I've been playing a pretty good Control deck in Standard recently.

But rather than talk about that, given that there was an earth-shattering Banned and Restricted announcement between when I started writing this article and when you read it, instead I'll talk about my Premodern Elves deck and the $1,000 tournament I played in over the weekend.

Spoiler: I made Top 4; where I lost to eventual Champion (and the hottest player in the Premodern scene right now), SWB.

Things in this article that might be interesting to you:

1. One Basic Plains: Changes I made to Elves that meaningfully alter its most important matchups
2. What Everyone Missed About Enchantress, and why it's arguably the best deck in Premodern right now

First up, my Elves list:

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I've written about this archetype here a few times. I still thoroughly enjoy Elves and think it's the most fun deck to play in the most fun format. People can go a lot of different ways with Elves. When I made Top 4 of my first $1k with it, I was playing the stock list, more or less, with 4 Tangle Wires. Later, I experimented with a Natural Order package that could turn my little 1/1 creatures into some of the biggest 7/7 creatures in the format:

A lot of even the most loyal Elves players in the New York Premodern scene abandoned it over time, though. Bill Ellis lost a match to me on Red Deck when he had a third turn Verdant Force (I just chump blocked his huge non-trampler and sent all my Fireblasts to the face); and I, myself, lost a play-test game to Lan D. Ho that shattered all my previous preconceptions.

Goblins is traditionally the Elves killer, due to Goblin Sharpshooter:

This little 1/1 - especially with haste - can gun down every 1/1 in Elves. Elves often has very few lands in play and relies on those 1/1s for its operating mana. Ergo a Goblin Sharpshooter is a Very Bad Thing for them.

But I thought the Natural Order build might be the solution (even though I had lucked through Bill's Verdant Force earlier in the year). Well, it only took this one game...

I had my Anger online, so was actually attacking with both a Phantom Nishoba and Verdant Force, and Lan beat me anyway. The 1/1 Saprolings are no solution to Goblin Sharpshooter (they can't even block, really), and the Verdant Force didn't suddenly get trample. Lan chipped away at Phantom Nishoba's +1/+1 counters; and even though I essentially started the game with a huge lead... He ended the game with an overabundance of Goblins.

I didn't pick up my Elves deck for months.

That changed recently, in part, because the performance of red decks in Premodern - both Goblins and Burn - has been weaker than in previous years. Not "dead" maybe, but both decks have been less consistent and popular. Might there be an opening for Elves given the decline of its natural predators?

I decided to tech out my Elves deck with Thornscape Battlemage.

I had a previous version that I used to lose in the Top 8 of the "Andy's Apartment $1K" - the tune-up tournament that we lovingly call "Grand Prix Levine". I had three Naturalizes in my main deck of that one, but lost to a Phyrexian Dreadnought deck in the Top 8 anyway!

The version I play now essentially swaps the numbers: 1 Naturalize main (with the other three in the sideboard, obviously), going up to 3 copies of Thornscape Battlemage... With the key addition of one basic Plains.

Thornscape Battlemage might seem like an odd card to play. It's less efficient than an Uktabi Orangutan for the purpose of being a 2/2 creature that smashes artifacts (and requires you to have access to white mana). And it's also kind of half-as-good of a Flametongue Kavu for the same mana.

But do you know what Thornscape Battlemage is?

An Elf.

That means that once you resolve one, you can go off repeatedly with the help of Wirewood Symbiote. One Thornscape Battlemage - provided it has a little help - can smash all the Dreadnoughts in the opponent's deck! There are other cute things you can do with it, too. Like earlier in meetups this week I killed a Metallic Sliver. Or any odd artifacts.

Unlike Flametongue Kavu, the "Shock" Red kicker add-on can go to face. So you will sometimes find yourself in spots where it can deal the last two points of damage, or force the opponent to use their last Counterspell.

Most importantly, it is a low-cost (as in opportunity cost... The card is 4-5 mana, functionally) way to improve your Goblins matchup. The Duress Crew, the dedicated Magicians who have taken over the Premodern portion of LobsterCon, have assembled thousands of matches on camera and online to help give some context to the wins and losses of the format. Their data has this matchup at 30/70 in favor of Goblins. To which I can only imagine that they tracked only the greatest, most technically proficient, and luckiest Elves players in all the realms of Dominia. Because I've never been close to scratching 30% with traditional builds, or even hyper-biased ones that could make 7/7 haste lifelink.

Tangle Wire is a fine card (and one that has always held a special place in my heart since Kai Budde said it was his favorite 25 years ago), but I've been off it in Elves for forever. One of Tangle Wire's key uses was to buy time against Dreadnought; but my build just kills the Dreadnought so who cares? You can lace two together to beat Replenish; but Duress Crew has Replenish favored 40/60 anyway. What about all the other games? You don't even break even!

This might, admittedly, be a blind spot for me. Tangle Wire - despite being surrounded by so many accelerators - is too slow to stop the Devourer combo (that can deploy a ton of permanents to tap). On the other hand, Nick Mayo pointed out to me that I might have been doing better against Enchantress had I not cut it for the basic Plains and the 3 mana Elves it empowers.

Still: Give me my Battlemages for now.

Interlude One; Tuesday:

You're Elves.

You're my Elves (posted above).

You know you're going to be facing the winner of the table you're birding.

On one side is... Goblins.

On the other side is... SWB (regardless of deck).

Who do you cheer for?

I was cheering for Goblins! Those prayers went unanswered. According to Duress Crew data, Elves is favored 70/30 over Enchantress. SWB got me 2-0 and added yet another belt to his collection.

Interlude Two; Thursday:

I wanted to lock first place in the Premodern League playoffs. If SWB had a great night and I put up a doughnut, he'd overtake me for first.

We met in the second round.

This time I had Replenish; which according to Duress Crew has a 90/10 advantage over Enchantress. Over 90%!

He got me in two.

I put up a 2-1 finish on the night and was able to lock first. But who's celebrating? I've got Lan in the quarterfinals, which is going to be no picnic.

The greatest sports gambler of all time (who also happens to be the best blackjack player and pretty good at Magic) has me a dog as well.

The match but now I feel I undersold Lan

— Jon Finkel (@Jonnymagic00) June 28, 2025

$1K Mini-Report

Round One: Dave Kaplan on Mono-Blue 12/12

Oh great! One of the best players in the community (let alone this tournament) and he wins the roll! I'm getting ready to complain about losing rolls all day but manage to get Dave three.

He raises an eyebrow at a main deck Naturalize.

"My deck pic is on Instagram."

Sideboarding:

• +3 Naturalize
• +1 Uktabi Orangutan
• -1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
• -1 Masticore
• -1 Caller of the Claw
• -1 Multani's Acolyte

This is a matchup where you don't really need the power that Elves can produce. Dreadnought only really has two angles on you: Making a 12/12 that will kill you in two attacks, or making a Powder Keg that will sweep multiple 1/1 creatures in order to generate massive positional advantage.

Artifact hate fights both angles. You don't really want the expensive stuff like Masticore or Kamahl because the entire game revolves around 2 mana on the opponent's side. I think it's arguable that you can cut the second Deranged Hermit and keep the 4th Acolyte for the same reason. You don't need much offense: Attacking with three 1/1s is fine as long as 1) they don't all die at the same time, and 2 you're not already dead to a 12/12.

1-0

Round Two: Matt Girardi on Mono-Blue 12/12

Matt has all of one entry in the Premodern stat sheets. But it was a first place win at a recent 42 player Duress Crew event!

Got there in three again (same sideboarding).

He got the second because, well; Dreadnought is Dreadnought. I drew a ton extra with Symbiote + Acolyte but none of those cards mattered.

2-0

Round Three: SWB with Enchantress

"Intentional draw?"

Wyatt Danger gave me the charity draw in the third round to increase the chances we both made Top 8. He won the next; I didn't.

2-0-1

Round Four: Adam Sitsis with R/G Ponza Oath

This was a nightmare for Yours Truly.

Adam has multiple top finishes, including second place at the first Sacred Torch $1.5K. Worse, he was on one of my worst matchups: Pairing Oath of Druids with Pyroclasm.

I almost got Game 1. I had to make a sacrifice block to stay alive against his first Terravore; and he left his second Oath-borne 21/21 on defense. On the pivotal second-to-last turn, Adam could either deploy a third Terravore or Thermokarst my Mountain. He killed the Mountain.

I didn't have Survival of the Fittest yet; but he theorized I could have drawn it and "done something stupid with Anger." I sent all my forces and left him at... Two. The Thornscape Battlemage in my hand would have Shocked for the last points. But alas, that Thermokarst!

I squeaked in the second sending all my guys every turn to win by exactsies. Death by a thousand cuts, or at least a dozen 1/1s.

But Adam got me in the third, as he probably should. turn one-2 Oath of Druids all three games is almost impossible to beat.

2-1-1

Round Five: Sidney with Esper Wizards

I figured that Game 1 would be easy; but saw Sidney with an Engineered Plague in play earlier in the day. So sideboarded games might be challenging.

I got the first one in an exciting flurry of Green mana.

I guess there's a reason Gaea's Cradle costs $1,000+

I had double hasted Deranged Hermit on the last turn, which is 26 damage by itself.

Game 2 Sidney had the Plague; but I had sided to 1) minimize its impact, and 2) maximize my ability to recover if the worst happened.

• +4 Call of the Herd
• +1 Druid Lyrist
• +1 Genesis
• +3 Naturalize
• -3 Quirion Ranger
• -1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
• -1 Deranged Hermit
• -3 Thornscape Battlemage
• -1 Masticore

The trick here is that if you get Survival of the Fittest, you can set up Mountain + Anger + Genesis + Druid Lyrist and basically kill Engineered Plague on demand.

The first Plague hit and I took minimal casualties; then set up my Lyrist.

But Sidney made a face-down creature that I assumed was an Exalted Angel.

Oh shoot, I thought. I have no Battlemages to kill a 2/2; no Masticore to catch up; and no Kamahl to go over the top. Worse, I have all of one Deranged Hermit in my deck for offense!

I had four Call of the Herd - eight Elephants - but a 3/3 is no match for a 4/5 lifelink!

I went for my one Hermit and Sidney - I assume because of its impact in Game 1 - spent a ton of instants trying to interact with that; and I had time to kind of go around the [Exalted Angel] before it actually flipped. I think if he had gone the other way the game would have been challenging, at least.

3-1-1

Top 8: Rematch with Matt Girardi

My deck did one thing really well: And that was beat Dreadnought opponents! Got this one 2-0. Matt threatened on Discord to return to his Goblins roots to avoid losing to Elves again.

Top 4: Rematch with SWB

This one went less well.

SWB had play in Game 1, and I London'd to six. My first accelerator was a Priest of Titania, which met a MAIN DECK Swords to Plowshares. That was about all she wrote.

Sideboarding:

• -1 Masticore
• -3 Thornscape Battlemage
• -1 Caller of the Claw
• +3 Naturalize
• +1 Druid Lyrist
• +1 Genesis

Enchantments are not artifacts!

Enchantress exiles creatures, rather than destroying them, so Caller of the Claw is even more terrible than usual.

There are basically no creatures in this matchup that you can target with Masticore or Thornscape Battlemage, so moving them for Naturalize and the Lyrist combo is super clean.

Game 2 I was on the play and won in pretty convincing fashion. SWB said he kept a "trap" hand with two Swords to Plowshares. He did, indeed, kill my first two Elves. But I got my engine online whereas he had kept a hand with no Enchantress draw effects.

SWB got Parallax Wave (but no Opalescence) online on the second-to-last turn; but I had set up Anger + Genesis + Druid Lyrist, got all my guys back, and attacked for lethal thanks to Anger.

So, it all came to the last game; SWB on the play again. I kept a functional hand with Priest of Titania as my first accelerator, Anger, and a Survival of the Fittest.

I thought about a mulligan; but there were two things that compelled me to keep. First, my six card hand would have less than 40% likelihood of having a Survival, and 2) I might just rip a one mana Elf as my 8th card.

SWB couldn't believe it when I passed on basic Forest on turn one! He Plowed my Priest and followed up with an Aura of Silence.

Oh no!

I had scripted a possible fourth turn kill, assuming he did nothing to disrupt me. But given one of my lands was a Gaea's Cradle (and I now had no creature) I couldn't even cast the Survival any more. The game ended up completely non-competititve.

Finish: Top 4

Part Two: What Everyone Missed About Enchantress

The Duress Crew data had Elves a 70/30 favorite and Replenish a 90/10 Favorite. I went 0-3 against SWB on the week, winning only one game in seven.

For all its usefulness basically everywhere else, I'd argue that the Duress Crew data is not reliable around specifically Enchantress, specifically after this year's LobsterCon.

The reason is that while Premodern is a non-rotating format (nothing enters and very little leaves), that doesn't mean that the decks stay the same. I spent the first part of this article talking about adding One Basic Plains to a deck that has literally zero White cards in the seventy-five. Innovation is ever-present in Premodern, and Enchantress - especially recently - is one of the most important examples.

The Enchantress data is comprised of over 700 matches dating back years. But the archetype as it stands today is functionally only a couple of years old. You see, prior to Rich Shay's much deserved victory at LobsterCon, I didn't even have Enchantress in my Top 10 Power Rankings. It went on to multiple Top 8s, including the trophy.

Since that win, Enchantress has changed in four important ways. Maybe not to the point that it is a completely different deck, but its speed, fundamental turn, ceiling, and most importantly, matchups have all shifted. It's less powerful in some ways, but more explosive while being both faster and more consistent.

1. The default Enchantress deck now has 4 Mirri's Guile and 1 Sylvan Library.

When I made my first Top 4 with Replenish at LobsterCon 2022, I was joined by Jordan Goodwin in that Top 8, on Enchantress. Jordan's deck had 2 Mirri's Guile and no Sylvan Library.

Mirri's Guile is a card whose stock has risen tremendously because of its impact in high numbers in specifically this deck. Playing four not only gives you something good to do on turn one, not only gives you a "Sensei's Divining Top" that you never pay any more mana into, but it allows you to keep more hands. Looking at 10+ card in your first two turns dramatically improves your likelihood of having an Enchantress effect in play when you start turn three.

Later in the game a redundant Mirri's Guile is basically Ancestral Recall due to its overlap of very low cost and, you know, being an enchantment.

2. Enchantress now plays 4 Exploration, 4 Wild Growth, and 4 Serra's Sanctum

When SWB beat me on Tuesday, I had a turn four kill on the table. Unfortunately he went first and pre-empted me with a turn four Opal / Wave.

This is because he had drawn double accelerator and his Serra's Sanctum. It's not that it's impossible to recover from Opal / Wave (even for Elves)... But he can not only generate massive card advantage, but the Parallax Wave just kills you in a few attacks. The path to recovery is narrow, and you can't do much to develop your board before you get there.

This setup, especially combined with the consistency of 4x Mirri's Guile, makes Enchantress faster than ever. Previously Enchantress decks might play one Serra's Sanctum, in part because they didn't have anything to do with a ton of White mana. Now they not only have something really good to do with it, they dramatically increase their chances of drawing the first Sanctum.

When I won the Volleyball $1K last year I cracked Cam Fulton's Enchantress in the Top 8. Cam at that point had only 2 Exploration, 1 Sylvan, and no Mirri's Guile. This was logical at the time, and Cam had a bevvy of anti-Red cards that served him well in that metagame. But his then-Enchantress was less of a specialist.

Because...

3. Enchantress is now an Opal / Wave deck

When combined, these two cards give you infinite creature defense, infinite vigilance, and - at worst - a five turn clock where you're very unlikely to ever get blocked.

Enchantress is not a very good Opal / Wave deck, but SWB himself pointed out it's a very fast Opal / Wave deck. I think heads up it's a weaker Opal / Wave deck than Replenish (which plays not only more copies of both, but more copies of Replenish AND pairs these enchantments with Parallax Tide for even more exiling) but against anything that doesn't play its own Parallax Wave, Enchantress is not only awfully efficient, but can now turbo all these permanents out. Notably, it becomes almost impossible for a fair deck to do creature damage to Enchantress, and any that rely on getting a ton of creatures in play (like Elves) can be broken up by just a Parallax Wave, before you even have Opalescence.

Importantly, it now has a ton to do with all that White mana.

Prior versions won all kinds of weird and different ways. They could bounce all your permanents with Words of Wind; gun you down Ball Lightning-style combining Words of War with Sylvan Library; or make a ton of 1/1 flyers with Sacred Mesa. None of that any more. The contemporary Enchantress has narrowed its focus, increased its consistency, lowered its ceiling (maybe) but has incomparable staying power due to all the card draw effects.

4. Enchantress is Now One of the Best Decks Against Blue

Rich Shay, the Enchantress LobsterCon Champion himself, pointed out to me that with its current sideboard of Xanthid Swarm, Carpet of Flowers, and to a lesser extent Gaea's Blessing, Enchantress is now highly favored over the most important Blue decks - Mono-Blue 12/12 and Mono-Blue Tide.

Especially in Game 1, the Blue decks can focus all their Counterspells on Opalescence and Replenish, maybe even win the game with Vision Charm milling. They probably have more Counterspells than Enchantress has ways to win, regardless of how many more cards they've drawn.

But Xanthid Swarm and Carpet of Flowers - both only - come down under Counterspells and stop the Blue long game plans of "Countering everything that matters" or "locking down the mana with Parallax Tide" both. Carpet is especially nasty because it provides yet another one-mana accelerator for the already acceleration rich deck.

Gaea's Blessing answers deck exhaustion as a Blue anti-strategy, where traditionally they could punish an opponent who drew 20 extra cards. At a minimum the best Green sorcery from Weatherlight extends the number of "must counter" spells by 2-3; and at worst, it can punish an unwary Blue mage who uses Vision Charm or Brain Freeze in error.

Enchantress today is vying for the title of best deck in Premodern.

Which leads me to wonder if I should have mulliganed my functional last hand against SWB. I was less than 40% to walk away with a Survival of the Fittest... But what if I don't win any games that don't start with Llanowar Elves or Fyndhorn Elves?

This is a question that's going to be important to answer as we approach the League Finals (where I'll have play the entire Top 8, provided I get past Lan), and the second Sacred Torch, the most important tournament of the year other than LobsterCon.

Wish me luck. According to the greatest sports gambler who ever was, I'll need it.

LOVE

MIKE