I've been playing G/B elves in modern for a while, but my local metagame is a lot of Grixis control and Abzan. Both of those matchups become very difficult after board because they are able to board into wraths like Anger of the Gods, Damnation, and Wrath of God. When functioning optimally, the elves deck plays out its hand very quickly, so sweepers are nearly impossible to recover from. This is part of the reason I decided to add a third color. Blue gives the deck access to counter magic out of the sideboard to keep our elves from being swept away.
I am currently trying Coiling Oracle instead of Elvish Visionary as the two drop cantrip elf. While it does stretch the mana base a little bit to get blue and green on turn 2, the upside of being able to reveal a land and immediately put it into play untapped is huge. For example:
Turn 1: Forest, Elvish MysticTurn 2: Breeding Pool, Coiling Oracle revealing Cavern of Souls and putting it onto the battlefield, tapping cavern for Heritage Druid, tap 3 elves, make 3 green mana, play Elvish Archdruid or refill your hand with Lead the Stampede
This line would not be possible with Elvish Visionary.
Sideboard Choices
Disdainful Stroke - counters Damnation, Wrath of God, and Cryptic Command as well as delve creatures like Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler.
Spell Pierce - Counters most of the same spells that I want to get with Disdainful Stroke but can also get Anger of the Gods or Liliana, the Last Hope.
Cyclonic Rift - Playing against Abzan, the ground can get clogged up very quickly. It is also difficult to fight through Lingering Souls. Elves can easily make enough mana to overload rift and clear the way for a kill the following turn.
Heroic Intervention - Protection from sweepers. Necessary against Supreme Verdict decks since counter magic can't hit verdict.
Evolutionary Leap
- Super grindy card. Grixis does not have a good answer for it. Elves just keep replacing themselves until we find the pieces to combo off.
Murderous Cut - the deck struggles to kill big creatures, so an early Tasigur, the Golden Fang can be a huge problem. This deck does not utilize the graveyard for anything, so adding a delve card lets us use a resource that would otherwise go to waste.
Dismember - basically the same as Murderous Cut. Removal spell for larger creatures with an alternative casting cost.
Fatal Push - super efficient removal for creature heavy matchups. Triggering revolt is not usually a problem, so push can get larger creatures sometimes.
