Peering Into Pauper: Extreme Elves

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Pitlord

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  3. I don’t see how it is worse than visionary due to the ability to drop the land straight into play if that is what drawn. Sure the blue mana makes it not as dependable to cast but there are enough blue sources and ways to get them that I think it’s a fine pick, and still an Elf.

    Overall good article, I like elves and this build seems like a decent pauper contender

  4. yea this deck dies to frantic storm.

    What do you think about wellwishers and try to keep your life total high enough and theyll mill themselves?

  5. looks sick. I’ll be trying this one out in paper.
    remember not to call things “unfair,” though. everything is unfair against the right deck. saying something is “unfair” gives off the wrong impression entirely, even if you’re not serious.

  6. Wow, thanks for the quick feedback and great comments already everyone!
    @Nero – I never tested Spikeshot Goblin, but I highly doubt he’s worth the mana problems since Timberwatch sticking means you’re winning anyway and he’s mediocre alone.

    @milegyenevem & Seides – I play both! Visionary is good, and so is oracle for the reasons outlined above. The deck draws a surprising number of cards with 8 cantrip guys.

    @apricio – Frantic storm isn’t the best matcfhup no, but like I outlined above it is winnable. They can’t always bounce your entire board if you’ve produced enough tokens, and sometimes you randomly race. I’m unsure of how good wellwisher is against frantic since they should be able to do 50+ damage before milling out. I have brought her in against TPPS with some success though since it makes the grapeshot ill much harder for them.

    @Dougf – Glad you like the deck, and I was merely trying to illustrate that the deck is much less fair in general than something like Sui Black or White Weenie.

    I’ll be creating a forum topic for further decklist discussion as well by tomorrow

  7. I like Thermokarst in the board for both storm matchups. Keeping them off their mana for a turn (or two) can buy you enough time to go off. I’d replace three Invokers (against what decks would you ever want to draw multiple of these?) and a Hornet Sting with the ‘Karsts.

  9. Of course I see that you play both Coiling Oracle and Elvish Visionary, I’m just surprised you need 8 of those. I still think Oracle is much worse. The advantage that it puts the land into play is not a big one if you have only 18 lands. I think it’s only enough to make up for the small disadvantage of revealing your card. You have 10 ways to get blue mana, but 4 of them are vulnerable (and if you have to tap 2 creatures instead of attacking with them, just to get the blue mana, is a huge problem). But even if you just can’t play it on your second turn, can be quite bad.

  10. Entirely disagree with your overall abstract premise. The only reason to play a ‘fair’ deck is the belief that you can make a series of 1:1 trades and slow the game so much that the synergy of your ‘unfair’ opponent falls apart. Topdecking wars are most of the time awesome for a fair deck because if I have a 2/2 beating down, and you have 1/3 of the cards you need for your broken combo, I’m in a great spot.

    Unfair decks aren’t inherently stronger because fair decks just lose to themselves sometimes; most unfair decks actually lose to themselves more often.

    Where unfair decks do have an inherent advantage is in that they have draws that ‘just win’, and fair decks don’t; and as a format gets broader and deeper, the ‘just win’ draws become faster, more common, and more resilient to disruption.

    Keeper isn’t non-viable in vintage because it has draws where it lacks the right answers, it is non-viable because the cost/benefit of giving up access to just-win draws for slightly more control options isn’t there.

  11. @Juggernaut – I agree more and more that Thermokarst is the way to go. I’ve dropped the stings altogether for them though since Invoker is your hedge against decks with sweepers.

    @Xecho – Good call on Fyndhorn over Arbor Elf, I honestly didn’t even think about him being available online. Priest was considered in a few early builds and with Invoker but I just couldn’t find room for her.

    @Mile – The deck really wants to draw cards since it really needs a Timberwatch Elf, Huntmaster, or Distant Melody to actual do more than be a mediocre beatdown deck. Oracle rarely is uncastable, and the benefit of digging to a big threat is well worth the space. The land coming into play vs. revealing the card never really has much impact, the deck really just wants lots of cantrip guys. Multani’s Acolyte though is out because of the prohibitive echo cost, since you want to keep all of your guys in play for melody/timberwatch.

    @Cserph – I agree with parts of your analysis, and disagree with others. Without going into too much detail I think the gap between fair and unfair is fairly large in pauper, enough to justify playing unfair. Also, one of the reasons I advocate for a deck like elves! as my unfair-ish deck of choice is that is has a decent, if slightly underpowered backup plan of simple beats. It can’t really be ‘stranded’ with 1/3 of a combo available any moreso than other beatdown decks are susceptible to removal.

  12. I agree in part about elves having a backup plan, but if you’re stuck on elvish visionaries and essence wardens, and your opponent is slamming with shades of trokair, you’re pretty damn stranded :).

  13. I found it very funny to see this and the article about Stompy right underneath, the Stompy-praising article posting a similar list and similar strategy, but claiming it almost never lost to Storm — then reading this, admitting that the matchup is bad for the creature deck. The juxtaposition was wonderful, and saved me commenting on the other article.

    Good to see more articles here, but I hope to see MTGO Academy’s high editorial standards maintained, and the content more than the endless run of pauper, casual, tribal, pauper, tribal, casual rundown that PureMTGO sometimes looks like.

  14. @fifthchild Stompy (the traditional version) isn’t THAT bad a matchup for Frantic Storm, but Goblin Storm is a different story. Game 1 is usually ‘gg’ in both cases, but after sideboarding it’s not that bad.

    Consider this (for frantic storm): After a bounce, Stompy will have several things going for it. It might have Silhana (untargetable) which, when powered up, is a threat they have to block. You have threats that are probably going to come in at end of turn (i.e. basking rootwalla). You have pump and creature spells for very cheap. Plus, if you had untapped mana, your largest creature might still be alive (if you played vines of vastwood on it). Adding in thermokarsts and hornet stings meant you had a chance if you played smart.

    The only thing you could do for goblin storm was sandstorm, but double grapeshot is basically ‘gg’.

    Anyways, nice article, but the deck really doesn’t address the metagame issues at this time. DE’s are basically all about affinity (with Krark-Clan Shaman basically wiping your board), storm (which you admitted isn’t a good matchup), and burn (which this deck ‘sorta’ has, until they target your wellwisher). Goblins may be a decent matchup, but it usually doesn’t play that big a role in the current meta.

    tl;dr version: ‘Turn 3 is key in pauper’. Anything slower that can’t disrupt their opponent doesn’t have good chances.

  15. @Kai – Thanks you, basically everything you said about the storm matchups regarding stompy is true.

    As for the mediocrity of this deck currently, I actually also agree. Unfortunately this deck was designed and the article almost posted months ago before the site went on hiatus. Back when goblins was a much bigger threat, affinity wasn’t playing board wipers in the main, and decks like white weenie were more common the deck was much better. Once combo cools off for a bit though this deck will have much more of a shot again.

  16. if affinity shouldn’t be that large a concern for green. even if it was 25% of the meta for dailies (it’s not), fangren marauder is almost always a win for green (too big to remove w/ galvanic blast, trumps their disciple kills), and some bevy of removal. w/ a creature based strategy you could even run gleeful sabotage and use conspire pretty consistently to simply take out their mana base + drums at any time turn 3 onwards.

    burn = nourish out of the board. not even joking.

  17. How is the matchup against mono black rats? It seems like the disruption and access to nausea and crypt rats would make the match somewhat difficult.