Do not be alarmed at the block of text, I am just musing on how the deck works and what cards are essential. tl;dr it's typical multicolored elves.
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My Elf deck for local Tuesday Pauper. Probably every elf deck should contain 4 of each of the core cards: Timberwatch Elf, Priest of Titania, and Quirion Ranger, for obvious reasons. Quirion is a mana dork (tap forest return forest play forest tap forest) that enables the other tappers to do obscene things like make 42 mana for drawing and casting more elves or making a giant monster or give a creature +42/+42 at instant speed. Nyxborn Hydra, and Generous Ent are less obvious inclusions that I still think you should always have 4 of. The ent makes the low land count even better by being either a creature or a land, he's a creature in the graveyard for the purposes of Masked Vandal which should be either in the side or the mainboard, and you can hit him off of winding way. The hydra is a great way to sink your excess mana, it's absurdly difficult to remove thanks to bestow, if you bestow it then it can swing the turn you play it, it gives creatures trample so even if you bestow it for just a little it can be relevant for pump effects. Sometimes decks playing only 12 dorks will sideboard one, but there should have 4 total. 4 Winding Way and 4 Lead the Stampede I find to also be essential, even though having so many reduces the number of creatures in your deck for them to hit, you're still likely to hit 3/4 creatures off of them, and you'll probably never be unhappy to have more in hand. They are also sometimes 2 mana draw 4 or a 3 mana draw 5, which I would take any day of the week. Also in a pinch, Winding Way naming lands is a good way to throw creatures in your graveyard for the purposes of Masked Vandal or an opponent playing Exhume.
13 Forests is pretty sacred, EV of forests in starting hand is 1.517 (~83% chance of one or more forests) and the deck operates fine with one land hands plus quirion or ent or mana dorks. Yeah, you'll lose if your enemy is on "oops, all Skred" but that's the gambit you run with elves. 13 is the minimum for slightly more than likely odds of naturally hitting a 2nd land off your first draw, which is important in bad matchups where they might kill your first dork.
