Topic: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

Apologize in advance for my long-windedness.

So I went to my first FNM this last week.  Definitely had some fun, and that was mainly because of the deck that I was playing.  Here's the Deck.
It took everybody by surprise, for several reasons.

  1. Nobody plays "Elfball" type decks in the current meta

  2. I had the capability of dumping my entire library to the battlefield, and did so several times.  Once on Turn 4.

How did I do this?  Extreme mana ramp + Primal Surge.  It was the only non-permanent card in my entire deck, so if I ever played it I could put as much of my library into play as I wanted, including my two Craterhoof Behemoths to trample over with everything.  My first game of the night I did exactly that on Turn 4.  I explained the situation that my entire library was permanents and then he and I literally flipped the entire thing (minus a handful of cards, so I wouldn't deck myself) over onto the battlefield; he conceded right then.  Got to do the same thing another couple times as well.

Sadly, with 16 mana dorks composing a majority of the deck, there isn't much I can do if they decided to destroy a few of them in the first few turns.  And after the first game with each person, that is generally what happened.  I knew it was too good to last.  Oh well, it was a hell of a good time.

___________________________________________

Moving on, I decided that I'd like to try making another fun deck for the next FNM that I attend.  This time around I'm hoping to do the same type of thing of taking people by surprise, but in a totally different way.  Here is the deck I have right now.

The idea is to make use of those unblockable guys, like Invisible Stalker.  But instead of just pumping them up for the win, instead use them to activate crazy awesomeness via Elbrus, the Binding Blade // Withengar Unbound.  Using the Grand Architects and plethora of blue creatures to quickly pump out some of my bigger artifacts, like Elbrus, Staff of Nin and Wurmcoil Engine (Yes, I know I should probably have more of them, but they're expensive).  Then, once I have the big guys up, hopefully I can protect them with a smattering of counters and such.

I'm debating about which creatures and artifacts I all want to include though.  For instance, Blighted Agent brings a secondary win condition with poison, but the Neurok Invisimancer allows me to possibly make Elbrus unblockable when it actually comes down to that.  And Moonsilver Spear could be a great addition with unblockability, because it is essentially a free 4/4 flier every turn, but I'm not sure what I can compromise to bring it in.

Also, I'm trying to debate if I need to get some more, better qualified blockers into the mix to help buy me some time (Fog Bank?) or if I'd rather just race other aggro type decks.

Thoughts anybody?
Thanks!

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Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

It's funny, someone was running a mono-blue deck trying to do exactly what you are at Game Day at my LGS and I was trying to convince him to add green for ramp, and now you're doing the opposite, well I can give you some advice from his deck, Dissipation Field is amazing at slowing other decks down and just being annoying. He also used Argentum Armor which can be sweet if it actually works out. I wouldn't recommend Blighted Agent, I've never found using Infect as an alternate win condition to be effective, it leaves your opponent with 6 posion counters and like 4 life and then you die, use latch seeker or artful dodge if you need more unblockable sad I noticed that in the deck he was using he never got up to enough mana, as such I would suggest either adding ramp or Vapor Snags to slow down your opponent. This seems like an interesting idea and it actually worked out for the guy playing it, he got second overall

EDIT: Just looked at your sideboard and realized half of my suggestions were already in there. Oops

Last edited by imsully2 (2012-08-07 03:10:47)

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Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

The one big reason that I might stick with the Blighted Agents right now is because I happened up this little number, Silver-Inlaid Dagger, which fits perfectly with both Blighted Agent and Invisible Stalker.

In a perfect world, things would fall into place like this:

  1. Island, Silver-Inlaid Dagger

  2. Island, Blighted Agent

  3. Island, Grand Architect, Tap Grand Architect to equip dagger on agent.  Swing for 5 poison.

  4. Swing again.  GG

That's a turn 4 kill with blue-aggro, assuming no disruption. That's pretty crazy in my mind.  And even with some disruption, it probably wouldn't take much after that.
And if I don't get that combo, the dagger on a stalker is almost just as scary since the stalker has Hexproof and can't be blown out of the water with targeted removal.

I do definitely like Dissipation Field though; very interesting card.  I have to get out of my EDH, don't do anything to piss people off, mindset to make use of some of those types of cards.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see how the deck does.  I'm already liking the looks of it, now I just need to test a few things out.

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Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

At least at my LGS there will be some sort of removal by t4 if not t0 (Gut Shot) and so to do all of that t3 then have the agent get killed would be a major thorn in the side, if you want to keep infect throw in some inkmoths and maybe a blightsteel as a 1 of.I agree that blighted agent + the knife is a really nice combo if it works out.

http://deckbox.org/users/imsully2

Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

Like I said, I've only played at one FNM, so I don't really know too much about the meta, here or anywhere else.  I'm not doubting that there are early removal spells, which is also why I want to keep the Invisible Stalkers in, possibly as an even more consistent win condition, and the agents are more just a bonus possible combo.

I think I might drop the two Staff of Nins for two more Silver-Inlaid Daggers, but I'm not entirely sure yet.  Like I said, I guess we'll just have to test it and find out! cool

Thanks for the feedback!

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Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

I'm surprised to hear that more people weren't running crazy elf ramp decks.  When they chose to reprint Elven Archdruid I had to chuckle, as he's just SICK if you can pair him with anything really expensive.  I run a casual elf deck that uses them to drop a big Stream of Life followed by a big Hurricane.  I guess the problem there being that green is lacking in X cost spells.  But you could easily fit Sands of Delirium in there for a totally different twist, as you could go about your business and in the event you get slowed down, well, just mill them for 10-20 cards per turn.

For the infect stuff, imsully has hit on most of the points I'd go after pretty well.  I was terrified of infect when I started playing again like 6 months ago, but have realized that it really isn't as dangerous as you'd think.  It would likely be much more effective to just put together an unblockable deck and run from there.  You could easily put in a variety of useful cards if you start thinking unblockable, with Trepanation Blade, Runechanter's Pike, anything with lifelink, even Cathedral of War (why not get a few extra exalted damage out of the unblockable guy?).

OR, again as imsully was going with, you can try for a more artifact centric deck, as this appears to be split in two directions here, with one hand wanting to work around unblockables and infect, with the other wanting to do cool stuff with artifacts.  Elbrus, the Binding Blade has always struck me as a cool card, but one that you're likely going to do way too much work for the benefit (a CMC of eight once you manage to get it equipped, then you need to get it through to transform, and then it needs to survive another turn to be able to lay waste - in a game of three mana Murder or one mana Tragic Slip/Vapor Snag that strikes me as a LOT of things needing to go right).  Props to you if you can get it to work, I wish I could be more help, but I'm just starting to turn my eyes to standard myself, and having not made it out to an FNM yet, I don't really know what you'll need to do to get it rolling down this path - maybe splicers and Tempered Steel?  Yeah, I don't know there...

Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

First back to your original post, yes fog bank is worth the slot, especially if you're going for Elbrus because it either locks down their early game attacks or else it just draws out their removal so they've got to waste a kill spell on your fog bank rather than your flipped Elbrus.

Now to TyWooOneTime's post: I could see trepanation blade being a really good card for several reasons, if you  get it out early game it completely screws over their land draws, i've seen people stuck most of a game with 2 lands because the top lands always get milled. The pike isn't nearly as effective in this build, there are 6 total instants/sorcerys in the deck so in an average game there'll be 2-3 in the graveyard, and that's really late game when you want to be swinging for lethal not for 3 damage.

As far as making Withengar Unbound unblockable, it doesn't really seem needed, he can only be blocked by black or artifact creatures with flying, basically his only fear would be Vampire Nighthawks but then you're probably better off just giving him first strike so that you gain board position while dealing most of the damage anyway.

I have been attending FNMs at my LGS along with some other assorted days pretty frequently lately and I've come to realize that there's two ways to look at it, either you drop cash and Net-Deck, you start with a basic deck and use FNM as a way to improve it, or you throw something crazy and fun together every week to throw people off, I do a combination of the last two, I have a couple decks that i've used there, a UW infect exalted deck that throws people off, a couple different mill decks, self mill and opponent mill, and then my deck that I'm actually trying to make really good, which is a little more boring design wise but I like winning from time to time and I've found that I can trade for extreme profit at my FNM, which lets me get the cards that I really want for my decks. Overall I'd say that building decks to keep people guessing is the most fun of the 3 but I've never actually Net Decked so I can't speak to that.

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Re: FNM Decks - Elven swarm & Elbrus

TyWooOneTime wrote:

I'm surprised to hear that more people weren't running crazy elf ramp decks...But you could easily fit Sands of Delirium in there for a totally different twist, as you could go about your business and in the event you get slowed down, well, just mill them for 10-20 cards per turn...

Then, add Tormod's Crypt to exile all cards from the opponent's graveyard...

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