The goal of this deck is to swarm the field with elves as early as possible, seal off our opponents movements, and then crush them under the weight of a surprise avalanche of 1/1 awesomeness. With that in mind, let's begin
Deck Tech
Here are all the tools that make the deck work:
We'll start by analyzing Momir Vig, Simic Visionary's abilities. Firstly, both of his abilities are color triggered. And when triggered in order, they put cards directly into your hand. However, as you may notice, the deck has a grand total of 4 dual colored creatures, and one of those is the commander. So what do we do? We change it up!
Altering your mind
"Screw the rules! Blue is abbreviated 'U' for a reason!"
Sleight of Mind
,
Alter Reality
,
Glamerdye
,
Mind Bend
,
Spectral Shift
,
Swirl the Mists
, and the ever-so-useless-but-I-finally-found-a-home-for-it
Trait Doctoring
all serve as color replacers. In essence, you target Vig's "blue" trigger and change it to "green." Now, for each green creature you cast, you do both effects. Pretty cool. So now what?
Altering the game state
AKA the "combo enablers."
Nettle Sentinel functions are a key enabler in many a combo. I'll abbreviate it with NS when the combo requires it.
Birchlore Rangers
+ NS are pretty damn good. See all those 1 drop mana elves? Notice how they don't have haste? Now it doesn't matter.
Heritage Druid
and also nets us a 1-for-1 when we snag 3 1-drop elves, Haste not included.
Lys Alana Huntmaster
can function either alongside with or as a replacement for NS.
Seton, Krosan Protector
, again, an enabler, though sadly only for druids. Still, check those mana elf creature types. Aaaaw yeeeah.
Intruder Alarm combos with itself, but it's obscenely effective with the "I tap for crazy amounts of mana" elves like Priest of Titania or Elvish Archdruid.
Tangleroot
: Play a 1 mana elf, get 1 mana, search for library for 1 mana elf, repeat until out of 1 mana elves.
Soul of the Harvest and Primordial Sage can also serve as "color replacers" since their effect, in combination with momir's green effect, will do the same thing.
Imperious Perfect + Intruder Alarm +
Birchlore Rangers
= infinite elves! Pay , get an elf warrior, untaps imperious, tap new warrior and birchlore, get , untaps everything, repeat.
Altering the flow
It's like Ex-lax for your deck
Essence Warden is usually one of the first elves you go for when you start to combo off. That way, even if you get interrupted, you can still gain a good amount of life so you can recover.
Seedborn Muse and friends. Obvious reasons are obvious
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and friends. Don't have haste? No problem. Just flash them in on someone else's turn.
Aluren allows you to play cheap spells for free. Granted, it lets everyone else do the same, but who can get the most value out of it?
Creeping Renaissance gives your deck a slight amount of resistance to "oh god they field wiped oh god oh god." Slight, though, since it's the only effect of its kind. Still, it's good to have
Dizzy Spell and all other transmuters: Search for linchpins and combo enablers. Uncounterable tutoring is fantastic.
Alter your victory
AKA The cure for "I have a huge army of 1/1 elves...now what?" syndrome.
Coat of Arms makes your wimpy elves not so wimpy. It's not tutorable, so you gotta get lucky, but its friend IS, so without further ado...
Craterhoof Behemoth. Dear god this card. +X/+X and trample alone makes it worth it, but the fact that it can attack too? Insult, meet injury.
Joraga Warcaller, AKA the cure for "I have all this mana, now what?" syndrome.
Gilt-Leaf Archdruid steal the lands from everyone when you can, starting with the other combo players. Denying everyone mana ensures your ability to win within the next turn. If you can't win in 2, you're not playing this deck right. At all.
And there you have it.
Everything else in the deck it fairly self-explanatory and to expand upon it (unless specifically requested in the comments below) would be a waste screen space.
There you go, TheArkitect. A full description of the deck, and the way it works.
