(Nashi, Moon's Legacy | Art by Patrik Hell)

These Legends Are Something Elves

Hello, everyone, and welcome to back to Recross the Paths, a series that gives commanders a typal twist.

Today I'm going to talk about a legendary Elves deck... Oh rats! Who is this? Nashi, Moon's Legacy? What is it doing here? Oh well, that's the world we live in now. So, it's time for Nashi Elves, I guess?

Stage One: the Deck

Step One: Our Heroes

Given the absurd amount of Elves printed every year, it turns out that quite a lot of them are legendary as well. So, to take advantage of our commander, and also to escape from the same old big-mana go-wide Elves deck (that we are all tired of and you shouldn't be afraid to admit it), today I'll be focusing on those creatures that have these two types.

Obviously, we can still recognize some familiar faces. Eladamri, Lord of Leaves is a cheap (only mana-wise though, as he desperately needs a reprint to be more affordable) and efficient way to protect all of our creatures. Ezuri, Renegade Leader goes a bit further than his pal, granting us a way to close out the game as well. Then, Marwyn, the Nurturer remains a powerhouse in any Elf typal deck, even though here it may suffer a bit from the lack of low mana value creatures.

Anyway, we can also take advantage of some newer, and perhaps forgotten, toys outside the usual mono-green that characterizes these creatures.

Krydle of Baldur's Gate's ability to make any number of creatures unblockable could be deadly if we're looking for a way to conclude a game. Of course, we can also just target it to get some value for cheap, especially in the early game.

Moreover, we can also pair this ability with other Elves that flew under the radar. For example, even though Glissa Sunslayer already won't ever get blocked (first strike and deathtouch are a pair of keywords pretty difficult to deal with using creatures), granting it the certainty to trigger, thus assuring us some pretty good bonuses, is certainly something we are looking forward to.

Lastly, nobody said including the most popular Elves commander out there isn't fair game. Hence, let's all give a warm welcome to Lathril, Blade of the Elves who to no one's surprise keeps on shining even in this new environment.

Step Two: Fallen Legends

Our main goal is to take advantage of Nashi's ability mainly as a recursive tool. This means we want to play our legendary Elves, make them do some dirty work, and later reanimate them from the graveyard. We might also want to manually activate this engine or to cheat into play something we couldn't cast otherwise. For this reason, a card like Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar, which can autonomously place creatures in the bin and provide card advantage, is a perfect fit in our army.

In addition, Rhys the Exiled pairs a similar ability with the minor upside of gaining us a bunch of life during each combat step. What we really care about in its text box is the possibility to repeatedly sacrifice creatures for cheap.

Then, we might also want to take additional advantage of our creatures dying, like through Miara, Thorn of the Glade, which will make sure not even a second of our Elves' lives will go to waste.

Still, there might be instances in which we want our friends to stick around a bit longer before letting them go into exile. For this reason (but most importantly), as insurance against graveyard hate, we run a number of effects that can get our creatures back from the realm of death.

For example, Viconia, Drow Apostate and Storrev, Devkarin Lich will make sure we are always getting something back, as long as we meet some pretty easy requirements.

Also, Kagha, Shadow Archdruid actually carries out somewhat of a double function. On one hand, it makes sure our graveyard is always flowing with cards while on the other grants us the opportunity to play around with those we aren't ready to let go of yet.

Step Three: Those We Fight For

Given the structure of this deck, our typal synergies develop down two different roads.

On one hand, we have a number of cards interacting with legendary creatures. For example, Reki, the History of Kamigawa and Mirror of Galadriel make sure we get rewarded with additional cards for playing multiple legendary creatures. Then, Kolvori, God of Kinship and Heroes' Podium help us dig for some more legends to keep our deck flowing. Lastly (I admit I may be a bit biased), but I absolutely love Invasion of Fiora; on the front side, we get what is basically a one-sided board wipe while, on the back half, we get a powerful creature than draw us cards while also taking out planeswalkers or just resetting counters on our opponent's permanents.

On the other hand, we're still an Elves deck by every mean, so we get access to some very good synergic cards.

For example, we can get our hands on the very good Lords available for this creature type, like Leaf-Crowned Visionary, Elvish Archdruid and Elvish Champion. The first one is yet another way to draw additional cards with our leftover mana, then the Archdruid is capable of producing insane amounts of resources and repays us for playing our creatures. Finally, Elvish Champion allow us to prey on green players as well as playing nicely alongside Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth.

Step Four: The Complete Decklist

Stage Two: The Dataroom

We’re now on to the last part of this deck tech: the data room. Was this deck idea actually unique? Let's compare the list against both the average Nashi and the average Elves deck to see what we gained (and lost) in the process.

Step One: The Average Nashi Deck

Nashi is a pretty new commander, but it didn't really make an immediate impact on the format, as there are only 531 decks under its name. This makes it the 2o^th most popular Sultai commander and only 992^nd overall.

First off, it would be interesting to see how much legends-matter cards are played with this commander. Let's check it out:

All in all, it seems like the Legendary theme is something people are pretty interested in when playing Nashi. In fact, the top half of the cards considered are older cards that fit well in this strategy and were already popular when this commander was printed. The bottom half, on the other hand, is composed of more recent cards that were printed right around the time our favorite Rat became legal; this also means that the inclusion rates for these options are still a bit uncertain, as they might skyrocket or plummet depending on how people enjoy playing with them.

Interestingly enough, the only legendary-creatures-matter land that sees some play is Plaza of Heroes, perhaps thanks to the versatility it grants. On the flipside, Great Hall of the Citadel is among the new cards mentioned above and Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper is an old card that many probably forgot about, but that should definitely see some more play in this deck.

All things considered, we also need to keep in mind that we still have access only to a small sample of decks with this commander. This is to say, numbers may vary wildly once/if it becomes more popular and several other people give it a try.

Step Two: The Average Elves Deck

Lathril, Blade of the Elves is by far the most popular Elves commander, with 18,225 decks registered on EDHREC, which also means it is the 2^nd most popular commander overall.

So, let's see how popular our Elves are when they have to fight against fierce competition.

Well, that's quite a lot of data, but, if we overcome the initial dizziness, we can easily see that this information is also pretty easy to analyze. As a matter of fact, it's everything in line with what we expected.

In particular, all-time great Elves such as Elvish Archdruid, Marwyn, the Nurturer and Imperious Perfect see a lot of play, while newer cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist, Legolas Greenleaf and Galadriel, Gift-Giver are still to be evaluated (even though, realistically speaking, the first of them is probably the only one that could see its numbers go up).

Regarding the middle of the pack, I was surprised to see only around 50% of people play Elvish Champion, given how it would make all of its peers unblockable by at least one player every time. On the same note, seeing Leaf-Crowned Visionary sitting at less than 40% was pretty unexpected, as it seems to me a very cheap and efficient option to compensate for aggro's greatest weakness: card advantage. Another tool I thought I would see more people experimenting with is Glissa Sunslayer. While it obviously shines much brighter in 1v1 formats, I expected the combination of evasiveness and powerful triggered abilities to be enough to push her far above the 15% mark.

Lastly, as far as the tail of the graph is concerned, I really can't stress enough how much I wish people would play Glissa Sunseeker more. Given the sheer amount of cheap artifacts played in Commander, this card should be (if not a staple) at least a very popular way to deal with them. Let's remember you only need to have the right amount of mana in your pool to blow up your opponent's stuff, you don't actually need to pay anything: this means that you'll be able to spend those resources however you want once you've activated Glissa's ability! Other than this, Eladamri, Lord of Leaves is by every chance held at around 10% by its ridiculous price tag I've mentioned before, which is really a shame.

Takeaways from Today's Article

• Nashi is an extremely interesting new commander to play with! Its textbox opens up the Legendary theme to a newer color combination. While I decided to associate it with Elves, there are plenty of typal strategies that could benefit from a fresh new start;
• Elves are obviously among the most popular creature types out there. This makes it for a pretty harsh time when trying to innovate, as everything seems to have already be seen or done. Also, the extreme focus on green mana in these cards' casting costs means that even though you might be playing a multicolored commander, you might end up functionally playing a mono-green deck. For this reason, I've tried to include as many multicolored Elves as possible, with also a sans-green one among them, but a lot of work is still needed to justify complicating your mana base with other colors;
• All in all, I think it's safe to say this deck is a proper way to innovate an Elves deck. While its gameplan remains aggro (which is a characteristic pretty much rooted in the soul of this creature type), the focus of our strategy shifted drastically. We're no longer looking to swarm the board to ramp into a big finisher (aka, Craterhoof Behemoth), but we are now focusing on the graveyard and on mill-and-recursion mechanics. Also, the legendary-matters subtheme adds an additional layer to the deck, while also allowing us to play some niche cards that don't see the battlefield very often.

That’s all from me for the moment. I hope you enjoyed this deck tech, but now it’s on to you! What do you think of it? Would you have changed anything? Is there something you particularly liked? Most importantly, do you believe this was a true innovation? Let me know in the comments below!

Read more:

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• From the Brim to the Trim - Pinging Budgets and Stinging Opponents Alike
• CUT #24 Finals - Rukarumel vs. Anikthea

Jonathan Zucchetti

Jonathan is an Italy-based Magic enjoyer that has been playing, although with some pauses, ever since Mirrodin released. His passion for EDH bloomed in 2018 and, with it, the love for exotic and underrepresented builds. When he is not complaining about an “unfair” removal, you can find him fiercely defending his Delver of Secrets at a pauper table.