Thursday 21 May 2009

Deck tech - g/b elves rock

By Jim Marlow

Hey everyone,

Yep, Sunday is fast approaching, and if i make it to newcastle it will be the 4th nationals qualifier i have played in this year, so hopefully i can do the business this time. For anyone who has tracked my past events, i have played pretty much every deck in standard over the last month or so (obv except b/w, the good deck!), and i although i found a deck i like in the jund cascade deck, i wanted to try g/b elves to see if it really is worth playing.


Here's the list i have been testing with

4 x llanowar elves
4 x wren's run vanquisher
4 x putrid leech
4 x kitchen finks
4 x wilt leaf liege
2 x chameleon colossus

4 x infest
4 x maelstrom pulse
3 x thoughtseize
3 x profane command

4 x gilt leaf palaca
4 x twilight mire
3 x llanowar wastes
3 x treetop village
6 x forest
4 x swamp

S/B

4 x deathmark
1 x thoughtseize
3 x garruk wildspeaker
2 x cloudthresher
3 x mind shatter
2 x primal command

Overall im really happy with the deck. Chameleon colossus is a real problem for any deck playing g/b or jund colours because they can really deal with it, but wren's run vanquisher is good against it.

Obviously the infests in the main are a concession to the token and white weenie decks around.

Profane command is such a good finisher, and i think thoughtseize is key in the mirror or jund decks.

I think i have pretty much all bases covered with this deck, and i am really torn between this and the cascade deck. I think this deck is much better because of the lack of decent control decks at the moment, but knowing me if i play this i will play faeries and reveillark all day.

The only problem i can see really is the low elf count for the vanquisher and gilt leaf palace, but vanquisher turn 2 is not that important as this deck isnt meant to be super aggresive, and also i cut one of the treetop villages so that even if gilt leaf palace comes in tapped i havent got to many CIPT lands, plus i imagine treetop to be a prime pithing needle target nowadays.

Constructed criticism would be really helpful,


Enjoy.


Jim

As always, feel free to comment on anything about this article, or anything unrelated to magic whatsoever. If you would like to contribute to the TLM blog, please email any ideas, articles, pictures or anything else to ss07jm@leeds.ac.uk

3 comments:

  1. Hey Dude:)

    Been enjoying reading your articles, not really read into the state of standard much before and its quite an eye-openener.

    Was wondering if you intend to head down to London on the 30/05 for the qualifiers in Bloomsbury? I am considering it. Made a couple of new decks I'm keen to have a crack with, if you are going to be about campus tomorrow afternoon at all and fancy a few games then let me know as I finally have a few hours to myself!

    Take care, Seb

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  2. I honestly haven't seen anyone advocate Thoughtseize in Standard in a long time outside of Faeries, and even then it was overshadowed by Ponder et. al. It is a horrible Topdeck and only playing 3 means you are unlikely to have 1 in your opening grip all the time. You simply don't have enough of a discard-based strategy for the card being any more than paying 2 life to have both players mulligan. Instead you should play a more synergistic card for the deck or more creature-based removal like Shriekmaw or Murderous Redcap. In all honesty, I would go over to the 5 Colour Bloodbraid again - pet decks don't win tournaments, type 1 decks do. Also, there are no control decks around that need Mind Shattering at the moment and Scepter of Fugue outdated that card anyway. This deck would have been good a year ago but I don't believe it is viable for the current game.

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  3. Maybe thoughtseize in the board if you are going to run it, but not maindeck anyway.

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