[Deck] Recycle Elves

[samus_ssp]

"Recycle Elves"

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 [card]Priest of Titania[/card]
2 [card]Wirewood Chandler[/card]

4 Quirion Rangers
4 Wirewood Symbiote

4 [card]Wirewood Hivemaster[/card]
4 Bloodline Shaman

4 Recycle
4 [card]Concordant Crossroads[/card]
2 Gaea’s Cradle
16 Forests

SB: (very tentative)
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Compost
4 Naturalize
3 Viridian Zelot


This deck is obviously not the most competitive.  There are probably better Elf decks out there even.  I like this deck and I want to run it. 

The point of this deck is to look innocent on turn 3 or 4 with a Crossroads and a couple of elves out.  Then to plop down a cradle, a couple of priests, and recycle; then to procede to quite litereraly flip your deck into play and attack.  The elves all have great redundancy, so as long as a have the combo pieces this is surprisingly easy.

It's weaknesses are its high "disruptibility" and low consistency.  Its basically a two card combo deck with no draw or search, other than recycle.  Basically, if I don't draw recycle all I can do is play some elves.  It is in these two areas that I am looking for help in.  Also if anyone can suggest some sideboard cards to improve certain matchups that would be great.

This deck is wide open to a splash.  I have the duals anyways.  I was thinking white for Absolute Law on the board, maybe Enlightened Tutor.  I don't know what else.  So feel free and suggest down this line.

I fixed your formatting and about two dozen typographical errors. Run this through spell check next time... And I'm sure I missed a few. - Bardo

[Pitlord]

There are a few things I would like to know about this deck. One is, how do you really plan to win? You are playing a fragile 2-card combo, that doesn't actually automaticallly win you the game. Even with the "combo" out, you are still relying on a less than optimal deck. Where is your backup plan? Second, there are some specific cards I am wondering about, especially exploration. You are playing only 18 lands, how often does playing exploration actually accelarate you more than a mana elf?

Anyways, if you want to run an elf deck, I would suggest relying less on a combo and more going for just the fast win with a hoarde. If you want to play combo with green, play aluren, which is a blast to play. I would suggest playing the straight elf deck if you like elves, using cards like the mana elves, symbiote, hivemaster, tribal forcemage, ranger, sylvan messanger, and bloodline shaman. Actually, sounds like it's time for me to write a mini-primer.. . This idea, while pretty original, would probably be too hard to pull off in a real match consistently, and probably won't be viable anytime soon.

[Bardo]

I share Pitlord's reservations on how this is any good. My only suggestion is to run 4x Umezawa's Jitte, in the side or maindeck, for an alternate win condition. I'm pretty sure that will win you more games than anything else you're attempting here.

Umezawa's Jitte: making every creature-deck better since 2005.

[Scott_Limoges]

You seem to run lots of mana excelleration in the form of creatures.  Why not run biorythim as your kill.

[samus_ssp]

The win condition is not as fragile as you think.  If I go off I can get 30 to 40 1/1 creatures, at this point my opponent can either has a way to stop all of them or I win.  I decided to cut the exploration in favor of Bloodline Shaman.  I have to admit I ran this deck before, a while ago, and I did include Shamans, and they were excellent.  I forget the specifics, but I remember being a little frustrated with what I have mentioned as this decks problems.  The explorations were to help the deck play cards off Recycle.
Funny, I also remember playing Intruder Alarm. 

Jitte's are nice.  I think I may consider them as a sideboard option if I am playing a deck that I stand no chance pulling off my combo.  The decklist is rather tight, so I'm not going to include them in the main, though also because thats not how I want to win.

Biorhythm is a sub optimal kill.  If im resolving an 8 mana spell I would rather it stands a better chance at killing them.  I think overrun would do much the same, and it cost less.

Lastly, I understand the points you guys are making.  This deck as many flaws.  I mean, who am I to turn down Biorhythm because its a "sub optimal kill"?.  Frankly, I'm not trying to make this a better deck, or a better elf deck.  I just want my comb to be more consistant.  This is really all I am looking for here, that and sideboard suggestions.  If this is too much of a narrow focus let me know and I won't post such narrow decklists on these forums.  Obviously I am a new user here, so I am still getting used to the way you guys do things.  For example, there is a spell check button; who knew?

Thank you all for your input.  I think I will now work out a way to use Intruder Alarm/Bloodline Shaman in replace of Recycle.  In the mean time, do you guys think this is a good idea?

[Pitlord]

I didn't mean to bash your deck at all, and sorry if it sounded like I was. I just automatically jump to a tournament mindset. I think the shamans are a good addition to this ecept for one thing... how often do you accidently dump recycle into the bin when using her? That seems counterproductive if you are really focusing entirely on a combo.

I do think that the intruder alarm would be better, because not only does it let you get lots of cards, but because adding in cheesy infinite creature loops is always fun, especially in casual. Another perk of blue is you can run the other ridiculous blue combo enchantment.. Opposition. Fun Fun, sounds like something someone should work on for casual...

[Godder]

There was a Recycle deck back in the day from Extended (recently dug up in the Community Forum), and decks like Elves!, Elf-Ball and Elf-Stroke are decks that can be built to some sort of standard of playability. What we're asking is whether or not this is an attempt at making a viable (in a broad sense) Legacy deck, or if the Casual Forum would perhaps be a more appropriate forum.

[samus_ssp]

Ah, this could be the cause of some confusion.  I did not know there was a casual deck forum, where this deck would probably be better discussed.
I'm not going to close this though, for the time being at least.  I do have this deck in mind for a tournament, to be fair.  The setting is somewhat casual, with free entry and first place getting a draft set.  Though it does attract a good 20 to 50 players so, although a majority of them are scrubs, you do run into competitive decks fairly regularly.  The perfect place for a silly decks like this.
That said, I want this deck to be as competitive as it can be, while keeping it intact.  I want to win with my Recycle (or Intruder Alarm + Shaman) + Concordant Crossroads.  I love the idea of being able to draw and cast every card in my deck, and then attack with them all.

I am going to try this out I think:

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Quirriion Rangers
4 Priests of Titania
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Bloodline Shaman
3 Sylvan Messenger

4 Concordant Crossroads
3 Recycle
4 Intruder Alarm

2 Gaea's Cradle
2 Tropical Island (the number I own)
4 Wooded Foothills
10 Forests

Side Board:
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Naturalize
3 Undecided

Also, am I supposed to edit my decklist each time, or just post new one's?

[RaZe]

In all seriousness, pure Elf combo in this form of any kind is not viable for the main reason that it has no form of disruption whatsoever. I myself have a gone through making the fastest elf combo possible and even with skullclamp [my current version], it is still not good enough. It will win you games against any form of aggro if your a good enough player at it. You can even race WoGs and Infests/E.Plagues short of casting it of a ritual. But sadly enough, this deck will loose to aggro-control because you will never resolve your combo enabler for the main reason that the earliest an elf deck can combo out is on the 3rd turn. And by that time, all forms of used counterspells would be online. And it does not have the disruption Solidarity have to power though it's "must resolve" cards which for an elf deck is a no brainer after your opponent sees you combo off the first time.

I have tried going through all ways of making this work. From going Turbo land [Horn of Greed + Storm Cauldron] to Recycle, to Recycle + Glimpse of Nature to Skullclamps [which is banned from the format] to pull off the Intruder Alarm + Voice of the Woods combo. The turbo land, recycle and glimpse of nature path are all simple auto pilots once the pieces are set-up.

Intruded Elves v 1.0 Turbo Land

Creatures [28]
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Priest of Titania
4 Urborg Elves
4 Quirion Elves
4 Birchlore Rangers
2 Voice of the Woods
2 Skyshroud Poachers

Enchantments [8]
4 Intruder Alarm
4 Concordant Crossroads

Artifacts [8]
4 Strom Cauldron
4 Horn of Greed

Spells [16]
4 Land Grant
1 Stroke of Genius *
1 Braingyser *

Lands [10]
10 Forests


Off all these versions, the turbo land is the most viable due to the fact that Storm Cauldron works as both combo enabler and disruption. You will have to be warry of people abusing Horn so I suggest not casting it till your about ready to go off, or have storm cauldron in play against a no counterspell deck.


Intruded Elves v 2.0 Recycle Glimpse

Creatures [28]
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Priest of Titania
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Quirion Elves
4 Birchlore Rangers
2 Voice of the Woods
2 Skyshroud Poachers

Enchantments [12]
4 Intruder Alarm
4 Concordant Crossroads
4 Recycle

Spells [10]
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Land Grant
1 Stroke of Genius *
1 Braingyser *

Lands [10]
10 Forests

Recycle cannot come out till turn 3 at the earliest, the problem is that to put it out turn 3 requires you to play most of your hand, and cannot really go off without glimpse of nature. Plus unless you resolve 2 Glimpse of Nature, you have a 50/50 chance going to fizzle due to your creature count. [In your build, 32/60] Plus you would have to alpha strike the next turn unless Concordant/Intruder Alarm is already in play, which makes "over commiting" an understatement. Glimpse on it's own however is only good with Concordant Crosroads and only enables you to kill that turn if you are running Intruder Alarm.

All of these combo paths require you to assemble around 3-5 combo pieces in certain order for it to work which is hardly an optimal way because it makes the combo quite inconsistent.


Intruded Elves 3.0 Skullclamp ver. [not Legacy legal]

Lands [10]
10 Forests

Creatures [32]
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Quirion Elves
4 Priest of Titania
4 Birchlore Elves
4 Quirion Ranger
3 Wirewood Herald
2 Urborg Elves
2 Voice of the Woods
2 Skyshroud Poacher

Spells [6]
2 Stroke of Genius*
4 Land Grant

Enchantments [8]
4 Intruder Alarm
3 Concordant Crossroads

Artifacts [4]
4 Skullclamp

* SoG and Gyser are secondary win conditions as I play against Elf decks who can also go infinite with Intruder Alarm.

The skullclamp version is the most consistent and fastest version I have made. It works simmillar to meandeck tendrils, needing the same mindset and meticulous calculations to be good with the deck. But just look at this version from a Threshold/Solidarity or any deck that packs counterspells point of view. Much less worrying about Pyroclasms, Disenchants, Infests, E.Plagues and the like.