Icbrgr I just tried using that tool to see what it was doing, and I have to say it seems to give some really terrible advice

• it’s tooltips are super inaccurate. Specifically it states ”Typical 1v1 decks have an average CMC of about 3” which couldn’t be further from the truth… even in standard or casual formats this would lead to a deck being waaay too slow/clumsy.

• I input the values of a modern deck and it suggested I should only be running a measly 10 lands… where the deck clearly wants to be running closer to 22-23.

• The questions it asks feels far too generalised and non-specific to ever provide an accurate output.

• The output is mainly just suggested colour-ratios, but gives zero insight into duel-lands vs fetches vs basics etc… so entirely unhelpful. Furthermore, the ratio of colour-suggestions seems to just roughly mirror the input of total colour-pips, which is super lazy and misleading.

I would really advise against that tool

As others have mentioned, this is a question which requires more specifics, and can’t be solved with a generic catch-all answer.

I can say, from a modern perspective, that both "slow lands" and “checklands” are awful, and the “filter lands” are almost always terrible too. If you’re looking to branch out from the shocklands, i’d suggest “fast lands” (i.e. Blooming Marsh), and 1-2 surveil lands (i.e. Underground Mortuary). Generally speaking though, the more important/impactful thing for a deck is not the quantity of duel-lands, but the quantity of fetch-lands (i.e. Verdant Catacombs). Decks become a LOT more powerful and consistent with a strong fetchland-base, and if you’re looking to improve your landbase, adding in 8-12 fetches is almost always the strongest improvement you can make.

DemonDragonJ I thought from the above discussions that your Ghried deck has no reason to care about creatures (only creature tokens).

Paying 2 mana is infinitely better than 3 mana. Personally i’d include Rite before that creature… but you could very easily include both

DemonDragonJ

• Why Enduring Vitality when Cryptolith Rite is a whole mana cheaper?

• Either of those cards look terrible so just pick whatever one you don't want.

Some thoughts:

• you have far too many cards being run as 1-ofs and 2-ofs. This will lead to a hugely inconsistent, and much weaker deck. A good approach for newer deckbuilders is to pick 9 cards, and run 4-ofs each of those (making 36 cards) alongside 24 lands (for a 60 card deck).

• your mana curve is a little high - typically modern decks won’t run more than 4 cards costing 4-or-more mana, where you have 8.

Kazierts just spelling out my viewpoint in case its not clear:

• I have said that Wood Elves is a reasonable choice in a Chulane deck

• Saying that, I have also expressed heavy scepticism that its the best current addition to the OPs personal Chulane deck, seeing as they’re missing soo many more obvious/optimal choices for mana acceleration/ramp.

• Every other comment prior to the specific Chulane comments had been directed towards the OPs Ghired deck, which I maintain has no reason to run Wood Elves (or creature cards in general).

Sorry for the triple-post, just done some more digging specific to Chulane- I see from edhrec that Wood Elves isn’t suggested at all whereas every single mana dork is… it would make a LOT of sense to be including all of those before even thinking about Wood Elves

Specifically for OPs Ghired deck, which I had assumed this entire conversation was about, there are only 2 creatures that can make copies of creatures (Bramble Sovereign and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, both of which should have better targets), zero ways to blink creatures, and only 2 other cards I saw which care about creatures entering (Aura Shards and Warleader's Call). None of this justifies Wood Elves.

Even for OPs Chulane deck, where Wood Elves feels more at-home, there’s basically no synergy outside of the commander itself, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines and two blink spells (for some reason Ephemerate isn’t even being played). While Wood Elves has actual value here, I can’t see it being more useful than a Birds of Paradise or any other mana-dork for that matter, which the deck is missing.

Oh, just reading above I do see Chulane was mentioned - my bad for missing that, all my comments have been in reference to Ghired

Kazierts my point with Wood Elves is that I can’t imagine ever blinking it in a deck filled with better blink targets. Its not that blinking it is an inherently bad thing to do, I personally just don’t see it ever happening when any other target you choose likely gets you more value (imo using a blink effect just for a land on turn 4 onwards feels really suboptimal).

I would agree Chulane, Teller of Tales makes Wood Elves look good. That card was never bought up and it wasn’t the commander being discussed. Using that commander would change the discussion entirely, so I don’t see this being a fair point.

Agree that I see no inherent synergy with Ghired, Conclave Exile. Presumably copy tokens are being made? - and if so, again i’d wager there’s better creatures to make tokens of

DemonDragonJ I feel like Cultivate has already been mentioned a ton of times here and is a better choice.

But in any case this is a question the internet already has a multitude of answers for - doing a 2 second google yields links like this and this and this.

DemonDragonJ they all mostly do useful things, so yes. This gives more weight to why Wood Elves is a bad choice for flickering, because you just have better targets. So there’s no (or, very little) reason to be running this card as a creature.

DemonDragonJ the saga can’t just “flip” or it would still have a bunch of lore counters on it, which is just unintuitive and confusing, and any additional rules text on the cards to remove them just adds mess to the card design.

Giving every card haste would also be a very strange design decision.

DemonDragonJ that’s dodging the point - surely this card is nowhere-near the best use of your blink/copy effects

DemonDragonJ keep in mind the only reasons you’ve offered for these cards having effective-haste is ”because you want it”. That in itself doesn’t carry any weight - we can just as easily state that the cards are printed the way they are ”because wotc wants it” (i.e, presenting an idea without any evidence/facts can be dismissed by the same premise).

If you’re wanting to seriously debate why these cards should be printed differently, you need to provide some critical thinking and reasoning as to why this should be the case, beyond your own whims. Without that, I just don’t see the conversation going anywhere or being remotely constructive.

DemonDragonJ I just find it really hard to believe that the card is even remotely-feasible as a blink-target… surely there are just hundreds of better options for blinking… I can’t imagine wasting resources blinking this card leads to anywhere good?

They’re extremely niche - i remember hearing of them but I can’t recall any of them sorry.

I don’t think there are any current-day reasons.

There’s no real competitive reason, and the people you’re seeing doing this on arena are just evidently bad at deckbuilding.

There is very very rarely some mathy reasons to maybe justify 61-62 cards… but even this application is incredibly narrow and the vast majority of people doing this are just illustrating to the world that they’re too lazy/inept to make a cut down to 60 cards.

DemonDragonJ if the card designers really wanted these creatures to be able to attack on flip they would have been given haste. There are balancing and play-pattern issues here which presumably mean these cards are better-off not being able to attack on the turn they flip.

DemonDragonJ a deck having an emphasis on creatures doesn’t correlate to every card-being-a-creature being a positive thing.

What do you actually gain from Wood Elves being a creature card, that makes it worth costing such a high mana cost?