Golgari Elves Deck Guide
Darthjacen breaks down one of pioneer's premier tribal decks in Golgari Elves
Intro
It’s been a hot minute since we were able to look at a deck that revolved around a single creature type and found success in Pioneer outside of Humans or Spirits. While these decks have found plenty of success, other decks that exist in other eternal formats like Goblins, Soldiers, Elves, and Merfolk have struggled to survive the litmus test of Pioneer in Rakdos Midrange.
With the printing of Leaf-Crowned Visionary, that changes for Elves in Pioneer. While the deck still struggles to put up top finishes in the larger events, the deck continues to put up 5-0s alongside putting up results in smaller online events and RCQs. While that’s not a guarantee of success long term for a deck, it does enough to merit a deeper dive as many players love these style of decks, myself included.
So, let’s dive right into Golgari Elves and see how this version of the little green creature deck stacks up in Pioneer!
Decklist
Golgari Elves
Pioneer
0 mythic
55 rare
2 uncommon
3 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Creatures (36)
Instants (4)
Lands (20)
60 Cards
$386.4
Sideboard
15 Cards
$33.57
Deck Breakdown
One-Drops
If you’ve been playing Pioneer, you know that green creature decks start with eight elves, even if the deck isn’t Elf-centric. Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic make their contractually obligated appearance in this deck to help you ramp into your three-drops and cast multiple spells in a turn. Unlike most decks that play these eight elves, you do get some bonuses from them being elves, especially in the mid game once you start dropping elf lords.
While most decks can only find room for the eight one-drops, elves adds in an additional two one-drop mana producing elves in Jaspera Sentinel. While it does require a second creature to generate mana, that isn’t an issue in a deck with 36 creatures. The bonus text of reach can come up handy against various decks like Spirits, especially once the Sentinels are buffed. This is one of the places where various builds will differ as I have seen between zero and four copies of Sentinel. I like two or more, given that Spirits has remained a player in the metagame, but you don’t want to overload on too many one-drops that won’t be good draws in the late game.
Two-Drops
Moving onto the two-drop creatures, we have two lords and two value cards. Let’s start with the value cards as they are a bit more straightforward in what they do. Dwynen's Elite is a staple of elf decks since it creates two elf creatures for one card. With the various elf lords, it is valuable to have cards that make going wide even easier. Dwynen's Elite isn’t as strong as the other two-drops and that’s why you only see two copies in this decklist.
Next up we have one of the strongest snowball cards in the deck, Elvish Warmaster. This 2/2 elf for two is an army in a can and creates an additional 1/1 elf once per turn whenever one or more elves enters the battlefield under your control. While this will slowly take over the board with additional creatures, Warmaster also takes on the missing Ezuri, Renegade Leader’s Overrun role in giving +2/+2 and deathtouch for seven mana. This can be helpful on defense to eat larger creatures with your 1/1s or allowing you to suddenly kill your opponent out of nowhere thanks to Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.
Once you have developed out some elvish creatures, you will need your pair of lords to buff up these small green creatures and make them lethal. Elvish Clancaller is a small lord that pumps up other elves and can bring out other copies of itself from your deck and put them directly onto the battlefield. While it is an expensive effect, being able to have a +1/+1 anthem at instant speed makes creature combat terrifying for any opposing decks looking to block.
Finally, we have the latest addition to this deck in Leaf-Crowned Visionary. This lord manages to do an impression of Lifecrafter's Bestiary as you can pay a green mana whenever you cast an elf spell to draw a card. This isn’t nearly as powerful as Glimpse of Nature, but it does a good job of ensuring that you churn through your deck and if you have lots of mana, you can quickly outpace any opposing card advantage and dominate the board. The addition of a second two-mana lord was a big upgrade for this deck and helps you to ensure your 1/1s and 2/2s become threats quickly enough to end the game before removal-based or combo-based decks can take over against you.
Three-Drops
The three-drop slot is the most contested between various versions of this deck. This decklist plays at least one of each of the common three-drop creatures, but you will see the numbers adjusted depending on what decks you are trying to beat. Starting with Circle of Dreams Druid, this three-mana 2/1 taps for a green mana for each creature you control. This effect does half the job of Elvish Archdruid and helps you deploy your whole hand or draw extra cards with Leaf-Crowned Visionary. In matchups where it’s important for you to end the game early, few cards can speed up your gameplan quite like Circle of Dreams Druid.
Next up we have Realmwalker. This changeling is a great tool to help churn through your deck against removal heavy decks like Rakdos Midrange. While some decks are playing more copies in the main, we have the second copy in the sideboard as it does a great job to ensure you don’t run out of gas against control and midrange. While it is a little too slow against decks like Mono-Green, it does still work well into other creature decks where the board gets stalled like Mono White Humans or the various Gruul decks.
It’s impossible to play elves in Pioneer without access to your fireball for elves effect in Shaman of the Pack. This card can help you beat decks when you no longer have a board advantage or to burst through for the last points of damage against combo decks. This is especially one of your best hits of Collected Company as it can both burn out your opponent and then attack the next turn for a decent amount. This version of elves wants to go wide, and Shaman of the Pack is a great payoff for that method of building a board state.
Finally, we have Steel Leaf Champion, which is a great aggressive card to break through small creature decks and apply enough pressure, especially when played on turn two, to kill decks like Lotus Field or Mono-Green Karn. Once you can pair up Steel Leaf Champion with your various lords, it can kill very quickly and put enough pressure on your opponent to remove it or risk dying to a Shaman of the Pack follow up. Some decks aren’t running this card, but I think it is an important tool in beating the various Aggro decks and combo decks thanks to its size and ability to push through damage.
Collected Company
What would a 36-creature deck be without Collected Company. While this card can cause some problems when you fail to find the creatures you need, against various removal decks, Collected Company is one of your ways to pull ahead in tempo. Especially against wrath decks, it is a great tool to ensure you untap with a new board state to continue applying pressure. While it can be tough to leverage Collected Company to its fullest given the random nature of the card, when you find multiple lords, Shaman of the Pack or Warmaster, it will instantly win you over as a card that does more for four mana than any replacement ever could.
Sideboard Guide
Rakdos Midrange
| In | Out |
| +3 Shapers' Sanctuary | -2 Jaspera Sentinel |
| +1 Realmwalker | -2 Circle of Dreams Druid |
Matchup Feel: Difficult
Matchup Approach: This matchup is tough. If you’ve ever played Modern Jund into synergy creature decks, you know exactly what the plan is: kill everything, outvalue them on a card-to-card basis. Rakdos tries to do the same thing here against you, so you need to leverage your best value cards that can replace each threat after it dies. While cards like Extinction Event can nullify Shaper’s Sanctuary, if you hold back some number of threats, you can always redeploy through their wraths.
This matchup is tricky as you need to constantly apply pressure without overcommitting to the board along with your lack of removal for their Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet. I’ve seen some lists running Dark Betrayal to deal with Kalitas and it’s a reasonable consideration if you expect to face a lot of Rakdos. In the end, synergy decks struggle into value two-for-one decks that are all replacement level threats and removal. It takes a lot of practice to know when to deploy and when to try and bait out removal while protecting your key cards like Leaf-Crowned Visionary, Realmwalker, and Collected Company.
Heroic
| In | Out |
| +3 Fatal Push | -3 Circle of Dreams Druid |
Matchup Feel: It’s a close race
Matchup Approach: They have access to Reckless Rage and Portable Hole, and you have Fatal Push. Otherwise, this is just a race to see who can assemble their gameplan fastest. Unfortunately, that tends to be Heroic, but unless they leverage God’s Willing, you often have creatures around to chump block large swaths of damage while setting up for your big turns. This is a matchup determined by speed, so you need to have a one-drop, ideally multiple, and a payoff to leverage early. Cards like Elvish Warmaster and Steel Leaf Champion go a long way at threatening with good blocks and attacks, even through their larger creatures.
In the end, this matchup comes down to navigating a very strenuous first few turns of the game. Generally, around turn four, someone will be pulling ahead enough to make coming back difficult, especially since you both want to be threatening as quickly as possible.
Azorius Control
| In | Out |
| +2 Shapers' Sanctuary | -3 Circle of Dreams Druid |
| +2 Golgari Charm | -2 Jaspera Sentinel |
| +1 Realmwalker |
Matchup Feel: Close, especially post-board
Matchup Approach: You’re able to easily flood the board against Azorius Control and leverage Collected Company to survive through wraths, but there’s a lot of difficult to answer cards that can come out of control like The Wandering Emperor and the various 5/5 Lifelink angels that some sideboards are playing. You will need to get onto the board early and leverage that advantage to sneak through cards like Shaper’s Sanctuary or Collected Company to ensure you don’t fall behind to wraths. Golgari Charm is an all-star here as it can allow you to over-commit to the board without fear of wrath, though Farewell still is an issue.
Ideally, you want to get onto the board fast, leverage Golgari Charm to survive a wrath and then hold up Collected Company to finish off the game after a Farewell or to just power through their defensive tools and end the game before they can find Farewell. Post board you need to keep Portable Hole, Temporary Lockdown, March of Otherworldly Light, and wraths in mind as ways they can slow you down. If you can leverage your mana advantage though, you can force their hand to answer all your creatures on time or fall behind.
Be sure to leverage cards like Realmwalker and Leaf-Crowned Visionary to mitigate some of the tools Azorius uses to pull ahead in the midgame.
Abzan Greasefang
| In | Out |
| +4 Leyline of the Void | -1 Realmwalker |
| -3 Circle of Dreams Druid |
Matchup Feel: Difficult game one, favorable post board with Leyline.
Matchup Approach: Mulligan to Leyline of the Void. Likely you will still need a fast clock as they are going to bring in their Enchantment removal. You easily win the fair game, so if you can slow them down from turn 3 combo to turn 5 combo, you should have enough resources to push through and kill them. Prioritize being as fast as possible with deploying your threats as the more time they spend trying to find an answer to Leyline, the more you can pressure them with an early start.
Arclight Phoenix
| In | Out |
| +3 Shapers' Sanctuary | -3 Circle of Dreams Druid |
| +4 Leyline of the Void | -4 Shaman of the Pack |
| +3 Fatal Push | -2 Dwynen's Elite |
| -1 Realmwalker |
Matchup Feel: Difficult game one, favorable post board
Matchup Approach: This is a tough matchup. You are going to get your creatures shredded apart, much like against Rakdos. However, unlike against Rakdos, you can leverage Leyline of the Void to help turn the matchup post board. While they still have plenty of removal, you have enough time to build up a board and generate value even through their removal. You do need Fatal Push as Thing in the Ice can otherwise stop you from taking over in the fair game post board. Look for Leyline heavily as you don’t have a good chance of dealing with them if they can access their delve spells and their recursive blocker in Arclight Phoenix In the end, you will still want to close the game out quickly as they will filter through their deck given enough time, but without Treasure Cruise and Temporal Trespass, you’re fine in the fair game.
Mono-Red
| In | Out |
| +3 Fatal Push | -3 Circle of Dreams Druid |
| +2 Golgari Charm | -1 Realmwalker |
| -1 Elvish Mystic |
,
Matchup Feel: Favorable, especially on the play
Matchup Approach: This is a matchup where you can slow things down a little. They must target and kill off all your early creatures and you can still just drop-down a Collected Company or Steel Leaf Champion and stabilize the board. This is a matchup you’re happy to see and if you play patiently with your bigger creatures, you can bait out cards like Lava Coil and leave them with small creatures that can’t push through your board. Save you removal for the tougher creatures to trade with or to protect from potential double blocks. Golgari Charm does a great job of ensuring you can protect even from their more specialized removal that could otherwise deal with your Steel Leaf Champions or other important creatures.
Mono-Green Devotion
| In | Out |
| +2 Epic Downfall | -2 Dwynen's Elite |
| +3 Fatal Push | -2 Jaspera Sentinel |
| -1 Realmwalker |
Matchup Feel: Close race, but winnable
Matchup Approach: You’re taking the role of Aggro deck in this matchup. You will need to kill them before they can lock up the board with big blockers and threaten to combo you out. While you can easily go wide to get around their big blockers, you will likely need to find some removal to help ensure they don’t start playing Old-Growth Trolls on turn two and gum up the battlefield.
This is a matchup where cards like Circle of Dreams Druid and Shaman of the Pack do a lot to help close out the game quickly, especially since they don’t have wraths or removal. Once they play a Forest and likely an Elf on turn one, you know it’s time to dump your hand, go wide, and attack with reckless abandon. Unlike Mono White Humans, you don’t have a way to push through damage in the mid to late game, but you can pile up plenty of elves and land a Shaman of the Pack or two to drain them out.
Mono-White Humans
| In | Out |
| +3 Fatal Push | -3 Circle of Dreams Druid |
Matchup Feel: A race where you both scale up into the late game.
Matchup Approach: This is another race matchup where you can outsize them quickly, but Mono-White does a much better job than most decks at matching your scaling size. Especially with their post board plan of Portable Hole and Declaration in Stone, it can be difficult to win an extended game. If they find Brave the Elements, you don’t have any non-green creatures, so much like Mono-Green Karn, that card means they also win the late game if you can’t push through damage.
Focus on your one-drop hands into accelerated three-drops and try to out value their early turns. You aren’t favored the later the game goes on, but for the first five to six turns of the game, you should be able to easily outpace and out size their creatures. Elvish Warmaster is at a premium here as it can help end the game and trade off low-value creatures for some of their better attackers like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.
Mono-Blue Spirits
| In | Out |
| +3 Fatal Push | -2 Dwynen's Elite |
| +2 Golgari Charm | -1 Realmwalker |
| -2 Elvish Warmaster |
Matchup Feel: Favorable, but still a race
Matchup Approach: You both want to get onto the board quickly, but you do outsize them quickly. If you can’t find your way onto the board quickly, they will fly over top of you. Unlike a lot of green decks, their counters aren’t very effective here since you generate a ton of mana through your early creatures. If you manage to kill off some creatures with your removal post board, you’re able to easily take over the battlefield.
You still need to be getting onto the battlefield quickly to take over in this matchup, so focus on hands that have a one-drop or two and several two and three-drops. Try not to keep hands that have too high a curve as that’s one of the few ways to turn Mono-Blue’s early pieces of interaction.
Tips and Tricks
· You can use Elvish Clancaller at instant speed to anthem your team.
· Elvish Warmaster giving deathtouch can allow you to trade your 1/1s for large threatening creatures on both offense and defense.
· Against Rakdos, try to spread out your mana values among even and odd costs as they tend to run Extinction event over damage-based wraths now.
· Mulligan hands without one-drops. Much like Mono-Green, you can recoup value, but you need a one-drop to get ahead of the curve. Against red-based removal decks, value lands over one-drops in your opening hands.
· With only 20 lands, in matchups where you aren’t sure your elves will live, keep in mind it is easy to get choked on mana with a hand full of spells.
· Nykthos isn’t as strong in this deck, but you can still use the Nykthos then play another to hyper accelerate your mana development for a turn.
· Golgari Charm can deal with powerful enchantments, small creatures, or save your creatures from damage-based removal or wraths like Supreme Verdict. It’s an underplayed card and will likely catch most opponents off-guard.
Wrapping Up
There you have it, a deep dive into the latest creature-type centric deck in Pioneer and how these little green elves manage to gather and make a dent in the metagame. While the deck still needs a little more consistency in its finishes to make an impact on the tier list or competitive metagame, it’s a great deck to use at your local FNM or RCQ level event.
You can see based on the sideboard of this deck that there are some difficult matchups in the format, which makes sense given mono-green’s – on in this case nearly mono-green’s, in ability to interact with opposing threats game one. Leverage these powerful post board tools to mitigate some of these trickier matchups and like other Aggro decks, slam your threats early and often to punish any missteps from your opponents.
Thanks for reading and be sure to stay safe out there!
