by Beltan

Created on: October 07, 2010

Elves are the most versatile and powerful abilities of all creature types in Magic: The Gathering, which is why many of them have low power and toughness as a way to compensate. Their low combat potential scarcely reigns them in, though. The one and only weakness presented to the elves' overwhelming numbers are spells that use blanketing effects to wipe them off the board or spells that deal damage to all creatures. Although this weakness is a common one for decks reliant on creatures- of which there are many- the frequency of players who use such mass-removal cards is far less common.

For starters, Elves are in green, the color that does it best. By 'it', I mean X, where X is anything other than creature control and removal. This very high versatility and abundance of overpowered abilities makes a properly built green deck better than a deck of any other color. Elves began innocently enough with mana-boosting abilities, but branched out to eventually encompass even creature kill effects. Several Elves have even been given the deathtouch ability, allowing destruction of even the most monstrous enemy creatures. This is all good to keep in mind as you want to know what sort of steps enemies will take to stop a quickly blooming elf deck and what they may expect and/or fear.

You always want to start by planning out the number of cards you intend to have in your deck. The smaller the deck, the greater the chance that you will get the cards you need to activate  your preferred combo and the more quickly you will achieve victory. The most winning ratio of lands to your other cards is 40%, but having too many lands is just as bad as not having enough, because it will hurt your card advantage when you can't play anything. So many elves have mana-boosting or land-searching abilities that you can have a supremely successful elf deck with significantly fewer lands. It's best not to fall below 25% but this is highly dependant on your luck when it comes to drawing lands. Typically you won't reduce your lands below 35% (slightly more often than not, every third card will be a land).

Other than your specific choice of elves, there are two extremely important other factors in your deck. Utilities and Draw power, not in that order. Decks with card advantage tend to win in Magic: The Gathering, and the reason for this is that you get your combos sooner, drop more creatures, and almost never get land-screwed by not having enough land (ANYONE can get too many lands, it's just

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