Elves! falls into a strange position after Eighth Edition cycles into Standard. Engineered Plague, Elves' most hated card, goes away. MBC, one of Elves' worst matchups, is virtually unplayable without Corrupt and Duress. Psychatog, another problem deck, takes a couple of hits, losing the aforementioned Plague and downgrading Counterspell to Mana Leak. Mirari's Wake runs into similar Counterspell problems in a post-Seventh Edition environment.
Yet, in spite of all of this, Elves is actually a significantly weaker deck with Eighth Edition in Standard. Part of the reason for this seemingly illogical conundrum lies in the decklist of the current Elves decks. Here is what an average one looks like.
Elves!
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Taunting Elves
4 Bloodline Shaman
4 Seeker of Skybreak
4 Wellwisher
4 Wirewood Herald
2 Caller of the Claw
4 Timberwatch Elf
4 Wirewood Pride
4 Karplusan Forest
4 Wirewood Lodge
4 Wooded Foothills
8 Forest
Sideboard
1 Caller of the Claw
2 Elvish Lyrist
4 Flaring Pain
4 Forgotten Ancient
1 Mountain
3 Naturalize
Elves loses three cards from this build with the rotation of Eighth Edition: Seeker of Skybreak, Llanowar Elves, and Karplusan Forest. Fortunately, Seeker of Skybreak has an obvious replacement in Wirewood Symbiote - although the Symbiote is not an Elf, it works well in the deck, untapping important Elves, saving them from certain death, and abusing Wirewood Hivemaster. All Elves decks that did not run it before the rotation can easily put it in now.
On the other hand, there are no clear successors to the two other cards, but both have potential replacements. Llanowar Elves could be replaced by Birds of Paradise, which would accelerate the deck and compensate for the loss of Karplusan Forest. However, with Wirewood Symbiote already reducing the number of Elves in the deck, adding Birds would further dilute the abilities of Wellwisher, Bloodline Shaman, Timberwatch Elf, and Wirewood Pride.
There is an elvish replacement possibility, though, in Elvish Pioneer. Unfortunately, with no more than twenty lands, the Elves deck rarely draws three of them by the second turn. Whenever Elves stalls at two lands, as it so often does, Elvish Pioneer does not help at all, making it an ineffective replacement for Llanowar Elves.
Meanwhile, Karplusan Forest also has two possible replacements in Shivan Oasis and City of Brass; however, neither really works. To start, Shivan Oasis is simply too slow for the deck. Elves need to have access to as much mana as it can on every turn - most importantly the first. That makes the tapland unplayable.
But City of Brass is not a good choice either. With Elves having an already-shaky matchup against all non-U/G Madness beatdown decks, City of Brass just makes things worse. The advantage of having a red splash simply does not make up for the mandatory City of Brass pain.
One of the biggest mistakes in deckbuilding is assuming that there is an effective replacements to every card. Take, for instance, Rishadan Port. Back when it was legal in Standard and Masques Block Constructed, practically every deck ran four. This made them extremely expensive in the singles market; those who could not afford them constantly looked for a replacement, but no card could come close to replacing it without taking up non-land slots in the deck. To do so would defeat the purpose of the Port, meaning there were no playable replacements to the card.
The same is true for Llanowar Elves and Karplusan Forest with Eighth Edition. While many other cards have obvious replacements, like Mana Leak for Counterspell, Llanowar Elves cannot be effectively replaced by a card with a similar ability. That leaves four open slots in the deck and the loss of a red in the sideboard.
First off, the open slots can easily be replaced by a couple of utility Elves and mana. Given that there are still some strong enchantments around in a Plague-free Standard, including Compulsion and Story Circle, having a couple of Elvish Lyrists in the maindeck to destroy them does not hurt. As for the other two slots, a couple of Forests fill the mana void from Llanowar Elves.
As for the sideboard, which splashed red to get Flaring Pain in order to stop Moment's Peace, a card from Eighth Edition seamlessly replaces it: Defense Grid makes Moment's Peace highly uneconomical, and basically shuts down counterspells. This comes at the expense of Caller of the Claw, which would cost six to cast with a Grid in play. That makes the third Caller and Mountain in the sideboard no longer necessary.
To replace one of them, the fourth and final Naturalize can be added. But that still leaves three open slots, coming from the other of the two and the pair of Elvish Lyrists. In order to fill them, yet more expensive hate for R/G in the form of Phantom Centaur should make up the final three places in the sideboard. That leaves the Eighth Edition version of Elves looking like this:
Elves!
4 Birchlore Rangers
2 Elvish Lyrist
4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Taunting Elves
4 Bloodline Shaman
4 Wellwisher
4 Wirewood Herald
2 Caller of the Claw
4 Timberwatch Elf
4 Wirewood Pride
4 Wirewood Lodge
16 Forest
Sideboard
4 Defense Grid
4 Forgotten Ancient
4 Naturalize
3 Phantom Centaur
However, Elves only loses some of its power from switching to Eighth Edition cards. The rest of the loss comes in a swing in the metagame. Although U/G Madness will never go away, its popularity has been waning since this year's National Championships began. With Elves having what a matchup equivalent to a bye against U/G, the deck wants to see as many of those decks being played as possible. With Madness making up fewer decks in the Standard field, Elves can no longer count on multiple byes over the course of a long tournament.
Perhaps the main reason for U/G Madness waning away is Zombies. Before Seventh Edition, this was a large problem due in large part to Engineered Plague. Without that, though, Elves has a much easier time of winning, with only Mutilate as a huge threat. However, with Duress and Corrupt leaving Standard as well, Zombies' popularity will likely drop significantly as well, making the new found success against it much less relevant.
At the same time, R/G Beats has risen in popularity due in large part to Zombie arrival. While Elves do not flat out lose to burn and green men, they certainly do not have a favorable chance against them. Still, after all of the Elves get fried in the first game, Forgotten Ancients and Phantom Centaur help tremendously afterwards, replacing a Taunting Elf, the Elvish Lyrists, and the Wellwishers, which would otherwise be nullified by Sulfuric Vortex. This fat gives Elves a chance at surviving through burn spells while blocking and killing their creatures.
Meanwhile, Elves still cannot win the first game against Wake. During the second and third game, the deck relies extremely heavily on Defense Grid, which replaces four copies of Wirewood Pride. When Elves! draws the Grid, Mana Leak, Rewind, and Moment's Peace are become terrible, while severely weakening Cunning Wish and Renewed Faith. In order to remove it, the Wake player must counter it with Mana Leak if they went first, or Cunning Wish for Ray of Distortion. The first case is dependent on multiple variables, while the second is extremely time-consuming. That means whenever Elves draw a Defense Grid in the opening hand, the deck can hardly lose.
Unfortunately, during the other times, the Wake player is free to dominate the game with all of their powerful spells like they do in the first game. Considering that the first game is an autoloss, while the second and third games practically hinge on playing Defense Grid (although sideboarded Naturalizes for Taunting Elves and two Wellwishers help), Wake is certainly one deck that any Elves player would want to avoid.
Fortunately, Elves has a strong matchup against the other major control deck in Standard: Psychatog. Before, with Engineered Plague, the games against 'Tog were decided by the Tog drawing a Plague or not. Since that is no longer an out for Psychatog, Elves are free to go all-out on a control deck without any mass removal, using a similar sideboarding strategy as with Wake, exchanging Wirewood Prides for Defense Grids.
Astral Slide, however, is an entirely different story. With mass removal of all sorts, Slide can dominate all of Elves' creatures, making for extremely lopsided results. And since MBC, one of the biggest reasons not to play Slide, fades out with Eighth Edition, cycling decks figure to make up a larger part of the Standard metagame - much to the chagrin of Elves. Defense Grid is no help, unlike with the other two control decks, leaving Naturalize replacing Wirewood Pride as the only sideboard change Elves! can make.
So, among the five biggest decks in Eighth Edition Standard (Madness, R/G, Wake, Psychatog, and Astral Slide), Elves has two extremely good matchups, two extremely bad matchups, and one even one. That makes it a strong, but not spectacular choice, for the upcoming World Championship, Grand Prix: Atlanta, and other Standard tournaments starting in September.
William Spaniel
williamjspaniel@yahoo.com
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