If you have them, you probably want 4x Magus of the Moon... it is easier to remove than Blood Moon, but does 2 damage per turn.  This card + Tarmogoyf is probably the strongest plan your deck has.

  Other than that... Mogg Fanatic seems underwhelming.  Removing opposing card draw (Confidant) is nice, so they may have a place, but they don't look like they'll push through for much damage.  Lotus petal also seems weak, especially with Null Rod.  I would look into replacing that card, and possibly the fanatics, with some combination of G/R spirit guides to get your 2 and 3 mana creatures into play faster.  Wheel of Fortune is probably a bad card to play with Magus of the Moon in play... by shutting down their mana, you really slow their chances of finding more lands, getting out of the soft lock... unless you hand them 7 new cards, one of which might be a basic land.

  I also like Manamorphose... it's a crappy card but keeps you playing green spells under the Moon, and as long as you have 2 mana in play is free in terms of cards/mana.  I would consider running it before the 4th Wasteland and 4th Library.

  I agree with the people who think it might be slow for your deck to get up to BB and UU in order to Hymn/Counterspell consistently.  I also think you can free up at least one slot by cutting Tendrils; without Yawgmoth's Will or maindeck Rebuild it doesn't look like you would be able to win very often by that route.

  I've also been working on a discard deck, but it goes in a different direction from yours... and doesn't have the requisite 4x Hymn that you want to keep.  I'll post it anyway, though, because I think it takes a less mana-intensive approach to the problem you're trying to address with the counterspells... that discard is all sorcery speed (except for the black spellbomb) and so discard alone can't defend you against whatever the other player draws.  My solution, instead of aiming to hold a counterspell, was to slap in 4x Magus of the Moon.  It looks like this creature would be very irritating for most of the format right now, keeping most oath decks off green, dredge decks off bazaar, and even decks with plentiful basic lands to fight wasteland away from their fetches.

4 Magus of the Moon
2 Gorilla Shaman
1 Orcish Settlers
4 Dark Confidant
4 Leyline of the Void

4 Duress
4 Thoughtseize
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoth's Will

1 Dead / Gone
4 Manamorphose
1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt

1 Strip Mine
4 Badlands
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Swamp

  But in essence I agree with your plan of complimenting the discard with some other form of disruption... I just think that mana denial might prove more effective as a complimenting strategy since it's faster to slap onto the table in parallel with a bunch of duress effects.

  The concern about welder seems unnecessary... if you're afraid of null rod being welded out, you could always just side out the moxes (to remove the only really easy shaman target), and then you won't have artifacts in your graveyard... and if you're afraid of it being used to dodge mana denial, you could keep wheel of the sun and moon in the side, for welder and dredge.

  In general, though, I think I agree that steppe linx could be a lot faster than the kudzu or tarmogoyf.  And enlightened tutor would definitely be nice to see... certainly seems to warrant a place in the deck before 4x bazaar.

  I've always liked your bauble deck, but I'm curious to know whether you've tried a version with 3-4 Repeal and 2-3 Erayo.  I'd like to think that would improve fish and tezz more than adding Dark Confidant would, but haven't tried it personally.

Delaying by a turn in order to play duress doesn't seem that bad.  Certainly seems less bad than delaying by a turn to use spell pierce, since you can reduce their options for that turn by taking a card.

This deck seems like it could be... not necessarily viable, but at least fun to build as a budget version.  To do that you would probably want to run just green and black, load up on duress and replace the blue draw with dark confidant.  Maybe something like:

4 Hermit Druid
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Narcomoeba
4 Elvish Spirit Guide

1 Worldly Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dread Return
1 Dragon Breath
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
3 Duress
4 Null Rod

4 Bayou
4 Llanowar Wastes
2 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Overgrown Tomb

I think the most surprising thing about your deck is that you compliment the 7 strip/waste/rotation with only a single gorilla shaman.  Especially with the golem and no chalice of the void, I would expect that you'd want a second shaman, or, if you weren't too afraid of null rod, a copy of karn.  Your list looks like you were already running out of room in the deck, but I'd consider swapping the maindeck bridge for another shaman effect.

Otherwise, good luck at the event.

@ Zombie:

  Your decklist looks reasonable, but maybe slowing the deck down to have this alternate plan isn't the best option... Progenitus instead of comboing out is an extra threat, but gives another two turns for the opponent to play.  Something that might work a little better would be using your build as a base for a legacy deck, since you've already started cutting out skullclamp, the only really powerful card the deck loses to switch over to legacy.

  The other main recommendation I'd make would be to reduce the number of forests and add quirion ranger in their place... maybe drop two forests and a symbiote for 3 rangers.  You should be able to make most of your first and second turn land drops and also get a little more out of llanowar elves that way.

Your anti-mana drain plan sounds reasonable.  I move out the symbiotes a lot too.

One thing you might consider (and that I am considering), is replacing at least one of your elvish archdruids in the sideboard with joraga warcaller.  You can probably get 3/3 elves that way, and it's not a totally dead draw if you're trying to start the combo, because it's still a one mana elf.  I might try to fit one into the main deck as a potential pact target.

http://magiccards.info/rep/en/15.html

Thanks for posting your list.  The differences between yours and mine all seem reasonable - the fetchlands in my current list are geared more toward having black mana for duress in the sideboard than for deck thinning, and the duress might get cut anyway.  Still working on it.

  The number of mana sources seems similar, too.  My list has 14 mana sources for the first turn, and yours has 16, so maybe that's easier in terms of having enough mana to at least start cranking out elves in the opening hand.  I am leaning toward putting in at least one ESG, probably in place of fastbond.

  A few minor questions, though:

• If you start trying to combo out with clamp, how often does your deck run out of mana?
• Can you still combo out ever if you side out nettle sentinel?  Or is that one of the things you cut when you play against workshops?
• Do you play against any/many mana drain decks?  If so... do you sideboard anything?

  But, overall, it looks like your list is a touch slower than the list I've been working on, but probably a lot less bad against workshops.  I'd be interested to know how your list fairs against Tezzeret, also, but probably you won't have to play too many of those for your no power tourney : )

  Um, as a general comment... if you have them typed out, could you post the decklists you're using?  Kind of difficult to assess whether the number of ESG, etc. is right just thinking about having them in a hypothetical elves deck : )

@merfolkOTPT:

  I agree that elvish spirit guide makes the deck faster, but worry about the number of lands, having to mulligan.  My deck currently has 14 (counting the mox and black lotus, because 3 mana at once is basically a permanent mana source for this), plus the bonus number 15 Gaea's cradle, which is useless unless you're trying to combo out with skullclamp.  But maybe fastbond should be an elvish spirit guide, since fastbond usually only adds maybe 2 mana on its own (3 lands in hand, but need to cast it) and doesn't really speed up the beginning of the game, since you'll only have extra lands if you're already drawing, winning.

  As a pointless aside about ESG, also, I've seen budget lists with lotus petal and <4 ESG, which seems terrible.

@rpf5029:

  Xantid swarm, yeah, I've considered and mostly discounted it too.  I was thinking about having more eternal witness in the sideboard, though.  Do you think that's too slow?  It seems like that could be right sideboard plan to address both counterspells and duress, as it would allow you to pull back your glimpse/clamp and try again.  Have you tested this?  I haven't yet.


 

@ rpf5029

...congratulations on the tournament performance... 3-2 isn't that bad using a bunch of elves in vintage, I would think.  It's probably unreasonable for me to aim much higher than that : )

  Most of my testing of this deck has been with two windows of mindless automaton pulled up next to each other, testing against workshop, oath, and tezzeret decks, so my decklist probably can't be trusted too much at this point.  I will let you know how the cards I've put in fair after playing in an actual tournament.  So far, though, crop rotation doesn't feel too terrible; it lets skullclamp function, since that seems to take a lot of mana to pull off.  If gaea's cradle isn't in your maindeck, though, then there'd be no reason to even consider crop rotation.

  And, based on the look of your sideboard, am I correct in assuming that you don't side in anything against combo decks?  Or were you just not expecting to play any?

In general, I suppose I agree that it would be easier to beat the big fancy decks by playing something other than stasis.  But if you wanted to try to make that deck, I'd try something like this:

4 Stasis
4 Chain of Vapor
1 Boomerang
4 Root Maze
4 Elephant Grass

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
1 Thwart
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce

1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Gush

1 Tinker
3 Black Vise
1 Sundering Titan

1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
3 Forsaken City
8 Island


  Elephant grass is basically the same as propoganda, except that you can play it on the first turn... and then it dies soon.  Forsaken City lets you keep stasis going, or chain of vapor lets you return it to your hand, untap, and then hope it doesn't get countered when you play it again.  And presumeably black vice plus root maze would deal 20 damage sooner than trying to mill someone.

  If you can't run any proxies, the mana artifacts could be islands, and ancestral recall could be something cheap like opt.

Ha, the deck looks good.  Nice to have more than one single strategy to go for in a combo deck.

It looks like one might even be able to put something together that preserves the general idea in a low / no proxy environment by replacing the painter's servant combo with oath of druids, and just filling up the mana with dark ritual.  Something along the lines of:
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Serum Powder
2 Ill-gotten Gains
4 Helm of Obedience

4 Duress
4 Thoughtseize
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

3 Nature's Claim
2 Pernicious Deed
4 Oath of Druids
1 Iona, Shield of Ephemera
1 Krosan Reclamation

4 Dark Ritual
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Bayou
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Swamp
1 Strip Mine

...some of the synergies vanish, like the ability to use serum powder for anything useful after drawing a starting hand, but it was still fun trying to think of a way to put together a more budget-friendly adaptation of your deck.

  I agree, playing TPS seems like it would give about 3-fold better odds of winning most matches than playing elves... but the difference is that for a 10 proxy tournament, I can put together elves for under a hundred, whereas TPS would be at least 3-fold more (since I haven't played for a few years and, of the expensive cards, only have 4x Force of Will... Bayous are the only dual lands I own).  So my plan is just to optimize the elves deck and just come up with as good a chance as possible.

  And, metagame... the decklists from recent tournaments look like the usual suspects (several Tezz, one oath, one workshops, several fish, several random) show up.  And I don't know how new cards will change that.  Lodestone Golem will make workshops more powerful, and having workshops run more creatures will make oath more powerful, both of which are bad for elves, but maybe an increased number of workshops will lead some oath decks to switch from Iona to Tyrant, which would be less horrible for elves to face.  Who knows?

  My updated deck and sideboard is:

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Regal Force
1 Eternal Witness
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Viridian Shaman

1 Grapeshot
3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Skullclamp

1 Fastbond
1 Crop Rotation
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
2 Bayou
4 Forest
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Windswept Heath

SB: 3 Nature's Claim
SB: 2 Seal of Primordium
SB: 1 Viridian Zealot
SB: 1 Bayou
SB: 4 Duress
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 Ravenous Trap

  I tried to put in more answers for oath and workshops, and changed the sideboard land to a bayou so that it can side in along with the duress against combo / counterspell decks without wasteland.  Now I am trying to plan out which cards should actually start in the sideboard, and which should start in the maindeck... the deck / sideboard split is currently tuned for goldfishing, which seems suboptimal in *any* metagame : )  Does anyone have any experience or suggestions regarding putting in duress effects or more enchantment/artifact destruction into the maindeck, and whether, if one were to do that, it is even worthwhile keeping fastbond in the sideboard in case you want to tune the deck just to race?

  Aye, that card (Nature's Claim) would be good for killing Sphere of Resistance or Lodestone Golem, and much better than anything I currently have for killing Tanglewire, but it would be pretty lousy at killing Chalice (1), and that seems to be the absolute biggest threat.  My hope is that many workshop decks will switch from Sphere of Resistance to Thorn of Amethyst instead, but that's still 13 deadly cards against elves... (4 Chalice, 4 Tangle Wire, 4 Lodestone Golem, 1 Trinisphere).

  Given that it can't hurt Chalice, and that's the most deadly effect, more than 2 Nature's Claim seems bad... and I don't know if having any would be better than the same number of Seal of Primordium.

...the forum gave me a warning that I should start a new thread instead of replying... but I'll try this first.

I am trying to build a sideboard for this deck.  I looked at the sideboards that people have posted, but they don't feel right to me... for instance, I don't know how valuable the Xantid Swarms would be, as the deck already seems to have pretty good results against slower, controllish decks with counterspells, and I don't think you would ever side them in when trying to deal with TPS decks having Force of Will...

My goal was to load up on cards to try to fix matches against workshops, especially considering that many people may try playing workshop decks now with 9+ sphere effects, potentially many of them lethal.  And I am not particularly keen on running the new 1 mana green "destroy target artifact" spell, as one of the most important artifacts to kill is Chalice at 1.

My current list is:

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger

2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Eternal Witness
1 Regal Force
1 Viridian Shaman

1 Crop Rotation
1 Grapeshot
1 Fastbond

3 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Skullclamp

1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
2 Bayou
4 Forest
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Windswept Heath

SB: 2 Seeds of Innocence
SB: 1 Gaea's Herald
SB: 1 Viridian Zealot
SB: 1 Seal of Primordium
SB: 2 Forest
SB: 4 Duress
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt

...and I've been siding out:
1 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Eternal Witness
1 Regal Force
1 Crop Rotation
1 Grapeshot
1 Fastbond
1 Summoner's Pact

  to put in the top 7 cards against workshop decks.  This obviously makes it harder to combo out and win in one turn, but I haven't seen many sweepers (other than the occasional balance) in workshop decks.  Something still feels off, though, and the games are still awkwardly difficult.  Any suggestions?