Many Magic: the Gathering players are known for having a preferred playstyle. Some like Aggro, some swear by Control, or maybe you'd prefer something a little different.

I'm no exception to this. I'm quite well known for my love of and prowess with Elves strategies. If you can name a format, odds are that I've at least tried to make Elves work in it once. In some cases, I'm known for my strong finishes with Elf-based decks, primarily in Pauper where I have taken down several tournaments with the little Green critters.

However, there is one format that I notoriously dislike playing with Elves in: Commander.

Long time readers likely know what I'm talking about here, as it's something I've brought up multiple times over the years. It's come up when I've covered my old Ezuri, Renegade Leader decks as well as when I wrote about Lathril, Blade of the Elves (my most read article ever, for the record).

The reason for this is simple: most Elf decks tend to play the same way every game. The so-called "Elf-Ball" nature of the creature type leads to you generating colossal amounts of mana, drawing your whole deck, and winning the game pretty much on the spot.

That's how it tends to play out in 60 card formats as well, but that's part of the fun of them. In the case of Commander, though, it takes away from the fun of the format that allows for varied gameplay every time you sit across the table from someone.

What I liked about Lathril and the Kaldheim set is the way that it provided several new angles to approach. You didn't need to just spit out tons of creatures, draw your deck, and win. You could play a nuanced, interesting, and grindy game that would play differently from game to game. This was by and large thanks to the Black Elf creatures throughout the set and its accompanying Commander deck.

Now with our return to Lorwyn-Shadowmoor with Lorwyn Eclipsed, we get even more of these Black and Green Elves to play with. As you've likely guessed by now, one caught my eye...

When High Perfect Morcant was previewed, everyone lost their minds. The talk of the town was, to put it plainly, just how damn hot she was! And sure, that's fine and all, but I'm here for the fun part: an interesting new Elf commander to build around.

Dishing out -1/-1 counters for just doing your thing seems like a great way to offer some solid variety in your gameplan. Elves decks also frequently rely on tapping for other effects, which makes the Proliferate ability a little more interesting to utilize than it might seem at face value.

I really wanted to wait until Lorwyn Eclipsed came out so that I could spend some time with the deck. Now, I've finally had some time to put something together for you to check out.

Let's have a look at what I came up with and then talk about the card choices.

High Perfect Morcant | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 High Perfect Morcant

• Creatures (42)
• 1 Abomination of Llanowar
• 1 Disciple of Freyalise // Garden of Freyalise
• 1 Eclipsed Elf
• 1 Elvish Harbinger
• 1 Elvish Mystic
• 1 Elvish Warmaster
• 1 Evolution Sage
• 1 Evolution Witness
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Glissa Sunslayer
• 1 Gnarlroot Trapper
• 1 Golgari Findbroker
• 1 Golgari Guildmage
• 1 Heritage Druid
• 1 Hunter of Eyeblights
• 1 Imperious Perfect
• 1 Jagged-Scar Archers
• 1 Lathril, Blade of the Elves
• 1 Leaf-Crowned Visionary
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist
• 1 Lys Alana Dignitary
• 1 Lys Alana Huntmaster
• 1 Masked Admirers
• 1 Moon-Vigil Adherents
• 1 Morcant's Loyalist
• 1 Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Poison-Tip Archer
• 1 Priest of Titania
• 1 Quirion Ranger
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Rhys the Exiled
• 1 Selfless Safewright
• 1 Shaman of the Pack
• 1 Skemfar Avenger
• 1 Timberwatch Elf
• 1 Twinblade Assassins
• 1 Wellwisher
• 1 Wolf-Skull Shaman
• 1 Wren's Run Packmaster

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury

• Instants (6)
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Eyeblight's Ending
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Putrefy
• 1 Tear Asunder
• 1 Wrap in Vigor

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Bloodline Bidding
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Eyeblight Massacre
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Trystan's Command

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Elderfang Venom
• 1 Morcant's Eyes
• 1 Prowess of the Fair

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chronicle of Victory
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (38)
• 3 Swamp
• 7 Forest
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1 Castle Garenbrig
• 1 Castle Locthwain
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Darkbore Pathway // Slitherbore Pathway
• 1 Deathcap Glade
• 1 Eclipsed Realms
• 1 Festering Thicket
• 1 Gilt-Leaf Palace
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Nurturing Peatland
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Pendelhaven
• 1 Secluded Courtyard
• 1 Tainted Wood
• 1 Twilight Mire
• 1 Underground Mortuary
• 1 Undergrowth Stadium
• 1 Vernal Fen
• 1 Wastewood Verge
• 1 Wirewood Lodge
• 1 Woodland Cemetery
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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Avoiding The Elf-Ball Trap

With High Perfect Morcant, the name of the game is to get lots of Elves onto the board at once. However, the big thing I wanted to avoid with this deck was going full Elf-Ball. It's not just that I personally dislike the strategy, but I think it's an especially rough experience when you enact it with Morcant.

Consider some of the other peak Elf commanders that players love to use. Ezuri, Renegade Leader and Tyvar, the Pummeler are pretty plain in what they do. They let you go off and fill your board with cheap threats. From there, you repeatedly pump your board with your commander's Overrun-style effect and go to town.

The difference with these commanders, however, is the feeling that one of two things happens. Either the game ends on the spot - especially if a Craterhoof Behemoth is involved - or you can't go far enough, and someone survives for a chance at a comeback.

By comparison, High Perfect Morcant means that you'll just wipe out your opponents' boards while lining up the kill shot. That makes for a pretty miserable experience for your average opponent and is something I'd rather avoid.

So, I made a few deliberate choices when constructing this deck.

In short, I wanted to avoid having too many redundant effects for powerful abilities. This would mean minimizing including large numbers of dorks that tap for massive amounts of mana, Lords, Overrun effects, and card draw.

For big mana creatures, there were a couple of easy options to go with. Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid, and Circle of Dreams Druid all largely do the same thing in this deck.

Similarly, Marwyn, the Nurturer can get pretty out of hand while also providing a massive beatstick. I ultimately went with Priest of Titania here because it's iconic, small, and is easy to deal with. Elvish Archdruid might be acceptable, but that leads me into the next element - minimal Lords.

When I talk about Lords, what I mean are creatures that provide +1/+1 effects in some capacity. This comes from when cards like Lord of Atlantis, Goblin King, and Zombie Master all received the creature type errata of "Lord" rather than their appropriate creature type early in Magic's history. This was eventually reverted and their card box updated to say "other creatures" to make it read more cleanly and sensibly.

With Elves, there's no shortage of options. You get classics like Elvish Champion, Elvish Archdruid, and Imperious Perfect, as well as lesser choices like Elvish Clancaller, Joraga Warcaller, and Galadhrim Brigade. Couple this with the more generic options like Metallic Mimic and Adaptive Automaton and you could easily fill a deck with tons of these cards.

I ended up going with three cards here: Imperious Perfect, Leaf-Crowned Visionary, and Morcant's Loyalist. Imperious is truly a Lorwyn classic. It'd feel wrong if it wasn't here. The Loyalist is probably the weakest of the bunch but has a tradeoff for removing it and is quite flavorful.

Leaf-Crowned Visionary is a great example of what I want out of the card draw side of things while also being a good lord. It's conditional, relying on both a continual stream of Elves and mana to go off with. This is a far cry from something like Beast Whisperer, the new Champions of the Perfect, or even Realmwalker - all of which allow you to churn through your deck with ease.

Instead, I leaned largely into effects that made you work for it a little. Both Skemfar Avenger and Twinblade Assassins draw you cards as things die, but they have limits. The Avenger relies on nontoken creatures dying while the Assasin is a once a turn deal.

There are also some fun ways of generating your own card advantage as well, like using Golgari Guildmage with Golgari Findbroker to have a repeatable recursion engine. You can do similar by Proliferating an Evolution Witness.

I did include one big draw engine, but on a card that should be ending your game anyways. That brings me to the last point: the Overrun effects. These are the cards that often just end the games immediately but are at their best when they're conditional or can be dealt with easily.

Instead, I went with two simple options: Elvish Warmaster and Chronicle of Victory. Warleader is fun on two fronts: it makes an extra Elf token every turn and you can mass pump for a Deathtouch Overrun. The upside here, though, is that it's an expensive activation and - importantly - doesn't give Trample.

I also really liked Chronicle of Victory because it's the new hotness, is flavorful since it depicts the Lorwyn Elves facing the Phyrexians, and it can be blown up with a simple Naturalize effect.

Leaning into Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Elves

Some of the inclusions likely tell you something: I really wanted to try leaning into Elf cards that are from Lorwyn-Shadowmoor. Most of these naturally include the newest set, but also the classic Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks, plus a few oddballs from Core Sets and the like.

New cards like Morcant's Eyes, Eclipsed Elf, and Moon-Vigil Adherents all made for some pretty easy slam dunks. If you've played any Lorwyn Eclipsed Limited, you'll know that each of these can be a real beating.

Trystan's Command, Selfless Safewright, and Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist are all also quite great, as they don't ask you to lean too hard into the set's self-mill strategy.

I even opted to include Lys Alana Dignitary over the usual staple mana dork of Joraga Treespeaker for the flavor. But you probably want to hear all about the more classic options included here.

Naturally, some of the ones you'd expect make an appearance. Elvish Harbinger, Jagged-Scar Archers, Shaman of the Pack, and Lys Alana Huntmaster are all solid staples of Elves lists. I've even included some of the cool yet more obscure options like Wren's Run Packmaster, Gnarlroot Trapper, and Wolf-Skull Shaman in here too.

My favorite of these obscure options is, easily, Hunter of Eyeblights. It's not a card most players will think of, but it pairs astoundingly well with High Perfect Morcant. Dish out tons of counters and then pick them off one at a time. Best of all, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than shelling out $40+ on a copy of Crumbling Ashes.

Of course, the legends make an appearance as well. Rhys the Exiled is a really easy inclusion that provides a great way to offset the life loss many of your deck's effects will cause. The other big one, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf, makes your opponents deal with ill-favored discarding while you reap the benefits with creature tokens.

What was surprising, though, was the number of cards that ended up on the cutting room floor. I really wanted to include cards like Elvish Promenade, Devoted Druid, Farhaven Elf, and Drove of Elves in here. In each case, I figured other cards did these better already and there was only so much room.

I sort of wish I could've gotten in Lys Alana Scarblade as well, but I felt like I didn't have enough recursion in the list to make it legitimately viable. While on the topic of cards cut from the deck, there's one card in particular that needs to be talked about...

On Flourishing Defenses

You may be wondering why Flourishing Defenses isn't in my list. It seems like a no-brainer for High Perfect Morcant and is a big reason why several cards from the original Shadowmoor block spiked prior to the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed.

If you're unfamiliar with how this works, allow me to explain. First, you play Flourishing Defenses and then you play Morcant.

When Morcant enters the battlefield, an opponent puts a -1/-1 counter onto one of their creatures thanks to her Blight effect. The counter being placed onto a creature triggers Flourishing Defenses, allowing you to make an Elf token. The Elf entering causes Morcant to trigger once again and you have an "infinite" loop, or at least one that lasts as long as your opponents have creatures.

Personally, I don't think this makes for a particularly fun play experience. It might seem fun for you as the player doing it, but what about the table experience? If you were on the receiving end, it would seem hopeless unless you can somehow dig yourself out of it with some kind of removal.

To that end, I'd rather build something that doesn't make it too overwhelming for the others at the table.

Conclusion

The beautiful thing about a deck like this is simply how many customization options you have at your disposal. There are well over 30 years of Elves across Magic's history, dating back to the very first set - Limited Edition Alpha. There are tons of ways to build this deck because there are so many cards to choose from.

Something I really leaned into with this deck was the Elves kindred theming, going all-in to the point that I ended up cutting dozens of Elves from the list. I could've gone in a different direction though, leaning instead into the counters theme. It's not hard to add cards like Contagion Clasp and Contagion Engine to a deck like this, but those felt overkill and win-more to me. But it just goes to show how many ways you can build the deck how you'd like.

Get creative and have a blast building this new fan favorite commander the way you want. Most importantly, make it something fun for your next Commander night...or perhaps go all the way and be the villain of the table. The choice is yours, and that's what makes this such a perfect option for you to build around.

Paige Smith

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