As the title implies you will most often win by "comboing" off with your elves. We do this by keeping the CMC of our elves on the low end and using spells that either enable the retrieval of combo pieces or create card advantage in general.
This deck is good in both 1v1 EDH as well as group multiplayer but do be aware that group politics might see you as a good target to gang up on when they see Ezuri as your general (which is something I will address later).
Combo Breakdown
First lets define our capstone combo elves: Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid, Karametra's Acolyte, card:Wirewood Channler. I will refer to this grouping of elves as combo elves for the duration of the article (technically Karametras Acolyte isnt an elf but it serves the same purpose here).
Sword of the Paruns + combo elf that produces 4+ mana: Creates infinite mana.
Umbral Mantle + combo elf that produces 4+ mana: Creates infinite mana and the equipped created has infinite power.
Staff of Domination + combo elf that produces 5+ mana: Creates infinite mana, infinite life, infinite cards (read: draw as many cards from your deck as you want). This is the one that wins you the game every time. You can draw as many elves as you like, give them haste with Concordant Crossroads and make them as strong as you need using infinite activations of Timberwatch Elf or Ezuri, Renegade Leader. The only thing that can stop you here is if your opponent has some way not allowing creatures to attack or not losing the game due to damage. The deck is equipped to deal with some of these in the main board (Elvish Skysweeper deals with Blazing Archon for example) but the deck is usually trying to win before anything like that matters so its not usually a problem.
Payoff Cards
These are your payoff cards. Sometimes they help you to keep comboing off until you get all the pieces you need and other times they can just win you a game on the spot.
Regal Force: Can be used to reload your hand while youre trying to combo off or just as a value play. There are very few situations where casting this card is a bad thing.
Ezuri, Renegade Leader: Can win you games out of nowhere and even protects from some wrath effects. Slightly less effective if he is your general because your opponent can see it coming but your opponents foresight is often offset by how fast Ezuri hits the board and becomes a problem for them.
Genesis Wave: Casting this for 8+ either wins you the game or gets you very close.
Craterhoof Behemoth: With only 6 creatures on the board you already have enough damage to knock out 1 player. Easy to surprise opponent using tutors.
Timberwatch Elf + Glistener Elf: Pretty easy to hit someone with 10 poison out of nowhere. Doesnt come up often but that actually helps in making it work when it does because opponents tend to forget that your deck can even do this.
Combo Enablers
Memory Jar: Cracking this when you have an untapped combo elf or Gaeas Cradle will win you the game a good percentage of the time. Even if it doesnt, it usually sets you up to win on the next turn.
Fierce Empath: Gets you Regal Force or Craterhoof Behemoth depending on what you need. Behemoth tends to be better in 1v1 (or if only 1 opponent is left) and Regal is usually better when facing multiple opponents to get you closer to comboing off.
Chord of Calling, Green Sun's Zenith: Gets you what you need when you need it. If you dont have a combo elf yet thats usually a good target. If you do have a combo elf or Gaea's Cradle then Craterhoof Behemoth or Regal Force become good targets. Regal Force at instant speed using Chord of Calling at the end of an opponents turn is really powerful.
Fauna Shaman: Survival of the Fittest on an elf flavored stick. This is as good as it gets as far as crafting your hand for the pieces you need.
Thousand-Year Elixir: This one is a good surprise win type of card. Generally, your opponent will feel comfortable passing the turn if you dont have a combo elf on the board. Then you drop this followed by any combo elf and all of a sudden they have pseudo-haste and can activate twice. Very often allows you to win from nowhere and is just a good value card otherwise.
Lightning Greaves: Similar usage to Thousand-Year Elixir. Doesnt allow for extra activations of your combo elves but does have the added bonus of protecting them from any single target removal.
For the Brewers
As with all things there is always room for improvement. This section will serve as a good jumping-off point for any who want to start tinkering to make the deck their own. Most of these cards tend to be the weaker links in the deck but not all. I would not say that any of these cards are essential to what the deck is trying to do, as such, you can swap these in and out without affecting the decks engine in a way that breaks it. I dont think these are the only cards that qualify, I just think its a good place to start.
Sylvan Offering: I wanted to start with this card because it plays so much better than it reads. I almost didnt even bother to try this card but Im glad I did. The main thing to note about this card is that giving your opponent some elves can often be very good for you in how it interacts with cards like Priest of Titania (which gives you mana for all elves in play). Even when cast with X = 3 you net 2 mana and things scale upward from there. There is also a minor political benefit to this card if multiplayer EDH is your thing. All that said, this is still one of the weaker cards in the deck.
Skullclamp: Oh this is a spicy one. Okay so if you have anything close to an intimate relationship with Magic you know the reputation this card has. This is by far, one of the most powerful cards ever created. With that said it is still important to remain critical and objective and not just play a card because its been great historically. The thing about Skullclamp in this deck is that its only good a certain percentage of the time when you draw it because we are playing it as a value card (meaning we did not build are deck to abuse it in any way). It usually has targets but many times they arent the most optimal. Its great when youre clamping insect tokens from your Wirewood Hivemaster and other low value targets but its not as good when you have to clamp your card:Qurion Ranger or card:Wirewood Symbiot because you desperately need to refill your hand. This is basically a long-winded way of saying the Skullclamp will rarely be bad but I have found that its just kind of medium most of the time. This is made up for by the fact that when its good, it feels like youre cheating! Maybe thats not something you like though so I think this card qualifies as a card that can be swapped out for another card advantage effect. Do note that you could build the deck to be more compatible with Skullclamp, thats just not what I was trying to do.
Slate of Ancestry: This card is just a hair to slow in my opinion. Ive never really been disappointed with it but it has always felt a bit sluggish. It really doesnt feel like youve done anything until youve activated it twice. There is also a flaw in this card in that if you are trying to recover from a board wipe and you top-deck this you are the saddest of pandas so keep that in mind.
Thousand-Year Elixir: Although I think this card is quite good I do find myself sighing a lot when I draw this with an active combo elf already on the board and/or if Im trying to recover from a board wipe. Is by no means bad but there is certainly room to experiment with this one.
Play Style
In general, the deck tries to win somewhere between turn 4-6 (although it is capable of turn 2 wins). You can keep one land hands (in fact it will happen fairly often) as long as you have something to do on turns 1-3 and one of those things has a good chance of giving you something to do on turn 4.
The trick to the deck is keeping the mana curve low (as few 3-4 drops as possible, particularly 4) so always maximize your mana to play as many things per turn as you can.
With Ezuri, Renegade Leader as your general there is a good chance youve painted a target on yourself in multiplayer matches so keep that in mind. Decide quickly if you have the cards to go in guns blazing or if you need to plan on a longer game. This is one of the reasons I actually dont like Ezuri in multiplayer EDH, not only does it make you a target its also hard to navigate the game from there. If you are into multiplayer I would definitely check out card:Freyalise, Llanowar Fury as your general and put Ezuri in your 99.
This suggestion might seem a little out of place but heres why it works. First off, Freyalise does not put a target on you, in fact it might even have your opponents valuing your deck at a lower-than-average level when they see her in the command zone this is good for you! Second, she is much better at playing a longer more combo-control game than Ezuri is. Not only is she instant access to artifact/enchantment removal (which comes in very handy) but she is great at helping you recover from board wipes (of which you will have many to recover from in multiplayer) and she is something you can do when you dont want to overcommit your hand to the board but still want to do something that forces your opponents to act. If they do nothing, great! That means youll get to draw a bunch of cards and combo off on them. If they waste resources trying to deal with her, great you still have cards in hand and you can just cast her again. The commander penalty is much easier to deal with when youre elves.
As a final note, I just want to mention this decks natural resilience to artifact strategies (especially if Freyalise is your general) and Stax strategies. Between Gaeas Cradle and all the elves that poduce 2+ mana and untap each other stax doesnt really slow you down by much.
Closing Thoughts
That should about do it as far as the up-front analysis goes. There is still plenty to say that I havent called out here and Im omitting the Cards Im Not Playing and Why section because it would be way too long. Feel free to let me know what you guys think of the deck, the analysis, or any other comments in general. Happy hunting.
