How to Attack with Dryad Arbor for 20 turn 2

Hello everyone!

So as is evident by any article I ever write about legacy, I am a huge combo player. I really like how from turn 1 you are kinda the beatdown, but in a completely non-traditional sense. Instead of developing a board presence and dealing 20, you are in an invisible battle over card resources as you attempt to assemble death for your opponent while they do everything they can to delay the inevitable.

A few months ago I identified a few decks that I was actively going to be trading for, and in the time since then my views and actions have shifted slightly. Way back in October I identified 7 decks that I was going to be trading for:

Enchantress
Team America
Faeries
Alluren
Burning Tide
Belcher
Reanimator

Since then I have traded for all of Enchantress except for a Karakas (which I have found, and am playing politics for) and Moat, which obviously I am doing the pack to moat for. I have given up on a few decks that in testing I realized I didn't actually like, and that includes Team America, Alluren, Burning Tide, Belcher, and Reanimator. Which actually only leaves Faeries.... but I did build Fae and I do really like it. My reasons for discarding each of those decks are as follows:

Team America: overall an awkward deck, not enough action for my preferance
Alluren: Combo deck that has no back-up plan and is incredibly easy to disrupt
Burning Tide: I had the whole deck together in my binder, but before I could put it together someone asked to trade for the whole deck, which I obliged and gained cards that I needed for the other decks. Also, High Tide with Explorations seems way more awesome
Belcher: I technically still have it together, but it never gets played, and I don't bring it anywhere. I am probably just going to ship it back to the binder. It's actually not even that fun to play!
Reanimator: I don't like how little control you get after you combo. I often find you blow all your resources on the combo and then just hope you get there... not my idea of a staple combo deck. It beats all the combo decks by finding impossible to beat bullets, but Legacy is very fair right now

In the time that I started dropping off decks to trade for, I picked up different ones that suited my style better, and one was none other than.... Elves!

Elves, or Combo Elves, or Elf Ball, is a combo-aggro deck. What does that mean? It's an aggro deck that wins by turning dudes sideways. However it's a combo deck because it has an insane amount of mana and a cheap draw engine (well actually 3, but that's for later) to puke threats onto the table before winning in a very glorious mannor. Let's break it down:

Mana
Elves produce LOTS of mana. Between cards like Llanowar Elves, Fynhorn Elves, and GSZ = 0 --> Dray Arbor, you're basically always going to start turn 2 with 3 mana. From there other mana producers come into play like Priests of Titania, Heritage Druid, and Birchlore Rangers. The last 2 make all of your elves mana producers, so every elf adds to the pool, even if they primarily serve other purposes. Also, Gaea's Cradle is kind of a thing. It's only dead on turn 1, and than after that it usually taps for 7+ mana, which is kinda insane!

Card Draw
As I hinted, there are 3 different kinda of card draw in Elves: Glimpse of Nature, Elvish Visionary, and Regal Force. In the very early game, Elvish Visionary will probably draw you 2 or 3 cards deeper which can help you both produce more threats and create a spell density to go off with Glimpse of Nature. With Glimpse, we can have a huge turn where we draw 20+ cards and produce a mind-blowing amount of pressure on the opponent. However, because we have so many options for card draw, we can often just play Glimpse of Nature as an Ancestral Recall drawing ourselves 3-5 cards deeper as just a nice value turn. Drawing that many cards for G never felt bad! Finally, there's Regal Force which is our big papi draw 7+ cards for 7 mana! More often than not I will tutor this guy out with 2 or so potential mana in the pool and then proceed to just win that turn because it's like a preemptive Glimpse of Nature!

Tutors
Elves plays 4 Green Sun's Zenith and 2 Chord of Calling, so gone are the days of Summoner's Pact. Summoner's Pact was only good if your planned on killing your opponent with an Emrakul that turn because otherwise you get put so far behind on mana your next turn it's just not worth it. With GSZ and Chord of Calling, it is much easier for you to play the grindy games where you have to battle for the inches and these tutor effects can grab significant bullets, especially those in your sideboard.

Other
Wirewood Symbiote is fantastic because it nets you so much advantage every turn it's in play! First, it completely blanks your opponent's removal on your guys. If they try to bolt or plow something, you can just bounce it in response a la Mother of Runes. Also, in conjunction with Elvish Visionary you can outdraw your opponent 3-1 by casting it for turn, bouncing with Symbiote, and than casting it again, making it very hard to lose to.... anything. Also, while you're trying to combo off he can bounce a creature to allow to draw extra cards! Also, while he bounces he can also untap Llanowar Elves/Dryad Arbor/Priests of Titania  that don't have summoning sickness, so you can also ramp in the process!
Qasali Pridemage is simply a Natralize on a stick that we can easily tutor for in dire times. Crop Rotation is Green's Dark Ritual! I almost always tutor for Gaea's Cradle with it, which as I mentioned before usually taps for a whole lot more than just 3 mana!

Win Condition
Mirror Entity is the way to be. Emrakul was a very popular option for a long time, however unless if you're comboing off, Emrakul is completely dead. In some games with Elves, I had a Mirror Entity in play with a couple random dudes and some mana. I was able to activate Entity for a meager 5 and swing in for 25 damage out of nowhere! In that situation Emrakul would have been sitting in hand just laughing and mocking me! I can still win turn 2 or 3 with the Mirror Entity plan, so long as you remember who has summoning sickness and who doesn't. Here's my grand turn 2 kill story from my Elves debut weekend:

I was on the play for game one, and on my first turn I played a forest and a GSZ for 0, which resolved. I got my Dryad Arbor and passed turn. My opponent quickly played a Polluted Delta and shipped it back to me. I topdecked a Gaea's Cradle and did some quick math. I then:
Cast Glimpse of Nature
Cast Heritage Druid
play Gaea's Cradle, tap for 2 mana, cast Nettle Sentinal and Birchlore Rangers
Tap 3 Elves for 3 mana, cast Elvish Visionary (untapping Sentinal).
C-c-c-combo!

From there I comboed off chaining small creatures together until I reached the point where I was netting mana and accumulating many many cards in hand. I had actually forgotten I had a Dryad Arbor without summoning sickness until I was at about 15 mana with a Mirror Entity in play, and I was trying to figure out what I could do with all that mana. After realizing that, I continued to combo off as efficiently as possible until I got  to exactly 20 mana with exactly 0 creatures in hand (though I did have 5 tutors!). I used a Quirian Ranger to bounce forest, untap Arbor, turn everyting into 20/20s, and swing em' dead! It wasn't really an interactive game, but I was having a blast!

Turning to the sideboard, the deck can go two different ways: Buried Alive + Vengevine, which is siiiick (especially against control) or Maverick. I think the Maverick plan is actually kinda funny because basically we're playing a combo version of the best deck in the format! I have found this deck to be incredibly powerful, and incredibly fun! So what does this mean all together? Here's the list I am currently playing:

3x Birchlore Rangers
4x Elvish Visionary
2x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Heritage Druid
3x Llanowar Elves
2x Mirror Entity
4x Nettle Sentinal
2x Priest of Titania
1x Qasali Pridemage
2x Quirion Ranger
1x Regal Force
4x Wirewood Symbiote

2x Chord of Calling
1x Crop Rotation
4x Glimpse of Nature
4x Green Sun's Zenith

4x Forest
2x Savannah
1x Bayou
3x Misty Rainforest
2x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Pendalhaven
2x Gaea's Cradle

Sideboard:
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Scavenging Ooze
3x Buried Alive
4x Vengevine
1x Gaddok Teeg
4x Faerie Macabre
1x Viridian Shaman

I will probably be playing this deck a ton (especially because the only proxied cards in the deck for me are 1 Chord of Calling, 1 Buried Alive, and 3 Faerie Macabre), and I look forward to writing more about it! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack

P.S.
It has been brought to my attention that my last article linked to an SCG premium article that is not public yet. So here is the Dream Halls decklist that I was referring to, I apologize for the inconvenience:

4x Dream Halls
4x Progenitus
4x Conflux
4x Show and Tell
1x Beacon of Immortality
1x False Cure
1x Echoing Truth

4x Ponder
4x Brainstorm
3x Preordain
4x Intuition

4x Force of Will
3x Daze

3x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
5x Island
3x Flooded Strand
3x Misty Rainforest
3x Scalding Tarn

Sideboard:
4x Leyline of Sanctity
3x Dispel
1x Echoing Truth
2x Gigadrowse
3x Ravenous Trap
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Wipe Away