In this time of MODO darkness, perhaps documenting some previously unblogged ELVES! action may serve to wile away the time.
After an almost entirely successful PE running ELVES!, I decided to queue up after tweaking the deck slightly. The changes to the main board are simply adding in mutavaults to gas up my mana base, and the sideboard tweaks are ones I'd discussed with fellow Iowan, Bill Stark. In our attempts to shore up the match against burn decks, we'd tried Elvish Eulogist+Primal Command (too slow in my experience) and Dragon's Claw. Bill had the breakthrough of realizing that ELVES! is probably going to cast more spells than the red decks, so switching to the green-triggered equivalent seemed like a good idea.
4 llanowar elves
4 boreal druid
4 heritage druid
4 bramblewood paragon
4 gilt-leaf ambush
4 hunting triad
4 elvish promenade
4 coat of arms
4 overrun
2 pendelhaven
1 horizon canopy
1 treetop village
3 mutavault
17 forest
SB:
4 wurm's tooth
4 door of destinies
3 squall line
4 harmonize
Saturday
I spent most of Saturday doing wedding planning online with MTGO up in the background. Every now and again the flashing at the bottom of the screen alerted me that someone was interested in the packs I had listed in the sellers' room. Before I was even ready to play, I had offloaded the entirety of my winnings from Friday's PE and purchased the 3 mutavaults in the list above. (-69)
The only actual magic playing was a single queue (-73).
Round 1 vs. Doran
Game 1: I won the roll and mulliganned to 6, keeping 2 forests, boreal druid, heritage druid, bramblewood paragon, and overrun. His hand was an action-packed 7 that included the mana for t3 doran and a t4 goyf that feasted on tribal instants of the creature killing variety. I didn't draw enough action to deal with that start and the match was soon over in favor of the bad guys (i.e. everyone but me).
Game 2: On the play I have some minor action, but he rips my hand apart with thoughtseize, a goyf to hold the ground, and another thoughtseize. As more action materializes for him on the ground, it becomes apparent that I am not going to get through for any damage, which saddens me because he is at 10 from his painlands and mind-ripping spells.
I have other obligations to attend to so I note the PE schedule for the next day includes a 2x standard tribal event. That format requires 20 creatures which share a creature type, and this deck almost qualifies. It also is played without sideboards, so I contemplate bringing in some number of squall lines to be pre-boarded vs. faeries. In the end, I simply decide to cut the gilt-leaf ambushes since they produce the smallest number of tokens and insert 4 essence wardens in their place.
Sunday
Tribal PE (-79)
This event is a wretched abortion. I get beaten by Fujita-style elves in rounds 1 and 2, and every time I see an essence warden I desperately wish it was ambush instead. Even in the creature-heavy format, the life swing doesn't justify the mostly worthless 1/1. Every game where my opponent sticks an Imperious Perfect rapidly goes to crap as their elves were bigger to start with and now they are able to out-token me since I've replaced one of my two-dude spells with a single 1/1 body. If I were to run in a tribal event again, I'd definitely put in Perfect over the Warden.
After the 0-2 drop comes a series of unfortunate queue-vents, which will be blogged in the not-too-distant future.
Tags: Elves Going Infinite
Related to:
Magic: the Gathering
