Arebennian wrote: ↑2 years ago
Naya Elves big advantage to me seems to be the ability to grant haste to your elves. Turning all your
Priest of Titania effects into Gaea's Cradle and
Llanowar elves into
Earthcraft effects seems good to me. Untappers are also the other great aspect of delving into white.
So in terms of the Toolbox cards:
Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei
Samut, Voice of Dissent
Village Bell-ringer
The ability to combo off on your turn and not be interacted with (as your not running blue) seems to mean
Grand Abolisher type effects would be of benefit too.
Dosan, the Falling Leaf is probably the only other one worth considering, but you really only need one thanks to Rocco, right?
Other potential stuff:
Umbral Mantle;
Nythos, Shrine to nix;
Crop Rotation;
Elvish Guidance
Just glancing through,
Explore seems subpar. So too do
Smuggler's Share (seems slow for a deck with mana and card availability through other means);
Zendikar Resurgent (So high on the curve.
Keeper of Progenitus perhaps?
Kodama of the East Tree ?) the Muses (windborn = kill them first + Seedborn = only really synergises with Yeva, Shalai, and Ezuri (sort of )). I also don't know about Shalai. I'm not sure the effect is worth going off tribe for. There is Eladamri, Lord of Leaves, but then you can't bounce or untapped your own stuff. There are other creatures that give hex proof to 'all' creatures. There is that new human from Innistrad that even untaps one. Can't think of the name right now.
Instead of Avacyn, what about
Hofri Ghostforge or
Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero? Seem to protect you from the same sort of sweepers.
Also, rather than Ooze, perhaps
Loaming Shaman that exiles an entire graveyard on entry or
Endurance that does something similar? You can bounce these back with
Temur Sabretooth and
Greater Good + Craterhoof would obviously be great. So too
Survival of the Fittest (which doubles as a haste enabler with
Anger and slow draw engine with Squee or
Masked Admirers or perhaps on budget,
Fauna Shaman.
I'd say it is worth running a couple more tutor too, even with your commander (as it isn't the most efficient rate).
Eladamri's Call might be better than
Chord of Calling here.
Moon-Blessed Cleric is on tribe
Enlightened Tutor.
I guess it depends on how much you want to combo and be 'fair', and how much your willing to push it as to which direction you go.
Pokken's Untapping Samut thread would be worth looking over for ideas.
Thanks for all the input I will try to walk through everything best I can.
Haste - I thought about this as well. I think its probably important to not have a cost to activate haste if I am going to push harder on running it. I thought about running
Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded for the really hard to remove setup which would be helpful if I get swept in that it likely survives most sweepers that would take out my creatures. I think
Samut, Voice of Dissent is a good idea as well but some of my concern is just like, do I value haste enough to tutor for it or do I need to increase my density in hopes of drawing it because I will be too busy tutoring other things? With any non elf creatures I think its valuable to sort of question if they are going to be what I am tutoring for and in what situation that happens and I have a hard time evaluating where haste stands on that for me. Haste is mostly a proactive gameplan rather than a reactive answer / hatebear but for it to be relivant I generally probably need to have card draw and mana generation already sort of going nicely for it to really make sense. I guess that is my biggest concern with questioning haste offhand is that it feels like I need other things working and I probably am going to want to feel like I am ahead and don't need to answer or defend my position with one of my protection means. I did include
Lightning Greaves but its a non creature but I liked how cheap it was in comparison for what it does and it also doubles well as a paired protection with Avacyn as they can protect each other. The big question with haste for me is mostly do I plan to tutor for it which I feel like the answer is.... probably a no so if I want haste I might need a few outlets for it or to ignore it.
Combo - I generally dislike combo. Its just a personal thing. I did consider doing a
Devoted Druid infinite but I just kind of hate infinite combo so I opted to throw it out. I wouldn't mind it too much if I got some combination of haste + draw that just chained mana dorks into a huge turn of horrible but I don't like going infinite. I don't see a lot of blue control but I do see a decent bit of spot interaction and a few sweepers here and there. The protection on my turn stuff can be decent but I just see more spot interaction than counter magic which is going to push me more towards
Sylvan Safekeeper sort of defenses. It does depend a bit on what meta decisions are for this but spot interaction isn't going to throw much of a wrench into my commander's tutors where counter magic would. If it was more of a concern of mine I could see doing the shift in defensive layers.
Umbral Mantle - I hate infinite combos. Its a personal thing but the only purpose seems to be to go infinite which I don't want to do.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - Good call I totally missed Nykthos. I usually don't run it in a 3 color deck but this is practically a green deck with two splashes.
Crop Rotation - Maybe. I was thinking a bit on some of the creature based versions like
Knight of the Reliquary and
Ulvenwald Hydra. I am not really convinced for the most part but I do have a lot of valuable lands and while I do have Elvish Reclaimer in my list right now I did think that I might want another card or two to help me get them out. Crop Rotation does have the advantage of being super cheap but its lack of even being a 1 for 1 leaves me mostly thinking that
Crop Rotation is good when things are already going well. The lack of adding another card to hand and being a 1 for 0 sort of a situation where you take a card in hand and result in one less card in hand with an improvement to your board but no more cards on hand often make me feel like I would rather have
Sylvan Scrying instead. Where I tend to really see
Crop Rotation shine is in decks that run
Bojuka Bog as an instant speed graveyard interaction play. I might want another card here but with already having an elf that can perform this for me,
Sylvan Scrying might be my next consideration offhand.
Elvish Guidance - I thought about it and its probably fine but its a non creature and I only have two cards that interact with it being
Earthcraft and
Arbor Elf. Earthcraft is already insane all on its own but it would be funny to pull off. I just felt like being a noncreature was not a positive asset for me with this one.
Explore - Its just an effect that I like. Drawing a card for cheap is always kind of relivant and in the early game its ramp but later on even if you topdeck it on an empty hand its still a cheap cantrip. I like it a lot more than I do dedicated ramp because of its late game ability to cheaply be thrown back for another draw. I am not glued to it and its possible that some of the other non basic land tutors like
Sylvan Scrying might be more relivant given how much power I have in my nonbasic lands.
Smuggler's Share - I haven't gotten to see it in action yet so its hard for me to theorize but I have high hopes with this card. It could easily pay for itself in a turn between the draw and ramp potential it has. I see a LOT of landfall decks in my meta that draw a bunch of cards so it has the potential to do a lot of work for me. I don't know if this is a meta thing but I pre ordered four of these things and I need to see it in action before I can do more than hypothetically think about it.
Zendikar Resurgent - It does cost a ton of mana but it has that draw a card on creature cast function I am looking for. With how many mana dorks I have in this list I could very easily pay for it primarily with mana dorks and recover most of my spent mana after cast with the mana production of it. Its really primarily in the list for the drawing cards rather than its mana production but there are only so many
Guardian Project effects.
Keeper of Progenitus - I am not sure if you are suggesting this from the standpoint of
Zendikar Resurgent. Its an interesting card as far as ramp goes but I also have a lot of my mana gen not come from my lands so I don't know that I want to ramp my opponents too.
Kodama of the East Tree - Its a good card for tempo but it needs draw to support it and its a non elf. I think that its value as tempo is lost a little bit with how much mana generation the elves give me I think I would be better served by a mass haste effect to let new dorks tap for mana as well.
Windborn Muse - I considered a few other cards like
Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist and
Serra's Emissary but in the end I opted to play the Muse mostly because its an effect I myself can overcome without a ton of effort due to just mana throughput. I didn't want something that could be cloned or stolen to backfire on me too badly and I felt like Mirri and the angel were both cards my deck would have a very hard overcoming if copied or stolen which I opted to not run them because. If I wasn't worried about this I would probably be running Mirri as my token swarm protection but swarm tactics is incredibly popular where I am at and
Propaganda effects work quite well. Also I felt like I didn't have a ton of ways to get Mirri tapped easily without going to combat. Outside of that was just the two earthcrafts.
Seedborn Muse - I also have
Winding Canyons and we are talking about more ways to get nonbasic lands to play. There are also a few minor cards with activated abilities that could be used on each player's turns but the Canyons and
Yeva, Nature's Herald were my main plans here. It is a bit of a fragile play with a lot of attention to it but the commander does serve as a tutor which can help set up the other parts of this and I think the payoff is strong.
Shalai, Voice of Plenty - I felt that it was at least interesting in that it had the mana sink for an anthem while also protecting other creatures. I ended up dislikping
Eladamri, Lord of Leaves because he cut off my
Wirewood Symbiote interaction as well as not protecting other valuable assets like Gaddock Teeg / Muses / Avacyn which pairing Shalai with some of the other non elves can be powerful I didn't find a lot of my elves to be directly the things I necessarily needed to protect from spot interaction. I did consider cutting some sort of mass hexproof effect and just relying on Sylvan Safekeeper as my defense but I liked Shalai's activated ability still somewhat with this deck's mana throughput potential. Shalai + Seedborn Muse seemed like a decent enough boardstate to make me at least interested in the potential she brought. Not sure which legend you are referring to as the last suggestion but
Saryth, the Viper's Fang might also be interesting in this spot for the untap effect. It would let me untap elves and most of the hatebears that I need to keep alive mostly don't tap while letting me possibly feed a lot of mana through elves or keep a protection effect up for them. I will probably pick up a copy of the fang and do some testing when I get a chance between the two.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope /
Hofri Ghostforge /
Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero - Avacyn herself having indestructible stops opponents from shooting her with a number of kill spells before sweeping which the other two don't accomplish. Being a huge vigilant beater is also powerful and useful in case someone is doing voltron tactics Avacyn is a big ass brick wall that makes it hard to fly / trample past which is also useful. Elves kind of don't do flying well and a voltron flying concept could be an issue and I like Avacyn as an answer to both flyers and control strategies. Pairing Avacyn with some spot protection like
Sylvan Safekeeper makes for a very robust board that generally will require a
Cyclonic Rift or
Toxic Deluge to break through it (annoyingly the same two spells that give
Gaddock Teeg issues).
Scavenging Ooze /
Loaming Shaman /
Endurance - In my experience there are a few things that need to go quickly in graveyards but even the option to cherry pick 2-3 out at a time is usually plenty. I like Ooze for the continued pressure it brings on graveyards beyond just entering play. It often forces the graveyard decks to answer it and that usually comes after I wreck what they have going on. This deck should also generale a LOT of green mana so I feel like Ooze should be quite powerful as my graveyard answer of choice. Getting a bit of life and a big old boy also gives good attacker / blocker options with the ooze.
Craterhoof Behemoth - I hate this card and continuously campaign for its banning. I can't really bring myself to play a card I keep asking to be banned. It is so far above and beyond the best overrun finisher its not even fair. That said, no I will not be playing him and its entirely due to how good it is.
Survival of the Fittest /
Chord of Calling /
Finale of Devastation /
Eladamri's Call - I actually ended up cutting most of the other tutors out of the deck as my commander is somewhat dedicated for that purpose. I kept
Green Sun's Zenith just because of how efficient it is but I felt like I didn't really need most of the rest of them. I get that once I am recasting my commander it will get less efficient than these cards but I wanted to break away from running a lot of them in part because.... well do I really need them with this commander? Also several of them lose out on the on creature cast benefit. Survival specifically I don't think I have enough discard / sac to support things that I want to be binning and with Finale I felt like I would only be casting it as a finisher and I just scrapped the whole lot of them.
Fauna Shaman - I wouldn't call her just budget survival from the standpoint that she is an elf which matters and a creature in play. I have several things that draw me cards based on my creatures / casting creatures so I would probably be more keen on including her into the deck than survival itself. Her mana cost can also be recovered through several things that count my elves / creatures in play as well. I will see if I can't make room for her because I think there is value in an elf that "can" accomplish some of these things over something dedicated on an enchantment where the enchantment might be better in a bubble I have a lot of synergy and reason to be upping my creatures in play.
Moon-Blessed Cleric - I do have several enchantments that would be valuable I just don't like topdeck tutors much and three mana for this effect is really not impressive even though its on an elf.
I will get Nykthos into the landbase and I think
Fauna Shaman /
Eladamri's Call probably do need more consideration. I agree with the idea on haste I just don't know how to evaluate it and I don't know if its like, add one creature to tutor or add a few and plan to just naturally draw them or not.
Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded and
Samut, Voice of Dissent are currently the two I am eyeballing but I am still not really sold.
I am still not sure where I stand on
Shalai, Voice of Plenty but as I was looking for your suggestion
Saryth, the Viper's Fang did seem appealing for a similar role. I would welcome some feedback on the two or if your other idea comes back let me know what it was.
Not that it was brought up but I think
Toski, Bearer of Secrets could also be interesting as another draw option for the toolbox. I have a few ways to beef up creatures / elves and throwing a few counters on Toski and some elves and going in for some beat down into draw could be good. I could possibly cut one of the noncreature based draw options to include him if I wanted to get into more of a scrappy elves concept which could be a lot of fun.
