My thoughts on Legacy NO Elves
After watching Reid win the Legacy Open in Philadelphia with NO Elves, I decided to pick it up again.
I've had quite a bit of experience playing this deck through various iterations (including the LSV list right after PT: Berlin, and the Classic list with Earthcraft/Skullclamp), so it is like riding a bike for me.
The major differences between this deck and the previous iterations are: less focus on Llanowar Elves/Birchlore Rangers, and not having to win with Glimpse of Nature everytime.
It's fairly easy to assemble a lethal Craterhoof Behemoth (via NO, hardcast or GSZ) given that you have 4 Gaea's Cradle.
My personal list that I arrived at:
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
1 Savannah
2 Bayou
2 Dryad Arbor
3 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Natural Order
1 Birchlore Rangers
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
Sideboard
2 Mindbreak Trap
4 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Abrupt Decay
I will give a nod to giving credit to the well-deserved Andrew 'Gainsay' Cuneo for building the initial shell as far as I can tell.
With the best draw, Elves can kill on turn 2. I wouldn't rely on this since it involves the exact draw of turn 1 Fyndhorn, turn 2 Nettle, Heritage Druid -> Glimpse -> go off from there. The PT: Berlin list was much better at doing this given how many Llanowar Elves it played.
Some card choices:
I found that Deathrite Shaman wasn't actually a reliable mana producer a lot of the time, so I shaved 1 for a Birchlore Rangers. This could actually go back to being the 4th Llanowar Elves type of card, but I am far less sure about that. Deathrite is still quite good vs a lot of your less than ideal matchups (Reanimator / Dredge), so having 3 seems more than fine to me.
3 NO is enough for me, but I would actually consider going to 2. Having multiples clogged in your hand is the worst.
Having 3 basic Forests means that Blood Moon isn't AS good versus you (but it is still nearly unbeatable if you are on the draw and they turn 1 it...)
g1 is clearly not very good versus the faster combo decks, but g2/3 is much better.
They tend not to have a great backup plan vs massive amounts of discard, whereas your plan B of beating down is more than fine.
The 4th NO and Progenitus only come in versus other 'fair' decks, and in fact I often shave 1 Behemoth versus removal heavy decks since it loses a lot of value then.
I saw LSV playing a build with blue in it: http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=618656
It looks pretty interesting, but there's a few downsides to this plan.
Beck / Call costing twice as much is kind of meh, I think, and Blood Moon is actually the best possible card versus that list as well. You also lose being able to NO for Behemoth in g1, but that's not a huge loss.
I've had quite a bit of experience playing this deck through various iterations (including the LSV list right after PT: Berlin, and the Classic list with Earthcraft/Skullclamp), so it is like riding a bike for me.
The major differences between this deck and the previous iterations are: less focus on Llanowar Elves/Birchlore Rangers, and not having to win with Glimpse of Nature everytime.
It's fairly easy to assemble a lethal Craterhoof Behemoth (via NO, hardcast or GSZ) given that you have 4 Gaea's Cradle.
My personal list that I arrived at:
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
1 Savannah
2 Bayou
2 Dryad Arbor
3 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Natural Order
1 Birchlore Rangers
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
Sideboard
2 Mindbreak Trap
4 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Abrupt Decay
I will give a nod to giving credit to the well-deserved Andrew 'Gainsay' Cuneo for building the initial shell as far as I can tell.
With the best draw, Elves can kill on turn 2. I wouldn't rely on this since it involves the exact draw of turn 1 Fyndhorn, turn 2 Nettle, Heritage Druid -> Glimpse -> go off from there. The PT: Berlin list was much better at doing this given how many Llanowar Elves it played.
Some card choices:
I found that Deathrite Shaman wasn't actually a reliable mana producer a lot of the time, so I shaved 1 for a Birchlore Rangers. This could actually go back to being the 4th Llanowar Elves type of card, but I am far less sure about that. Deathrite is still quite good vs a lot of your less than ideal matchups (Reanimator / Dredge), so having 3 seems more than fine to me.
3 NO is enough for me, but I would actually consider going to 2. Having multiples clogged in your hand is the worst.
Having 3 basic Forests means that Blood Moon isn't AS good versus you (but it is still nearly unbeatable if you are on the draw and they turn 1 it...)
g1 is clearly not very good versus the faster combo decks, but g2/3 is much better.
They tend not to have a great backup plan vs massive amounts of discard, whereas your plan B of beating down is more than fine.
The 4th NO and Progenitus only come in versus other 'fair' decks, and in fact I often shave 1 Behemoth versus removal heavy decks since it loses a lot of value then.
I saw LSV playing a build with blue in it: http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=618656
It looks pretty interesting, but there's a few downsides to this plan.
Beck / Call costing twice as much is kind of meh, I think, and Blood Moon is actually the best possible card versus that list as well. You also lose being able to NO for Behemoth in g1, but that's not a huge loss.
posted by Jarvis Yu at 6:43 AM
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