Leaf-Crowned Elder

Creature — Treefolk Shaman

Kinship — At the beginning of your upkeep, you may look at the top card of your library. If it shares a creature type with Leaf-Crowned Elder, you may reveal it. If you do, you may cast that card without paying its mana cost.

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
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (46)

lhetrick13 on

2 years ago

zigail - Creature cheat is something {G} excels in...casting big stompy creatures for less or for free is a solid plan so your concept is not bad. All wallisface and I are saying is that this deck is not optimized for this strategy specifically for for Modern play because Modern is just such a harsh and angry format.

Essentially your whole deck hinges on your opening hand...you MUST have at least 2-3 lands in your opening hand, hope you draw 1-2 more in the next few turns, and hope you either start with or draw Treefolk Harbinger, Bosk Banneret, and Leaf-Crowned Elder within the first few turns...which wallisface has pointed out even if all that works out, Leaf-Crowned Elder has no built in protection and you have no ability to provide any. So this crucial lynchpin and all the setup can be complete undone by a simple removal spell, likely staling your deck entirely.

I run a deck that is "similar" to this concept of building around a single creature (Beyond the Grave (Abzan)) as it is built around Haakon, Stromgald Scourge's ability to reanimate knight creatures. Excluding the lands, the other creatures, and 4x copies of Haakon, the rest of the cards are usually focused around finding Haakon and getting him into play as soon as possible. This is done via cards like Collected Company, Eldritch Evolution, Finale of Devastation, Pyre of Heroes, Aether Vial, etc...The point I am making is that the deck has so many ways to fetch Haakon or any knight I may need really. Adding additional ways to "force" your strategy will help your deck be much more consistent. As it is right now, the ideal combo you mentioned in your comment will be pretty rare and most times, this deck will struggle to find a board presence.

Other than adding cards to help fetch Leaf-Crowned Elder more consistently, I think adding some ramp to help cast those big treefolk earlier or adding in additional ways to accelerate the deck by lowering the mana cost of those treefolk would go a long ways. An example of accelerating a deck built around big stompy creatures with mild ramp or lowering creature cost that I can provide is my dino themed deck Spared No Expense!!!. 8 cards lower the cost of dinosaurs and then I have 7 others that provide me some ramp making it so I can cast things like Regisaur Alpha or Trapjaw Tyrant on turn 3. This makes it so that despite having a >3.5 CMC, the deck is very consistent and fast. I know you mentioned you want to hit more on the creature cheat ability of Leaf-Crowned Elder but just food for thought on ways I feel the deck could potentially be improved.

Good luck and happy brewing, hope some of the material I mentioned was helpful!

wallisface on

2 years ago

zigail There are some problems with that strategy:

• The biggest problem with this plan is that Leaf-Crowned Elder is already a very "high-mana-cost creature", and this will generally mean your gameplan is going to be moving very slowly. The Elder won't be able to start providing you value until turn 4 at the earliest (as it has to survive until your upkeep)... most decks have done a LOT already by then, and you're going to be playing catchup.

• Even if your strategy goes off perfectly, 22 lands is not a reliable number to reach 3 lands on turn 3 (28% of the time, you'll have not drawn your 3rd land in time). You'll really need to go to ~24 lands to have better odds of not land-whiffing (only 21% chance of failure).

• Leaf-Crowned Elder is only useful if you can cast it, and it can stay alive until your next upkeep. That's a LOT to ask of this card, when your deck will have presented no real threats up until then. If your opponent is running any kind of interaction, they're likely going to kill your Leaf-Crowned Elder. I would really suggest not relying on this card being in play - if your deck can't perform well without it, then you're in trouble. Same goes for Bosk Banneret.

Also just going back to my original comment around your deck lacking interaction - by not being able to disrupt your opponent you put yourself in a really awkward position. Aggro decks will likely have you almost dead before Leaf-Crowned Elder does anything, and Combo decks are almost guaranteed to win before you can kill them. Control & Midrange decks will just out-value what's going on here. Without being able to interact with what your opponent is doing, you're giving them free-reign to just walk all-over you

zigail on

2 years ago

wallisface , lhetrick13 First of all thank you for your comments! I know that a lot of creatures have high mana cost but the point of the deck is to cheat them into play. The Idea was to have an opening hand ( or mulligan to find a good starting one ) that allow me to play Leaf-Crowned Elder at turn 3 or 4. First turn : One forest + Treefolk Harbinger to search Bosk Banneret if I have the elder in hand to play it at 3 mana cost. Treefolk Harbinger seems quite versatile in finding the thing i need the most to start the game ( one of the 2 treefolks or a forest) . Or if I Have banneret + elder in hand its good too. Its the idea wrong? My plan was not to just play high mana cost creatures from the hand.

Genderfluidia on Aint Nothin but a Tree Thang

2 years ago

I found in The Trees are Alive (my deck) that Sapling of Colfenor and Leaf-Crowned Elder got in each other's way some. If you found the same, but want the lifegain, I suggest Orchard Warden.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Sssshamanssss

3 years ago

This looks pretty cool, good job! Did I miss Leaf-Crowned Elder or are you actually not playing playing it?

Also, how about Cryptic Gateway and/or Belbe's Portal to cheat in some more shamans without having to pay full price?

Neotrup on Does Leaf-Crowned Elder work on …

3 years ago

Assuming Leaf-Crowned Elder and Rootgrapple share a creature type, yes. They should, considering they are both printed as Treefolk, but some effects can change that, such as Conspiracy which only effects creatures, not tribal cards.

Genderfluidia on Does Leaf-Crowned Elder work on …

3 years ago

Simply put: does Leaf-Crowned Elder's Kinship ability work on Rootgrapple?

GeminiSpartanX on Treefolk Tribal Assault Formation GO!

4 years ago

GenoSans- Path is definitely the better card, but this deck is meant more for casual play. Crib Swap has the added benefit of being able to be cast for free with Leaf-Crowned Elder, which this deck is kind of built around. If you wanted to take this to an FNM I'd add paths for sure, but this is more of what I'd call an optimized-kitchen-table deck. Thanks for looking though!