This is a mid-high power elfball deck that focuses on exponential growth. The gameplan is to flood the board with Elf tokens & convert them into numerous win conditions, including combat damage, life drain or a Staff of Domination infinite combo. The deck has backup plans for grinder games but your odds of winning decrease the longer a game goes on so be bold & make them have the answer.
Lathril, Blade of the Elves is a voltron-lite commander that uses her power stat to produce Elf tokens. She serves as an early game accelerant, mid game powerhouse and an accessible win condition that centers the deck. Your goal is to turn the Elves she generates into mana via Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid or Circle of Dreams Druid or card draw through Shamanic Revelation and Pact of the Serpent. Once you have an abundance of resources you can cast Coat of Arms or Craterhoof Behemoth or activate Allosaurus Shepherd, or Ezuri, Renegade Leader to push for a lethal attack. If attacking is unavailable you can win with Lathril’s activated ability once you reach 10 Elves.
Lathril is difficult to block in the early game since most players spend the early turns playing ramp / mana rocks & not casting creatures. If you play a mana dork on turn 1-2 you can reliably cast her on turn 3 and get swinging by turn 4. Lightning Greaves grants Lathril haste & can be played on turn 2, letting you swing as early as turn 3. Starting around turn 5-7 it’s necessary to give her additional evasion to crash through blockers. Cultist of the Absolute is the golden standard, giving Lathril incredible evasion and power for 1 black mana and effectively no downside. Sword of Hearth and Home provides consistent lands & two ubiquitous protection colors. It ramps you, hits your land drops and gets extra value out of your elves. YMMV on the protection colors matchup but white and green are the most common token colors.
Most of your games will start with a turn 1 or turn 2 mana dork. Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Elves of Deep Shadow, Birds of Paradise, Arbor Elf & Sculptor of Winter all keep you on curve and set you up for later turns. Deathrite Shaman can work as a mana dork but requires lands in someone’s graveyard to be effective long-term, which doesn’t always happen.
You can continue accelerating in later turns with additional draws and mana. Black Market Connections gives you mana, tokens and draws to accelerate throughout the game. Leaf-Crowned Visionary and Beast Whisperer allow your elves to replace themselves throughout the game (more on them in the combo section). Guardian Project acts as a redundant copy of Beast Whisperer, letting all your creature spells cantrip. For mana, Heritage Druid, Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid & Circle of Dreams Druid produce absurd amount of mana on larger board states, letting you cast your higher-rate cards or go off on long combo turns. These three benefit immensely from the tokens Lathril generates & they’re the main reason we want Lathril’s power to be high.
Once you’ve assembled a big board there are numerous payoffs that either close the game or put you vastly ahead of your opponents. Pact of the Serpent & Shamanic Revelation can draw upward of 7 cards, giving you more than enough gas to push ahead & refill your hand in case someone wipes the board. Toski, Bearer of Secrets can covert high creature counts into massive draws depending on the board state. Overrun effects like Coat of Arms, Craterhoof Behemoth, Allosaurus Shepherd, and Ezuri, Renegade Leader end the game with larger boards.
If combat isn’t an option, Lathril, Blade of the Elves has an activated ability to drain everyone at the table. This is your slowest win condition but it has two combos that massively speed it up. The first is Seedborn Muse, which allows you to untap all your elves on every player’s upkeep. Since your average commander game is 4 players, this represents a lethal 40 drained life for every player at the table. The second combo is Staff of Domination, which is so powerful it can win the game the same turn you cast it. The only condition necessary is 5 elves and any big mana dork (Priest, Archdruid or Cirlce of Dream Druid). By tapping a big dork to add 5 mana then spending 4 of that mana to untap the dork and untap the staff, you create a mana-positive loop that creates green infinite mana. Once you have infinite mana, you can draw your entire deck, play Birds of Paradise, Elvish Harbringer or Elves of Deep Shadow as a black mana source. Equip them with Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots for haste, then use the same tap/untap trick with the staff to create infinite black mana. With infinite mana of both colors, you cast Lathril and 5 more Elves, activate Lathril’s ability to drain everyone for 10 life, untap all your creatures with Staff of Domination and do it again. Rinse/repeat until the entire table is dead.
With the main lines out of the way, the rest of the deck is full consistency boosters, removal and tech cards. This section will be dedicated to talking about powerful / flexible cards and where they fit in to the bigger picture.
Bolas's Citadel is a card advantage machine that trades life to cast spells from the top of your library. The vast majority of your deck costs under 4 mana so churning through the top of your library is very easy. Casting 4+ cards off of Citadel is not only common but puts you very far ahead of the table. This is your best play post-board wipe or when you’re really far behind, but it can win the game with the right board state.
Since it’s possible to brick when playing Citdel, I highly recommend not playing a land front your hand the turn you cast it. Additionally, cards like Grist, the Hunger Tide, Path of Ancestry, Staff of Domination, the fetchlands or any shuffle effect will lower your chances of bricking and let you cast even more cards. It’s alright if you only cast 3-4 spells before Citadel is destroyed as those spells usually replace the Citadel in rate/ value.
Wolverine Riders is a solid play during board stalls or longer games where you can’t resolve Lathril. They generate an Elf Token on every player’s upkeep, granting you a slowly growing board and some powerful inevitability. They’re not a high priority target like other player’s commanders or powerful spells, so they often land 4-8 Elves before being answered. They can be combined with Essence Warden to play a bizarrely powerful life gain strategy.
Beledros Witherbloom is a value engine and combo enabler. I personally believe all EDH decks should have an Elder Dragon somewhere in the 99 and Beledros is a worthy inclusion. He provides passive value by generating pest tokens every upkeep, he is one of the few flying bodies in the deck and he lets you untap your lands for 10 life. This sounds like a hefty cost but in reality this lets you cast Beledros & hold up mana to protect him or continue a long combo turn. He gives you lots of gas while accruing value in longer games, a unique combination of traits.
Grist, the Hunger Tide is a tutorable removal spell on a body. She can be grabbed with any creature tutor due to her passive ability. She can rotate between generating insect tokens and removing troublesome threats around the table. Grist is a deceptively powerful threat, as letting her sit around killing things turn her into a 3-for-1 or 4-for-1 trade. This deck doesn’t often play table police but Grist is strong enough to pull it off. You can disregard her ultimate as this deck isn’t really interested in filling the grave.
Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler turns your large mana elves into rituals. On larger board states he lets Priest & co create upwards of twelve mana in a single turn. As long as you have a draw engine in play you can easily run away with a game. His -2 is also very powerful, letting you grab over half the creatures in the deck from the graveyard. Your best hits are Priest of Titania and Leaf-Crowned Visionary, netting you mana and draw power respectively.
Wirewood Symbiote is a Swiss Army knife. The cost for its activated ability can be used to protect any Elf from targeted removal while the untap effect can be used to generate enormous mana off of Priest, Archdruid or Circle of Dreams Druid. The elves you bounce to hand can be used to re-buy Elvish Archdruid’s and Reclamation Sage’s ETBs and give you additional draws off of Beast Whisperer and Leaf-Crowned Visionary. Quirion Ranger can also untap the big mana dorks but she doesn’t have the same protection or bounce abilities.
Erebos, Bleak-Hearted is a tech card against heavy-removal tables. This deck is weak to frequent board wipes & Erebos provides a means of recouping losses. Whenever someone destroys one of your creatures you may pay 2 life to draw a card. This seems like a hefty cost, but replacing any losses with a full grip of cards gives you the resources to quickly rebuild your board. Nothing ruins this deck faster than no cards in hand + no creatures on board, so trading those deaths for cards is a valuable.
Essence Warden gains you 1 life every time anyone gets a creature. This adds up, especially when she’s played turn 1. That life stabilizes you against aggressive decks and turns into fuel for Citadel and Black Market Connections, so don’t undervalue the life gain.
Elvish Harbringer is a tutor and a mana dork, giving her great short and long term utility. If you don’t need a specific card, the best thing to tutor with her is Beast Whisperer or Elvish Archdruid.
Birthing Pod has no combo lines in this deck so it’s best used as a value generator, grabbing specific pieces for combos or converting high cost creatures into your win conditions. You can pod a token into a 1 MV creature like Essence Warden, Allosaurus Shepherd, Deathrite Shaman or Wirewood Symbiote. You can pod mana dorks into Priest of Titania for bigger mana. You can pod Wolverine Riders into Beledros Witherbloom to untap all your lands and continue a combo turn.
Weaknesses and bad matchups (WIP):
This deck is highly vulnerable to mass removal effects. Since it runs numerous small, low MV threats alongside various draw engines, the goal isn’t to protect your board as much as replace everything that gets destroyed. As long as you have a full grip or a draw engine you can rebuild from most board wipes, but if you have 3 or less cards in your hand you are basically out of the game.
While there are answers for destroy-based removal like Supreme Verdict or Damnation, non-destruction board wipes like Toxic Deluge, Farewell or The Eternal Wanderer can’t be answered. The best way to respond is eat the loss and rebuild your board faster than your opponents. With this in mind, repeatable board wipes like Pyrohemia hard counter the entire deck and need to be answered as soon as possible.
This deck has a weak spot against big, spell decks. Almost all the instants in this deck are targeted removal & protection, which are excellent against lots of interaction but can’t remove something lethal from the stack. Instead of letting control players cast their Omniscence or Cyclonic Rift you should kill them before they get the chance. Their board wipes and sedentary win conditions put you on a clock.
Shoutouts to Retalvio for giving me so many recommendations and putting up with my ridiculously long turns.
v 2.6
