Thanks Dave!!! This has been my most effective list yet in testing...I really do appreciate the +1.

It's so great to hear from you! I hope all is well from my fellow Green Mage. We had a little break so I haven't go to see all of the great brews on here as of late...I can't wait to see some of the cool stuff you've come up with!

This deck is insane. +1 and if i could another +1. I PT'd this and have all these cards lying around. gonna take this to my lgs for shits'n'gigs if you don't mind.

Moving back to a post that was higher up, Krosan Grip can stop the Splinter Twin itself. This probably will give you enough time to smash face, but there is a chance that they pull their Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker out on you and you'll need a different delaying tactic. Leyline of Vitality would probably be perfect, forcing them to combo with Pestermite or win with incremental damage, which gives you much more time to stabilize.

In your sideboard I see you have a Cavern of Souls, are you that scared of Blood Moon? I prefer 4 mainboard, it helps game one against control decks, and does provide decent mana fixing.

Nice! Glad to hear it's working consistently. I'll be honest, I've been MIA pretty much since BotG came out. I've been trying to come up with some edh brews as of late.

Thanks for that feedback, CurdBrosBrewingCo. I have found that 4x Garruk seems to be excessive as well; I put him at 3x in my build. Too many times I would draw into a second one when I didn't need him and it seriously hindered the synergy. You are correct that he is such a big staple for devotion, but drawing two when your opponent can't deal with the one on the table is disheartening. I also like your justification of Coiling Oracle, I may have to reconsider him as the only blue card for sure. He is amazing at what he does, and an elf to boot, so I definitely have no quarrels with the include.

severnaya - please do sleeve it up! That's why the decks are on here, so all can play them and make them your own! Let me know how it plays and if you think there is any room for improvement!

seanobiwan928 - I just realized what you initially meant by the 2nd Craterhoof (i.e. if they can path one, they most likely won't be able to path the 2nd). This may be better than adding the Outpost Siege main (and may even be allow me to cut red altogether). I will have to try this out. I'm sorry I didn't understand what you meant.

kameenook - Krosan Grip is a good idea...it deals with Twin and there is nothing they can do to stop it...I really like this idea. I may have to try that out. I LOVED using Leyline of Vitality when Delver was king (as it's good against burn, delver, zoo, scapeshift, and affinity)....unfortunately you only get the life gain when it's a creature you control; but things like Essence Warden would do exactly what you are saying. With 1 Essence Warden the opponent would have to have Pestermite, and with 2 Essence Wardens you buy yourself a turn no matter which creature they combo off with. It's a great philosophy to try out! Also, Essence Warden allows for infinite life. Then again, so does Leyline of Vitality (and it adds two to our devotion...Both of these ideas are spectactular and I will be testing these in teh sideboard immediately (as there are a TON of match ups this can be beneficial in).

You are absolutely right about the 4th Cavern main too. I ran another Breeding Pool (to have enough Forests for Arbor Elf]; but most likely should just be a Cavern (so I can open up another sideboard slot). I will test that today....I don't worry too much about Blood Moon as traditionally I will have one Forest and/or at least one Abundant Growth before they can get a Blood Moon down (and the elves can also tap for green).

CrovaxTheCursed - Yeah, i really think you are right on the 3x Garruk Wildspeaker for this deck. I just went with my (always have 4 Garruk, 4 Arbor Elf, and 4 Utopia Sprawl" devotion rule; but you are absolutely right that there is just too much card draw here to justify a 4th...I really appreciate the suggestions as it definitely helps the synergy/tempo of the deck.

Yeah...I've just found that I preferred Coiling Oracle to Elvish Archdruid in this build. Elvish Archdruid is one of the best Elves of all time (and is a must in nearly every elf deck) and to be honest, If I had the room I would definitely have Archdruid in here (and may try to fit in in the future); but the speed and resiliency you get from continually drawing cards is just unbeatable...it's something I will need to constantly pay attention to as the meat moves; but for now I prefer Coiling Oracle. If Cavern of Souls didn't exist, however...it would be entirely different :)

These are all such great ideas. I am testing now and will make the appropriate changes. I'm playing a TON of games 2 and 3 today to ensure the sideboard looks right too.

P.S. Another thing I really liked about Outpost Siege is it's ability to win around a Eidolon of the Great Revel...I played Burn (RDW) the other day and found that Eidolon of the Great Revel is a great card against this deck. I was able, however, to utilize Outpost Siege to use the first two "bounces" to kill the Eidolon so I could "go off" from there. It is a card that is most certainly staying at minimum in the board.

That's funny you mentioned Eidolon of the Great Revel. I was just going to bring up that comboing with this deck is basically nullified by that card, but once again you have a solution via Outpost Siege :). I saw a dude DESTROY a Jeskai Ascendancy combo deck with the Eidolon. He was like, "yeah, go ahead and combo off any time you like" lol.

Yeah...it was prett random :). Normally either Chalice or Seal of Primordium deal with Eidolon of the Great Revel...but it's nice to know there are several answers :)

I think that your original intuition to only have 3 Cavern of Souls (maybe even 2) was probably correct. The main reason is because with 4 you can end up getting a lot of starting hands where Utopia Sprawl can't be cast on anything, or where you might be deprived of green mana early on. Getting 2 in your opening hand can be very awkward for your non-creature spells, and this will result in having to mulligan more hands, which hurts things in the long run.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that... Idk if it's just this website, but I seem to never have a Forest in my opening hand in playtesting, no matter how many times I restart, refresh, mulligan, whatever. I'm sure you have better luck, and this site does that to me sometimes, but it's pretty ridiculous how infrequently I have been getting a Forest for my opening turns. This is just me, but I think I'll be excluding Cavern in my own build, just for that reason. Not saying you should take it out, but I'm a little deterred to buy some after that has happened to me so many times. It makes sense though, because only 1/6th of the deck is Forests, and 1/3rd is creatures. Unless you see countering decks at least 50% of the time, I don't think they're necessary in the main. That's all opinion ofc.

CurdBrosBrewingCo i honestly think since Delver is less of a factor now, you can limit the # of Chalice of the Void in your sideboard and go for some Swan Song or something else

Hey guys. Couple things on the landbase/ Cavern/Chalice front.

To begin, you are right that the mana base was getting a little greedy...you really do want at least 12 Forests...I have loved Cavern as it is amazing with Chalice, fixes for Coiling Oracle (the only blue card in the main), and is basically the reason this deck is good against control. I haven't had nearly the difficulties you've had with my opening hands; but I also have played the deck so long that I actually will keep certain hands that I know will 90% of the time "pan out" (i.e. if I have a Cavern, a Heritage Druid, an Elvish Visionary and even say a Nykthos, I will play the Heritage Druid on turn one, Visionary on turn two, and if I haven;t hit a Forest by that point I will play another elf, tap all three and have plenty of green mana)...this, however is NOT a good enough reason to play less Forests.

Having said this, I am currently testing going with 2 Caverns in the main and 2 in the board. I may try to go down to three if it appears possible. No Caverns (in my opinion) is giving up WAY too much power/advantage...not just in the Chalice package, but just in the benefits mentioned above. A tribal deck not playing at least 1 Cavern of Souls just doesn't feel right :)

And the Chalice of the Void package is simply too good to get rid of. There MAY be a possibility that you can get away with only three of them; as in most games you will play it on turn 2 or 3 (unless of course you are playing Affinity) and we do have a lot of card draw. Chalice was not just for Delver. Off the top of my head, I side it in against Boggles, Burn/RDW, Affinity, Merfolk, Zoo, Ad Nauseum, Storm, and Infect...I've even sided it in against Pact-heavy Amulet builds (to counter all of their Pact's). That, and I don't think Delver decks will entirely cease to exist (they still have Delver, Snapcaster Mage, Swiftspear, and Young Pyromancer as their creature base). It is possible, however, that you could run three and not notice too much of a difference...I will try this out.

This deck makes it difficult to run a "traditional" sideboard (with things like Swan Song, Beast Within, Dismember, etc.) for a few reasons:

1. You don't want to side out much in any match. Just as with Legacy Elves...you really want to keep most of the deck together all three games...For this reason, the few cards you do side in need to be REALLY powerful to be worth the loss in synergy/tempo.

2. The deck is very proactive...you don't really want to be holding up any mana on any turn. There are very few turns where you are not better off spending all of the mana you have available to you. This is not a deck that likes to hold up mana to see what the opponent is going to do. Our real goal is to get to our combo or overwhelm the opponent before they can do anything of substance. That is our "narrative". For this reason, we really do want our sideboard cards to just be cards that slow them down while not effecting us.

You could take out the Chalice package (which in this case with 2 Caverns main and 1 in the board) would open up 5 Sideboard slots. you would then need Creeping Corrosion for affinty and some way to stop most of the combo-esq decks in the format (Swan Song was a good option, etc.) I'd love to hear from anyone that is playing the deck that goes this route...there's every possibility it is great!

I do think you are right about the Caverns main however, and for the time being have went 2-main, 2-board. I will try to test out 3 Caverns total as well as 3 Chalices total to see if we can get away with this as well. As always, please do feel free to post on here how your deck has done if it is set up differently (i.e. no Caverns, no Chalices, etc.). It can only help us make the best deck possible! Thanks for the suggestions guys/gals!

I was also concerning myself far too much with fixing for Coiling Oracle when in reality between 2 Caverns, 2 Breeding Pools, 4 Abundant Growth, and 4 Utopia Sprawl there have been VERY few games where I wanted to case Coiling Oracle and couldn't. Thanks for the suggestions! Makes for a better deck long-term.

Hello, let me start by saying this deck is amazing, it earned a nearly instant +1 after reading your thorough description (which I greatly appreciate you making, there's a lot to this deck). I am a huge standard player, but I have recently started looking into modern. I've decided that this deck is the one I want to be playing, but I have some questions concerning the sideboard. As you said, almost everything in the mainboard is pretty vital, so what do you take out in favor of cards good against decks you've been talking about? Being new to modern, I only vaguely know the metagame, but I can't really imagine any 'dead' cards against any matchup. Thanks for any help, and cheers on the awesome elf build.

Hey mtgplayer443! Thank you so much for the +1 and the awesome words! There literally is no better positive affirmation than for a new player to pick up the deck and make it their own.

The sideboard is currently being tested (heavily) and I will make sure to update it asap (although I'm pretty happy where it is now). I'll also send you a more detailed sideboard strategy; however there are some somewhat "steadfast" rules I tend to go by:

1. Control - Against control, I tend to side out the Genesis Waves and Garruk Widspeakers (i.e. the higher CMC cards). I side in the Cavern of Souls, the Boils, and the Root Mazes (as UWx decks tend to have a LOT of trouble if you mess with their mana). Generally you will simply cast enough uncounterable creatures that you can just attack through even if you don't hit the infinite combo.
   

2. Fair decks - You honestly don't have to side in anything against fair decks. You kind of roll over them :)
   

3. Red decks - If they have red, I'll generally put in Outpost Siege and Seal of Primordium to to protect ourselves from Eidolon of the Great Revel. In those cases, you can simply remove the Coiling Oracle's for the Seals and one Craterhoof Behemoth for the Outpost Siege.

4. Aggro decks - Most of these are shut down by the Chalice package (as most aggro decks run on nearly all 0-2 CMC spells). In these situations, I just side out one Breeding Pool and one Stomping Ground for the Cavern of Souls and then 3 Abundant Growth, and 1 Craterhoof Behemoth for the Chalices (as you often will set them on "1" which nulifies future Abundant Growth's anyways).
   

5. Combo decks - These vary as to whether you want the Chalice package or root mazes; but basically as long as you can slow them down by anywhere from 1-3 turns you have about a 90% chance your going to win (as most other combo decks are light on interaction). Vs. Twin you want to side in the Boils and Seals, however. Vs. Scapeshift you will want the Boils as well. Vs. Tron you want Root Maze...so it really depends on the way they combo off. The "cantrip" type combo decks (Ascendancy, Storm, etc.) you will want the Root Mazes....There are so many different combo decks that you really kind of want different cards vs each; however in general (a) blue-based combo decks will want Boils, (b) land-based combo decks will want Root Maze, and (c) cantrip-based or multi-spell combos will want Chalice of the Void package...

I hope this more "general answer" helps. I'm happy to send you a more detailed sideboard discussion for each individual match up (and any changes made to the sideboard during testing) if you would like.

As an aside, I have found that Root Maze is tough on my Genesis Waves (as all of the lands come into play tapped) so I'm trying to see if I can find an equally "devastating" answer card that doesn't effect my side of play as much...may not happen; but I thought I should at least point out the downsides as well as the positives for each choice in the deck. I have been testing both Worship and a few other options and will of course update the deck immediately if I find additional great sideboard options. Of course, if graveyard-based decks or mill come back into fashion, we've always got Wheel of Sun and Moon.

I've been toying around with Elvish Harbinger as well...may have some interesting interactions with potential elves that could be sideboarded...going to take a ton of testing :)

Added Dryad Arbor to the list for a few reasons:

1. It's a Forest (so it still works with Arbor Elf and Nissa, Worldwaker if she's ever back in the deck...)
2. Triggers Cloudstone Curio
3. Can be used to protect Temur Sabertooth and re-played for "free" (assuming you haven't played a land for turn)
4. Is a great way to start a creature look with Cloudstone and Temur Sabertooth (again because it is "free" to play).
5. Is another creature for Craterhoof Behemoth.

Been thinking about playing Nissa, Worldwaker as well (as in many situations Nissa + Garruk + Cloudstone Curio is an infinite mana combo); but we'll see if she fits. Thus far, I've liked Dryad Arbor...it is a land with summoning sickness; so there are definite drawbacks; but in the end I think it may be worth it!

Why not Choke instead of Boil? To me it seems like choke is a little more permanent solution seeing as how it affects the islands that they play after you land it. Granted, they're still there if the enchantment is destroyed but I'm not seeing the game lasting long with this deck anyway. I don't think it makes a huge difference but Choke has a lower CMC and it's mono-green so you don't have go fishing for a stomping ground. But with ramp that won't be an issue. I'm rambling at this point, but it's just something I thought of.

Hey! Was just browsing the site and found this. I've been looking to get into modern for awhile now, just haven't really put in much time into researching it. And man, i'm glad I found this. It looks super fun, and as my legacy deck is combo elves, this shouldn't even be too hard to build as it looks like i've got half the cards needed already. Thanks for brewing this man, def adding this to check out later.

I said half, I guess i meant "twelve" haha, still, got a bunch of the other cards lying around anyway.

Thanks kyuuri117!!!

After tons of testing, I feel like the mainboard is very "tight" (i.e. one card here or there can change every once and a while; but very little can change). I'm still working on the sideboard (it's tough with a deck like this that doesn't want to board much :)

I hope you really enjoy the deck! From one Elves lover to the next....Enjoy!!

Holy shit this deck is crazy. Aside from the fact that you can usually just win by casting Genesis Wave, the combos are very aggressive and easy to get out. Love the deck, +1000 if I could.

haha! You're right kyuuri117! I would LOVE to have access to Glimpse, Birchilore, Wirwood, Natural Order, etc...it is funny that even though they are very similar (with Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel); they are even more dissimilar!...ha! Let me know if you see anything you think needs tweeking, or what you think the best "sideboard functions" should be (protect my combo or fight others, etc.)...as an elf player, you have a good insight into how difficult it can be to board (and that is the thing I'm working on most now...given the recent meta shift it's kind of up in the air...) Thanks again!