Not sure how the deck wins. Doesn’t seem aggro enough to race and no evasion to punch through board stalls. I’d run gingerbrute - evasion you can toss treefolk counters on to hit harder, and works with food synergies in a pinch. I like Hunter but question your ability to cast when you need to. I don’t like Fortifying Provision - I’ve never seen it be worth it. You’re weak to flying and might be better off running Fell the Pheasant instead if wanting the food. True Loves Kiss is maindeckable in this set - lot of food tokens running around giving artifact hate targets to cantrip off at worst, and good amount of high value targets that get played like casket, tower, well, clock, henge, various equipments, etc.

So the Acolytes are the only way to play the Hunter? I'm not sure I'd go that way with only 2.

True Loves Kiss is main deckable as a singleton. There are enough targets in this set that it will almost never be a dead card.

I would use Gingerbrute instead of Hunter and I would remove Fortifying Provisions for Rally for the Throne. One leads to stalled board states, and the other gives you the edge in a stalled board state. One can dig you out of a hole while the other just allows you to sit in the hole for a little bit longer.

I think Acclaimed Contender is fine but it's most likely just going to be a good body for 3 on curve most of the time. Your best case scenario is sending the Unicorn on adventure then picking up a Youthful Knight off of the Contenders trigger on T4. That certainly doesnt sound awesome, but a 3/3 for 3 is not bad

He’s got Golden Egg too, but yeah, seems sketchy

Sixty kind of beat me on Acclaimed. Doesn't look like you are running enough knights to make it anything other than a body.

Went 4-3. Fell the Pheasant was shockingly useless and was dead in my hand quite a bit; it couldn't even make food. Gingerbrute was equally bad. Yeah it can poke for 1 damage at a time, but the deck is not aggressive enough to capitalize on that, and using the +2/+2 treefolk counters on Gingerbrute never came up. I am not sure if the build was right, but I'm rather confident both of these cards should not be included (especially Gingerbrute).

True Love's Kiss was okay. Won me one game by blowing out my opponent attempting to use Outmuscle on an artifact creature, never actually hit a Revenge of Ravens though. I am skeptical it's a great card; but it should be playable. As for the games I won, they were generally by playing a normal game of Limited. There was one disappointing game where after mana screwing, *just* stabilizing, and then blowing my opponent out with two Silverflame Squires - which opened my opponent to an attack for 15 to boot - my opponent topdecked a lethal spell. Oh well.

On another note: boy is mill dumb. I pretty much forced it after seeing 3 Merfolk Secretkeepers in the first few picks of pack 1, knowing they'd wheel, and then drafted a deck that's already run into three mill mirrors. By the end of the second game I'd realized the win condition was "do nothing until you have 3 Islands, play Mystic Sanctuary, put Forever Young back on top, loop it". Was a good call to maindeck Forever Young, RIP.

It's been a while that I (had to) draft ELD, but I disagree on the Gingerbrute Man. That guy wins/steals games. Outside of mill vs non-mill games there are a lot of board stalls and some unblockable damage - even a single point per turn - can give you inevitability. Also there are so many pump effects and auras.

True Love's Kiss x2 were dead in my hand when you killed me some weeks ago. Can be dead, can be awesome, one is always ok imo.

Most games at least one player is on mill though, with hugely varying power levels. My first of those decks had a combined 8 of Secret Keepers and DSPs - 7-0 without breaking a sweat. Then you draft a deck with only one Secret Keeper and multiple Run Away Togethers and you lose without ever putting up a fight after the opponent uses premium removal on the Keeper - as if they'd know he's much, much more than an 0/4.

TBH your pool wasn’t great. Not aggressive enough to race, lacking evasion to punch through board stalls, no card draw or recursion engines to grind, no notable bombs - just a couple big dumb guys. Getting the 7/7 token out quick (ideally T3) was your best bet to win but blue and run away together are a big part of limited meta (unless they updated the bots) and hose that token. Getting 4 wins out of that pile is impressive.

I still think gingerbrute was worth including. Aside from the potential + counters dump and your only evasive creature, it counts as food for making the 7/7 and increased your odds of playing that T3.

I just faced a blue-black mill deck with three Lucky Clovers to mill me for 16 at a time. But, I had Syr Konrad.

First game, I just put too much pressure on them for mill to work.
Second game, they milled my Forever Youngs (main 1, sideboarded in another) and I couldn't keep a board.
Third game, I baited out the counterspells with my other creatures, then played Syr Konrad with two Forever Youngs in hand. They ended up staring at their hand for a long while then just suicided by milling me for 32.

Also, this game was my second time facing the bug where when you go to sideboard, you see no cards on the screen and hitting Done doesn't work, you just have to wait out the timer. Fortunately, I was able to sideboard between Games 1 and 2 so that I was set up to combat mill.

Boros Knight shell served me well to a 7-2 the other day (I dropped the B completely by game 6) so I ended up drafting the same general idea last night and had a very strong game one win before I stopped for the night (knight). Syr Arlin, three Youthful Knights, a Dwarf and a Knight of the Keep all up one from a Silverflame for lethal swing is how I ended the game.

Struggling with what to cut here. I feel like if I cut any of my creatures or cheap spells I'm really diminishing the resources my deck has to deal with different kinds of threats. Then, on the other hand, I really don't want to cut my wincons and diminish my deck's overall power level. Would probably help if I'd drafted knights before.

edit: I'm three cards over 40 btw.

IMO, running Deathless Knight when you are evenly split between white and black is risky. Even Witch's Cottage is pushing it imo. Especially when you are cutting to 16 lands.

I think you can lose Eye Collector and Shining Armor right off the bat. I would cut one of the Knights of the Keep. I'd reconsider the second Silverflame Ritual at least, and Deathless Knight, and probably Lash of Thorns.

Thanks. Those were pretty much the cuts I decided on.

Got to 4 wins, so not bad.

1st loss was against a garruk-mill deck. Created a static board state with wolf tokens which were unable to attack due to my revenge of ravens. 2nd was to pretty nasty combo with Harmonious Archon and heraldic banner – the 1/1s become 4/4s if you name white as the color, instantly putting 13 power on the board. Third loss was also to a damned archon, this time archon of absolution, whose protection from white really screwed with my white fliers strategy. I honestly may have misplayed this game, as the Archon made calculating mana costs a big headache. This was the only game where cauldron came down, and it was a bit underwhelming – I suppose since most of my creatures were pretty frail and relied on board synergies.

I haven't been able to play as regularly since I started a new job, so my first 5-win completion of Best of 3.





I have had the most success with black-green decks in this format.

Not running Kenrith's Transformation seems loose - it's a cantrip-ing removal spell that can also upgrade your creatures if necessary. I'd probably have subbed out Familiar, which doesn't seem good without Witcher's Oven.

Speaking of which, this pile went 7-2 after starting 0-2. I'm surprised. I thought it didn't have the power level to compete, losing quickly to e.g. Revenge of Ravens.

2 x Cauldron's Familiar
1 x Witch's Oven
1 x Redcap Melee

2 x Smitten Swordmaster
2 x Reave Soul
1 x Piper of the Swarm
1 x Malevolent Noble

1 x Tempting Witch
2 x Lost Legion
1 x Redcap Raiders
1 x Clockwork Servant
1 x Foreboding Fruit

1 x Baked into a Pie
1 x Opportunistic Dragon
1 x Embereth Paladin

2 x Searing Barrage

1 x Prophet of the Pack
1 x Reaper of the Night

8 x Swamp
8 x Mountain
1 x Witch's Cottage


Cards in sideboard not used: another Smitten Swordmaster, Lash of Thorns, Ferocity of the Wilds, Thrill of Possibility

In one pick I had the option between 2nd Familiar and 2nd Oven, took the Familiar because I figured it at least does something when I don't have the other combo piece, but in hindsight this was likely wrong. Two Familiars and one Oven doesn't work well, but two Ovens works great with one Familiar. Having Familiar without Oven is not much better than having Oven without Familiar too - it's just a 1/1, I don't make enough food to bring it back easily, and finally Oven protects my creatures against removal.

Opportunistic Dragon waaaay overperformed. I knew it was good, did not think it would be that good. It was especially insane at e.g. stealing my opponent's Gingerbrute and feeding it to Familiar. After the first few games I realized the interaction was strong enough that I brought in Malevolent Noble instead of the 3rd Smitten Swordmaster. The Dragon was so good that one of the two losses was to an opponent with Covetous Urge taking my Dragon. I did forget that it also takes Humans though, which made my 6-2 game hairy. Piper of the Swarm was also great, although not nearly as much. Problem is even if opponent can't answer it, it takes several turns and lots of mana before I get to steal a creature. That said, it did win me some games, and it demands removal, so it's not terrible. Embereth Paladin was a late inclusion as well, since it felt like I had no way to attack past a mill deck's 0/4s otherwise.

I lost two games: one to Embercleave, and another to an opponent with both a great deck and the patience to wait till 7 lands to cast my Dragon + hold up Didn't Say Please to counter the Redcap Melee I'd revealed earlier. A memorable game was one against a Clackbridge Troll deck against which I refused to sacrifice goats to because he would gain life. He was dying quickly and only had 2 life, while I had a Tempting Witch in play, a Smitten Swordmaster with one knight on the board, and Cauldron's Familiar in hand. On the other hand, I also only had 2 life, so I would have to feed the Troll and won't be able to burn him out. But then he decided to use all his mana playing his own Tempting Witch & using a Scalding Cauldron on my witch, which left him without mana to eat his own food and I burned him out. There was another game where opponent was at 3 life, had 2 food in play with lots of mana. He ate a food, and I sacrificed one to Witch. He ate the other food, and I responded with Searing Barrage for the win.

I'm not sure about B/R in this format. With lots of small attackers, it doesn't seem very capable of beating Revenge of Ravens.

Red / White is the way to go right now, stay away from blue or black!!!

Red / Green also apparently good but make sure you take red.

Help, what's the build?

- Thunderous Snapper works well with Faeburrow Elder (my P1P1).
- If I run the Snappers, I'm incentivized to be heavy green, which also goes well with the Outmuscles & Garenbrig Paladin, not to mention Gingerbread Cabin. However, I have very few ways to trigger them.
- The two red spells seem very strong and worth splashing for, especially since I have Faeburrow Elder. I have two fixers in Egg and Beanstalk Giant, didn't see any Rosethorn Acolytes though. Kind of regretting passing the P3P1 Escape to the Wilds now.
- Shambling Suit has tons of artifacts & enchantments at the moment. It remains a rather fragile 3-drop though, not sure.
- Trail of Crumbs seems rather mediocre in this deck, but it is a mana sink and helps mitigate flood.

I'm genuinely not sure. How would you guys build this?

I'd honestly consider cutting White entirely. Your power level in red is much higher than in White, and the cards need less mana altogether (Faeburrow and Flutterfox need reliable White early, which your deck overall doesn't have enough access to)

This also makes your mana much smoother since it allows a much higher commitment to Green with a 12-5 or even 13-4 manabase, which makes a lot of your cards better and allows for you to run Once and Future and Henge Walker (Snapper is probably too ambitious still).

Something like 1 Gingerbrute, 1 Insatiable Appetite, 1 Once and Future and 1 Merchant of the Vale over the four White cards looks decent.
You could also consider cutting 1 Cauldron (card played out quite a bit worse than it looks in my experience) for the Henge Walker, Garenbrig Squire or second Brute.

I agree on cutting a color. Ideally you’d go mono green, as the strength of your adamant spells seems to be the most likely path to victory. Turtle is fine as just a 4/4 for 4, but would make your 4 slot too crowded and you’re short on early creatures if you cut to just green. That your splash is all 2 and 3 drops, you don’t have reasonable substitutes in green there, and your 4-7 drops are basically full means Turtle should prob stay in sideboard and you need one of the splash colors. Could make a case for either (RG legend more important to play on curve then your white removal spells, which is a negative for small splashes - and white offers greater synergy with the constructs - but pure card strength favors red I think)

I’d def run the Henge Walker. Think the need is there for another early creature if cutting fox and the 2 mana removal spells. With greater commitment to green you should adamant more reliably on the Walker. I wouldn’t run more than 4 mountains since you have beanstalk and egg to help fix and you only need a single mountain in play to cast your red spells. Think most important thing for your deck is adamant on outmuscles and paladin.

mostly what module said, but I'd run squire as a third creature I can pay with 2 or less mana if I was cutting white, probably over insatiable appetite.

Thanks for the suggestions. The deck went 7-1 and functioned very smoothly. I admit I was skeptical at first, after all I have some strong white cards (Glass Casket & Trapped in a Tower), but I turned out not to need them. After all, four Adamant Outmuscles counts for something. Shambling Suit underperformed a little, surprisingly. I was expecting it to be good, but it was often just a 3/3. As it turns out, although it counts food/Cauldron, they also tend to get sacrificed and not stay in play.

What do people think of Once and Future? I got this last pick out of a pack, and it was a solid performer in the deck. Being instant speed is very nice, and so is being able to get back non-creature spells. I can see a deck that can't trigger Adamant reliably not wanting it, but if Adamant is reliably triggered it seems much better.

Edit: now how do I build this?



Building on my experience with the above, it seems I want to be mono-red, in which case I presumably won't be splashing Grumgully? Kind of a pity not to play that card though, it's so good, and I'm a bit short on creatures without green. Alternatively, I could run green and accept I won't trigger Adamant as often (the Rosethorn Acolytes should help though), taking out Irencrag Pyromancer & Thrill of Possibility.