Lathril Blade of the Elves Elven Stompy

Commander Overview

Lathril is one of the most popular commanders in the format, and for good reason! This card is powerful. As someone who plays mana mono-green elf decks, adding black really does change the game. Having the ability to utilize Demonic Tutor, Shaman of the Pack, and Patriarch’s Bidding really changes the game for us. Golgari Elves is super awesome, and so is Lathril. She can be a strong source of token production and allows us to do non-combat damage easily. It’s shocking how easy it is to get ten creatures in this deck. This deck really has it all. We can win through combat and huge swings with cards like Overwhelming Stampede or Craterhoof Behemoth, and we can use Lathril to win through non-combat. One of my favorite elements of the deck is how quickly we can assemble a board. This deck pumps out mana so quickly, which works perfectly with cards like Finale of Devastation.

How to Play the Deck

This is an elf deck through and through. Our main goal is to pump out mana with cards like Priest of Titania and then ramp into our commander and other huge spells like Overwhelming Stampede or Finale of Devastation. But we mostly want to fill the board. Lathril helps with this a lot, but it’s also really nice to have cards like Elvish Promenade, which can be very strong and work really well with Lathril. We typically go for the combat route, but with Lathril’s ability and cards like Skemfar Shadowsage, we can also win with direct damage, which is good in the elf mirror or if we are playing against decks like Ghostly Prison or Propaganda, making it very difficult for us to attack. The true name of the game is to commit our mana makers early and hit like a truck once we have a ton of mana.

Synergy’s in the deck

We have a million synergies in the deck, Elves play off of each other so well! One of my favorites is Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Elvish Champion, which makes all of our elves unblockable. If you can drop both of these, the game typically goes very smoothly. Another powerful synergy is Dionus, Elvish Archdruid and any of our tap elves, while we really dont care much about the counters being able to untap a card like Priest of Titania or Elvish Archdruid and tap them again for mana is just insane and allows us to go crazy in ramping out our hand. Our elves synergize so well with each other and allow us to be a force to be reckoned with both in and out of combat.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: Our early game consists of establishing our gameplan typically through our cheap elves like Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic or Llanowar Elves, its also really nice to ramp into powerful elves like Elvish Archdruid, we can attack during the early-game but we typically dont because we’d rather ramp into our bigger and better stuff.

Mid-Game: Mid-game is when stuff starts to get hectic for our opponents. This is when we keep dropping elves as well as our commander and can really start doing some damage; we start being more aggressive, especially if we get buffs from cards like Elvish Champion or Banner of Kinship.

Late-Game: Late-game is where things get evil thats when we start ending peoples whole career by dropping cards like Craterhoof Behemoth or a huge Finale of Devastation or even Overwhelming Stampede these are excellent ways to get out as much damage as we can, we typically have enough elves that we can kill three opponents. If combhat isn’t an option, we can continuously use Lathril’s ability every time it’s our turn, which can be effective in a very grindy game.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

In this deck pretty much everything ramps, our elves play off of each other so well and allows us to go crazy with our mana but we do have some highlights with cards like Priest of Titania and Elvish Archdruid these accelrate our gameplan like crazy. Im also a huge fan of Growing Rites of Itlimoc which is certainly a worse version of Gaea’s Cradle but the creature selection bit from the front side is quite good for us, Rites is also extremely easy to flip in this deck and can be turned on extremely quickly.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

We aren’t super heavy on card draw, but do have cards that fit with the deck very well, Beast Whisperer being a perfect example. Not only does it allow us to “cantrip” our creatures, but it also gives us an elf, which is really strong for the overall game plan. Return of the Wildspeaker is another card in the deck that is very strong for us; five mana is criminally easy for us to get, and we can draw a ton of cards. If our hand is full, we also have the option of buffing our elves, which helps a lot for the combat game plan. We also have both Sylvan Library and Guardian Project which both allow us to draw a ton of cards and keep our hands full, after all we have to use all that mana for something!

Removal

We have a decent amount of spot removal and mass removal. Being in Golgari always feels very good since we have access to a wide variety of removal like Beast Within and Assassin’s Trophy. Both of these are quick and easy ways to get rid of problematic stuff our opponents have.Crippling Fear is our big board removal, and while it isn’t super effective on decks that pack huge creatures like Dinosaurs or any Stompy strategy, it is a one-sided board wipe that can devastate opponents with smaller creatures. I will say it is bad in the elf mirror since we won’t kill any of that opponent’s stuff. However, it is still a powerful card for the deck.

Protection

Our protection package is pretty strong for our deck. We do have ways to recover from board wipes with cards like Wrap in Vigor, which is a card I’ve noticed a lot of people have never heard of, and get very shocked when you play it, and can keep your entire board. Heroic Intervention is another card that’s just strong and efficient for our deck and allows us to survive board wipes. People tend to board wipe against us because we typically flood the board quite quickly, so being able to say no is very helpful. We also have Legolas’s Quick Reflexes, which only protects one creature but can be really helpful to keep Lathril or a strong creature like Priest of Titania on the board. We also have Galadhrim Ambush, which is more proactive than reactive but can be highly effective if an opponent has one big attacker like an Eldrazi or a Voltron creature/commander.

Utility / Support

One of my favorite support cards in the deck is Badgermole Cub, even though we have a lot of mana production. Getting extra mana each time is very strong. Cub is a great card for this deck and an amazing support piece. Another one of my favorites is Banner of Kinship. Since we have so many elves in the deck, we can have a ton of kinship counters, which allows us to get a huge buff. This is one of the easiest ways for us to kill opponents in combat. Leyline Axe is another card that assists the overall game plan of the deck a ton. Being able to put it into play for free is very nice, but even if we have to hardcast it, giving Lathril double strike and trample allows us to make a ton of tokens and continue the filling of our board and the elf onslaught! Elderfang Venom is another card that really helps the deck. Adding deathtouch to our elves makes us really nasty in combat, and being able to drain and gain each opponent, which, when combined with the non-combat damage we can do with our commander, really helps the game plan.

Mana Base

We have a lot of strong utility lands in our mana base, my personal favorite being Cavern of Souls. We do have a couple of non-elves in the deck, but for the most part, this makes a large majority of our deck uncounterable and can make our matchup against a control deck much better. I love Three Tree City in this deck since we can output just a ton of mana. Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth not only provides mana fixing for the deck but also interacts very well with Elvish Champion and makes it so our opponents can’t block! Even though it’s not the most impressive card in the deck, I am a big fan of Gilt-Leaf Palace since it is an infrequent occasion where we don’t have an elf. This is essentially a Bayou for us, a large majority of the time.

Win Conditions

We really have two different ways to end the game, we either end it through combat which is the most common way, with the help of cards like Craterhoof Behemoth and Finale of Devastation or we end the game through non-combat means, using our commander to make each of our opponents to lose 10 life, which is pretty easy to do, both of these gameplans intertwine quite a bit as we can always use both elements but they are our typical win conditions and how we close it games, whether we use a combo of both or just one.

Strengths of the Deck

One of our biggest strengths is our ability to produce mana at an extremely high rate, being able to cast out our hand and play pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want.

We are quite good against other combat decks; our high amount of elves and blockers overall really helps with this.

Weaknesses of the Deck

The deck can struggle if board wipes continuously happen or if we are against decks that have a ton of control elements.

We struggle against combo strategies or strategies that don’t care about what we are doing. Besides Beast Within, we don’t have many ways to take care of noncreature permanents.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Krenko, Mob Boss. Matchup Record: 2-2

This was a pretty even game; it mostly depends on who has a faster hand. We split our games for that very reason: cards like Crippling Fear do really well, and our main thing in this game is to be aggressive and keep Krenko off the board if we can.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Crippling Fear, Beast Within and Throne of the God-Pharaoh

Game 2: Vs Firesong and Sunspeaker. Matchup Record: 3-1

This was a decent matchup for the deck. We are often a lot quicker than them, and in games where we are quite aggressive, we can easily beat them. We do struggle the longer the game goes on. This is a matchup where I try to be very aggressive.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Throne of the God-Pharaoh, Shaman of the Pack and Skemfar Shadowsage

Game 3: Vs Jetmir, Nexus of Revels. Matchup Record: 2-3

This was an ok matchup for the deck, there commander is really efficient and can be very aggressive and since they can easily give their creatures Vigilance, Double Strike and Trample it can be very tough to defend against them, they can go over the top a lot against us, this is a winnable matchup if we can kill their commander but if they can stick them with a bunch of creatures it can be very tough.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Triumph of the Hordes,Beast Within and Elderfang Venom.

Conclusion

I hope you all enjoyed this one! I had a lot of fun playing and testing this deck; I totally see why it’s one of the top commanders in the format, and it’s played a bit differently than some of the other elf commanders like Voja, Jaws of the Conclave. Thanks for reading to the end. Stay tuned and tap in!