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May 19, 2008 | mtg, strategy
PS Elves Yu, Redux!
by llarack
Attending the SCG 5k, I knew that I didn't want to play Faeries, because the mirror was way too random for my tastes, and I had been doing well with Elves in modo 8mans.
I came to the conclusion that the following list was probably very good, and is what I ended up registering for the 5k:
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[deck]
Maindeck
2 Chameleon Colossus
1 Civic Wayfinder
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
1 Boreal Druid
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Profane Command
4 Thoughtseize
4 Nameless Inversion
2 Terror
4 Forest
3 Swamp
4 Gilt-leaf Palace
4 Llanowar Wastes
3 Mutavault
4 Treetop Village
1 Pendelhaven
1 Urborg, Tomb Of Yawgmoth
Sideboard
4 Cloudthresher
1 Kitchen Finks
4 Riftsweeper
1 Shriekmaw
2 Squall Line
2 Primal Command
1 Profane Command
[/deck] |
Round 1: Michael A. Oliveros, Doran (2-0).
Game 1: I win the dieroll and choose to play (obv?). I lead with gilt-leaf palace, revealing Vanquisher to thoughtseize his birds when he kept a 2 lander with 2 dorans and a viper. This turns out to be very good because he doesn't draw the 3rd land until turn 5, by which point I have a colossus beating him down. I end up profaning him for 5 when he is at 5 for the win.
Sideboarding: -2 terror (mediocre vs doran/colossus), -1 wayfinder, +2 primal command, +1 profane command.
Game 2: He mulligans on the play, and leads with turn 1 birds into turn 2 doran. I open with turn 1 llanowar elves into turn 2 vanquisher + elves. Turn 3, he just passes with only 3 mana, and on my turn 3, I primal command his murmuring bosk searching up a Colossus, which ends the game pretty quickly after that, even though he gets a warhammer on doran.
Round 2: Jay S. Carter, GW manaramp (2-1).
Game 1: He wins the dieroll, and leads with snow-forest, suspend search. This leads me to believe he's some sort of manaramp deck, so I hold off on thoughtseizing him for as long as possible. My turn 1 is, forest, elf. His turn 2, he plays a plains, so I then realize he must be the popular GW manaramp, and change my gameplan to try to play around wrath of gods. This plan is derailed when he plays a turn 4 oversoul. I then commit my colossus to the board which trumps his oversoul. However, the game degenerates to a point where he gets enough mana to play wrath into crovax, and then flashes out a cloudthresher with him on 4 life after I profane commanded him a few times to force damage through (with fear), after which I lose.
Sideboarding: -4 Inversion, +1 Profane Command, +2 Primal Command, +1 Squall Line (I just wanted another fireball if the game became clogged vs his oversoul, and inversion doesn't really kill anything in his deck).
Game 2: He mulligans to 6, keeps his hand. I go palace, thoughtseize, and take his wall of roots and notes he has 4 lands and a mouth of ronom in hand. His turn 1 is forest, suspend search, which lets me know that he still has 4 lands in hand. I am a tad flooded, but I have double treetop village which beat him down to 9 before he mouths one. Then I commit a colossus which finishes the job.
Game 3: I kept a slightly sketchy hand of: palace, forest, vanquisher, profane*2 + garruk on the draw. Luckily, my first three draws are a land, then a perfect and then another land. So the game ends up not being close, despite him getting a turn 3 oversoul (which could not even attack into my vanquisher). He then plays a crovax on turn 5, and I just terror it to make him pay 2 life so I can profane him to neardead. I then rip another profane which ends up killing him.
Round 3: Justin D. LaRose, Faeries (2-0)
I recognize this guy's name from browsing the decks from the last 5k, and also the first Rockville PTQ. He seemed like a fairly good player, so I put him on Faeries.
Game 1: I win the dieroll, and open the following hand: forest, boreal, vanquisher*2, perfect, wayfinder, thoughtseize. Normally this is a pretty terrible hand, but since I am fairly sure he is playing faeries, and i'm on the play, i will probably get in both vanquishers before he is able to counter them. This is exactly what happens, and he gets stuck on 2 mana after committing a bitterblossom. So the vanquishers take the game when I draw a swamp for inversion.
Sideboarding: -3 Garruk, -3 Profane, -4 Perfect, -1 Wayfinder, +4 Thresher, +2 Squall, +4 Riftsweeper, +1 Shriekmaw
Game 2: He leads with island ancestral, then swamp bitterblossom. My first two turns are palace, llanowar, into llanowar, riftsweeper ancestral. The look on his face was PRICELESS, especially when he suspended ancestral the following turn, and i riftsweepered it. The game is not very close after that after I draw a treetop to go along with my bears.
Round 4: Robert D. Seder, Faeries (2-1)
Game 1: I mulligan to 5 on the play, and I promptly get mopped up by turn 4 mistbind, turn 5 mistbind. He didn't have early ancestral or blossom, but it was pretty irrelevant.
Game 2: I run the same sideboarding plan as earlier. I mop him up when he keeps a 2 lander with ancestral, I riftsweeper it, he suspends another, and I riftsweeper the 2nd one. This guy gives me an incredulous look as he scoops it up to treetop + double bear attacking for 3 turns in a row.
Game 3: He mulligans to 6 on the play, and has turn 1 ancestral, but I wait until turn 3 to play my riftsweeper (because of turn 1 elves) so I can play around rune snag, which he ended up having. After that, I start swinging with my bear, llanowar elf, and treetop with pendelhaven in play.
Round 5: Korey Mcduffie, Faeries (2-0)
I had seen this guy playing a round earlier, so I knew exactly what he was playing.
Game 1: I win the dieroll ({e}, obv), and open with turn 1 Llanowar, turn 2 perfect, turn 3 colossus when he taps out for blossom. He just looks at my board in disgust and concedes.
Game 2: Riftsweepers get his early ancestrals, and mutavault and a treetop finish the job.
After this game, he made a comment about he was sure he had lost infinite ratings points to me. I told him I was 1971 coming into this event, and then he started to backpedal on his comment.
Round 6: Daniel Samson, Monogreen Elves (1-2)
Game 1: I win the dieroll, he mulligans to 6. His first 3 turns are just forest go, so I think he is g/w manaramp. Then he lays a g/w liege on turn 4, but I vomit out 2 perfects which actually just beat him.
Sideboarding: -1 Wayfinder, -2 colossus, -1 tarmogoyf, +1 profane, +1 shriekmaw, +2 primal. (Colossus is kind of mediocre vs his infinite chain of blockers, especially with heartmender out).
Game 2/3: He gets early persist guys, including finks which let him just sit there long enough to cast overrun both games to attack for 30+.
My draw in game 3 was kind of mediocre too, but I think if we played this matchup like 70 times, I would lose about 60% of the matches.
Round 7: Anna Scott, Kithkin (2-1)
We got put in the feature match area, and I'm not really sure why. All I do know is, over the three games, I counted about 15 play mistakes from her, including main-phasing reinforce on her knight of meadowgrain several times. I lose game 2 due to getting flooded, but game 1 and 3, I win fairly easily, despite getting stuck on 3 for quite a while. She had some odd card choices, including coordinated barrage (wtf?) and walking into my removal spells while trying to barrage something.
Sideboarding: -1 Wayfinder, -2 Colossus, +1 Profane +1 Shriekmaw, +1 Finks
Round 8: Marshall A. Ashford, Merfolk (2-1)
This matchup is even easier for elves than faeries is by a long shot, because they are forced to commit threats at sorcery speed, and they are HEAVILY reliant on their lords, making your removal spells super live.
The games play out as I expect, with me killing his key lords while laying threats. I lose game 2 to an unexpected Teferi's Moat, but game 3, I just kill him very quickly with double vanquisher so profane command can finish the job through his moat.
Round 9: Brian Kelly (ID, but I then find out he was playing R/G land destruction which seems favorable for me).
Round 10: Scott Jeltema, Fiery Justice (0-2)
This matchup actually seems abysmal to me, when I find out he has 4 maindeck fiery justice, calciderms (which are a HUGE problem for me if I don't draw colossus, and he can still kill colossus with justice).
I get destroyed in 2 games when he had turn 3 calciderm both games as well as stonecloaker to win the goyf fights.
In conclusion, I still think this is the 2nd best deck (with #1 being Faeries) but it has a very good matchup vs Faeries.
However, I would modify the decklist slightly to be:
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[deck]
Maindeck
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Treetop Village
3 Swamp
3 Mutavault
1 Pendelhaven
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Forest
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
4 Llanowar Elves
1 Boreal Druid
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Chameleon Colossus
1 Tombstalker
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Thoughtseize
2 Terror
3 Profane Command
Sideboard
1 Terror
4 Cloudthresher
2 Squall Line
1 Tombstalker
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Riftsweeper
[/deck] |
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