I've been working on putting together a modern elf deck for the last few months. It's here. I really feel like it's the optimal build (or close to it), but it looks a bit different than the most popular builds. I'd love to hear advice. I'll explain some of my decisions.
The goal of this deck is to get the Ezuri overrun kill as early and as consistently as possible. When not heavily disrupted, I can almost always get there by turn 4, with a rare but possible turn 3 kill (especially if they're starting at < 20 due to lands). Ezuri is really the key to the whole deck. He protects my other elves and is the plan A win condition. This strategy seems faster, more consistent, and harder to disrupt than the plan of "go really wide and stick a shaman or two" that most elf decks seem to be going for.
Copperhorn scout is amazing, and I don't know why other elf players aren't using her. She's the reason I can pull off a turn 3 kill, or an overrun (or even double overrun) with as few as four creatures. She also let's me use Chord of Calling and Collected Company mid combat as a trick. I've been debating going up to 4 Copperhorns and down to 3 Nettle Sentinels. Elvish Visionary is great, but I just can't find the room for her. Every other creature card is absolutely vital to the strategy.
Shaman of the Pack is great, and a double Shaman turn can be a blowout, but really that's plan B for the deck. Vanilla 3/2 really isn't that great once she's on the table. She trades with or just dies to most other creatures in modern, so really she's only good for the EtB effect. Her EtB effect usually hits for about 1/4 to 1/2 my opponent's life total, leaving me to get the rest of the way there with either more SotP or creature combat. And often I'll only have 0-2 other elves in play, making her EtB effect pretty minimal. Since elves are all vanilla (in combat) ground pounders, it can be hard to force lethal damage through without Ezuri, and if I've got Ezuri, the life loss from SotP isn't essential. It helps, but I can usually get there with Ezuri alone.
In the sideboard:
Tajuru Preserver seems like a better answer to Living End than Viscera Seer since 1) it's an elf, so it has synergy with the rest of the deck, 2) it's green, making it a bit easier to cast, and 3) it's also an answer to Liliana OTV and other sacrifice effects.
Dauntless Escort seems great, and is in CoCo range. He protects against pretty much every board wipe. However, I haven't had a chance to test him out much yet to see if he's really worth a SB slot.
I'm thinking of putting a few Beast Within in the SB to deal with threats that otherwise lock me out, like an early Karn.
TL;DR: explanation of some of my specific deck construction decisions.
I'd love to get some advice on this deck. Does my strategy seem good, or would a more typical elf deck be stronger? (and if so, why?) I've been playtesting it casually a lot, and I won a small LGS tournament with it.
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