My goal for this elf deck was to lean more towards aggro and less towards combo. With cards like
Wolf-Skull Shaman
and
Wren's Run Vanquisher
I have a higher density of cheap threats that still provide good pressure and often need an answer. The feeling I had with a more combo-heavy version was that so many hands died to just a single removal spell, or counter spell, or discard spell. A corollary of this is I run the full 4 of Lead the Stampede as just a great way to reload on gas.
The main drawback of course is you have fewer games where you can go 'oops, I win'. But I found in earlier versions that in reality the quick combo win almost never happens, and some of the pieces, like Summoner's Pact, were awful more often than not. In this deck, the singleton Craterhoof Behemoth isn't that great since there's no way to tutor for it and probably should become a more versatile card like Ezuri, Renegade Leader or Joraga Warcaller that don't need a ton of mana to even get started.
The sideboard needs tweaking, especially the (probably excessive) artifact hate, the Essence Warden, and potentially the Fecundity. The Choke are for any blue deck with a fetchland manabase. They overlap a lot matchup-wise with Defense Grid. The Essence Warden is something random for aggro matchups with lots of cheap dudes and also against burn, and maybe also can come in against twin. Perhaps there should be some Torpor Orb, Dismember for twin and maybe pod and jund, the creature needs to deal you more than 4 life AND needs to be worth spending a card on.
Random thoughts: Scavenging Ooze is a good card, probably mainboardable, but I don't own any. Elvish Visionary might not be that great in this deck, worth 2-3 slots but not the full 4.
