The Elf tribe has been one of the most powerful of tribes in magic the gathering almost since the inception of the game. Able to create a great deal of mana if they work together the elves are generally smaller than their opponents but can make up for it with a great deal of skill. And with so many choices sometimes it becomes difficult to find the one elf you need in the deck.

Elvish Harbringer is an fantastic addition to any elf deck. It does those things that you expect out of an elf well and aids in others possibilities as well. A uncommon elf druid from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering, it costs one green and two colorless, making it a reasonable second turn play for a great many elf decks, it is a 1/2 creature with two powerful abilities.

The first and more basic of those is that you can tap it to add one mana of any color to your mana pool. This helps to overcome the three casting cost of the card as well as making the second ability a bit more powerful.

The second ability reads "When Elvish Harbinger enters the battlefield, you may search your library for an Elf card, reveal it, then shuffle your library and put that card on top of it."

There are several possibility for this card. One of the interesting ones is to put another elvish Harbringer on top of the deck. This early in the game could be a very powerful move as having two or even three of these out by the forth turn of the game would likely allow you to easily play any spell in your deck, or put you a good distance ahead in a elfball deck in which you need as much mana as you can put out.

There are any number of other elves as well though. A elvish pipe is a reasonable possibility allowing you to put any creature you have in your hand into play for one green and tapping the piper and since the piper costs only one more mana than the Elvish Harbinger, you know that you will have the mana, so long as the harbinger is available to tap for mana. Other possiblities are elves that improve all other elves, or those that tap for mana based on the number of elves, or even the bloodbraid elf, allowing you to get another card out of the deal.

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