Elves!

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Elves have been one of those creature types highly associated with Magic the Gathering for quite some time. Sure Elf creature decks have seen fickle changes in popularity but has always been close to the heart of many a casual magic player. Since we began playing MTG in the Lorwyn block, there has without fail been an Elf deck we've palyed against or played ourselves. In fact, we maintain a standard (post - Mirrodin Besieged) Elf buiild to pull out and have fun with - Here's a quick look at what we have . . .

4 x Llanowar Elves
4 x Arbor Elf
4 x Joraga Warcaller
4 x Nissa's Chosen
4 x Naturalize
4 x Elvish Archdruid
3 x Nissa Revane
2 x Tel Jiihad Defiance
2 x Plummet
2 x Lead the Stampede
2 x Leatherback Baloth
1 x Asceticism
1 x Ezuri, Renegade Leader
4 x Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
4 x Khalini Garden
4 x Turntimber Grove

Elf decks are first and foremost good and generating mana to bring out fatties on the quick. The choices are fairly good in standard and just get better as one considers extended and then legacy decks.


Some of these mana producing tree huggers may be Llanowar Elves and their variants (Fyndhorn Elves, Arbour Elf, etc.), Priest of Titania, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Quirion Elves, and a variety of other Elf creature cards which tap for stooopid volumes of green mana or a variety of mana like Urborg Elf.


Elf Lords or cards that synergise well currently in standard may be Joraga Warcaller, Elvish Archdruid, Ezuri, Renegade Leader and the Elf Planeswalker, Nissa Revane. Other extended and legacy cards to consider may be Imperious Perfect (our fav elf-token generator), Elvish Champion, Eladamri, Lord of Leaves, or Ambush Commander.


In this particular build, we tweaked for our local metagame and it is still performing not too badly considering we've not really looked at modify it for some time. Anywhoos - we invite you to share your favourite elf card, combo or build in the comments below.
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Joraga Green

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Happy Monday MTG fans,

As the Worldwake spoiler well has run bone dry, we have to wait until the official Wizards previews begin next week. With this time we thought we might as well revisit that new Worldwake Elf Lord Joraga Warcaller as we have been giving it some thought as to how it may impact the casual standard Magic the Gathering environment.

One choice that has been yattered about is to slide this very excellent new card into a modified 'Eldrazi Green' deck. If you are not aware, 'Eldrazi Green' has not only been seeing some popular casual play but also has been venturing into some tournament play as well.

Here are some of the typical existing cards one would see in these decks . . .
Artifact : Eldrazi Monument

Creatures : Ant Queen, Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Visionary, Great Sable Stag, Llanowar Elves, Master Of The Wild Hunt, Nissa's Chosen, Noble Hierarch.

Planeswalkers : Garruk Wildspeaker, Nissa Revane

Lands : Forests and a deck set of Oran-rief, The Vastwood.

Right off the hop, we see that Eldrazi Monument really shines in a deck that consistently pukes tokens out each turn but starts to loose its appeal as we do not have anything (yet!) that produces Elf tokens. We are unsure whether there will be such an Elf token generator in the rest of Worldwake but for the moment, it appears we have a road block - that is unless you play extended with the likes of Elvish Promenade, Imperious Perfect, etc.

You may not want a full deck set of Eldrazi Monument, but certainly will want to keep Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Visionary, Nissa's Chosen and Nissa Revane. After this, a careful selection of other Elves are in order - perhaps you even want to consider introducing a cascade mechanic with Bloodbraid Elf.
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A quick reference for Joraga

Joraga Warcaller, (Rare)
Creature - Elf Warrior
Multikicker 1 (You may pay an additional {1} as you play this spell as many times as you choose.)
Joraga Warcaller enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each time it was kicked.
Other Elf creatures you control get +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on Joraga Warcaller.
1/1

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Wherever you pilot this deck, you will most likely want to try to dump as many +1/+1 counters on Joraga Warcaller as possible. Your choices are Sigil Captain, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, Ajani Goldmane and Quest for the Gemblades and even Blade of the Bloodchief. Perhaps you may not even want to multikick this card when you play it put hold onto some extra mana in the event that your opponent will want to kill it as soon as it enters the battlefield. We suggest that you at least one green mana for Vines of Vastwood which may work in your favour.

We are unsure that we will see some other lovely Worldwake cards coming out to support this but we do know that wherever the chips will fall, you will have some fun building a deck with this critter. Take a minute and drop a comment as to what your fiendish plans are for this build.

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Now for something completely different . . .

We're sure everone has dropped into their local games store to pick up cards . . .
BUT . . .

What if you are in a hurry to catch a train and know that you have the next several hours to kill. Instead of catching up on some sleep, you and your MTG buddy should drop some coins into this vending machine on the train platform. This machine is found at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof trainstation and in our opinion a very cool idea.

Photo cred to Sapphireblue.