Llanowar Elves

Creature — Elf Druid

: Gain .

Discussion (48)

liamk585-mtg on Favorite Mtg Art?

10 hours ago

Boundless Realms, Vigor, Forest, Mountain, Time Walk, Mox Jet, Kargan Dragonlord, Llanowar Elves, Llanowar Elves, Tamiyo, Collector of Tales, Liliana Vess, Domri, Anarch of Bolas, and Deicide are some other cards with cool art.

Optimator on Jurassic

3 days ago

Your list looks pretty good so far! Solid ramp, but your land-count seems a bit low. The conventional wisdom is that 37-38 lands is the sweet spot. If you have a extremely low curve or lots of low CMC or one-mana rampers (Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth etc) you can go lower. I almost always run 36 lands; it's just what I do. Anyway, dinosaurs and your commander are expensive so you might want to bump up your lands a bit. Gishath has a huge target on her head so you should expect and plan to recast her over and over. I know from experience; my brother has a Gishath deck and it's terrifying: Dig Up Her Bones check it out and up-vote it if you have the chance!

You're a bit light on removal, but that's actually quite normal for such ramp- and creature-heavy decks. Just the way it goes. That said, you might want to squeeze in Swords to Plowshares and/or Path to Exile. Not only are they just good, but--as you pointed out--Polyraptor and Marauding Raptor draw the game unless you have a way to instantly stop it. I suppose Collateral Damage and Momentous Fall help there, but the latter is pricey (mana-wise) and might not work.

You may want more creature tutors or Enlightened Tutor IF you want the Polyraptor stuff to be a major strategy. If it's just something fun in the deck to stumble upon then more power to ya. If you do consider it a core tactic then perhaps adding Purphoros, God of the Forge and/or Impact Tremors to go with your Warstorm Surge would make it more reliable and prevent the game drawing with Marauding Raptor. Might not be worth the slots though. Gishath stompy works fine as-is!

You have a lot of great utility cards, but you may be a bit heavy on them. If you're looking to free up slots perhaps look there. I wouldn't drop any creatures in a Gishath deck. You have a very solid amount of card draw and card advantage, which is actually kind of impressive for a beginner deckbuilder! Good job!

Personally, I would cut Coat of Arms and Door of Destinies. You're not going wide enough to make them as impactful as they can be. A bit win-more, as opposed to an actual win-condition. Incremental Growth is solid but one of your weaker cards. Priest of the Wakening Sun is a bit on the weaker side too. I don't hate it, but if you're looking for another cut you could do worse.

All in all you've got a great thing going. Gishath is fun on a bun. Play some games and note which cards get stuck in your hand.

slashdotdash on Golos attempt II

5 days ago

Hey there Kronhamilton,

First of all, I like the improvements you’ve made to your deck. It’s already looking a lot slicker and I can see you’ve made some very fun looking changes to how the deck plays.

You’ve got a nice array of threats (I always love to see the Bringers and Ur-Dragon) and a decent amount of ramp which are both a big plus. Additionally, you’ve got the beginnings of some nasty graveyard synergy shaping up, which looks really, really cool as a sort of plan B.

That being said, I’d like to make a few suggestions to help guide you toward a more consistent and powerful Golos deck. Please remember that these suggestions are just my informed opinion, and that I totally respect whatever deck choices you decide to make. I really just want to help you get comfortable with deck building and learning what to look for in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ card.

Broad Suggestions

I would encourage you to add 2 Lands, 3 Removal cards, and 8 Draw cards. I’d also think about adding 2 more Ramp cards, but that is less critical to the overall health of the deck. Your Threats look great and I think your Sweepers are also appropriate. Anything that synergizes with your graveyard backup plan is great.

There are a couple of things to think about as you play this deck; 1. “Am I happy or sad to be holding this card in my hand or drawing it off the top of my deck?” – If a card seems to constantly be ‘the wrong card’ for the situation, or you can never seem to cast it, or you always play other cards instead, or you tend to die while holding a certain card, then you probably want to think about how well that card fits in your deck and whether or not you should cut it or modify the deck to support it. 2. “What ongoing advantage does this card give me?” – Some cards seem like a decent card based on having decent power/toughness, a fair cost, and some neat keywords or abilities. Just having those upsides alone though doesn’t make a card truly powerful. Instead, try to think about what ways a card can synergize with your deck to create crazy effects or otherwise how it will become more dangerous as the game progresses (like a Quartzwood Crasher, Scute Swarm, or Giant Adephage). Additionally, try to find cards that do multiple things such as Chasm Skulker which gets bigger when you draw cards and also explodes into tokens when it dies, or even Ravenous Chupacabra which deals with a threat and also acts as a blocker when you are facing pressure. The key is finding a way to levarage the most amount of value in each individual card – even a 2 mana ramp spell will set you up to play all of your future spells 1 turn earlier than normal for the rest of the game, which can be an insane advantage when you think about it. 3. “Am I out of options?” – If you can’t seem to find a solution to a problem or you’re ‘running out of steam’, then it is likely that you need more card draw and more ways to create ‘engines’ that accrue value. An example of an engine would be Fertilid + Evolution Sage or Rampaging Baloths + Elemental Bond or Kruphix, God of Horizons + Victory Chimes or Atraxa, Praetors' Voice + Ajani, the Greathearted or Anointed Procession + Endless Ranks of the Dead or Search for Azcanta  ^Flip or Deadbridge Chant or Mind Unbound, etc.

Ramp

Your ramp looks pretty good with 10 dedicated Ramp cards. I’d suggest adding 2 more Ramp spells to really help speed things up early. Examples would be Kodama's Reach, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth, Farseek, Rampant Growth, Springbloom Druid, etc.

Ramp - 10

• Fertilid

• Palladium Myr

• Solemn Simulacrum

• Cultivate

• Arcane Signet

• Commander's Sphere

• Ketria Crystal

• Raugrin Crystal

• Savai Crystal

• Sol Ring

Not Ramp

• Azusa, Lost but Seeking - you don’t have enough land + card draw to really capitalize on Asuza’s ability.

• Empowered Autogenerator – this card is vastly too slow to be considered a true Ramp card. At best I would call it a ‘Ramp Support’ card, because it is there to slowly help you in the late game, not propel you in the early game like a true Ramp card (Rampant Growth, Farseek, Fertile Ground, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth)

Draw

Overall, I think your card draw package needs a little bit of love. I want to note I see a lot of ‘looting’ effects like the ones on Teferi, Master of Time or Obsessive Stitcher and while these cards are great for a graveyard strategy they still don’t count as card draw. I’d keep most of these ‘looting’ type cards, but try to find cards that get you about 2 or 3 cards such as Harmonize, Concentrate, Escape to the Wilds, Urban Evolution, Moldervine Reclamation, Deathreap Ritual, Recurring Insight, Mind Unbound, Underworld Connections, Cloudblazer, Mulldrifter, Drawn from Dreams, Return of the Wildspeaker, Harvester of Souls, Momentous Fall, Dream Trawler, Keeper of Fables etc.

Draw - 2

• Bringer of the Blue Dawn (nice)

• Reconnaissance Mission

Not Draw

• Barrin, Tolarian Archmage – drawing 1 card does not really count. If anything, Barrin is like slow, bad removal for dealing with your opponents’ stuff temporarily. If you’re interested in reusing Golos’s land finding ability I would recommend playing Soulherder instead.

• Solemn Simulacrum – He has sort of ‘incidental value’ with his death trigger but doesn’t actively net you a bunch of cards like Keruga, the Macrosage or Beast Whisperer. Sad Robot is still great though.

• Titanoth Rex – still keep this guy because he is a threat that isn’t dead in your hand on turn 5.

• Void Beckoner – same story as the Rex

• Teferi, Master of Time – Teferi’s great, but he is really at his best when you’ve got 4-7 card in hand so that you can throw a bunch of big threats to the graveyard and hopefully draw a reanimation spell. Other than that, Teferi isn’t going to refill your hand so he doesn’t count as true draw.

Removal

Your removal package looks like it needs a couple more additions to keep your deck responsive and able to handle imminent-doom type threats. It is worth noting that cards like Blatant Thievery or Mythos of Illuna can save you in certain situations, but be wary of their crazy mana costs and the fact that they are not instant-speed answers. Examples include Mythos of Nethroi, Beast Within, Price of Fame, Reality Shift, Terminate, Return to Nature, Putrefy, Utter End, Eat to Extinction, Murderous Rider, etc.

Removal – 4 (aim for 7)

• Mortify

• Despark

• Barrier Breach

• Disenchant

Cuts

There are several cards that I would consider cutting first when modifying the deck.

• Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast - he relies very heavily on luck and only interacts with creatures. This makes him good with only 30% of your deck. Additionally, Lukka can’t ‘protect’ himself like Garruk can (making tokens to block for him), nor does he have an immediately accessible removal ability like Teferi. Overall, Lukka is interesting but a little lacking in consistency, defensibility, and power.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking – you don’t have enough land + card draw to really capitalize on Asuza’s ability. Yes, you can use the double lands (like Gruul Turf) to bounce a land to hand and then play that land with Asuza, but realistically that’s such a narrow and relatively tame synergy (in this non-landfall deck, that is) that you would be better off playing a Farseek or a Rampant Growth or even a Fertile Ground.

• Sparkhunter Masticore - This little fellow has a major drawback and no seriously crazy abilities that make him worthwhile. Yes he can deal with planeswalkers, but so can a Murderous Rider or an Eat to Extinction. Yes he can be an indestructible 3/4, but you have to pay 3 mana just to make him indestructible. Under normal circumstances that’s 6 mana for a 3/4 that dodges death one time - a 3/4 just isn’t fantastic. The biggest bad news about this robocat is its “additional cost to cast” ability which means that even if you hit it with Golos’s ‘Rainbow Wheel of Death’ ability, you still have to discard a card for a 3/4. I just honestly think you’d rather have a removal spell (Beast Within, Mythos of Nethroi) instead of this cat any day.

• Pursued Whale - While this whale is kinda cool and he does force combat, he is just sorta expensive for what he does. 7 mana for an 8/8 is pretty standard and giving your opponents tokens (that they could just attack you with or sacrifice to an effect) can be a bad idea in some situations, such as when they have an Beastmaster Ascension or a similar effect on the field. While his semi-hexproof ability (3 more mana to target) seems nifty, that is one of the only really powerful highlight abilities of this card, meaning that ability is protecting a relatively low-powered card. A couple immediate alternatives come to mind for me; Geode Rager to force combat AND keep you safe, and Dream Trawler for a flying, hexproof, lifelinking, card drawing threat.

• Renata, Called to the Hunt - She just isn’t fantastic. You aren’t playing a devotion centric deck in which she might become a 10/10, and your strategy doesn’t really care about 1/1 counters either. I would consider replacing her with a Harmonize or another 3 or 4 drop with more impactful abilities. Heck, even another reanimation spell could be nice like Unburial Rites or Grave Upheaval since your deck seems to have some tendency to but things in the graveyard for later.

• Lorescale Coatl - Cards like this (or his bigger cousin Chasm Skulker) are really designed for “wheel decks” that play “wheel effects” like Windfall or Reforge the Soul. He is fine, but really not much better than that. If you want a threat that can grow faster and do more important things, try Managorger Hydra or even Scute Mob.

• Colossification - This aura is too expensive, taps your creature down, and worst of all is an aura. Auras are generally quite bad because your opponent can destroy your creature and the aura attached to them with one spell – and odds are they’ll do that because it is usually too juicy not to. The fact that you can’t attach Colossification and attack immediately means that your opponents will have a full turn to deal with it before you get a chance to use it (and keep in mind your Colossified creature needs to survive 3 opponents’ turns!). This means you’ll most likely run out of cards in a hurry without accomplishing anything.

• Door to Nothingness - Unlike Progenitus, you can’t reanimate the Door, nor can you get its full value off of the Rainbow Wheel of Death. The only time this card does anything at all is when you literally have 10 mana of the exact color combination necessary to use it. It’s still your call, and I know some people make it a goal to Door their opponents, but be warned: you probably don’t have as much ramp as you need to make this work well. I’d consider supporting this crazy cards (and your many expensive threats for that matter) with a few more ramp spells – Boundless Realms, Migration Path, Circuitous Route, Kodama's Reach, Explosive Vegetation, Zendikar Resurgent

• Azor's Gateway  ^Flip – This card belongs in a very specific variant of Golos. That variant is the Minamo, School at Water's Edge Golos deck which also runs stuff like Vizier of Tumbling Sands, Fatestitcher, Kiora's Follower, and other payoffs like Jegantha, the Wellspring, or Captain Sisay. Especially considering that Sanctum of the Sun (the flip side) adds X mana of only 1 color, I think this card is just rarely going to work like you want it to unfortunately.

• Lathliss, Dragon Queen - Basically, you only have 3 other dragons in the deck so I would either exchange a bunch of cards for more dragons or cut Lathliss, since she will rarely be able to use her best ability (5/5 tokens). Keep in mind, you could also run a bunch of cards with the ‘changeling’ keyword if you wanted to get really funky, in which case you may as well also play stuff like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, Reaper King, Crested Sunmare, The First Sliver but that’s a very slippery and insane slope that I’m not sure you want to get sucked into.

Summary

Nice changes Kronhamilton, I can see that your deck is really starting to shape up as a rampy graveyard-mingling Golos deck, and that’s really cool. I encourage you to try and pay attention to what situations you find yourself in, as that’s often the best way to tell what cards you need to cut or add to the deck for it to work best. As a default, I’d consider making a few of the changes I mentioned in the Broad Suggestion section, as those changes should just generally help with your deck’s consistency.

Please do let me know how you decide to tune your deck – it’s really fun to watch honestly, and I’m always down to help advise you. Other than that, take care and enjoy Golos!

Best,

-Slashdotdash

multimedia on Help with Korvold

1 week ago

Hey, it's going to be difficult to improve on something if you start with the mindset of "I'm not good at it". If this is your first Commander deck then you are already good at deck building especially your card sense, decent mana curve and knowing mostly what's a playable land for your budget and not a playable one. Overall, well done with your casual version of Korvold :)

One drop mana dorks are nice with Korvold because they can be the fastest ramp and then be sac fodder when you don't need them: Birds of Paradise, Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic, Wild Growth, Llanowar Elves. Tireless Tracker, Mystery Booster version is cheapest, is good with Korvold because it can be a repeatable source of permanents to sac (clues) just by playing lands. Clues can be a backup repeatable draw source if Korvold is disrupted. Dreadhorde Invasion, Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse, Loyal Apprentice are two drops that can be a repeatable source of a token to sac to Korvold.

Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Korvold are quite the pair. Every time you sac a creature to Korvold you get experience from Meren and use the experience at your end step to reanimate or recur a creature you saced. Sakura-Tribe Elder and Plaguecrafter are good examples of the best of both worlds since they can sac themselves for value. Jarad's Orders is a budget tutor that's nice with reanimation since you get two creatures, one into your hand, the other into your graveyard.

Some lands within the budget to consider adding: Llanowar Wastes, Karplusan Forest, Savage Lands, Ghost Quarter. If you add green one drop mana dorks then more dual lands that can ETB untapped turn one to make green are helpful. The Jund Tri land is a upgrade for a land that always ETB tapped. Quarter is nice since it can sac itself to destroy a problematic opponent land or even your own land in a pinch and can play it from grave with Ramunap Excavator.

If you're interested in any of these suggestions then I offer more advice about what cards to cut. Good luck with your deck.

SynergyBuild on Card costs, Land mana calculation …

2 weeks ago

Daaaaaang that's an expensive Llanowar Elves @enpc

RNR_Gaming on Angus Mackenzie Pillow Fort Enchantments

2 weeks ago

Constant Mists with a Crucible of Worlds + Life from the Loam package is fairly thematic and effective. A Crop Rotation to snag up your Glacial Chasm will do wonders when facing down those pesky aggro decks. I'm also a big fan of Wilderness Reclamation and Quest for Renewal (assuming you can add in more dorks) Noble Hierarch, Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Priest of Titania, Fyndhorn Elves and Avacyn's Pilgrim typically get the ball rolling consistently :)

RNR_Gaming on Animar's Hydra's

2 weeks ago

This was a pet commander for me for a long time. I loved getting him out early. Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, Elvish Mystic, Wild Cantor and Fyndhorn Elves have always been mvps for me. Lotus Petal helps out too but I've moved away from that now that I got Chrome Mox. Free creatures like Peregrine Drake and Cloud of Faeries make, making animar big a snap but definitely can start getting into the degenerate territory if you couple them with other things like Cloudstone Curio or Aluren (this seems like it's meant to be more casual but I figured I'd suggest some of the cool high end options too)

0rc on 京 An illusion? What are you hiding? (CEDH-$T4KS) 京

3 weeks ago

Kiyomei, I use Drannith Magistrate to prevent my opponents from casting their commanders from the command zone, which is crippling in its own right, however, my strategy is far different from yours and less competitive so it may not be as appropriate for your stax strategy (my deck is on my profile). Late game, it also prevents commanders from casting spells from zones outside of the hand zone. As such, it stops Urza, Kess, and Muldrotha type strategies that hope to cast their win conditions from exile, graveyard, or wherever. It’s easy to pod into with Llanowar Elves-type dorks and completely shuts down many of the most competitive strategies, which tend to be commander driven. It also pods into Eternal Witness and Faeburrow Elder. It’s a real asshole in cEDH. I play it in Brago as well.