Blessing would not. I also want to possibly include or sideboard a Spellskite or two. Once they get the hang of this, we can leave a black untapped if nothing else just to bluff Unyding Evil, it's such a strategic card for this deck I feel strongly about.

It's just, if we are allowed to ramp, the deck really hits critical mass very quickly, and Karn enters the battlefield, and/or I'm going to add 1x of Vorinclex. That's my one gripe about the deck, late game, Green Sun feels like a dead draw as I've got nothing big to fetch. If you can quickly ramp a Vorinclex/Karn/Wurmcoil, you really put twice the pressure on them.

Please get back to me and lemme know what you think, Defensive Ramping as a strategy here.