The Dilemma
The third league day was looming on the horizon for me last week, and I had a problem: I did not want to play. All week long I was stressed and had a lot to do. I still went to the weekly Pauper hangout and played Magic. I didn’t enjoy playing Magic. Thinking about the game was boring, each match seemed like it was extremely predictable, and I’d much rather just go home and read a book.
Many people would see this as a sign to not attend the league for this month. But I have a goal for the whole league. Keep the Elf theme going. Play another Elf deck. Dress up as an Elf. The thought of trying to improve my elf costume stressed me out a lot, speaking as someone who doesn’t dress up very often.
I also didn’t know what deck I should play - I tried to make Spellstutter Sprite
+ Elves a reality in the weeks before, and I was unhappy with the list I had. I netdecked a list from GiorgioCombo but I had problems with it. I dislike having a Spider Man in my deck. Getting the color blue consistently was a problem. Having 7 non-creature sideboard cards is awful when you have both Winding Way
and Lead the Stampede
in your deck. I just didn’t like the list.
It was Friday, I was stressed out, I didn’t have a deck I was happy with, I didn’t want to play. So, what to do? I still wanted to participate. I wanted to be there, be an Elf, but everything was stressing me and I didn’t really want to play.
Deck Choice
I did not want to play the deck I had, so I had to decide on another deck. I have a few ideas floating around and I just decided to use fate. I gambled. I rolled dice.
Random chance chose Spy Elves for me. And I was very happy with this. What deck is better at not playing magic than Spy? You just play the guy and the game ends, one way or another. It’s perfect, really!
I checked my old list I had and made some changes. I sleeved it up and I had a deck ready for the league.
The Games
Honestly not very interesting. I don’t want to talk about the games, I want to talk about why this deck is interesting.
Elven Philosophy
I think there are two ways of how you can think about Spy Elves. The first is from the Spy perspective: Why change your Walls to Elves? I am not interested in this, cause I am not playing 8 different Spy decks.
The other way is from the Elf perspective. But why add something to your perfectly fine Mono Green Elves deck? Even in the Mono Green world your sideboard has a variety of choices. You can add a lot of removal deal with problematic creatures in the only problematic matchup. You can add a lot of big guys to be more of a midrange deck, to not be as vulnerable to boardwipes as with a lot of tiny elves.
Some people like to add counterspells because they’re afraid of board wipes, or just like to hold open 1 blue mana. You could, in theory, add red or black to have a boardwipe on your own. This might be particularly good in the mirror - if you have an Elf heavy meta (I take full responsibility for our Elf heavy meta during this league).
During my time in Pauper, I’ve learned that the best green cards are both Winding Way
and Lead the Stampede
. They allow you to win by pure card advantage alone. You can grind through grindy matches, fill your hand after board wipes, find threats and silver bullets. So why would I ever want to reduce my creature count in my deck, making these two cards worse?
I think there are some creature cards in other colors that are interesting.
First up, the aforementioned Spellstutter Sprite
to counter a critical card to win the game. Some people really like counter spells and I get it.A card that’s already seen play in Spy, Fang Dragon
to give you an edge in the mirror match.Mesmeric Fiend
to disrupt key pieces in opponents hands. I hear this was play in Elves during the Basking Broodscale Combo days.
And then there’s the Balustrade Spy. It does not only give you some sort of advantage, it also gives you a whole new wincon. It is relatively easy to adapt and Elf deck to have less lands and add Spy. You can commit too hard, however, I think. If you add too many sideboard cards that help your Spy gameplan - then you risk becoming more of a Spy deck. I think the advantage of putting Spy into Elves is having a combo that you can just ignore as needed.
This is why I opted to only put 1x Giant and 1x Dread Return into my deck. Yes, you might draw them and not combo - but you are also playing Elves. You can also win by attacking with your creatures.
Additionally, this gives you the flexibility to board out the entire combo! You can side out 4x Spy, 1x Giant, 1x Dread Return very easily, and just become a better, more consistent, Aggro/Midrange/ramp Elf Deck.
In my games, I have successfully shown the Spy combo and won a game with it, then sided it out, only for my opponent to side in graveyard hate. It is really quite a good feeling to do this.
The deck can also just look like Mono Green Elves! Game 1 is over and you haven’t shown any black cards or black mana? No reason to sideboard out the combo, it could always just randomly win the game!
I really like the flexibility of this deck. I think it is a serious deck! It doesn’t sacrifice much to add a little game ending combo to Elves, with the added flexibility of still just being Mono Green Elves after sideboard, and adding mindgames to a match.
It’s cool!
End Step
Saturday morning, a few hours before the league started, I didn’t want to go. Or maybe I wanted to go, but drop after going 0-1 or 0-2. I still packed my make-up bag with my Elf ears, I went to the venue. Once there, I wanted to be home. But I stayed and I played out the matches.
It was my roughest league mentally, I had a big moment of frustration in a game too, yet in the end I achieved my best result ever. I even beat Mono Red Madness, which I always face, but have never beaten before.
I don’t know what that means for the game, but I know that I’ll keep playing Elves. I’ll see y’all next league.