#Help making cuts/tweak to my first custom deck
dim flintBOT
lone vault
This is honestly a great starting point for your first go, and fits into bracket 2 quite nicely. I have a few cards to put in/take out that may help.
Cultivate can go. Elves are known for their "mana dorks" (low costed creatures that can tap for mana). Where most green decks want land searching effects, elf based decks will instead generate mana through their creatures. For a similar reason, Patchwork Banner and Elven Chorus can go. A small "lord" (+1/+1 buff) isn't worth paying an extra mana for a mana artifact. Another cut would be Generous Patron, unfortunately High Perfect Morcant has "each opponent blight 1", which actually means your opponents are the ones placing the counters on their creatures, not you, so you will not get the card draw.
You are missing a few staple elves that really help these kinds of decks churn. [[llanowar elves]], [[elvish mystic]], [[fyndhorn elves]], [[elves of deep shadow]], and depending on how your mana base looks (how many forests/mana fixing sources you have), [[arbor elf]] and [[boreal druid]] all put cheap elves in your deck that ramp you when drawn early and provide very cheap sources of blighting off your commander when drawn later. [[Deathrite Shaman]] is also situationally nice here, as your deck does include a fair amount of milling and graveyard interaction, so he can be versatile.
The other thing elves are great at (which also happens to be the best way to trigger your commander) is making tokens! Elves main win condition is normally making a wide board and using some kind of mass pump effect such as the ezuri, renegade leader you included to turn a board of 1/1s into a board of giant tramplers. [[Lys alana huntmaster]] and [[wolverine riders]] are very notable here as ways to constant spew out tokens, and [[elvish warmaster]] is also a great token generator with a pump ability included.
This is a general idea of where to go, but feel free to ask questions if you have any.
Oh and one extra thing, some of your creatures should be placed into other categories. For example, Priest of Titania is ramp, Circle of Dreams Druid is ramp, Ezuri is protection and also a finisher, Champions of the Perfect is card draw, Selfless Safewright is protection, etc. It feels a lot better looking at multiple categories that are filled up by creatures that fill their roles.
I also wouldn't worry about blighting being oppressive, the typical play pattern with that mechanic is your opponents just keep putting the counters on 1 creature at a time until it dies, that way your proliferates only tick up by 1 counter per player and not on multiple creatures. I like the idea of building heavier into graveyard and recursion with golgari elves, as it does help make what is normally a pretty fast strategy a lot slower, more resilient and generally weaker for lower bracket play.
edgy orbit
This is honestly a great starting point for your first go, and fits into bracket...
This is awesome! I appreciate the in-depth feedback.
I did notice that there's a ton of ways to make elf tokens, and it seemed like if I focused on that, the deck would become substantially stronger/more oppressive. I added a 'create a lot of elf tokens' instant as a sort of board wipe/protection card. I also added Lanthril because I suppose I need some strong win con. But if I end up loving this deck and want to venture into the B3/B4 area, I might go that route. There's a card I saw that creates temporary infinite loops until the board is wiped (one-sided)
Do you think I could/should add in some more token creation without the deck getting too crazy to play against? My regular pod is playing strong precons like teval, hakbal, bloomburg, etc., some with upgrades to them. We tend to play casually, though, and not try to focus on fast wins, but rather like big plays/swings
lone vault
hakbal is all about exploring and growing an army of merfolk, teval doesn't care what dies as the entire deck is centered around interacting with the graveyard, I'd say you have the perfect pod to try and control the board state a bit harder as it won't effect them nearly as much as other decks.
your typical play patterns with morcant are going to be playing a bunch of small dudes, having some board control with the blighting, building up your mana and digging until you find an ezuri type effect, then winning through pumped up combat damage
edgy orbit
One more question... I made the cuts you mentioned, which all made sense, but still at 106 cards. I assume that since elves seem to have so much utility in addition to being creatures, I don't necessarily want to look at cutting them and this kind of deck wants a higher creature count?
Similarly, more mana dorks sounds great, but then I don't know what to swap out for them. Since they produce mana, would I look at cutting other ramp cards? ie, sol ring, Growing Rites of Itilmoc? Maybe cut a protection card or two since I have strong recursion?
lone vault
Making cuts in bracket 2 is a bit weird as it's 100% acceptable to just play cards you enjoy that aren't as efficient or intentionally play worse cards to make yourself a bit weaker. looking at your list, I would cut collective unconscious and look for different/better card draw such as [[guardian project]], atomize would go, wildwood escort, safewright cavalry, golgari raiders, dwynen, slate of ancestry is a spicy include, elvish eulogist, virulent emissary, eclipsed elf, formidable speaker (this card is too good for this deck, it has nothing amazing to tutor for and nothing amazing to untap, at it's best this card is very busted/played unfairly).... etc. I could probably chop a lot more if I spent more time evaluating each card, but the gist is for bracket 2, play the inefficient fun stuff and don't worry too much about it.
dim flintBOT
steel ember
[[atomizie]] everyone's cutting out this card
steel ember
its probably the right call but dang this is like the third time i heard it getting cut this week
😢
edgy orbit
its probably the right call but dang this is like the third time i heard it gett...
What's your opinion for cutting it? Also curious why it's getting cut so much lately
steel ember
it may just happens to be the type of deck i stumpled upon
since lorwyn elicpse, theres been lot of 1- counter synergy going on
itself is lowkey [[beast within]] but green never have issue against non-creture permanents to begin with
dim flintBOT
steel ember
and black is the colour that has countless creature removal
so it just come down to the proliferate part: is it worth it at that rate at instant speed, one single time
when the commander can literally do it on repeat, things that can only do it once is basically much worse in comparison
and proliferate cares so much about that intital count
, not being able to put out that first count maybe the issue too
4 mana removal? potential high value but the floor is just as low
it would care about your creature having +1 counters just as much as opponents' with -1 counters