4 Earth Elementals is weaker then 1 plus sensible support, and MUCH easier to beat. Donovan - you alone of everyone that's been playing for years with Earth Elementals see them as a problem, when everyone else sees them as weak. As has been said to you in many threads ignore the elemental, and yes, you can and should ignore multiple elementals even more so - you can kill the enemy mage easily before he casts his third, let alone worrying about 4 swinging at you...
You are struggling because of bad strategy, not because of bad cards...
I think if somebody is irritated by questions, perhaps they should better not answer. I think they run the risk of becoming personal and that doesn't help anybody.
You are right that the winning strategy is to go into attack-the-mage mode.
Your remarks come a little bit after that same conclusion was made in the
other tread.
Personally I like longer games where you build up a force and then see if you can win over what the other mage built. Even if I'd see a chance to quickly end the game in the first 5-6 rounds, I would not do it, because playing is my first goal - winning comes 2nd. I play against my 10 year old son. I was investigating long-term solutions.
I think it is clear to everybody that it is not going to be a successful strategy if one is going to fight multiple Earth Elementals - each having the same amount of life as a mage. But it was not immediately clear to me that ignoring multiples of them and go on with your normal play is not going to work either.
There were a lot of posts saying "Earth Elementals are weak - ignore them". But that was not the complete solution. The key here is to go into attack mode without casting any creature/conjuration, because the true weakness of the multiple Earth Elemental opening is that the other mage puts tons of mana into long term damage. So if you can turn the same amount of mana into short term damage, then you win.
Still I think the Warlord could use some help to let him play Warlord-Like instead of an Air-Wizard or Earth-Wizard.
But let's not dilute this thread further. This thread is about an elegant opening for Grimson. I like it.