Best Colors For Elf Decks In MTG

Key Takeaways

• Green and white is great for token spamming with Elves, providing removal and doubling the number of creatures.
• Green and blue offers control elements and powerful cards from Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings.
• Mono green provides pure Elven power with straightforward strategies and abilities like Ezuri, Renegade Leader.

Elves are one of the quintessential creature types in Magic: The Gathering. With thousands of creatures out there that all share the same creature typing, across all colors in the game, you might be wondering which color or combination of colors you’ll want to land on when building your deck.

Since there are a bunch of little nuances that come with deck building, we took a look at some of the most viable ones out there to help make your designing process a little smoother. Here’s everything you need to know about your color choices when building your next Elf Kindred deck.

5 Green And White

Spam Those Elves

Elves are a fairly versatile creature type, lending themselves to a wide variety of play styles. If you’re of the token persuasion, you can’t go wrong by going with green and white. You get plenty of token enablers with cards like Anointed Procession and Doubling Season, along with quite a few ways to make Elf tokens.

Cards like Elven Ambush double your creature count, while Lys Alana Huntmaster makes your Elf creature spells a two-for-one, giving you an Elf token every time you cast an Elf card. Even if you don’t resolve the spell, the Huntmaster still gives you the token.

You also get access to quite a few pieces of removal thanks to white’s proclivity towards board wipes and targeted removal that green normally can’t compete with on its own. While mass removal is a bit counterintuitive to your game plan, it’s always nice to have one in the back pocket when the game isn’t going your way.

4 Green And Blue

A Classic Powerhouse

Green and blue is an exceptionally strong union of colors in Magic and while Elves don’t capitalize much on the color pairing it can still make for a powerful deck. The main power behind this deck comes from the many blue and green Elf cards released in the Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set.

This set took iconic characters like Galadriel, Elrond, Arwen, and Cirdan and gave them powers befitting their attributes from the books. Many of these cards have to do with voting mechanics, letting you and your opponents vote on various outcomes, with them almost always being in your favor.

Since you have access to blue, you get all sorts of control elements between counterspells, extra turn effects, and bonus card draw. While you might lack some of the pure power that other color combinations might have, you get plenty of gas to back it up with.

3 Green, White, And Blue

A rather new entry into the Elvish possibilities of deck design, this color combination is more likely to be found in Commander, with the release of the special Galadriel, Light of Valinor. This three-color legendary creature does a lot, with an ability that triggers for the first three creatures that enter the battlefield under your control each turn.

Any time a creature does come into play under your control, you get to either add three green mana, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control, or scry two and then draw a card.

Since you get these effects only three times each turn, you will want to make sure you have a few was to make creatures at instant speed. Whether this is from creatures like Imperious Perfect, which can make 1/1 Elf tokens whenever you like, or Kindred Summons, which can put Elves straight into play from your deck.

2 Mono Green

The Original Elven Colors

You can’t go wrong by building a straight green deck. You get access to pure Elven power with a straightforward deck strategy. All in Elf decks tend to follow a singular strategy, play Elf creatures and lord or anthem effects until you reach critical mass and then swarm over your opponents in a single turn.

There are all sorts of ways to go with this strategy, and every few years it becomes a little more viable in various formats as Elves rotate in and out of Standard. The deck archetype got a boost with the release of Modern Horizons 3 with Eladamri, Korvecdal, who lets you manipulate the top card of your deck and put creatures into play directly from it or your hand.

These decks end with Ezuri, Renegade Leader, who for five mana gives your Elves +3/+3 and trample. Since you don’t have to tap Ezuri to use this ability, you can dump all your extra mana into it, giving your Elves upwards of +9/+9 or more, and then take out your opponents in a single attack.

1 Green And Black

A Little Evil Never Hurt Anyone

The strongest color combination for your Elf deck is going to be adding a splash of black to your stuff. More often than not these decks are your traditional mono-green Elf strategies while splashing black for a few specific cards.

In Commander, you are probably running Lathril, Blade of the Elves. She’s the most popular Elf commander and its easy to see why. When she hits another player in combat, you make that many Elf tokens. Then you can tap Lathril and ten other untapped Elves you control to make each opponent lose ten life and you gain ten life.

No matter what type of deck you’re building you should be running cards like Shaman of the Pack in your deck. This card has an opponent lose life equal to the number of Elves you control when it comes into play. Getting multiple copies of this out or being able to bounce it back to your hand and cast again can take out your opponent in a single turn with enough Elves out.