Elvish Spirit Guide
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Premodern Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Elvish Spirit Guide

Creature — Elf Spirit

Exile this from your hand: Add .

greyninja on Animar & friends!

3 weeks ago

@SaberTech interesting, Lilysplash Mentor is now in the tcgplayer cart! Cool idea

Other upcoming additions:
- Dour Port-Mage
- Elvish Spirit Guide
- Simian Spirit Guide

Anything in the deck you think should come out?

SaberTech on Mad World Rising

1 month ago

Thanks for the questions greyninja!

Grazilaxx is a remnant from an older, pre-banning of Dockside cEDH build for the deck. At that time in cEDH people were running Animar as more of a midrange deck because it wasn't fast enough for a turbo build to work well in the meta. I've kept it now that I run the deck as more of a Bracket 4 build and have to face off against more board wipes in the casual meta. It's mostly in the deck as another way of drawing cards to help recover but if an opponent would rather have me bounce back my creatures so that I can put more counters on Animar and get more ETB effects instead of drawing a card, then who am I to argue?

I've generally been pretty happy with Elvish Spirit Guide and Simian Spirit Guide. Like you pointed out, they help to increase the chances of a turn 2 Animar. There have also been times where I was digging through my deck with the help of something like Glimpse of Nature but have completely tapped out to do it. In those cases, having cards like the Guides, Lotus Petal, and Chrome Mox help to give free coloured mana that I might need to help close out the game. In cEDH the guides are a little more useful because they can pay for cards like Red Elemental Blast and Veil of Summer on their own but even in this build they can help to pay for a Wild Cantor or a Talisman so that I have blue mana up for counters to protect Walking Ballista. At 3 mana, the Guides can also be Neoformed into Ancestral Statue.

The 27 lands may not seem like a lot but some of the cEDH builds have even less. Animar doesn't really need many lands to go off considering the various cheap mana dorks and other ramp the deck provides. It is a bit tricky to go that low in lands and can require some aggressive mulligans to get a decent starting hand. While playing though, I've sometimes found that even just 27 lands can result in some mana flooding when I would really rather be drawing spells. The land count is something that you just have to experiment with for your own build to see where that sweet spot is for your own play style.

As for Utopia Sprawl, there are times where it has been a dead draw but it's not that often. Between the Dual Lands, Shock Lands, and Fetch lands in the deck it's not normally that difficult to get access to a land that counts as a forest on turn 1. Using Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth as ramp synergizes well with Arbor Elf and can also net extra mana with the help of cards like Snap, Deceiver Exarch, and Peregrine Drake.

greyninja on Mad World Rising

1 month ago

Looks fun! Love to see differences and similarities of the various Animar decks. Pretty sure I +1 years ago

Curious on your inclusion of Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar. Is it more for the first, or second ability?

How do you like Elvish Spirit Guide and Simian Spirit Guide? These are two I have considered myself, to try and get a turn 1-2 Animar. Worried I might just be hard-casting late-game for that +1/+1 on Animar though

27 lands - super aggressive! Do you ever find Utopia Sprawl to be a dead draw with no Forests?

If you have a chance, please take a look at my deck as well! I can see you commented back in 2015, but we've had updates since then ;)

burferking on Turn 0 win vs Chancellor of dross (100%)

2 months ago

Well, if you can play conspiracies, I would use Emissary's Ploy in the sideboard as "A conspiracy doesn't count as a card in your deck for purposes of meeting minimum deck size requirements."
3 Pact of Negation, because in a deck of 60 FoW, each Force of Will needs to exile another one. In a starting hand of 7, three could be played.

Main list 53x Contract from Below 2x Elvish Spirit Guide 1x Flash 3x Pact of Negation 1x Thassa's Oracle

Sideboard 1x Emissary's Ploy

DreadKhan on Monster Feets

3 months ago

I think you should run more stuff like Lotus Petal or Elvish Spirit Guide, Legacy is an incredibly fast format, and a deck like this needs to be putting a threat on board turn 2 pretty reliably, Lands decks and Reanimator decks can both put similar (or even better in the case of Lands) creatures onto the board on or before turn 2.

To protect vs wipes you could try Heroic Intervention, it's pricey but once you've stuck a threat I feel like you need it to stay alive. Not of this World can help protect your big creature from targeted stuff fwiw, but that's neither wipes or counters!

Have you thought about something like Terastodon to deal with stuff like Ensnaring Bridge? If a Discard deck can stick their Bridge do you have any ways to deal with it? I'm not saying Discard is a prevalent deck, but it can also kill a Dark Depths before they go off with it fwiw. The nice perk of the card is if you blow up lands your opponent will have a hard time casting a wipe, while you might be able to make another large creature!

I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Once Upon a Time, I'd run it as a x4, having one in your opening hand is really, really good I've found in my elf list (which also uses a lot of mana dorks fwiw). Between Once and the plethora of 1 mana dorks I used I ended up going down to 16 lands, which I was pretty happy with in practice.

If you're TRULY desperate for ways to deal with counter magic you can try Null Brooch, I used it in an aggro list to stop wipes, but if you REALLY want to protect stuff that's already on board it can help. It's a terrible card vs rack decks, but that's why we have sideboards, right?

capwner on

4 months ago

Not of this World is an interesting choice, but makes an odd sort of sense for an all-in depths list. What do you think of Sowing Mycospawn as an uncounterable way to tutor out depths (or wasteland)? Elvish Spirit Guide or Lotus Petal might be worth consideration to turbo out your plan a turn earlier. I agree with Balaam, Bayou and 4x Wasteland would be very nice to see in here. As it is, this is impressively budget for a legacy deck! +1

multimedia on Exploding Kobolds

6 months ago

Hey, interesting deck.

Consider adding green? By adding green you get Glimpse of Nature, Noxious Revival, Elvish Spirit Guide. Glimpse and Revival go well together to keep casting Glimpse. Guide provides a green mana source without needing a land that can make green. Green also has Assault Formation, not needing an anthem effect to increase Kobolds power since only toughness matters. With 4x Glimpse you would only need 1x Formation as well as some kind of haste for all your creatures source such as Burst of Speed that you cast after casting all your Kobolds for the turn. With 4x Glimpse, 1x Grapeshot is all you need.

Stomping Ground, Karplusan Forest, Copperline Gorge can be dual lands that could replace Mountains? Lotus Petal and/or Wild Cantor, replacing some Mountains gives you a mana source of any color while also counting towards storm. The problems with Impact Tremors and Purphoros, God of the Forge are they need to be on the battlefield before you start casting Kobolds. In theory Tremors/Purphoros seem good, but in gameplay they seem slow, too inconsistent hit or miss.

Consider this package for upgrades?

Good luck with your deck.

DreadKhan on EDH Merens Reanimator

1 year ago

The OG Fetches are very good cards in almost any deck, and as I mentioned in my first post, I don't know if it would be easy to improve this deck without either adding Fetchlands or increasing the power level.

The easiest way to increase the power level a deck like yours is to add a combo, but your present power level is high enough that you'd need to add a fairly efficient combo, something like Protean Hulk to find a complete combo (ideally via a single pile), this would leave you at a strong 8, not quite cEDH but it's fairly hard to make Meren a cEDH deck at this point, her ability is too slow/grindy for cEDH games. cEDH Meren lists are likely to make use of something like Razaketh, or possibly a Phyrexian Devourer combo. Razaketh uses something like Life / Death to turn your lands into creatures so you can keep tutoring until you find both your combo of choice as well as the mana to play it. Razaketh decks love stuff like Lion's Eye Diamond, which is extremely pricey and does very little other than combo off. You'd also want Dark Ritual type cards, and possibly things like Lotus Petal and Elvish Spirit Guide. The main problem with Razaketh is getting him out early, but something like Final Parting can get you there by putting Razaketh in the bin and a Reanimate into hand. Similarly, you can reanimate a Protean Hulk (which you then sacrifice) to tutor up a game ending combo, the advantage of Protean Hulk is that it's easier to cast when you're desperate, but the upside of Razaketh is that you can tutor up any cards you want, Razaketh just gives you a new hand in exchange for a few creatures. I think Protean Hulk is the best of the lot, but Phyrexian Devourer isn't a bad option, you use Triskelion with it by getting both into your graveyard, with a Necrotic Ooze on the battlefield, you then just exile cards to put counters on your Devourer, and the only real drawbacks are your limit on individual MV (Devourer dies if it gets too big), and you'll need enough total MV to actually kill everyone (this isn't too hard if you go off fairly early, but it can suck if you take all game to get into position and can't kill everyone because you don't have enough cards left. Another upside to Devourer is that Triskelion also wins the game with Mikaeus (you ping Triskelion with the last counter so it dies (without any counters left) and has Undying). Oh, with Protean Hulk the 'smallest' pile I am familiar with involves Disciple of the Vault, Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Lesser Masticore, and Carrion Feeder/Viscera Seer, with that pile you don't even need Activated Sleeper to nab a second Protean Hulk (with only 3 MV after you account for the Sleeper). The main drawback of this pile is that the cards are individually bad IMHO (I would run Feeder and Seer, but none of the others fit in a generic Meren deck), and the lack of redundancy (Melira and Masticore aren't used in a lot of other combos in Meren decks afaik) makes it less stable than some lists. The final one I feel is worth mention is Demon of Dark Schemes, Mitotic Slime, and Phyrexian Altar nets you infinite mana, ETBs, death triggers, Energy, and all the creatures in each graveyard can be reanimated by you. The nice thing about the Demon is that it's only 6 mana (so technically Hulk can find him), and it can do a lot of work in certain situations since it can wipe small creatures as well as reanimate cards from anyone's graveyard. It's one of the better generic reanimation effects that can go infinite, and it's sheer range of utility makes it worth looking at even if you didn't use Mitotic Slime. The Slime btw is very good in most Meren decks since it offers a plethora of tokens for only 5 mana, while Phyrexian Altar (or Pitiless Plunderer) are both amazing cards in a deck like this.

If you feel like adding a combo, I wouldn't have more than ~2 trees/paths to work with, unless the cards are shared between multiple lists.

I can go into more detail if it would be helpful, I have a Meren deck on here you could take a look at, it's a lot more combo oriented than your list, but it's combos aren't optimal, they're all made with stuff I already had.

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