I want to start this off by saying this is the first time I've really built a deck for someone else, let alone an elf tribal deck.
I tried to keep most of the budget for the deck, around a $50 price range. My idea was that I took a lot of inspiration form the EDHrec articles Ultra Budget Brew.
The aim of the deck is to support a tribal strategy of Elf-ball, or a back-up plan of “Voltron” Abomination.
“To Elf-Ball, is to snowball.”
Elf-Ball:
First you have one or two elves, they help make each other bigger, or help each other generate an amount of mana, equal to the number of elves you have, then you have three or four more elves, all who help your elves get bigger, or generate more mana. If you’re lucky, both.
Getting straight into it, lets dive into the Basic land base. My main goal was to keep a straight split with both the swamps and forests. I always feel like in a budget brew, you should try to keep a good split of basics.
The Temple of Malady lets you scry one, which is good for filtering the top of your deck. A lot of people really underestimate a good top deck.
Skemfar Hall has an expensive activated cost, but, because Elves mostly top out at about 3 base Power, the additional -2/-2 on the archenemy’s greatest creature, can really help you slip your Commander through.
Rogue's Passage is kind of the same thing as Skemfar. A little costly, but you get Abomination big and beefy, use four mana, smack for like thirty commander damage. Feels good.
Bojuka Bog, and Path of Ancestry are just useful utility lands.
Bog is just to help nerf a fellow GY deck in an emergency. Path of Ancestry is another Scry ability. Manipulate the top of your deck, get one step closer to that Tainted Strike win.
The Enchantment suite is where we take a little bit more of a focus on the tribal aspects of the deck.
Pride of the Perfect, and Elderfang Venom, both pump up our elves to an acceptable level of power, and the added Deathtouch is never anything to scoff at. Being able to toss a few elves to the grave, and then toss Abomination at them.
The two sagas we have also provide us with additional benefit over the long gain. The trouble with a lower power deck, personally I find, is there's always going to be someone who can out gas, or out aggro you.
The best way around this, is with long term gain and rewards. Binding he Old Gods gives us a putrefy-esq effect, a forest tutor, and Deathtouch after three rounds. Three turns around the board is a HUGE risk, but if we can get there, it's worth it. Also, we still have the Elderfang Venom to always keep us in Deathtouch range. Nothing wrong with some redundancy.
Next up, lets look at the artifacts that we have. Lifecrafter’s Bestiary allows us a scry a card on your upkeep. and when you scry a creature that shares a creature type, you may pay (G) and draw that card. Goes back to that top deck manipulation.
Golgari Cluestone and Golgari Locket, both act like mana rocks and card draw late game. Once you have enough mana dorks, or even just enough land, you can sac them off for card draw. Commander's Sphere is also a good one for just plain mana fixing, and again card draw is always redundant. Too many elves in hand? Toss them into your GY. Beef up your CMDR.
The sorceries I feel are solid. We have an Overrun effect, a staple in any Elf-Ball deck. We also have some ways to recover our board in case of a wipe, Return from Extinction, and Roots of Wisdom put in the work where we need it. We can return cards to hand, only to recast them immediately.
Can't forget to bring down our opponents a peg with Eyeblight Massacre, and Crippling Fear. Remind them why elves were the superior race on Lorwyn at one point.
For the instants, we're looking a little tight, but we compensate by having a few surprise combat tricks. Tainted Strike, Feign Death, Golgari Charm, all super strong back up support for Abomination.
Turning him into a surprise bomb that could potentially OH.K.O. an opponent from either just pure combat damage, or even poison counters, and that just feels... really good. Real. Good.
Last up is our creature department.
The best thing about elves in general, is that they either support themselves by generating a COPIOUS amount of mana, or they allow you support yourself long enough to get enough of their brothers and sisters out, that you could possibly swarm the field and overrun your opponents before they really have a chance to respond to you.
Abomination is a great commander as well, because even if our elves get hit by a board wipe, we can send Abomination to the command zone, and cast it later as a 10/10, give everyone -2/-2 with Crippling Fear, and Tainted Strike for just such a sweet meme dream ending.
