Welcome back to another week of elvish madness! Last week I covered a basic introduction to Pauper Elves. This time around I’m going to take you through a lot of the card choices the deck has to offer and how you can use them to your advantage.

Card selection and deck building largely depend on how your metagame looks. Often you’ll find an archetype, and looking through various lists you’ll see an established core with a bit more variety in a select handful of cards. The reason these flex spots (as we’ll call them) shift is often due to metagame calls affecting how you expect the deck to play. For example, if you’re new to the format and/or Magic Online you may be unaware that Pauper has a couple ways to play the format competitively. There’s generally speaking friendly leagues (and by similar extension 1v1 queues) where you play matches as you please, and a weekly competitive tournament known as the Pauper Challenge that is held every Sunday. The former offers a wider selection of possible players and decks that you might run into at any given point, sometimes even running into the same person twice in one league.

The Challenge is a more traditional tournament, so there’s a focused player base with a metagame that evolves every week based on what people expect to face across the table. In a Pauper League, you might run into Burn really often because it’s cheap, or random rogue decks people try to make work in an effort to create the next big thing. In the Challenges, these appear once in a blue moon and are far from the typical sort of thing you might expect to see. As a result, when I took Elves into this week’s Challenge to a top 8 finish, it looked a little bit different than the list I posted in my article last week.

Pauper Elves! (5/20/18 Pauper Challenge 5th Place)

If you compare to last week’s list, not much changed; but what did change mattered. Going down an Essence Warden in the maindeck felt appropriate given a downturn in Burn and Blitz/Tribe Combo lists while the maindeck Spidersilk Armor was largely unnecessary because I was unlikely to run into maindeck sweepers in a Challenge environment. Cards like Viridian Longbow and an extra Nettle Sentinel felt more vital against the decks that had been popping up in recent weeks.

So what options does Elves have in the face of a large metagame and how can they be used? The majority of the cards I talked about last week makeup the foundation of the deck. In just about every elf list you can expect to see 7-8 one drop mana dorks, playsets of Quirion and Birchlore Rangers, some number of life gain creatures, and bigger finishers like Priest of Titania, Timberwatch Elf, and Lys Alana Huntmaster. What you might not expect are the lesser-known options or the ways you can make the well-established core work to your advantage.

For example, one question I get asked about is: why split between different one-drop mana dorks? People see three functionally identical cards and think well why not just run three of one and four of another. Someone not so familiar to the format may not realize that cards like Echoing Decay and to a lesser extent Echoing Truth see play often, and this gives you a minor edge against them.

When Lead the Stampede came out, people discussed the plethora of odd options the deck has at its disposal. Elvish Branchbender gives the deck a bit of an extra beating, especially in the more aggressive mono-green lists. The colorless creature it creates is unaffected by cards like Prismatic Strands and Circle of Protection: Green. (Playing Birchlore Rangers face down will net you this same advantage). Elvish Visionary also sees a fair bit more play in the mono-green version as a creature to draw you more cards when you lack both Distant Melody and Sylvan Ranger. The Ranger itself usually fulfills another role of card choice by enabling you to grab a lone Island or even just a second land drop in an effort to enable your plays more effectively.

On the note of grabbing lands, some players have opted to try using Land Grant as a way to edge out small advantages against their opponents. Unfortunately this is not something I can advocate. Giving your opponent perfect information is bad and allows them to play around every move you make, or at least try to. As an example, during the first paper Pauper event I attended, a mono-blue Delver player I was up against countered my Timberwatch Elf which he correctly assessed as a threat. However, I followed it up with Distant Melody, which ended up winning me the game. Had I used Land Grant, he would’ve known about the Melody and likely held his counter. Speaking of counters, if Land Grant is acting as your only land drop and you’re on the draw, your opponent could easily cast Daze in response to you attempting to cast the spell.

You have plenty of other great options in your arsenal as well. Ulamog’s Crusher occasionally makes appearances in lists as a finisher that can be played at a very quick rate, and Wirewood Pride gives you a maindeck way to use a one-time Timberwatch Elf effect following a turn comboing off with Distant Melody and Lead the Stampede, as well as doubling as a combat trick. Wirewood Herald sometimes shows up in removal-heavy matchups and can be a clincher at times when decks like Pestilence make an appearance. Taunting Elf, Shinen of Life’s Roar, and Elvish Herder all give you greater possibilities to push your finishing attacks through.

There’s still some room for innovations to be had. Look no further than Zodiak_, who has brought a lot of tremendously unusual card choices to the last few Challenges in their build of the deck. Cards like Street Wraith, for example, give a bit of extra card draw you can hit off of Lead the Stampede, while Plague Witch offers up both a bit of spicy off-color removal and elvish synergy. I can’t personally get behind a lot of these choices, but they bring something new and different to the table. That shouldn’t be overlooked.

Zodiak_'s Elves! (4/22/18 Pauper Challenge 29th Place)

I’ll be back next week to talk a little bit about sideboard options for the deck and how to best utilize them against some of the different key matchups for Elves in the vast format known as Pauper. Until then, keep that Elfball rolling!

Kendra has been playing Magic since Urza block and never looked back. Playing a variety of formats and being known for championing Pauper in particular, the Elf Queen can be found hanging out on Twitter as well as streaming on Twitch, always seeking to better the community at large.