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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Deck Ideas - WWK Elves

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Good Day MTG peeps,

With the newest Magic the Gathering set now out, Worldwake, there appears to be a lot of players out there looking to either build a new deck or tweak an existing one.

To this end, we decided to run a series of articles providing some very general deck ideas. NOTE - these decks are meant for FUN casual kitchen table play or for standard constructed play at Friday Night Magic. You will note that the cards we choose may not be quite budget but will certainly not include expensive bombs the like of Wallet-Slayer Angel. We would like you to have a look and tweak these to your style as you see fit. Please drop us a comment

The next deck idea up is post Worldwake Elves. Following are our ideas for two Elf variants - we had not the heart to suggest the number of each card to run - we leave this up to you to tweak and test.

Maindeck

Llanowar Elves - The original lawnmower elf is still kicking it ramp style. A perfect one drop to accelerate your game.

Joraga Warcaller - We suggest you DO NOT drop this on turn one - or even turn two for that matter - you want to be able to multikick the heck out of this to pump him and all your other Elves. You may want to test ways to dump +1/+1 counters on him (like Quest for the Gemblades or Strength of the Tajuru).

Scattershot Archer - Great card to keep the skies clear of flying bird tokens (a la Emeeria Angel) - trouble is, this card is not that great until you get a Basilisk Collar on him - now we're cooking with a timmy point of deathtouch to any flying critter.

Vines of Vastwood - great instant to temporarily give one of your critters shroud-lite and a solid boost to boot.

Elvish Visionary - Card draw equals card advantage in our opinion - having no cards in hand equals little or no options.

Nissa's Chosen - Even without the Elf Planeswalker, this guy is not that bad. Great chump blocker who will almost always find its way back into your library.

Greenweaver Druid - Stage two booster rocket for mana acceration - you may not really need this unless you decide to run some big green fatties late game.

Elvish Archdruid - Great Elf Lord who not only pumps your elves but also serves mana salad.

Nissa Revane - two positives are great for a P/W. Your options are to chump out a critter or life gain - not bad. The third ability is likely to be totally devastating to your opponent. I have seen the third ability resolve at least thrice - it's controller won each game.

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood - great pump from a land and a favourite card among many running a green deck. We suggest you align the planets to get an additional counter on Joraga Warcaller.

Forest - off course

Elf Ally optional build

> There are not a whole lot of support in the Elf Ally folder in Worldwake - mind you, we think these are some fairly decent cards to kick some additional synergy into an Elf build but we think this will see a lot of play in casual fun decks. Again ally builds really need a truckload of allies.


Nature's Claim - situational but may prove worthy depending upon how dangerous that artifact or enchantment is.

Canopy Cover - We love this aura. Shroud and limited evasion is plain good.

Vastwood Animist - time to animate some land. We prefer to use Awakener Druid to churn out a 4/5 Treefolk but this card may have its uses.

Tajuru Archer - again, this card becomes more dangerous with the more allies you have on the table.

Joraga Bard - meh. vigilance until end of turn.

Turntimber Ranger - We like this guy. Whenever an ally hits your side of the table, this gets pumped and pukes out a 2/2 wolf token.

Strength of the Tajuru - This may be sweet with Joraga Warcaller.

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Anywhoos - Whichever your casual build takes you we hope you have a ton of Vampire fun - tweak this, take this out for a spin at the kitchen table or to your FNM and get back to us with your comments, feedback or constructive criticism.

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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.