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A Tribe Called Elf Quest

Commander / EDH Counters Elves Hexproof Mono-Green Primer Ramp Theme/Gimmick

Slashdance

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Creature (46)

Land (35)

Sorcery (6)

Artifact (4)

Planeswalker (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: Marwyn, the Nurturer

Enchantment (4)

Instant (3)

Maybeboard

Creature (20)

Artifact (4)

Enchantment (3)

Sorcery (3)

Instant (1)

Planeswalker (1)

Land (1)

FIRST, there was "Elf Quest":

Elfquest is a comic book property created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978. It is a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons.

THEN, there was "A Tribe Called Quest":

A Tribe Called Quest was an American hip hop group formed in St. Albans, Queens, New York, in 1985, originally composed of rapper and main producer Q-Tip, rapper Phife Dawg, DJ and co-producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and rapper Jarobi White.

AND NOW ... there is "A Tribe Called Elf Quest":

Back in the olden times of 2014, things were different ... far, far different from the world you know today. Most of the history of these days is lost to the winds of time and change.

Few recall how it all started. What we do know, however, is that shortly before this year, "Commander" became self-aware. "Legacy" and "Modern" were the first to fall, and "Standard" soon after, leaving the world war-torn and asunder. Gone, forever, were the days of slim, 60-card, efficient decks with multiple copies of favored spells; now, only massive stacks of singleton spells could survive such harsh conditions of the post-apocalyptic LGS landscapes.

Fewer still know the stories of a small regiment of elves that fought back against the menace, using the magic of nature and song and nasty, pointy arrow thingies to become one with a new kind of efficiency and turn the tide against the multi-colored Commander beasts. They became like a rap tribe of old, unstoppable in their combined strength; greater than their individual rap skills*.

THIS IS THEIR TALE ...

*note: Elves are excellent rappers. The Beastie Boys? All elves, btw. Now you know, and knowing is half the rap battle!

Upvote and support this Elfball deck!

Been playing a version of this deck for a long time and it's evolved a lot over the years. I recently pulled it out again and did a little updating.

Obviously, it's an elfball deck, and while the deck isn't super competitive, it IS super fun, full of synergy, and able to snowball into an avalanche at nearly any given moment.

Given that elves are one of the most developed tribes in all of Magic, and their natural ability to ramp or create card advantage for low amounts of mana, this deck can hang. As long as you're not trying to play competitive (cEDH) and keep up with 2-3 turn winning decks, you have good odds of lasting far into the late game with elves, so long as you aren't targeted early as archenemy #1. Ignore anybody who says 40+ elves is a poopy deck. Let them underestimate you, to their detriment.

Elves are super versatile, so why can't our commander be? Feel free to adjust your general to meet local conditions!

Our commander Marwyn, the Nurturer is pretty sweet. We were running Ezuri, Renegade Leader before, was very decent, but Marwyn does make the deck run smoother when she's in the captain's chair. She's relevant in turn 3, she's relevant on turn 12. Always relevant, always nurturing. We love her.

I can recommend Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury. Being able to create mana dorks out of thin air is wonderful, and her other abilities are icing on the cake.

Ezuri, Renegade Leader is a decent commander that can help against board wipes, targeted removal, and is a win condition in his own right, as it's not hard to have 7+ elves in play any given time, so having an additional 21 trample damage added to any attack is pretty sweet.

If you really want to lean into +1 counters, Rishkar, Peema Renegade is the commander for you. He can really do some work for both counters and mana.

Omnath, Locus of Mana may seem a little odd for Elf tribal, but as a commander it can be crazy good with all the mana we work up. However, we'd advice, perhaps, a couple more hydras and some extra X spells.

If, even with our anti-flying suite of cards, you are finding flyers to be too troubling in your meta (grrr, dragons!), Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen can be fantastic. Our deck will buff her up quickly into a blocking machine. But she has little use outside of that purpose.

The pair of Numa, Joraga Chieftain & Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood make for a fearsome duo.

Finally, Eladamri, Lord of Leaves is an ... interesting choice. He's great to lay down as a prelude to taking out the rest of the table, but may actually hurt you if he's out too early. Much of our deck needs to target our own dudes, so keep Eladamri in the command zone until you've established a devastating attack and you either need his Shroud ability, Forestwalk for everybody ability, or both.

For ramp, we rely on creatures (elves, of course), because they are far more synergistic than artifacts in this deck. We have 11 of these mana dorks, plus several more elves and sorceries that will also fetch us land. Even with a bad starting draw we can generally excel with mana over our opponents. Even our Commander is a dork. Some of our elves produce more than just 1 or 2 green mana, and have the capability for far, far more. Use the Sword of the Paruns to completely abuse such mana dorks!

Aside from creating an abundance of elves that are all buffed up and ready to fight for your right to party, our secondary win condition lay within one of our several large creatures we can bring to the board. But, honestly, these are simply removal bait. Before dropping an elf such as Allosaurus Shepherd, Drove of Elves, or Renata, Called to the Hunt, it is preferable to drop something like Primordial Hydra to bait out a counterspell or targeted removal. While we do have many cards that prevent our creatures from being countered or even targeted, this is what we do when those cards aren't already on the battlefield ... and then we drop our bomb elf and dance on our opponent's grave.

Aside from that, though, the deck is pretty straight forward. With over 30 elves and a ton of Basic Forests, the deck is very consistent. There is a lot of overlap in card effects, also increasing that consistency but also providing synergy over and over again. Still, there are enough unique things to keep games from getting boring. We also like change the deck up, trying new cards all the time.

Lot's of mana, lots of card draw, and lots and lots of elves. Oh, and a fair amount of flyer hate. We hate flyers.

While elves are our tribe of choice and our way to victory, card advantage is how we make them shine.

There are over 20 cards that are mostly devoted to drawing or searching for cards in our deck, though some simply create advantage by destroying multiple things at once, create token creatures for us, or return cards from our graveyard.

Be sure to mind all of your triggers and abilities! Create several elf tokens before casting things like Kindred Summons, and then be mindful of the order in which you resolve the elves you find. For instance an elf like Ivy Lane Denizen will want to resolve first to get the most counters out of it, or perhaps you want Viridian Shaman out first to destroy an opponent's artifact from exiling one of your next elves that will be coming into play. Not that there's a ton of stuff to monitor, but it's very easy to get into a mode where you just start dropping tons of elves in any old order because you're doing so much. Take a moment, take advantage of the stack, look over all your cards every time you cast something, and use all that card drawing and elf dropping to your advantage!

I would seriously come to any game with many elf warrior tokens.

Minimum number of other tokens you'll likely want to have:

  • 1/1 Elf Warriors ... 10x
  • 1/1 Elf Druids ... 6x
  • 3/3 Beasts ... 6x
  • 3/3 Elephants ... 3x
  • 0/1 Plants ... 10x

What I do is just use a free graphics program, like GIMP, and copy a bunch of tokens (shrinking them to be a bit smaller than a normal card to fit more) and print/cut them at home. A stack of paper tokens takes up less space than the thicker card versions.

As for +1/+1 counters, you'll want a lot. I find it much easier to use actual +1 counters than dice or glass beads.

Something like these: https://www.etsy.com/listing/617598261/

They make playing magic so much more enjoyable! I recommend at least 10x counters, if not 20+. Often you'll have more than 10 creatures needing counters on the board, or creatures that have have more than +6 worth of counters and you need to add a second die.

Here, I will show you the easy way to build on a budget by simply showing you an expensive card (over $10) and a budget replacement. Not all cards are going to have adequate effects when replaced, but the deck as a whole will still function with synergy and purpose.

Have fun!

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Casual

94% Competitive

Revision 5 See all

(1 year ago)

+1 Copperhorn Scout maybe
+1 Elvish Herder maybe
+1 Essence Warden maybe
+1 Llanowar Mentor maybe
Date added 10 years
Last updated 1 year
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

7 - 0 Mythic Rares

35 - 0 Rares

16 - 0 Uncommons

13 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.65
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Elephant 3/3 G, Elf Druid 1/1 G, Elf Warrior 1/1 G, Plant 0/1 G
Folders My Personal Decks, elf
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