While not quite as explosive and consistent as Elf decks in the eternal formats, this standard version is still immensely fun and has the potential to get out of hand very fast. I don't expect this deck to be tier 1 however I do believe it has solid enough legs that it can be in tier 2.
An opener with Forest, Forest, Llanowar Elves, Marwyn, the Nurturer, and Elvish Clancaller gives you enough mana to activate Elvish Clancaller's ability on turn 4 and gives you enough mana to drop up to another five mana worth of creatues on turn three with the following sequence:
- Turn 1: Forest, Llanowar Elves
- Turn 2: Forest, Marwyn, the Nurturer
- Turn 3: Forest, Use Forest, Forest for Elvish Clancaller. Marwyn, the Nurturer gets a counter. Use Llanowar Elves, Forest for a 2CMC elf, Marwyn, the Nurturer gets a counter. Marwyn, the Nurturer can produce for something.
- Turn 4: With Marwyn, the Nurturer + lands you can activate Elvish Clancaller's ability to fetch out another copy of itself while also leaving up open mana.
That being said, that was magical chistmasland and probably not something that will happen in the majority of games. Without cards like Lead the Stampede, Chord of Calling, or Collected Company to search for specific pieces and card advantage, in addition to not having cards like Ezuri, Renegade Leader, or Shaman of the Pack for a consistent and reliable wincon, the deck does suffer a bit as it is quite prone to stagnation while you dig for ways to close out the game.
Sideboard
Sideboard is still a work in progress. On the suggestion of a friend, some copies of Plummet are likely going in to it in addition to cards like Heroic Intervention for protection, Reclamation Sage for Heart of Kiran or Sagas, and likely some cards that give me a little more interaction with their side of the board to clear otherwise hard to remove creatures. We like Plummet as a sideboard option due to the large amounts of flying finishers and key creatures in the format ranging from Glorybringer to Lyra Dawnbringer. We also expect some form of Big Red or Dragon midrange decks in the format that will play a large amount of flying threats.
Updates and Thoughts
These are my personal notes and more an avenue to tune the deck through my stream of thought as I playtest the deck. These are certainly not absolutes or anything just my personal thoughts on what I feel like the deck needs!
7/6/18:
Want to test running Vanquisher's Banner over Lifecrafter's Bestiary. The idea was to use Lifecrafter's Bestiary to keep gas in the tank since we potentially have an excess amount of available mana but for a larger initial cost it's possible to keep getting gas in the event of our dorks getting removed in addition to being a third anthem.
7/8/18:
Haven't gotten as much testing as I'd like done since it's Pre-Release weekend but tested a bit into the Mono-Red Chainwhirler deck and the matchup is pretty abysmal. It definitely hinges on getting an early Steel Leaf Champion down to keep pressure but given the amounts of removal they generally run in addition to Soul-Scar Mage shrinking the Steel Leaf Champion and the obvious Goblin Chainwhirler the matchup is generally unfavorable. Looking at maybe running options to deter the removal such as Poison-Tip Archer or Shapers' Sanctuary to shore up the matchup. Don't like Poison-Tip Archer's cost but if it plays well it could be a necessary evil. Otherwise Vanquisher's Banner played okay for now. Not as impactful as I hoped but not a terrible addition.
7/12/18:
I feel like the deck needs another two lands in it in order to not fall behind if it stumbles in the early game. Not hitting a T1 Llanowar Elves or getting hit by removal early with a low land count leaves us prone to not having enough mana to get going often getting stuck at 1 or 2 lands. That being said I'm not sure what to drop. In play Thorn Lieutenant hasn't proven terribly impactful however I'm reluctant to drop the 2CMC elf in a deck that requires to spam the field. Some options were to drop a copy of Rishkar's Expertise and maybe a copy of Cultivator of Blades but I need to think on it a bit more.
Poison-Tip Archer unfortunately played really poorly. When it was on the board it just ate the removal first which I should have seen coming. In theory it's removal that would have otherwise been targeted at something more important however it's not cheap enough to cast early to act as a deterrent while I set up. By the time it comes down the pieces it's supposed to protect are either already gone or I'm winning heavily enough where it won't be as impactful as something else. The reach/deathtouch however is marginally relevant into stuff like Lyra Dawnbringer though it really feels bad into an exerted Glorybringer. I'm going to test some copies of Shapers' Sanctuary in the side instead since I can get it down early and is reasonably resilient.
7/15/18:
Got a decent amount of testing in over the weekend with some pretty good results. Played into some interesting brews that really showed and exploited some of the weaknesses in the deck and put my sideboard to the test. The first was a mono-red goblins deck which was essentially a meta list mono-red aggro deck with the top end being Siege-Gang Commander andGoblin Trashmaster. The incidental upside of them having free repeatable artifact removal meant that I couldn't keep Metallic Mimic or Vanquisher's Banner on the board which forced me to play into the same gameplan as the normal mono-red matchup where I aggressively mulligan into a Steel Leaf Champion and keep protection up for it. Out of the sideboard Shapers' Sanctuary played really well. I went down two Llanowar Elves to bring them in as an alternate turn one since elves usually eat a shock immediately and it played quite well. It was nice to keep gas in the tank and eventually win out through card advantage.
I also played into a Zombie/Skeleton tribal deck and found that deathtouch is a pretty good keyword when it's on every single creature. Go figure. Thankfully this matchup wasn't terribly bad as even though all of their creatures had deathtouch they'd have to trade in to me to get any damage through so I had the luxury of stalling out until I hit Overcome. This does highlight the one major flaw of our deck however in that it's lack of consistent and reliable win-conditions really hinders the power of the deck. Had I been playing into a more aggressively interactive version of the deck I probably would have lost out once they could start making favorable trades since all of their creatures were recursive.
No changes to the deck for the moment. The deck needs to be played into some more "meta" lists before I make any judgments.
