Elves have long been an iconic creature type in Magic: The Gathering. Primarily a green creature type, Elves can be found across all colors of Magic and with a wide range of abilities. The first elf creature was Llanowar Elves in the original Limited Edition Alpha set, and they have appeared in just about every set since.

Related: Magic: The Gathering - Strongest Cards For An Elf Tribal Commander Deck

Whether you’re looking to break into Modern or Legacy with a competitive deck or want to sit down with your friends for some Commander fun, Elves are a great deck to pick up and play. There are plenty of staple cards for you to play in your Elf deck, but there are also some unique cards that you might not think to include in your deck-building process.

10 Weird Harvest

Weird Harvest

It's a gamble for sure, but if you have a way to empty your entire hand in a single turn. Elf-themed decks are particularly good at pulling this off, with the impressive amount of mana these decks can generate.

Sure, Weird Harvest does give your opponents creatures. But if you can land a finisher like Craterhoof Behemoth or have some other type of board protection, you can quickly end the game by the time your next turn rolls around.

9 Hall Of Gemstone

Hall of Gemstones

Hall of Gemstone is a weird card that gets weirder the more you learn about it. At the start of each player's turn, they pick a color. All lands all players control only produce that color instead of whatever color they normally produce.

It's important to keep in mind that colorless mana isn’t affected by Hall of Gemstones, so spells that require it will be fine. Hall of Gemstones is incredibly disruptive for most decks with two or more colors and will force your opponents to be very careful about how they use their mana rocks.

8 Helix Pinnacle

 Helix Pinnacle

Sometimes you might not be able to win through an army of Elves. Sometimes you have to take more drastic measures, like dumping 100 mana into a weird little enchantment that automatically will win you the game.

Related: Magic: The Gathering - The Strongest Alternate Win Conditions In Commander Format

Helix Pinnacle might place a bit of a target on you, but hopefully, you’ll be fine with a battlefield filled with Elves protecting you. With the amount of mana that Elves can generate, Helix Pinnacle can quickly close in on 100 counters, stopping any time you want, depending on how quickly you want to end the game.

7 Thousand-Year Elixir

Thousand Year Elixir

This unassuming artifact can help Elf decks pull off some very fast plays thanks to its unique ability. Thousand-Year Elixir lets you tap creatures to use their abilities even when they have summoning sickness as if they have haste. It doesn’t actually give your creatures haste, so you still can’t attack with them, however.

Combed with cards like Elvish Archdruid, you can tap your creatures for mana the turn they come out to get immediate benefits from them. You can also double up on your abilities since Thousand-Year Elixir can also untap a creature you control, letting you keep up blockers or tapping it for a second activation of an ability.

6 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid

 GiltLeaf Archdruid

Mono-green decks aren’t traditionally known for locking players out of a game, but under the right circumstances, Gilt-Leaf Archdruid can do just that. Gilt-Leaf Archdruid lets you steal every land an opponent of your choice controls when you tap seven Druid creatures. The creature type restriction here can seem a little counterintuitive here but seeing as there are more than 100 cards with the Elf Druid typing combination, you could easily reach that amount without even realizing it.

Related: Magic: The Gathering – The Best Golgari Elf Commanders

Combine it with cards like Arcane Adaptation (which changes the type of every creature you control to another of your choosing), and you can easily start locking players out of the game. It is also important to note that you don’t give back the lands if Gilt-Leaf Archdruid leaves the battlefield, you keep them forever (or at least until the end of the game).

5 Beastmaster Ascension

Beastmaster Ascension

Beastmaster Ascension is one of those cards you easily forget about until an opponent plays it and you remember how hard it hits. For just three mana, this enchantment pumps your entire board by +5/+5 once it reaches seven counters.

You can either play it early on and slowly build counters on it by attacking throughout a few turns, or you can drop it when you have an army of elves in play and trigger it with just one attack.

4 Seedtime

 Seedtime

If you want some weird tech in your deck, look no further than Seedtime. This is the only green spell in Magic that lets you take another turn, an ability typically reserved for blue spells. There is a heavy restriction on Seedtime, though: you can only cast it on your turn and if an opponent has played a blue spell this turn.

In Commander, however, where you’re making big plays against three opponents, there are plenty of opportunities for your opponents to counter a spell or two of yours.

3 Bramble Sovereign

 Bramble Sovereign

Part of the fun of Commander is being restricted to just one copy of every card in your deck. With Bramble Sovereign, you can have twice as many copies of every creature in your deck for the low cost of an extra two mana.

With Bramble Sovereign, you can double up on your lords like Elvish Archdruid and Elvish Clancaller or draw twice as many cards off of Beast Whisperer by making token copies of them. While the Sovereign isn’t an Elf itself, the number of extra Elves you’ll make is worth the inclusion.

2 Mercy Killing

 Mercy Killing

Green isn’t typically the color known for destroying creatures, but Mercy Killing is a targeted removal spell that gets around even indestructible. Because you are forcing your opponent to sacrifice the targeted creature, it can remove just about any threat your opponents could play.

It does give that player a bunch of 1/1 Elf tokens, but that likely won’t affect you too much. For some really tricky plays, you can also target your own creatures, either in response to a kill spell or just for some added creatures to bolster your Elves with some extra tokens.

1 Soul Of New Phyrexia

Image of the Soul of New Phyrexia card in Magic: The Gathering, with art by Daarken
Soul of New Phyrexia by Daarken

Soul of New Phyrexia might not be the most obscure card, but it's severely underplayed, given the amount of protection it provides for creature-based decks. For just five mana, you can give all your Elves indestructible until end of turn, saving them from any number of board wipes that your opponents might be holding on to.

Soul of New Phyrexia also lets you attack into enemy creatures that otherwise would not give favorable blocks.

Next: Magic: The Gathering - The Best Green Enchantments For Commander