I love Xantid swarm and I will be defo playing it in sb.
Rest of the deck, well I just can't afford Recs, so no point in me arguing about em.
I love my build, heavy blue.
Tho, have you tested LDV?
how is my deck full of fail?
again I can not compete with storm that goes off turn one (which happened in my first two games) third game I take blame myself for the play mistake... but my deck was very solid (even when you extripate my cavern harpy, I still found way to win).
I also changed sideboard out and put alter of dementia and endless cockroaches in side board for fun easy mill lol.
I have deeds, and plan on getting cabal therepy... but until then, it'll do
Unionjack83:
I would make the following changes to your list:
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Underground Seas
4x Tropical Island
2x Bayou
1x Swamp
2x Island
3x Forest
23
3x Cabal Therapy
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Chain of Vapor
3x Intuition
4x Aluren
20
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Cavern Harpy
2x Wall of Roots
2x Wall of Blossoms
1x Eternal Witness
1x Man-O-War
1x Parasitic Strix
4x Raven Familiar
18
Sideboard
4x Tormod's Crypt
3x Pernicious Deed
3x Natural Order
1x Progenitus
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Duress
1x Cabal Therapy
Cut 1 sea and city to make room for more basics. 2gg is what you need to win, being more wasteland resistant is always goood.
Cabal > than Daze. You have dudes you can sac to cabal, so you can cast it twice. w/ Man o war you can bounce annoying dudes like Teeg and cabal it out of their hands.
Chain of Vapor + Raven + Aluren is too sick not to include chains. That and its MD bounce, also chains + cabal = removal of hate.
Intuition is better than LDV because you get 1 card immediately in hand. Also you can search out 3 cabal and cast cabal therapy 4 times!
You have lots of MD mana, -2 roots +2 blossoms = more draw = win faster
4 Raven Familiar, you have no recruiters, Ravens help pre and post aluren in finding what you need fast + chumping + pitching to force. Better reason, they fly, so its a wincon MD pre-aluren!!
1 Eternal Witness… too good not to use, also great w/ intuition. Plus w/ Aluren and Raven Familiar you can cast a stupid number of force of wills (cast ewit, regrow fow, cast raven, dig for blue, cast fow, cast man o war, bounce ewit, rinse and repeat)
Natural Order combo in side is a great alternate strategy.
2 Duress + 1 cabal t in side, you have the black, it stops combo long enough for you to win. 3 duress + 4 cabal therapy that are castable twice.
Deed in side, you are combo so you win fast. Deed isn’t needed MD. If you have a lot of aggro in your meta, then cut birds for more walls and / or tarmagoyfs (best wall aluren can play + alternate win)
-2 leyline because you have Deed and force as additional dredge hate. You just need to slow them down long enough for you to win.
just what the hell is Harpy doing in your graveyard, wtf.Originally Posted by Unionjack83
Also, I run 2 int +4ldv +2 impulse (dont have4 int) and its kinda great to get so much draw/setup. +LDV + coiling oracle is sexy. or brainstorm.
Well, for the most part, Recruiter is mostly dead until you combo off. If I have the excess mana against aggro, I may cast him and fetch another recruiter, strictly for chump blocking. Once in a while you'll cast him to fetch a Bone Shredder to kill a Meddling Mage or other hate bear, and sometimes you fetch a Witness to recur an Aluren and combo off again.
Storm combo can be rough, depending on both players draws. If they're on the play and have 2+ pieces of disruption for us, we'll lose. If we're on the play and have FoW + Spell Pierce/Thoughtsieze we'll probably win, as this deck can easily combo out T3/T4 and they have nothing other than Duress/Orim's Chant to stop us. It's truely draw dependent and how much disruption you choose to play between the MD and SB. Black discard helps here quite a bit. As for Survival, they'll win if they get a decent hand. But in all honesty, nothing can beat UG Survival if they get a good hand, which is why the deck will probably be banned out of existence in about 3 days.
Swarm has been amazing for me, and I can't recommend it enough, even if you're not running NO/Prog in the board. It just stops so much hate against this deck, leaving them with either Pithing Needle (easily circumvented with a Stern Protector or a Sedraxis Alchemist in the deck somewhere), or Pridemage/other hatebears to stop you, and only GWx decks run hatebears.
On Recruiter, I totally understand, as even I don't own the set that I play. I'm going to do some testing to see if I can come up with a Recruiter-less list that is viable, as most of Legacy players don't own a set of cards that are equal in cost to a car payment.
LDV is an excellent card, but I just prefer Ponders currently. It's still blue for Force reasons, costs 1 less, but allows a lower land count and is mainly used for just digging for lands, disruption, or Intuition/missing combo piece. But I do believe that Intuition is most certainly the best tutor this deck can run. Seriously, blue Demonic tutor? Amazing.
I've made some minor tweaks to the deck in last few days, but nothing major. I think I'm going to remove the Volrath's Stronghold, as I never want to see it in a game. The Intuition pile for VS/Loam/Witness is cute, but insanely slow, and I'd rather run a dual and another piece of disruption for the Storm matchup. I'm really trying to figure out an effective way to deal with GW decks like Bant and New Horizons and The Rock.
They have Grip, Pridgemage, and possibly Needle, Teeg, Cannonist too. Everything that is good against us, they have and I've found it to be a pretty much unwinnable matchup. If anyone has any tech to share, let me know!
"Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk."
"You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?"
"If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from A to B."
LDV/ponder requires more testing, LDV is insane imho.
GW bant/new horizon/rock we can beat by pressure. Timely Counterspell via FoW or something else, Manowar bounce and slowing by turns
is good. or even Mage in sb, but I'd go against it.
Stronghold/loam/witness used to be good in slower meta, now we either win or lose in next few turns.
Spell pierce? I'll try it i think, but I don't know what to throw out.
ot: I play every other month or so, on 2 local tournies. one play we have 4 proxy rule, on other 0.
I'm gonna run same decklists on both, fuck recruiters, i hate them really.
How can you hate recruiters when they are the best creature you can cast with Aluren ?
I dont see it as a dead card, if necesary I can tutor an awnser to a thread, or with aluren it is win.
I play with rectors and recruiters Both are insane, rector can get aluren, leyline, moat - form of the dragon, decree of silence... recruiter gets the rest..
The deck is Enchantment - Creature + tutor-disrupt why not get the best
If you thik your mana base is screwed with recruiters, perhaps change the lands you play
And my deck can go of turn 2.
If by Rectors you mean Academy rectors, they seem pretty slow. Could you post your list? What kind of disruption and tutors do you use in your build? How do you exactly can go off turn 2? Elaborate, please.
Are you into Jazz? Have a look at the Lp's I have for sale on Discogs!
Probably with moxen etc...
the most consistent list is the one kiblast and me were tinkering with couple of pages ago.
Maybe switch some disruption (therapy etc) MB, Xantid sb and thats it.
If you got recruiters play em instead of some 4ofs, and thats it, nothing radical to change.
Kinda pointless to talk about a single card no one has.
That's the point. I don't care if Recruiters make this deck better. Because anyway, I'm not going to drop 750$ on an useless playset. And the deck can be as much resilient without them. I only had 2 tournaments with Aluren and in one of these (28 players) I reached top4. And lots of people all over the world reach top8 with recruiterless version. Remember that Aluren's main goal is not to combo on your second turn. Its goal is to try to adapt to your opponent until you feel that your combo is set nicely. This can happen on your 4th or on your 8th turn, as we use plenty of answers to opponent's threats ( walls, tutors, bouncers and lifegain etc etc).
Are you into Jazz? Have a look at the Lp's I have for sale on Discogs!
creature (19)
4 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Selkie hedge mage
4 Raven Familiar
2 Man o War
3 recruiter
instant [16]
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Intuition
2 Impulse
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
enchantment [4]
4 Aluren
land [21]
2 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept heath
2 Floded strand
4 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
Think it was it. went 6:0against Landstill (we didn't board), there were quite fun games at times.
I cast aluren, harpy goes to board - I put CIP ability on stack, cast raven, draw, I wanna "bounce" raven with harpy (cip on stack) he tries to kill raven, I bounce harpy (act), play it, he tries to counter it, I play another harpy, he tries to sword again raven, and then i play a third harpy I drew with the first raven :))
and I went 2:2 against Pippin's show and tell/sneak attack. there were few fun games tho.
Once he wanted to go off with sneak attack but at last time rememberd I could put on aluren (had it + rec in hand). would've been fun tho.
Also, one game it was all harpy+raven hardcast beatings, and 3 harpies when swinging were fun as well :))
The problem here is that you Swoop and Kikiblast think you own aluren or something and saying that your list is THE most consitant list is pure rubbish..
I was looking for seriuos deck discussion but apparently budget wins from the best... in the list here above just as a tip..
Try dreamstalker over mano war... if you dont see why I dont know anymore.. ( here is a hint Dream stalker doesnt target) im off to somewhere else for more serious discussions
Dream Stalker sucks by itself. 2cc is ok, 1/5 is ok, but its ability is trash. You never want to cast it unless you already have Aluren on the table. That's the problem with Stalker and Recruiters forcing you to run Stalkers if you want the combo to be safe.
The main problem with this deck as I see it is not how to win once you drop Aluren, it's how you manage to drop Aluren in the first place (Landstill, Merfolk, CounterTop, combo in general won't let you do it that easily) - and until then, cards that won't help you should more than likely be dismissed. Stalker is mostly useless, and Recruiter, while extremely good by itself, doesn't get you Aluren, Force of Will, Cabal Therapy, or hate cards like Krosan Grip, so...
Recruiter doesn't have to fit in every creature deck conceivable. For example, you see them in Imperial Painter, but not in Goblins or in Survival variants when they were legal.
1st. My nick is Kiblast.
2nd We don't ''own'' Aluren.
3rd Tell me why a 1/5 with no relevant ability without Aluren is better than Man-o-war wich ability is great even without Aluren. It's like: Pact of negation is superior because doesn't cost you a card and a life point as Fow, shame is that Fow has his utility while reaching turn 4, whereas Pact has not. The same can be told for Dream Stalker, great ''in'' combo, sucks ''outside'' combo.
4th Check this link: http://www.deckcheck.de/list.php?type=Aluren&format=4 the last top4 list in 2010 (wich is also the last top4 placed list for Aluren) was ran by me.I mean, if you think Recruiters and Dream stalker are better, slap em in a build go out and have a top8 to prove you are right.
5th If you can't see why 4 colours (with 22 lands) list can't exist in the same format of Wasteland, Stifle, Daze, Crucible and Loam, go out and play some real Magic and tell me how it feels.
6th You bought a stupid 800$ playset and you are trying to find a way to abuse it? problem is yours, not ours. Recruiters in OUR opinion doesn't fit Aluren, simply because the problem, as Nonex said, is not ''how to win fastly with Aluren on the table'' but ''How to consistently reach 4 mana, survive up to the 4th turn and drop the enchantment with some kind of protection'', so if you think that Aluren is OMGBROKENZ with Recs, it's fine, test it and have a result IRL to prove you are right.
Are you into Jazz? Have a look at the Lp's I have for sale on Discogs!
Prove me wrong. and my nick is "swoop"
Our list is NOT BUDGET. It has 6+ duals, 4 fows, how is that budget? oh right, we don't use 800$ crap card single playset
I have only played versus Aluren once in a tournament, but I would recommend you to play Xantid Swarm and Imperial Recruiter (if you can afford them) in your 75. In that particular match, my opponent did not have many problems resolving his Aluren; on the contrary, he was trying to prevent it by repeatedly countering my Show and Tell. Recruiter-> tutor Man'oWar would have saved his ass against my Emrakul.
I think the main problem with Imperial (besides the price) is that unless you are running BoP, he's hard to cast pre-Aluren and he doesn't pitch to FoW either. So you need to pitch another card instead, which may have been required to be cast instead of pitched by the game state in order for you to advance your strategy. That kind of got me thinking whether Living Wish would be useful or efficient enough in an Aluren list. On one hand, it does act as additional copies of combo pieces or it can help with thecolor splash issue, but on the other hand it requires additional mana and you need to have a small wishboard to truly get advantage out of it. Good stuff is, you would gain access to SB Xantid Swarm etc. even in G1 when required-> opponent may need to burn some of his counters at least (many control decks simply don't care about some of the MD cards Living Wish could replace). Or Karakas to answer to Iona vs Reanimator / Emrakul versus Sneaky Show. But I guess your list is too tight versus aggro MUs to make it fit, and post-SB you can just SB in the real stuff instead of SBing in the Wish.
EDIT: Read some of the Wish-related discussion earlier in this thread and found out that the aggro MU is indeed hit too severely to warrant its inclusion.
Last edited by Karhumies; 01-06-2011 at 08:25 PM.
The problem with not running Recruiter is that once you resolve Aluren, you know need 2 cards to win. With Recruiter, all you need to do is resolve Aluren. Yes, all the pieces of the combo suck without Aluren in play, but all of the pieces for Recruiter-less builds suck too. Having a 2GG, 2 card combo is much better than having a 2GG 3 card combo. Playing Recruiterless is still viable, but you will not get the consistency that Recruiter builds get, and you'll have less slots to dedicate to disruption.
Again, you don't cast Recruiter without Aluren in play. Wish is fine for builds who don't run Recruiter, the added consistency is worth the tempo-loss in casting it. Also, if you're opponent would have had Recruiter with Aluren in play, he would have just killed you at instant speed. Man-o-War is completely unnecessary, and is inferior to Dream Stalker in every way during combo time. Targeting the bounce creature opens up opposing removal that otherwise would be useless.I have only played versus Aluren once in a tournament, but I would recommend you to play Xantid Swarm and Imperial Recruiter (if you can afford them) in your 75. In that particular match, my opponent did not have many problems resolving his Aluren; on the contrary, he was trying to prevent it by repeatedly countering my Show and Tell. Recruiter-> tutor Man'oWar would have saved his ass against my Emrakul.
I think the main problem with Imperial (besides the price) is that unless you are running BoP, he's hard to cast pre-Aluren and he doesn't pitch to FoW either. So you need to pitch another card instead, which may have been required to be cast instead of pitched by the game state in order for you to advance your strategy. That kind of got me thinking whether Living Wish would be useful or efficient enough in an Aluren list. On one hand, it does act as additional copies of combo pieces or it can help with the
EDIT: Read some of the Wish-related discussion earlier in this thread and found out that the aggro MU is indeed hit too severely to warrant its inclusion.
If you don't like Recruiter or don't have any, fine. Play regular Aluren. But don't hate on people who do have the Recruiters and choose to put them to good use.
"Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk."
"You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?"
"If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from A to B."
This.
IMO, Living Wish seems like a poor man's substitute to I.Recruiter when comboing off: 3GGG in one turn is much worse than 2GG with Recruiter. But it can tutor up relevant hate cards from wishboard before Aluren hits the table (most notably Xantid Swarm for 1GG or Maze of Ith/Tabernacle/Karakas to avoid getting killed when the board position has become bad for one reason or another) to buy tempo, which is a benefit over Recruiter especially if the Recruiter build chooses to run easily disruptable (or 0 total) red mana sources (= Recruiter is a dead card until combo turn, unlike LW).
What I meant was: if he had run I.Recruiter instead of the random-seeming creatures he pitched to FoW - which I do not see played in the current lists - he could have let SnT resolve, putting his Aluren into play and kill me at instant speed. Or if he did not have Aluren in hand when SnT resolves, he could resolve I.Recruiter (despite not running
Great post Manadrain
On topic
As for mana acceleration I won't be using bop/mox/spirit guides.. Instead this is what I use, in my experiance the synergy is outstanding.
Veteran Explorer
Academy Rector
+
Diabolic Intent
Cabal Therapy
Slaugterpact
Phyrexian Tower. This land is insane. It does this, Turn 2 `add 5 mana of any color to your manapool` Wich means you can pay for daze, cast therapy when you put in aluren, else with Rector you can cast therapy and go of anyways.
Also I think show and tell is the best matchup against Aluren.. they help you go off quite efficiantly. If you happen to loose game 1 then on game 2 you should win for sure, if not try to mulligan to at least aluren, In my built I either need aluren or a ractor, versus emraku rector goes to removed when emraku attacks and then I go off
I disagree. The combo pieces not sucking by themselves has always been the key for Aluren to be successful. Raven Familiar is a flying chumpblocker that digs into the library, Man-o'-War buys tempo, so does Wall of Blossoms without card disadvantage, and so does Wall of Roots while accelerating. Spike Feeder helps you escape burn range and/or makes your creatures bigger while being immune to Swords to Plowshares. Coiling Oracle can accelerate or at least replace itself. Selkie Hedge-Mage can buy up to three turns depending on how many of its abilities can trigger. Eternal Witness needs little explanation. None of these creatures is bad when hardcasting them.
Recruiter is mediocre because it gets a creature that does something rather than doing something itself, but I can understand it. Too bad it's off-color, but that's what red duals are for. Anyway, I think we didn't understand each other or just see it in different ways. We don't focus on the same problems.
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