I've been retooling my old Elf deck to be at least modern-legal. This is the result so far. It mostly keeps casting costs low so that we can abuse the Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel
combo to cast out everything in hand.
Nissa Revane
is the title card, but is only a one-of. She can gain you enough life to weather some pretty ludicrously strong attacks, but takes a bit of time to pull off her ultimate. I'm not running a lot of tokens, either, so I don't really want to use the Doubling Season combo either. Still, I want her in for flavor reasons.
The land base is specifically selected to be fast. As long as you intend to cast an elf spell on your turn, putting out the Gilt-Leaf Palace is no problem. I have a lot of potentially black mana for only a couple black cards, but all of it can also produce green to avoid running into color issues with a mostly green deck. It all enters untapped too, so it doesn't really slow us down. Cavern of Souls is effectively a forest that also prevents counterspells 90% of the time. While there isn't a lot of land, this deck can still run fairly efficiently with only one or two lands as long as you can get some of the druids into play. I've done well keeping one land starting hands in a number of situations.
Instants and sorceries are currently culled towards keeping momentum through card draw and getting rid of problems that I can't either overrun or outrace. Hunter's Insight is pretty stellar - since it is instant speed, you can wait until just before you do combat damage, and as long as you are inflicting at least 2, you get your mana's worth compared to Divination. Getting more cards for this deck is pretty trivial. Lead the Stampede is a little more hit or miss, but you should on average net 2-3 creatures with the spell. Giant Growth is an old standby, and adds just enough unsurety about our combat power that we can run some bluffs.
Slate of Ancestry
is one of our most costly cards, and our sole artifact. It mostly is in to help prevent stalling if the match drags into later rounds.
The creatures are the focus of the deck (as is right with elves). At 1 CMC, we have our mana base exploit Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel
. We also have Llanowar Elves taking the place of some forests. Technically Joraga Warcaller is 1 CMC too, but he really needs to be kicked once to be worthwhile.
At 2 CMC, I have a couple of
Nissa's Chosen
to interact with her abilities, which means we at least can get 4 life once we can no longer pull bodies onto the field with her +1 options.
Talara's Battalion
is a killer spell for only 2 mana, but sometimes will require waiting to a bit longer in the game due to the casting requirements. Finally, Bramblewood Paragon gives us a way to get some trample into the deck, if paired with any later warrior cards or tokens or Immaculate Magistrate.
At 3 CMC, we get a ton of elves that start pushing our power and toughness up. Elvish Archdruid also makes more mana and really pushes the pace of the game into overdrive, and Imperious Perfect gives us the option for a few warrior tokens.
Lys Alana Scarblade
can deal with any targetable threats, even if they are indestructible. For Legendary creatures, Ezuri, Renegade Leader gives us some repeatable overrun, and
Rhys the Exiled
gives us some free lifegain if needed.
Finally, at 4 CMC, we only have the Immaculate Magistrate who synergizes well with Joraga Warcaller or
Talara's Battalion
due to the innate trample.
Sideboard is currently set to deal with flyers (Jagged-Scar Archers and some Hurricanes for an alternate win condition), graveyard reanimator/dredgers (Tormod's Crypt), and board sweeps (
Prowess of the Fair
). While most decks have some enchantments and artifacts, Back to Nature and Naturalize are mostly only options for when you can't outrace them.
Eyeblight's Ending
gives us a little more ability to deal with creatures that are problematic.
Overall, the idea is to keep the pressure up with as many creatures as possible so that the Lead the Stampede plays end up drawing 3 or more cards.
