Introduction
Have you ever felt the need to up the pace of long commander games?
Are there times when your games need just a bit more interaction?
Do you miss the times when combat mattered at the table?
Then this is NOT the deck for you!
This is a commander version of my elf tribal canlander deck. With it in your hands you wield a powerful weapon of synergy. You will build an army of elves that benefit from being around each other, you will have cards synnergizing left and right and you will have to keep all of those interactions in mind or your turns will take half an hour before you pass to realize you missed lethal on four fronts. Still, the deck is very efficient. What may seem like neat little synnergies at first will suddenly blow out of proportion and you find yourself drawing most of your deck, blowing up all your opponents creatures and swinging for 1642 points of trampling damage on turn four. (No you won't. Your opponents will have scooped ten percent into your calculations.) It's powerful and explosive, and the amount of resources you'll have in your hands is almost frightening. It's impressive and fun, but don't be the guy who insists on playing 'til the end. Let the game end on your opponents' terms (conceding).
The deck runs four colors, but it is really a mono green deck with a triple splash - every single land except for Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and a single Swamp produces green mana and green mana is likely what will be needed for the finishing blow. Tymna the Weaver and Tana, the Bloodsower help enable the deck even though they are not themselves elves, and allow us to splash three colors for this handful of support cards, great tutors, some wincons, and powerful effects in the command zone.
How the deck runs
The deck wins like most Elfball decks do, the goal is to reach a critical mass of elf synergies to overwhelm our opponents. To do this, however, we rely on combos to gain exceptional value. These can be take the shape of a draw engine like Beast Whisperer or Primordial Sage forming a finite combo with a big mana producer like Priest of Titania or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to allow very big turns very early, or the combos can be infinite combos such as suiting up Wirewood Channeler with Umbral Mantle and generating infinite mana of every color before casting Plague Wind into Uncage the Menagerie for a very large amount to go get most of your creatures, including Craterhoof Behemoth and Tuktuk Rubblefort and swing for lethal. Or we can Eldritch Evolution a mana dork into Ezuri, Renegade Leader and use infinite green mana to overrun a billion times and win through combat.
For this elfball to get off the ground, we need to rely on tutor effects (or extreme luck) in order to be fast - the premier of which may well be Pyre of Heroes and Birthing Pod, the namesake of the archetype.
Part 1: Mana
The first part of the machinery you'll need to assemble is a mana generating engine. You're going to need a lot of mana to make this deck work, so I've divided the mana generation into Fast Mana and Big Mana.
Fast Mana
To get of the ground quickly, we are running a suite of mana dorks that accellerate us early.
Beastcaller Savant, Birchlore Rangers, Bloom Tender, Chrome Mox, Deathrite Shaman, Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Gnarlroot Trapper, Heritage Druid, Llanowar Elves, Mox Diamond, Priest of Titania and Wild Cantor can come down early and get the ball rolling. Some of these also give us Big Mana in the later game, but often getting started is the most important. Elvish Spirit Guide is a +1 green ritual effect that also happens to be an elf, and we naturally play it.
The moxen are not at their greatest in this deck, since we need to keep our card velocity very high and loosing too many cards in hand early might hust mean we never get going. But "free" colored ramp is still hard to turn down. We don't really care much for colorless ramp in this deck however, so we are missing outon some of the absolutely fastest mana.
Big Mana
Once some pieces are falling into place, we get into the truly scary part of the deck. We are running a bunch of cards that are capable of generating insane amounts of mana for us, easily reaching fifty mana a turn and not uncommonly over a hundred mana after some shenanigans.
Bloom Tender, Circle of Dreams Druid, Elvish Archdruid, Priest of Titania and Wirewood Channeler all generate crazy amounts of mana once we are getting set up, and if they are able to generate enough mana per activation they can all generate infinite mana with Staff of Domination, Sword of the Paruns or Unmral Mantle. Wirewood Nurturer can both do this with Seedcradle Witch too (Bloom Tender would be able to if you somehow get a blue permanent, such as a token or perhaps a Gilded Drake).
Birchlore Rangers, Gaea's Cradle, Heritage Druid and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx can all also generate us tons of mana, but cannot go infinite.
While not directly generating mana, Aluren will likely allow us to play a large number of creatures for free, and if combined with a reliable draw engine it could potentially put upwards of twenty creatures into play for us. Similarly, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded can allow us to cheat a game winning bomb such as a Craterhoof Behemoth onto the battlefield for cheaper.
Also, a shoutout to Vitalize that enables us to go even more crazy once we are ready to go off.
Part 2: Draw
To keep going we are gonna need more gas, and we get our gas in the form of cards that generate card advantage when we do what the deck allready wants to do: play elves.
Beast Whisperer, Glimpse of Nature, Guardian Project, Primordial Sage, Rite of Harmony and Soul of the Harvest all give us more cards as long as we keep playing our elves, while Skemfar Avenger gives us cards if our elves die.
We supplement these card draw engines with other ways to gain card advantage, we can replay our cards off of Underworld Breach, get good card selection with Collected Company or tutor for several cards at once with Genesis Wave or Uncage the Menagerie. Also, Ad Nauseam.
Part 3: Endgame
If all goes well you'll find yourself with a large board of elves, but let's face it. They are just little elves.
Craterhoof Behemoth, End-Raze Forerunners and Ezuri, Renegade Leader all pump our team and give us trample. Generating infinite mana, tutoring and playing Ezuri is generally our most common out since he is the easiest win condition to find. (Getting Hoof or Runners from Eldritch Evolution, Birthing Pod or Pyre of Heroes is tough, but we do also play Fierce Empath that doesn't find Ezuri.)
If we are somehow unable to win through damage, we can drain the table through pumping and sacrificing our elves to Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, and through gaining board dominance through Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, In Garruk's Wake or Plague Wind we can grind our opponents down rather quickly even if we are stopped from comboing.
Supporting the plan
Now that we know what the plan is, let's look at our tutors.
Crop Rotation and Elvish Reclaimer are in the deck mainly to get Gaea's Cradle or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx on the field, but Cavern of Souls, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Wirewood Lodge may all be the correct choice in a specific circumstance.
Stoneforge Mystic is in the deck to go get Sword of the Paruns or Umbral Mantle, and Mystic herself can be found with Pod and a dork. Enlightened Tutor also gets these equipments, but can serve a double purpose in fetching Birthing Pod or Pyre of Heroes, fetching Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded or getting a value engine started by tutoring for Guardian Project, Staff of Domination or Underworld Breach.
We then run the set of Birthing Pod, Chord of Calling, Collected Company, Eladamri's Call, Eldritch Evolution, Fauna Shaman, Pyre of Heroes, Uncage the Menagerie and Worldly Tutor for our creature tutors, and we run Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor since we are obliged to when playing a power ambitious deck running black. The most important creatures to tutor for are the creatures that allow us to generate the most mana, followed by Seedcradle Witch if we are unable to find an untapping equipment and finally a big game winning pump.
We should also be aware of the board and use our tutors to toolbox for specific removal to troublesome stax pieces, but we are not equipped ourselves to try to stop an opponent's win once they go for it. The interaction has been selected to synnergize with the Pod/Evolution plan as well as our abbundant creature tutors. This does mean it is not the best removal we could be running though, but I'd personally rather run a removal spell I can reliably get when I need it even if it is in fact a much worse spell.
Conclusion
This is a powerful deck. It is not an interactive deck and it is not an easy deck to play fast. But once you get going it is so much fun to run. Just keep in mind that it's not really a deck suited for some more relaxed metas, and perhaps not powerful enough for some competative tables*, so consider your playgroup and deploy it accordingly.
*If your competative table is stax heavy, this deck will suffer. Rule of Law and co. wrecks us bad. But if your table is full of greedy people trying to resolve a fast combo while relying on negating their opponents' win plans, you should stomp well above your share of matches. So read your meta and consider your options.
