I like elves mostly for ramping up to cast bigger things. Rofellos and Joraga Treespeaker come to mind. Then you use them to hard cast an Emrakul, or something insane like that.

And yeah, drafting is where it's at. Nothing is more challenging than a good draft.

They've been doing all these flashback drafts to old formats online (like, Urza's Saga, Mirage, etc) and I really enjoy drafting sets that were designed before drafting was invented. They're incredibly unbalanced for the format and often very fun.