Alchemy Meta Green-Black Elf: How To Make a Solid Deck?

With so Many Various Meta’s Floating Around, How do I Make a Solid Deck? This has been a question every Magic player has asked themselves at least once, and if you’re returning to the game after a years long break, well then you’ve probably asked yourself that question more than just once. Today’s goal is to remove the clutter that comes with deck editing, to push away all the various cards and effects being thrown in your face so that you can focus on what’s really important. Coincidently, this also will help the players that find it impossible to trim their decks to the 60-80 card range so that your pulls aren’t entirely left to the fickle RNG gods and programming of Arena. Below are a few bullets that one must remind themselves as they navigate all the possible options when it comes to deck selection.

Core Rules of Deckbuilding in MTGA

• First and foremost, choose an element that you’re comfortable with. I highly advise against playing a certain element just because you see it steamrolling others, as every element has a natural counter and sometimes a shield is better against a sword than another sword.
• Two, focus on a gimmick. Every deck needs a gimmick and this is what your deck is supposed to build towards. It’s your ace in the hole, the coup-de-grace. A good deck can win at least four different ways, a great deck can do that before turn ten. Some example gimmicks that go a long way are Red-Black treasure/haste/deathtouch, Blue-Black board control/flying/zombie, or white-green equipment/enchantment/deathtouch. It’s at this stage that so many players pad their decks unnecessarily. Focus on what you want to do, don’t worry about what you can’t do. If you don’t have that many kill cards or counter cards that’s not necessarily a problem if you’re building a deck that wins by turn ten or forces the opponent into harmful engagements.  
• Three, recognize that for every creature card you add there are probably three other cards that can do the same thing. Find those three cards and cross compare their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe one is a little weaker but the cost is cheaper, or maybe one needs more mana to spend but its effects make it worth it.
• Four, trim the fat. Whenever I make a deck I always end up in the 80-120 range for my cards and it’s often because I didn’t follow step two and three enough. Go through your deck and spot any duplicates, which is to say not four of the same card but four of one card and then another three that is different but effectively performs the same role. Case and point, unless you’re running a die-hard lifelink deck (which I hope you won’t) there’s no need for Impassioned Orator and Lunarch veteran to be in the same deck.
• Five, and this is the final step, take the deck for a test drive. Play friendly’s but try not to win as soon as possible. Anybody can win if they get a good hand and RNG, that’s not what you’re out there to prove. Play jazz with your deck, push it to its limits and discover things that you might not have realized when building it. Find out its hidden weaknesses, and find out what strengths you didn’t realize it could have. Remember, a good deck can win four different ways. Find out what those ways are.

Now that I’ve spoken as if I’m some great Magic Guru, despite the fact that I myself can rarely get my own decks down to 60, let me paint an example of a deck that can win four different ways. I’ll go over its strengths, weaknesses, and how you can apply that same thought process to other decks and elements.

Getting To Practice: Green-Black Elf Deck

My last article touched on an elf deck and I’m going to do so again, not because I’m a fanboy for anything elvish, but because elves in magic can do quite a lot. Many of them have reach, deathtouch, mana effects, and some of the black card elves do crazy things. To start I’ll lay out the four ways this deck can win and then show you how it achieves that.

alchemy-green-black-elves

Win 1: A thousand little jabs. You overwhelm the board with elvish tokens that can all get +2/+2 and deathtouch from a card effect. This requires four Elvish Warmaster and you would do incredibly well adding four Elven Ambush as they count tokens as well. Some people straight up quit when they watch eleven 1/1 tokens turn into twenty-two.

Win 2: by using win 1 in conjunction with Fynn the Fangbearer. All you need to do is hit the opponent five times and you win, which is especially easy to do when all you’re sacrificing is throw-away 1/1 tokens and they’re forced to defend with everything they got. Even if you don’t win you are forcing them into a board-wipe scenario. But be careful when you attempt a board-wipe. They are a lot like headbutting someone, nobody really wins unless it hurts them more than it hurts you.

Win 3: Win by simply existing. Okay so this one is my favorite because they never see it coming and you can straight up kill them without even attacking. In this instance you’ll need Skemfar Shadowsage which is absolutely dastardly. By gaining life equal to the amount of elves you have on the board, tokens included, you can prevent yourself from ever actually kicking the bucket; however, imagine what you could do by its other effect. The opponent loses life equal to the elves you control and since this deck is essentially about crapping out elves as quickly as possible by turn five or six you could do seven damage out of nowhere. This is also especially handy when you are going up against multiplication decks, as they often lead to these protracted stalemates where you don’t want to attack and leave yourself open to their 20 tokens and they don’t want to lose the army that they know will win in five more turns. If this step is how you truly wish to win then go hog wild and pad your deck with as many low cost elves you got, as long as you can defend yourself.

Win 4: Win by might. This one is a little harder, as it takes time to build and leaves you open to many unknowns. Winning by might is a way in which any deck and any element can win, however, it operates on the hope, not assumption but hope, that the other player doesn’t have many board control cards. To do this one I would recommend packing both Boreal Outrider and Canopy Tactician. The amounts for each are up to you, but by giving every elf you control a +1/+1 on top of the possible effects of Elvish Warmaster is devastating. This method is the most unreliable in my opinion because everyone and their cat now has board wipe spells. Once upon a time they all used to be mythic rare level cards but now they are incredibly easy to come by.   

I will include the decklist for this example, but I do not share it with hopes that everyone flocks to packing elves in their decks, but by illustrating that to create a Gold rank and above deck you need options. You need to be able to win different ways at varying speeds so you can accommodate any opposing deck. This way, if one of your most important cards get removed from play you are at least still in the game yourself.

The last piece of advice I will give is this: there is no “grandpa’s unbeatable deck” in magic. There are hundreds of Exodia type cards in magic so there is always a chance you will get steamrolled, and those chances are even greater if your pulls just happen to be bad. Because there is no “unbeatable deck” focus more on just enjoying the match, and if you’re grinding ranked play, take notice of your win/loss ratio. A good deck will only lose one out of four matches, a great deck will lose only once twice out of seven. Do not focus on the one or two losses you get beyond what they represent; a chance to further hone your deck. Happy dueling and don’t forget to pack your lands!