Abomination of Llanowar - The Elvish Swarm

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

Abomination of Llanowar - The Elvish Swarm

Abomination of Llanowar
Approximate Total Cost:

About the Deck

This deck started as a Yeva, Nature's Herald deck that was nothing but elves and lands, with the option to switch out the commander for any of the other legendary elves in the deck. After just a handful of games, I saw the spoiler for Abomination of Llanowar and knew that my deck was going to be adding black and switching over to this new commander fairly quickly. I've been playing this since soon after Commander Legends was released and have really enjoyed it. If you like to be aggressive and apply pressure, this is a really fun deck.

I've tried to stick to the concept of as few non-elf, non-land cards as possible since every non-elf, non-land is less power for the mighty elvish swarm. I would prefer to keep the deck at least 50% creatures.

This deck simultaneously goes wide and threatens kills by commander damage, which can allow you to put some significant pressure on your opponents. The Abomination of Llanowar gets big really quick, it isn't uncommon to swing for 4+ commander damage on Turn 3 if your dropped a mana-elf on turn 1, and it gets much scarier every turn after that usually.

The deck is actually pretty resilient to board wipes as they don't really affect the commander's damage output for the most part, unless it is mass exile. Following up a board wipe by replaying Abomination of Llanowar if you have Concordant Crossroads in hand or in play, can unexpectedly kill people, but even without haste, you've got good odds if you have to wait a turn cycle after a wipe since the commander has built in evasion due to menace.

Very often you will be killing players via the combat step. However, Shaman of the Pack, Skemfar Shadowsage, Lathril, Blade of the Elves, as well as using Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to sacrifice Abomination of Llanowar, can be great ways to deal damage outside of combat, and may be needed if facing Fog effects.

Cards For Future Consideration

A few non-elf, non-land cards I've considered but not tried are:

Entomb, Buried Alive - Being able to put Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord or Elvish Dreadlord directly into the graveyard seems worthwhile. These also work as pump spells for Abomination of Llanowar. These have synergy with Volrath's Stronghold, Phyrexian Reclamation and Patriarch's Bidding as well.

Living Death - This seems extremely good as a redundancy for Patriarch's Bidding but I just haven't found the space.

Filth - This is not an elf, but the evasion potential is huge since it is rare to not see a black deck on the table, and I am running Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. However, since I am not running any real discard outlets or cards like Entomb, getting it into the graveyard might requiring playing it and having it die, which I think may be too slow. I may experiment with Entomb and/or Buried Alive in the future, and if so then this card may make the cut.

Morality Shift - This would in theory make the commander lethal instantly and combos with Patriarch's Bidding well. If I were including the usual black tutors then setting up something like Concordant Crossroads + Morality Shift + Patriarch's Bidding would probably be a viable thing to try and pull off. This might be a little too goofy to try pulling off, I don't know if I'll actually try it.

Crop Rotation - This is 100% worth including and I'm sure I could find room for it, but for now I want the non-land, non-elf cards to really be kept to a minimum. This likely will be added eventually as being able to more reliably get Volrath's Stronghold, Gaea's Cradle or any other utility land would be great.

Budget Options

While my particular build isn't exactly low budget, you could easily build something very similar to this on a much lower budget and I believe it would still be rather effective. Most of the really pricey cards are in the lands, and while they are great I could see the deck working without them. Gaea's Cradle has a much cheaper replacement in Growing Rites of Itlimoc // Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun, but that may still be too pricey for some budgets and in those cases you can still get by with just normal basic lands. The more expensive dual color lands could just be basic lands or your dual color budget land of choice (I'd probably choose a basic land over one that comes into play tapped) . Even the pricier elves like Eladamri, Lord of Leaves are not crucial (although mass forest walk has allowed me to kill some players).

The only somewhat pricey cards I would say are "must haves" are the cheaper mana cost mana dorks like Heritage Druid and Priest of Titania. I probably wouldn't want to run a lower budget version of the deck without those two unless absolutely necessary since they do truly make the deck explode quickly.
Last edited by Ruiner 9 months ago, edited 14 times in total.

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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

Kaldheim singles came in so I made a few adjustments that I hope will work out:

Added Cards
+1 Tyvar Kell
+1 Realmwalker
+1 Skemfar Shadowsage
+1 Lathril, Blade of the Elves
+1 Wolverine Riders
+1 Tyrite Sanctum

Removed Cards
-1 Elvish Clancaller
-1 Wirewood Hivemaster
-1 Llanowar Tribe
-1 Heedless One
-1 Elvish Dreadlord
-1 Forest

It was tough making cuts but I hope these will work out. Llanowar Tribe has actually been pretty useful previously, but I'm hoping the lost mana production is made up for by Tyvar. I never got Elvish Dreadlord into play but the more I think of it the only dependable part of it is the encore ability, just playing it normally isn't a dependable way to get the trigger off, maybe I'll try it again at some point.

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

Strixhaven did not really give this deck any fun new toys from what I have seen, although maybe I overlooked something. There are only three elves in the set and none of them are particularly great for this type of deck.

No recent changes to the deck but I have to say the addition of Wolverine Riders from my last update has worked out fantastically. The token generation is a pretty big deal for just general aggro threat purposes, various "add X mana where X is the number of creatures" effects, and of course the Abomination itself.

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

This is an incredibly minor update to the deck but I added Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth (just swapped out 1 Forest for it). Given the elves that grant forestwalk I think it's a good choice. No other cards in MH2 really fit.

I probably should look at adding Crop Rotation and Elvish Reclaimer at this point with the utility lands I've got.

Forgotten Realms is looking to add a few new toys to this deck so I'm sure I'll be updating the list again soon.

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

A few small updates:

Added Cards
+1 Traverse the Outlands
+1 Return of the Wildspeaker

Removed Cards
-1 Sylvan Ranger
-1 Bloodline Shaman

Essentially just trading two small incremental ramp and draw cards for bigger more explosive versions, which should work really well given Abomination of Llanowar's average power in my experience.

Also considering Greater Good for a future update since it would be a great explosive source of card draw in the event someone tries to board wipe or just tries to steal the Abomination. Likely it would work out well, just have to decide what card to exchange.

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

A very minor update, there haven't been many worthwhile elves for this deck lately, but Neon Kamigawa did have some interesting cards for the deck.

Added Cards
+1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire - This land is easy recursion, potentially for pretty cheap with multiple legends in the deck, and it probably boosts the Abomination's power after milling cards. This seems to be all upside.

Removed Cards
-1 Forest

Boseiju, Who Endures will probably make it's way into this deck in the future as well but I think I'll wait a few weeks until prices settle a bit before grabbing a few for this and other green decks.

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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

A small update for the deck since the new Commander Legends set was released:

Added Cards
+1 Boseiju, Who Endures
+1 Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar

Removed Cards
-1 Forest
-1 Sylvan Messenger

I think Shadowheart has a good amount of potential for card draw and swapping out Sylvan Messenger, which is a decent card, seemed like the best choice I could see.
I wanted to make room for Viconia, Drow Apostate since it seems like another decent source for recursion but I have a hard time making cuts in this deck. It is very possible it makes it into a further revision of the deck down the line.

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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Another quick update to the deck:

Added Cards
+1 Leaf-Crowned Visionary
+1 Greater Good

Removed Cards
-1 Kindred Dominance
-1 Kindred Summons

Leaf-Crowned Visionary is a new card from Dominaria United that is basically a no-brainer include for any elf deck. Greater Good should be able to draw a silly amount of cards and I've been meaning to try it out for a while. Both of the removed cards are pretty good in the deck but as always, something has to get cut to try new things.

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Post by Shabbaman » 1 year ago

Haunted One is a nice card to try out, as is Cultist of the Absolute.. I have these in Lathril.
“Our words are backed with OBLIVION STONE!" - Mahatma Gandhi

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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Shabbaman wrote:
1 year ago
Haunted One is a nice card to try out, as is Cultist of the Absolute.. I have these in Lathril.
I may have to give Haunted One a shot, I've definitely overlooked that.

I like Cultist but I don't necessarily get a steady supply of disposable bodies in this deck a lot.

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Post by Shabbaman » 1 year ago

Ruiner wrote:
1 year ago
Shabbaman wrote:
1 year ago
Haunted One is a nice card to try out, as is Cultist of the Absolute.. I have these in Lathril.
I may have to give Haunted One a shot, I've definitely overlooked that.

I like Cultist but I don't necessarily get a steady supply of disposable bodies in this deck a lot.
I just realised that Abomination has vigilance. That'd make it hard to trigger Haunted One. Sorry for the excitement.
“Our words are backed with OBLIVION STONE!" - Mahatma Gandhi

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Shabbaman wrote:
1 year ago
Ruiner wrote:
1 year ago
Shabbaman wrote:
1 year ago
Haunted One is a nice card to try out, as is Cultist of the Absolute.. I have these in Lathril.
I may have to give Haunted One a shot, I've definitely overlooked that.

I like Cultist but I don't necessarily get a steady supply of disposable bodies in this deck a lot.
I just realised that Abomination has vigilance. That'd make it hard to trigger Haunted One. Sorry for the excitement.
Oh well. I'll definitely be keeping it in mind for other random tribal decks in the future.

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Post by Ruiner » 9 months ago

Surprisingly for a set with a lot of elves, there is barely anything in The Lord of the Rings that caught my eye.

Added Cards
+1 Windswift Slice

Removed Cards
-1 Tyvar Kell

Windswift Slice seems like it is going to be amazing. It's removal, nearly doubles the Abomination's power depending on what you target, and increases the go wide threat.

I wanted to find room for Galadhrim Ambush, and maybe I will in the future. It is hard to find room for non-creature spells in this deck. I do have a copy set aside at least.

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Post by gsgfdf » 9 months ago

Indeed, we got almost zero playable elves. Galadriel, Gift-Giver is on the running for the worst legendary elf ever printed.

I added Elven Chorus in my deck. I was thinking about adding Cryptolith Rite already and this is the same effect with card advantage on top.

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Post by Ruiner » 8 months ago

I could see Elven Chorus doing some decent work with the Future Sight aspect. I already run enough mana dorks so I don't really think Cryptolith Rite would be particularly useful.

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