[Deck] Aluren

[theBloody]

I like standard build too. Testing something like this (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=941&iddeck=2043). Living wish could be nice. I'm curious if it work for you swoop.

[kiblast]

I like standard build too. Testing something like this (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=941&iddeck=2043). Living wish could be nice. I'm curious if it work for you swoop.

Hey, that's an old list of mine. I'd really increase the number of Coiling Oracle in it, probably cutting a Selkie Hedge Mage.

Edit: and probably upping the land count to 21.

[swoop]

Interesting to run with Intuition would be 1 Volrath's and 1 Loam perhaps.. with 1 witness MD

[Cacks]

Swoop - that has been tried before, but generally found to be rather slow. But do give it a go, as it gives real flexibility.

[swoop]

I know, it might be a meta choice. 3 Living Wishes however can provide us with a few solutions.

Bojuka Bog / Xantid Swarm / bounce / kill / w/e

[swoop]

SCG t16 deck is so horribad I can't even mention it

[5doorfury]

@swoop - I promise I am not trying to be a troll, but could you please explain your reasoning on why the top16 deck is "horribad?"

I only looked at the last couple pages and you seem to get respected in here, but TBH, that post was worthless. Do you just hate recruiters because you can't afford them? I saw that in July you "just picked up a Taiga" so I am suspecting that is the case.

If you won a recent legacy GP with Aluren or something I will stand corrected, but I really just don't understand why you feel that you can come on and say that with no reasoning.

Please explain.

[Nonex]

Shall I post the list in question:

1 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Taiga
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp

1 Parasitic Strix
1 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
2 Dream Stalker
1 Eternal Witness
4 Imperial Recruiter
2 Wall of Blossoms

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Intuition
3 Repeal
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe

Sideboard:
4 Go for the Throat
1 Progenitus
2 Firespout
4 Natural Order
3 Thoughtseize
1 Dryad Arbor

Which is to say, the list is exactly Tom Raney's (http://www.channelfireball.com/home/making-it-raney-should-coiling-oracle-be-banned-in-legacy/) except -1 Ponder, -1 Repeal, +2 Intuition.

I tested the list with the original changes and found it, well, not bad, but the lack of tutors was evidently a problem. Sometimes you had to dig hard through the library and abusing Repeals in ways you didn't really want to, just to get there. Depending on what you face, you may end up in a position where you have to go balls-to-the-wall, be it Aluren or NO-Prog, and risk getting it countered without protection. But the list in general still has some remarkable attributes:

* 5 basics, including a Swamp
* Plenty of fetchlands and no more duals than necessary
* 2 Dream Stalkers, which is the minimum required to be "safe" from removal
* Minimum disruption acceptable (FoW + Therapy) plus cantrips that improve it
* Good creatures overall, nothing fancy or reliant on Aluren
* Now with Intuitions to solve the consistency problems
* Versatile sideboard with solid answers to both aggro and control

So, as far as Recruiters are concerned, the list is as good as it can get. However, I agree with swoop in that I don't like the list, and I guess he doesn't precisely because it runs Recruiters, in which case I also agree with him. I speak for myself when I say the reason has nothing to do with money or having access to them, though, since I bought them a bunch of months ago and here they are.

It's hard to understand why Recruiters would be bad in Aluren unless you thoroughly test them. The analogy could be the inclusion of Life from the Loam in Canadian Threshold. Apparently, it's all advantages: you get protection from opposing Wastelands, you can recur your own Wastelands to deny them mana, recurring fetchlands help preventing you from topdecking lands, and Nimble Mongeese become 3/3 in no time. Why don't Threshold players run them, then? Because the deck is heavily tempo-oriented, and Life from the Loam contributes to anything but tempo. The same happens to Recruiter: Aluren is a control deck above everything else, and Recruiter is only good at comboing, making it a very poor card in any other situation. Forcing another color and Dream Stalker over Man-o'-War adds the insult to the injury.

Summarizing, Recruiter itself is unique and very good and provides numerous advantages to Aluren, but is mostly bad because it goes against Aluren's main strategy. However, Recruiter got so much hype when it became legal that it stigmatized Aluren ever since:

- Most people think Aluren needs 4 Recruiters to be good and that versions without them are inferior
- Most of them have never played both versions to truly know which one is better, mostly due to lack of Recruiters
- When asked about playing on MWS or proxying Recruiters, the answer is generally that testing a list they'll never get to play in real tournaments is pointless

This way, you get a collective faith dogma with no real basis to stand on. Whoever owns Recruiters will play Aluren with them, and those who don't won't consider Aluren as a reasonable choice. This is why the few Aluren lists that do something important run 4 Recruiters.

[swoop]

If you won a recent legacy GP with Aluren or something I will stand corrected, but I really just don't understand why you feel that you can come on and say that with no reasoning.

I believe we have yet to wait for someone to win a GP with Aluren.

Nonex basically argumented everything. I would just like to comment on his few marks:

* 5 basics, including a Swamp
* Plenty of fetchlands and no more duals than necessary

- pretty normal/smart for any build

* 2 Dream Stalkers, which is the minimum required to be "safe" from removal
* Minimum disruption acceptable (FoW + Therapy) plus cantrips that improve it

- pretty normal/smart for any build - though probes are useless most of the time

* Good creatures overall, nothing fancy or reliant on Aluren

- remove probes, add some more harpies, coiling oracles and you've got yourself a deck.

* Now with Intuitions to solve the consistency problems

- All lists I've played in last 5 years had atleast 2 Intuitions there, smart solution, perfect number (maybe +1)

* Versatile sideboard with solid answers to both aggro and control

- standard sideboard. Thoughtsize is an interesting addition.

[GoblinZ]

Hello every one

I am interested in this deck, but I want to know how to deal with turn 1 lackey or Nacatl.

[death]

If you're on the play, cast a Wall of Blossoms or Coiling Oracle. If you're on the draw, there's Force of Will.

[Lejay]

Or chain of vapor in a good controllish build.

[Cacks]

Or win on turn 3.

Or turn 2 ;-)

[kiblast]

Hello every one

I am interested in this deck, but I want to know how to deal with turn 1 lackey or Nacatl.

The solution is:

a) Ignore the turn 1 lackey (I am not going to worry about a deck which represent less than 2% of the meta) as in the past I've raced turn 1 lackeys easily...just drop some blockers and combo off. Seriously the only thing you need to worry about in this mu are Port+Waste.

b) Take 3 damage then drop some blockers, dig, play a couple of Cabal Therapy, combo off turn 4-5.

[swoop]

MM the Lackey.

of wait.

[TheDreamStalker]

@Nonex

you brought up some interesting points about not having to play imperial recruiters. i've been playing dredge for a while now, and i have recently decided that i actually want to play magic, so i wanted to pick up Aluren. could you maybe post your current list for a Aluren deck that doesnt use Imperial Recruiters? thanks :smile:

[Nonex]

Providing an optimal list is a tough call, since it's been a while since I last played Aluren.

I have always noticed certain problems with the mana base, and after some months playing Food Chain (3 Ancient Tomb + 4 Birds of Paradise + 2 Llanowar Elves) and Astral Rift (3 Ancient Tomb + 4 Mox Diamond) I have come to the conclusion that the "fair" mana base I always played Aluren with just isn't enough. Some 1cc accelerant is needed. Ancient Tomb has a little of a hard time coming in because of the costs.

If I had to play Aluren right now, it would probably be something like this:

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp

4 Veteran Explorer
2 Cavern Harpy
4 Raven Familiar
2 Man-o'-War
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
2 Eternal Witness
2 Phantasmal Image
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Wall of Blossoms

4 Aluren
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Diabolic Intent
2 Chord of Calling

It's creature-heavier than average, but I think it's a good place to start. Phantasmal Image is the latest tech, since a resolved Natural Order into Progenitus was pretty much game over before. I choose Veteran Explorer as the 1cc accelerant, for it's a fantastic wall against aggro and has great sinergy with Diabolic Intent. Chord of Calling is incredible, it can be cast for free almost too often, and it even has sinergy with Selkie Hedge-Mage when going off.

I wouldn't know how to build the sideboard. Pernicious Deed sure should have a place, as well as some Thoughtseize, but the rest I guess is up to the metagame. Some silver bullets for Chord could be appropiate, too.

[kiblast]

...list...

Ok srsly Nonex where are Fows? :)

I'd probably cut Phantasmal Image, as I don't really see Natural Order being a problem for Aluren. You need (and should use properly) protections, in the form of Fow and Therapies. I don't think a 2 turns clock is *so* scary for a control combo deck like Aluren. Anyway, if you let opponent resolve Order, let's say by turn 3 through turn 1 Hierarch/GSZ acceleration, you'll have lost by turn 5. Which means you have 5/6 turns (depending if you were on the play or on the draw) to win with a deck that normally goldfishes on turn 4-5. It is definitely enough, and if it's not enough, it's not because of Order, but rather because of bad draws/misplays/ opponent with crazy good hand etc...
I understand Image is nice while going off but I really would never rely on it to go off simply because it can't be bounced back. Also if opponent is skilled enough he will kill the critical creature you want to copy in resp to Image.

Chord of Calling is interesting and has seen use in the past in various Aluren builds, but I think is really overrated. While comboing, you basically need GGG (In a 3color deck with 21 lands,even with sac outlet+Explorer is not easy to reliably have GGG by turn 4-5) + at least 2 creatures out to find an Harpy, or 3 creatures to find Raven. Instead, if you play Chain of Vapor, you may easily bounce multiple creatures for the low cost of U, and continue bouncing/casting/digging your library.
With Vapor, you can also put on the stack multiple bounce abilities (like Dream Stalker/Man-o'-War + Harpy) targeting all your opponent creatures, and without passing priority bounce your Aluren with Chain of Vapor, and swing with your creatures next turn while opponent has no creatures on board. Seriously, you absolutely want 1-2 Chain of Vapor maindeck.

Explorer+Intent/Therapy is a very good interaction, I tested it in the past and I think I'd run it.

Here are the changes I'd do to your list, imho:

-2 Image
-2 Chord
-1 Witness

+3 Fow
+2 Chain of Vapor

Edit: Moreover, Chain is golden in those matches where you are facing some beaters (ex: Goyf/s) and you are in flood. Chumpblock with your Walls, bounce them and sac your lands to bounce multiple cantripping creatures you own, play them again, draw extra cards, continue chumplocking... seriously Chain is so flexible in this deck that you simply never want to cut it.

[Nonex]

Chord of Calling doesn't need GGG, tapping three green creatures is enough for that matter. I know what Chain of Vapor does and the multiple tricks it enables, too. I just think it's time to try something different because conventional builds seem too slow right now.

[Dravus Mallinard]

Had everyone give up from this deck ??? There are no new techs for Aluren ????

Isn`t it possible to acelerate it with chrome mox, petal or spirit guide ????

Or enter throught a wizard control mode??? (cursecatcher+patron wizard+vendilion clique).

I never played this deck, but i`m really interested... would like to know resoults from people that are currently playing it !!!

[Grymer]

some weeks ago i went 4-1-1 with the deck
and a week later my friend played it and when 4-1-1 aswell.. i think Aluren is pretty strong right now in the meta..

[Philipp2293]

Could you share the list as there are no recent lists/posts at all.

Thanks!

[Grymer]

Creatures [15]
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix
2 Dream Stalker
2 Wall of Blossoms
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Imperial Recruiter

Instants [13]
2 Intuition
3 Repeal
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will

Sorceries [8]
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe



Enchantments [4]
4 Aluren

Lands [20]
1 Bayou
1 Swamp
1 Taiga
1 Underground Sea
2 Forest
2 Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs

Sidebord
4 Natural Order
3 Thoughtseize
4 Go for the Throat
2 Firespout
1 Progenitus
1 Dryad Arbor

i havent made the list my self just found it at liked it so i tryed it out and it was pretty good in the meta :)

[Dravus Mallinard]

An Imperial Recruiter list is not feasible for me !!!

Any suggestion for a non-recruiter list ???

[Alexeezay]

Well, without Imperial Recruiter this deck can't be very competitive. With Recruiter you got more or less a 2-card combo while without it it's much harder to combo off

[igri_is_a_bk]

Well, without Imperial Recruiter this deck can't be very competitive. With Recruiter you got more or less a 2-card combo while without it it's much harder to combo off

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/15448150.jpg

[Alexeezay]

lol... the times have changed... decks like Aluren or Faerie Stompy aren't what they used to be.

[Grymer]

as i said some weeks ago i went 4-1-1 and my mate went the same result the week after... so why do you think aluren is dead?
i think its strong.. prob-cabal combo is awesome you just always know what your opponent have in there hand so you can play around stuff.. and just combo off when its safe...

[Alexeezay]

I don't think it's dead. I said it's good with Imperial Recruiter, but not that competitive without. Read better

[Grymer]

i did..

Faerie Stompy has been dead for like years now... so i think its a bad compared if you didnt ment that Aluren was dead..

[Alexeezay]

I just mentioned them together because they're pretty old Established decks that became less and less popular :)

[Fade]

i think Aluren is pretty strong right now in the meta..

I'm not sure if aluren is good right now. There is a lot of TES and ANT floating around which are just faster than Aluren. Also, more people are playing Krosan Grip due to RUG Delver adopting a Top/Balance sideboard which makes Aluren cold.

[UnsungHero]

prob-cabal combo is awesome you just always know what your opponent have in there hand so you can play around stuff.. and just combo off when its safe...

Couldn't that be said about any combo deck using Probe and Therapy though?

I love Aluren, but right now but there is so much faster combo in the format. And with Mav running Pridemage with GSZ, Sideboards running K.Grip for various strategies Aluren doesn't seem very strong. Which is sad, because I love me some Cavern Harpy loops.

[br14n^lol]

Budget Aluren [janky]

this decks janky but does well in my meta. chants janky MD but i like it more then force.

The sideboards a pure meta SB.

i also have to say, i love this deck so much and ive been playing it since 2004/vamp tutor days.

enchantment [4]
4x aluren

creatures [19]
4x cavern harpey
2x shrieking drake
1x manowar
4x raven familiar
1x auriok champion
1x parasytic stryx
4x coiling oracle
2x cloud of faeries

spells [19]
4x gitaxian probe
4x cabal therapy
3x orims chant
4x brainstorm
3x lim-duls vault
1x brainfreeze

19 lands - duels, fetchs, 4 gemstone mines, 4 city of brass.

SB
4x force of will
4x nihil spellbomb
3x chain of vapor
4x leyline of sanctity.

force of will - for belcher and fast combo and anything i want more protection for.
chain of vapor - against maverick and hatebears. good synergy as a semi cavern harpy
nihil spellbomb - dredge reanimator
leyline of sancitity - storm, discard, etc. slows em down enough to give u time to win.

[swoop]

Your budget version is something along the lines I've played years ago, just remove strix and add maggot carrier. Also soul warden instead of auriok champ.

Check out and try lists from last 20-ish pages, most are along these lines. And throw out white.

I'm still waiting for Imperial Recruiter functional reprint. Those fucking bastards.

[Nonex]

The Warden + Carrier combo was used in Old Extended when Wall of Roots and Man-o'-War rotated out and thus the Spike Feeder loops became unviable. Having them back in Legacy makes the first combo useless. Parasitic Strix is the final nail in the coffin.

So you can go the Wall + Man-o'-War + Feeder if you feel like playing old school or simply Strix if you don't want to run all of the former pieces.

Also, drop Brain Freeze from your deck. It's complete garbage. There's no need for an alternate win condition, even less when it targets like the main one.

The mana base doesn't need playsets of rainbow lands, by the way. It needs basic lands, at least 7.

[dameus]

*sigh* so many mistakes keep getting repeated in this thread.

Stryx is best win con. No need for Brainfreeze or Auriok Champ/Soul Warden and don't add Maggot Carrier.

19 lands isn't enough. Recommend 22, or if you go lighter, have some mana producers like BoP or Wall of Roots. Also, rainbow lands aren't necessary but some basics are as nonex mentioned.

Drake and Faeries are suboptimal - remove.

Try adding some more disruption instead of Chants. I prefer IoK/Duress/Thoughtseize over Probe, but I seem to be in the minority. Nonetheless, you actually have room for both.

[theBloody]

Went 3:2 with recruiter-less aluren.

2:0 loam
2:0 budged storm
1:2 goblins
2:1 dredge
0:2 rug thrash

Decklist:

[18]
4 x Raven Familiar
3 x Cavern Harpy
3 x Wall of Blossoms
2 x Coiling Oracle
2 x Eternal Witness
2 x Parasitic Strix
1 x Man-o'-War
1 x Bone Shredder

[20]
4 x Aluren
4 x Brainstorm
4 x Cabal Therapy
3 x Intuition
3 x Force of Will
1 x Chain of Vapor
1 x Chord of Calling

[22]
4 x Misty Rainforest
4 x Verdant Catacombs
2 x Polluted Delta
3 x Forest
3 x Island
1 x Swamp
2 x Tropical Island
2 x Bayou
1 x Underground Sea

[SIDE]
4 x Faerie Macabre
4 x Blue Elemental Blast
3 x Pernicious Deed
3 x Wall of Roots
1 x Force of Will


Thoughts? This was my third tournament with Aluren and rug and other delver decks seem like biggest problem, other matchups looks at least 50:50. I didn't realize how to effective manage them. Probably Selkie + Therapy combo, but there is a "wasteland effect".

Deck is tuned to aggro meta. Also wall of roots help speed combo if necessary.

[kiblast]

Playing more than 1 Parasitic Strix is useless, as you never want to see it pre combo.

[theBloody]

You are right. But when you are low at life total, you want her. In example sometimes when i have intuition in hand and 1 witness (second in yard), 1 strix in deck, it is too risky go for familiars with 5+- life total.

[Fade]

Has anyone tried a list with Veteran Explorer? It seems that the ramp would be welcomed by getting the basics you need for Aluren.

[Nonex]

There are lists with them, with the Terapies and Diabolic Intent. It's sort of a sidegrade, performing no better or worse than other lists, just different.

[dameus]

I admit, all my experience is w/ the Recruiter version of this deck. Nonetheless, if you're worried about going off at low life total, why not play Essence Warden instead of 2nd Stryx. It solves the problem you mention, but also can be played pre-combo as a counter sponge, chump blocker, life gainer, etc. Also, if you want an accelerator in your SB, consider Carpet of Flowers. I don't recommend Deed in this deck; I'd much rather have Inquisition of Kozilek. IoK is strong vs the match-ups you mentioned as problems (+ combo), and makes your Therapies much stronger, too.

[Cacks]

Hi All,

I've been trying to rebuild aluren to play in the current tempo / mana denial (i.e. wasteland heavy) meta that exists right now. None of the main three decks (Maverick, RUG and Stoneblade) are amazingly fast, so I decided to maximise mana stability and aim for a usual turn 4 - 5 win with stronger control capacity. Frequently the deck will go off with two counters back up (or counter plus mana to pay for daze) on turn 4, without falling over to a single wasteland. The deck also has the smallest combo package of any combo deck out there at the moment (12 cards + 1 witness), and no extraneous creatures so as to maximise the value of stranding removal in the opponent's hand. Thus my love affair with BoP has ended.

It is of course slower, and therefore has to rely on its counters against faster combo. And is a desperate dog to dredge!

I also run a wish SB, to so as to answer particular problems (e.g. ravenous trap or extraction vrs graveyard decks) or fetch another counter (pact) to punch through the combo.

4 aluren
4 recruiter
1 harpy
2 dream stalker
1 parasitic strix
1 eternal witness

4 brainstorm
4 ponder
2 preordain
4 force of will
4 spell pierce
3 intuition
3 cunning wish

2 island
2 forest
3 tropical island
1 volcanic island
3 ancient tomb
2 city of traitors
4 misty rainforest
3 scalding tarn
3 wooded foothills

SB:

1 pact of negation
1 mindbreak trap
1 sudden shock
1 wipe away
1 ravenous trap
1 surgical extraction
1 harmonic sliver
8 other stuff (currently mixes of pithing needles [mainly for quasali pridamage], engineered explosives [for a catch all, and to set at 2 to remove pridemages and G Teeg] and grafdigger's cage)

Rather short on sideboard for RUG, but I am not sure what is really worth bringing in.

The red splash is to chain recruiters as chump blockers, and for the sudden shock to wish for. This is to get round a virtual lock of pridemage or Teeg plus mother of runes. The other concern is a stoneblade player with swords, snapcaster and 2 mana (which is enough to double swords the dreamstalkers once Aluren makes the snapcaster free). Not sure of the answer to that yet, save for more counters! An alternative splash would be for one underground sea and slaughter pact in the SB - but that can be kolded with a mother of runes.

With 10 cantrips and 10 fetch, it plays out a bit like the old U/B storm (if slower): ponder / brainstorm / fetch for a turn or two, tutor up something with intuition or wish for protection, then go off. Ideally your land drops will be something like: T1: fetch --> island, T2: fetch ---> forest (if the shuffle is needed), T3: another forest, T4: sol land to go off with U available to pay for daze or for spell pierce back up. Hopefull with a force of will, or pact, available too.

The idea was for a deck that even Ari Lax would not hate (10 cantrips, 10 fetch, good protection) - although I make no claim to have succeeded!

This is a fun and reasonably competative build, not not necessarily optimal, and I'd be interested if anyone has any thoughts.

[dameus]

Sorry, Cacks. I see this deck list as a step backwards. 10 cantrips is too many. Make those Preordains more distruption or acceleration. And Cunning Wish has no business being in there. If you want a jack-of-all trades, Chain of Vapor or more counters (maybe Flusterstorm) would be better.

[oRen]

engineered explosives [for a catch all, and to set at 2 to remove pridemages and G Teeg]

nice. explosives to handle teeg.

[swoop]

chain, or even therapy + that other card..

no wishes, no preordain. ttyl

[Jabari]

Have you all seen the new Strix form planechase? Looks like a good swap for Wall of Blossoms, pitches to force and serves as a better blocker. Any ideas on a list?

[DireLemming]

Coiling Oracle is probably still better: the colours are less awkward (don't forget you need double G for Aluren) and it can [sometimes] accelerate you and/or enable Brianstorms and CoV whilst going off (that is searching for Harpy & kill). Either way the most important thing either one has over Wall of Blossoms is the "Necropotence" interaction with Harpy. In a similar vain, Vendilion Clique is an interesting (i.e. it has it's problems, namely the nonland clause and the double U) protection/draw-engine combo.

[Raggedjoe]

The way I see it, there are 0 reasons to play Strix. I mean, it's more fragile, harder to cast, and doesn't ramp. As far as this deck is concerned, it's a strictly worse card

[Cacks]

nice. explosives to handle teeg.

Ah yes, embarassing that one..... Nobody's pefect.

:wink:

[kiblast]

I'd say its a decent alternative to Wall of Blossom, you can now run up to 8 2 cc creatures which pitch to fow and let you go off with an Aluren and an Harpy. Sometimes blue count is a problem, and more or less you never want to block with your creatures more than once, so yeah, I'd play the Strix over Wall. Coiling still stays as a 4 of obviously.

[theBloody]

Tested Baleful Strix instead of Wall of Blossoms in Recruiterless version.

Pros:
- you can go off with it
- can block delver
- pitchable to FoW
- kill everything

Cons:
- deck become dual land heavy
- you can't cast it, pass turn, block and sacrifice it next turn to therapy
- die to everything (eg. cycled Gempalm)

Main problem is that it become almost impossible to play without duals because black and green card count are nearly equal. You want early black mana which was unnecesary in Blossom build (you just casted therapy before you go off).

What about your experiences with Strix guys?

[swoop]

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=47479

This was the most common, normal and effective build.
1 off Venser is a bit odd, and rest is pretty usual.

I hate it. it has recruiters.

[kiblast]

So here we have this (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=8551&iddeck=63148) list, which is a reelaboration of the old Explorer/ Intent lists we were brewing 2 years ago.

1 Parasitic Strix
4 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Selkie Hedge-Mage
4 Veteran Explorer

2 Chain of Vapor
3 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm

3 Diabolic Intent
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy


4 Aluren

1 Bayou
1 Swamp
2 Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island

2 Chain of Vapor
2 Krosan Grip
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Pernicious Deed
4 Spell Pierce

I really like this list (top 16 on 100ish players in spain), although the 3rd Intent seems a bit overkill. No Raven Familiar makes me cry a bit, but we'll see.

Anyways I need to test the full set of Selkie. Bouncing flipped Delvers seems good. I think I might want the 21st land though.

I'm going to test it, I think it's a very good starting point in this meta (RUG / Maverick essentially). More thoughts to follow.

[Nonex]

So they covered the top16 instead of just the top8, nice.

By that I mean you just posted my list. I am the one who placed 14th in that tournament.

I lost to MUD and BUG Landstill, MUD overloaded me with Golems one game and a topdecked Wasteland in the other, and BUG won by sticking a Liliana and me getting mana flooded. I won against GW Zenith, Canadian Threshold, BGW Rock, UW Delver and Sneak&Show -> this is why I picked Aluren, to drop one with his own S&T, which I did, and then I comboed in response to him paying 7 life.

The list is straightforward, but very, very fragile to my tastes. I didn't like Probes that much, I mean, Therapy has always been good on its own provided you know what to name, and there should be something better than just cycling for 2 life. I didn't face a single Surgical Extraction from blue decks, which could have been a nightmare, and Sword of Body and Mind is essentially an unblockable threat that wins the game automatically if Strix gets milled.

I was told to try without Ravens because "they are too slow" and I said why not, but then I found myself having to be overly conservative with Oracles. I also noted I had less creatures than usual for extra sacrifice effects, therefore I missed not having a Dryad Arbor.

Overall I'm not satisfied with this list, it's fast, goes off reliably and Oracles counter the bad synergy between Chain of Vapor and Selkies, but it feels like it has too many vital points exposed and I must rely on my opponents not knowing they are there. Perhaps this one is just not my style, but I hate seeing how more controllish versions are too slow for the current format. It definitely needs something to speed it up, though, and both Explorers and Intents are damn good at this.

Don't let my opinions cloud your mind, though. Test the list first and tell us how you see it.

[kiblast]

Well Nonex, what else can I say, congrats on getting top16 with Recless Aluren. I'm definitely going to test your build.

Probes: they should be important in the Ubased.deck matchup, for example RUG delver and UW miracles. This is something coming from the UR dreadstill list (Rood's build) : peek their hands, get information, adapt your gameplan to what they have. Moreover you have Therapy.

Aluren always relied on opponent not knowing properly where they are and what they're playing against. :laugh:

Would you mind posting a detailed report?

[Alexeezay]

less Intents and more raven familiars & that list is the nuts I guess :)

[kiblast]

less Intents and more raven familiars & that list is the one we built in this thread 2 years ago

Fixed that for you.

I guess it's time to test different builds/solutions. Therefore congrats to Nonex to bring that innovative build in a competitive environment and doing well. I'm going to test it. Again, it's a very good starting point.

[theBloody]

Even if I prefer control builds it is nice to see recruiterless build going well in such big tournament. Gratz to you.

I disagree with need of familliar. Harpy + Oracle seems enough to go off. You just find selkie and draw your library.

Nonex: Didn't you have problem with protection? Seven spells seems low for fast build.

[Nonex]

Finally found the notes I took from the tournament.


Round 1: MUD

Game 1 he accelerates so much with Tombs and Welders that I'm more worried about not dying to Golems than thinking how to go off.

Game 2 I drop Explorer, he drops Metalworker, then I sacrifice Explorer to Intent, get Grip and destroy it. I combo out later.

Game 3 he topdecks a Wasteland that destroys my Tropical Island and prevents me from sacrificing an Oracle to Intent and get Chain of Vapor with :u: open. Now I leave myself fully tapped if I do this, so I can't do anything against him activating Metalworker -> Lightning Greaves -> Kuldotha Forgemaster -> hasty Blightsteel Colossus.


Round 2: GW Zenith

Game 1 I have to helplessly die when my hand has everything I need to win and the table has 1 land and two Explorers exiled by Swords to Plowshares.

Game 2 he fully taps to drop stuff and I take advantage of that to drop Aluren and kill him.

Game 3 he casts Choke and I'm always 1 mana short of blowing it with Deed, however there's a moment where I simply don't care since @ 2 I blow up Teeg, Thalia and Sylvan Library. I drop Aluren and my 2 Harpies and 2 Selkies win over his 4 Swords to Plowshares.


Round 3: BGW Good Stuff

We get deckchecked and he loses game 1 because some sideboard cards were still in the maindeck.

Game 2 I get mana screwed and he promptly attacks with some Finks and tokens powered by Sorin emblems.

Game 3 I go infinite life but can't dig into the library because he has Mindbreak Trap. First one is unexpected, second one is topdecked after seeing his hand with Therapies. I eventually get the Strix, though.


Round 4: UW Delver

Game 1 is fast, since Insectile Aberration attacking on second turn is harsh, but equipped later with Sword of Feast and Famine is simply impossible.

Game 2 I clear his hand with Therapies and win as usual.

Game 3 he is mana screwed but eventually recovers. He has two tapped lands and an untapped Tundra when I cast Gitaxian Probe on him. I see FoW, Spell Snare, Snapcaster Mage and Disenchant, while he has a Pithing Needle in play naming Cavern Harpy. I cast Therapy on FoW, cast a Selkie, flashback and take Snare, cast Oracle, sacrifice to Intent and get another Therapy to take Mage. I drop an Aluren so he can Disenchant it, and I drop another one a little later and bounce Needle with Chain of Vapor. I explain all this with this level of detail because it's the best moment of the day.


Round 5: Canadian Threshold

The entire round is composed of Therapies on his counters and Explorers sacrificed to Intents. Nothing truly remarkable happens in any of the games.


Round 6: BUG Landstill

Game 1 I get mana flooded and lose to a resolved Liliana of the Veil. I should have cast a second FoW on her, but I had both a Harpy and an Oracle and didn't want to exile either. That costed me the game.

Game 2 he Darkblasts everything I drop and can't flashback or Intent properly. It's a matter of time before Liliana and multiple Mishra's Factories kill me.


Round 7: Sneak&Show

Game 1 he casts Show and Tell -> Griselbrand vs Aluren. He attacks and I cast a Selkie, he draws 7 and by an error on his part Selkie doesn't get countered (if you ask for her target, it means she has resolved). Griselbrand in hand again, I cast two Therapies which meet his two FoWs, so now I can freely cast an Oracle and Chain of Vapor it and Selkie almost indefinitely, since every land topdecked is an additonal Chain copy. After revealing like 5-6 cards with Oracle, the last one is a Harpy, so death and destruction.

Game 2 I Spell Pierce his Blood Moon because he's caught me with all the fetchlands in hand. After that he doesn't draw anything while an Explorer and two Oracles kill him slowly.


I can't really say if the deck has enough protection or not, but Therapies are so incredible (as is getting one with Intent if necessary) that I wouldn't be surprised if that was enough. That's all mosts lists have always used anyway.

[Guy I Don't Know]

Hello all, I think I am going to go back to playing aluren again and was wondering what people thought of the U/W stoneforger and miracle matchups. What cards do you side in and out and what determines if you win or not? Thank you in advance!

Edit: Also what is the plan versus gaddock teeg? Force of will and cabal therapy naming GSZ are good measures, but what is the plan if it lands?

[swoop]

Therapy, chain, deed.

I like deed against stoneforge/maverick

[Guy I Don't Know]

Hello All! I am tuning this deck and thought it would be good to brainstorm what are the best catch alls in the main deck. In non recruiter builds it is chain of vapor usually because of interaction when going off. So here we go!

Chain of vapor: bounce teeg, Thalia, pithing needle, humility. Pros: useful when going off, pitch able to fow, and only one mana! Cons: not permanently dealt with, can get awkward if wanting to bounce and block(think coiling oracle vs silvergill adept and lord of Atlantis) does not deal with counterbalance effectively

Pernicious deed: pros: deals with everything cons: sometimes have to play and hope they do not kill you or remove it so you can blow it next turn.

EE: pros: cheaper than deed, better getting around counterbalance can play academy ruins for recursion cons: CAN'T BE PLAYED WITH TEEG (I would so play this one if it could) does not sweep everything

Echoing truth pros: pitch able to Fow, sweep entreat the angel tokens cons: not permanent and costs more than chain of vapor.


So what are other possibilities you can come up with?
My dream card: pitch able to force and can permanently deal with teeg and counterbalance.

[dameus]

I don't think your dream card exists.
CoV and ET are my choices.
Wipe Away at least deserves mention (but I don't play it).
Reality Acid permanently deals with Counterbalance and Teeg and is pitch-able to FoW, but it's no good, of course.

[menace13]

Does the deck now play Baleful Strix and Shardless Agent?

[theBloody]

Testing Baleful Strix and Wall of Roots in place of Blossoms and Oracle (don't like him in control anti aggro build). Seems good, but still waiting for tournament.

[kiblast]

Does the deck now play Baleful Strix and Shardless Agent?

Strix is perfectly playable if you still play Wall of Blossom since is a Wall you can combo off with. But Agent? never thought about that and never tried it. But cascading into more combo pieces, or into Chain of Vapor while comboing off, targeting all your creatures sacrificing your lands.... could be interesting.

Edit: Pre combo you also get Therapies, seems sweet, I'll test it.

[theBloody]

Interested in your results kiblast. I thought about cascading into living wish which give you virtual recruiter but can't manage to build proper list.

[menace13]

Strix is perfectly playable if you still play Wall of Blossom since is a Wall you can combo off with. But Agent? never thought about that and never tried it. But cascading into more combo pieces, or into Chain of Vapor while comboing off, targeting all your creatures sacrificing your lands.... could be interesting.

Edit: Pre combo you also get Therapies, seems sweet, I'll test it.

I am not really well versed in all the Aluren builds as they all seem so different to me. Not so much Recruiter vs Non-recruiter but even the variety in both of these versions confuses me. Last time I played it was when Recruiter builds were gaining popularity. I think over a year ago?

Is Wall of Blossoms a staple? Veteran Explorer, Strix, Agent, Man-O-War, Selkie Hedge-Mage, Artic Merfolk. I mean the list is long these are just some I can think of.

Why do lists vary with Intuition/Lim Dul's Vault/Diabolic Intent/Perilous Research ?

Any reasons for the splits on Repeal, Chain of Vapor, and Echoing Truth?

Thoughts on Pact of Negation? Natural Order sideboard? Has anyone jammed Academy Rector with any of the sac spells?

Sorry for all the questions.


Interested in your results kiblast. I thought about cascading into living wish which give you virtual recruiter but can't manage to build proper list.

There is a list I found off TCDecks with Wish and Raven Familiar.
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6955&iddeck=50446

[menace13]

So what are other possibilities you can come up with?
My dream card: pitch able to force and can permanently deal with teeg and counterbalance.
Venser End Of Turn? Necrotic, and Harmonic Sliver(Not blue but it is a Disenchant/Vindicate)

[theBloody]

Finally went to tournament. Tried to break Shardless Agent. List:


MAIN:
4 Baleful Strix
2 Cavern Harpy
1 Coiling Oracle
2 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix
3 Raven Familiar
4 Shardless Agent
2 Wall of Blossoms

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
1 Chain of Vapor
3 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Cabal Therapy

1 Bayou
2 Forest
3 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs

SIDE:
4 Faerie Macabre
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Krosan Grip
1 Force of Will
1 Relic of Progenitus



EDIT:
List worked good, but it is far from optimal. Agents were there for value, no as win condition. Sad note; Blue Elemental Blasts were not enought to stop goblins -.- (plus Baleful Strix and Shardless Agent can't stop Piledrivers).

Tournament (22 participants, 5 rounds, top 8):
1 Pox - 2:0
2 U/G Turbo Eldrazi - 2:0
3 U/W Illusions of Grandeur/Gigapede/Sanguine Bond/Replenish combo - 2:1
4 Hypergenesis - 1:2
5 ID
6 R/g Goblins - 0:2

Ended 6th.


Tested list with Living Wishes. It is impossible to build list where you can consistently cascade into Living Wish. Also I can't simply replace Familiars with Agents. Agents can't cascade into Parasitic Strix so you can't win from there.

[Kap'n Cook]

Here's a question for everyone.

I do have recruiters but only for painter. I don't own any other staples or cards for that matter. So my question is whether or not there are any 'budget' recruiter builds and whether anyone would know where to start.

I was thinking of a shell similar to the budget cephalid breakfast style lists like this:

4 gitaxian probe
4 cabal therapy
4 aluren
4 ponder

4 recruiter
2 dream stalker
1 parasitic strix
1 cavern harpy

4 city of brass
4 gemstone mine

and then some assortment of other lands, creatures, protection like duress, other search etc

Any tips?

[menace13]

Here's a question for everyone.

I do have recruiters but only for painter. I don't own any other staples or cards for that matter. So my question is whether or not there are any 'budget' recruiter builds and whether anyone would know where to start.

I was thinking of a shell similar to the budget cephalid breakfast style lists like this:

4 gitaxian probe
4 cabal therapy
4 aluren
4 ponder

4 recruiter
2 dream stalker
1 parasitic strix
1 cavern harpy

4 city of brass
4 gemstone mine

and then some assortment of other lands, creatures, protection like duress, other search etc

Any tips?
Yes, actually there's a player on MTGO that places with his Aluren build and t is Fowl-less.
4 Aluren
1 Arctic Merfolk
1 Bayou
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
1 Dream Stalker
1 Eternal Witness
3 Forest
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Intuition
3 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Parasitic Strix
4 Ponder
2 Repeal
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
1 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs

[dameus]

Here's a question for everyone.

I do have recruiters but only for painter. I don't own any other staples or cards for that matter. So my question is whether or not there are any 'budget' recruiter builds and whether anyone would know where to start.

I was thinking of a shell similar to the budget cephalid breakfast style lists like this:

4 gitaxian probe
4 cabal therapy
4 aluren
4 ponder

4 recruiter
2 dream stalker
1 parasitic strix
1 cavern harpy

4 city of brass
4 gemstone mine

and then some assortment of other lands, creatures, protection like duress, other search etc

Any tips?

It's funny seeing Recruiter and budget together, but I get it.

2 potential solutions:

1) a GBU manabase with rainbow lands similar to what you have.
If FoW isn't in the budget, I would highly recommend putting Thoughtseize and/or Duress in the main and get rid of G Probe. (I believe the main reason other threads prefer peek/cantrip vs peek&pluck is to maintain a high blue count for FoW pitches). You'll also need a tutor beside the Ponders. If Intuition is beyond reach, Lim Dul's Vault should serve as a capable sub.

2) a GU manabase only
In general, you can sub Accumulated Knowledge as your tutor and use countermagic as a sub for black's discard. Remember, part of the alure of Cabal Therapy is its synergy with Intuition, where the blue opponent lets the Intuition resolve and you fetch 3 Therapies to his chagrin. If you con't play Intuition, you don't have that trick. Also, you wouldn't need rainbow lands either and so you should be rather resistant to Wasteland.
For both cases, populating critters to taste shouldn't be hard b/c Aluren plays the cheap ones. BoP should make the cut for sure, tho. Tinder Wall is also often underestimated as a lackey/chump blocker and accelerator and is another emergency way to cast recruiter without splashing red.

[dsck]

I wouldnt play Aluren without having solid manabase, you are going to lose to Wasteland with a combo deck which isnt that much fun.

[catmint]

How nice - you get to play cabal therapy and baleful strix in the same deck and finish with a 4 mana spell that is not academy rector. :)

my questions:
Is there a finish where you just need 1 card (recruiter) + aluren or is it always a 3 card combo?

Why do people play Raven Familiar? Is there something I am missing about this card except for 1 shot block, 3 mana cantrip and good cabal therapy target?

[kiblast]

Why do people play Raven Familiar? Is there something I am missing about this card except for 1 shot block, 3 mana cantrip and good cabal therapy target?

You can go off through Raven + Harpy, and you need less life than Harpy+ Coiling/ Strix.

[Nonex]

Is there a finish where you just need 1 card (recruiter) + aluren or is it always a 3 card combo?

You can chain Recruiters until you decide to find your two Shrieking Drakes / Dream Stalkers / Arctic Merfolks, then repeat the chain to find Cavern Harpy, then repeat again to find Strix. Aluren and Recruiter are enough to start, but you'll need to run a pair of any of the shitty blue creatures mentioned.



Why do people play Raven Familiar? Is there something I am missing about this card except for 1 shot block, 3 mana cantrip and good cabal therapy target?

Mostly for everything you said.

[kiblast]

You can chain Recruiters until you decide to find your two Shrieking Drakes / Dream Stalkers / Arctic Merfolks, then repeat the chain to find Cavern Harpy, then repeat again to find Strix. Aluren and Recruiter are enough to start, but you'll need to run a pair of any of the shitty blue creatures mentioned.


Well, I think is ok to run Dream Stalker considering that it has a marginal utility pre-combo (non targeted bounce for your Coiling Oracle, play Oracle again next turn for value, leave a 1/5 wall on board. Basically the same way Recless version do through Harpy-which is a way better wall through the bounce itself ability; or trough Man-O'-War) while Recruiter is substantially dead pre combo, even if the latest Recwith lists actually have a toolbox boarding plan built around Recruiter.

I still think playing with a 4colour-21 lands manabase when Goblin and Threshold are DTBs is suicide. I really don't get why players keep doing results with the Recwith version, when the BUG Recless is more affordable, has an overall more stable manabase and is less fragile.

However, players who play Aluren decide to play with Recruiters -> they top8 tournaments -> the community thinks that Recless sucks-> who likes the deck is convinced the only playable build is Recwith-> rinse and repeat.

[bigbear102]

I guess I don't see the reason you have to play a 4 color base with Recruiter. Sure it's a dead card per-combo, but having a 2 card combo instead of 3 should more than make up for it. And with the recruiter builds all you need to do is get Dreamstalker, return Recruiter, get Harpy, return stalker and recruiter, Recruiter to get strix and win. It's a lot simpler and more efficient than having to play Oracle/Raven/Strix to draw your deck, and you still have that as a backup plan if necessary.

Playing 4 colors allows you to cast Recruiter, but it's not like you have to bend over backwards, I'dplay maybe 1-2 red sources max, you typically don't wanna burn half your combo to get a draw spell. If I were to play Recruiter I'd do something like this:

4 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Polluted Delta
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Volcanic Island
2 Forest
3 Island

4 Aluren
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Force of Will
4 Intuition
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Imperial Recruiter
2 Cavern Harpy
1 Dreamstalker
2 Parasitic Strix
1 Man O' War
3 Wall of Roots
2 Raven Familiar

It may be terrible, but I think it could work.

[theBloody]

Still working on Shardless list. Previously I said you cannot consistently cascade into Living wish. That is true but who cares? Shardless Agent is simply better than Raven Familiar if you build your list properly. Why? Third turn is often last time when you can cast something relevant. Familiar dig only a little and chump blocks. Agent can do much more.

Imagine first game of match on play. Typical Alurens game looks like: First turn fetch + Brainstorm opponent EOT (against fast aggro). Second turn Baleful Strix/other two drop. Turn three is your game edge. Aside from chump block Shardless Agent allow you to:
- cast Therapy to protect your turn four Aluren
- cast Living Wish to grab combo piece/hate
- cast two drop value blocker (Baleful Strix idealy)
- dig with Brainstorm (hello Familiar)
- cast Harpy to return your Baleful Strix

Side efect: Send random number of card to bottom. I play 22 one or two drops, 9 cards are cantrips so digging is bit deeper than Familiar in average.

Strategy: Go off as fast as possible if you playing against aggro. Resolve Intuition for Therapies against control. Therapy your opponent (flashback needed) and go off asap against combo. Shardless Agent support your goals better than Familiar aside from one thing: he send your Alurens and Intuitions to bottom. You often don't mind. Value for the win. You don't have to be fast if your opponent don't have anything in hand.

With Sharless Agent you get one bonus. You have about 28.5% to win from spot via Aluren + Agent (cascading into Harpy/Wish, not counting Brainstorm).

List:

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Force of Will
3 Living Wish

4 Baleful Strix
1 Eternal Witness
4 Shardless Agent
3 Cavern Harpy
3 Wall of Roots
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage

1 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp

SB: 1 Parasitic Strix
SB: 1 Cavern Harpy
SB: 1 Spore Frog
SB: 1 City of Brass
SB: 1 Raven Familiar
SB: 3 Pernicious Deed
SB: 4 Faerie Macabre
SB: 1 Force of Will
SB: 2 Krosan Grip


I'm satisfied with main deck. Possible change is 1 Wall of Blossoms + 1 Wall of Roots for 2 Coiling Oracle, if you don't expect lots of Goblins. I recommended to left some Wall of Roots main deck. It allow you to cast Living Wish when you go off and have it in hand/accidently draw it via Baleful Strix etc.

I definitely need better sideboard targets for Living Wish. My main idea was Wish into combo piece/something to buy time but it is not enought. I need some good combo hate at least. Also i will kick Faerie Macabre out (maybe 1 will stay for wish) for some better graveyard hate.

Tried this list at tournament (33 participants, 3:3 result)
2:1 Omniscience with white (going off thanks to Show and tell is sweet)
0:2 Dredge (faeries were not enought)
2:1 UR delver burn (Pernicious deed shined)
1:2 UR Know and tell (Bad luck Brian. Have Aluren game three but nothing else to cast)
0:2 mono B Pox (discard me out and bob ftw. Never saw Brainstorm these games)
2:1 ANT (discard him out, counter his Surgical Extraction to save intuitioned Aluren and win)

Your insight is welcomed.

[lavafrogg]

Someone please make shardless aluren a good deck. I love aluren and I usually play coiling oracle/chain of vapor control with 3 hains to help stall the board and combo off without harpy.

[swoop]

Played two games other night against Nic Fit or whatever's that deck name.

2:0 clean.

Played my standard Recruiter version with oracles, therapies and 2 chain/int on some pages back.
I like this shardless agent version though, gonna try it out soon.

who knows... maybe it'll be fun to play if nothing else

[swoop]

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Force of Will
3 Living Wish

4 Baleful Strix
1 Eternal Witness
4 Shardless Agent
3 Cavern Harpy
3 Wall of Roots
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage

1 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp

SB: 1 Parasitic Strix
SB: 1 Cavern Harpy
SB: 1 Spore Frog
SB: 1 City of Brass
SB: 1 Raven Familiar
SB: 3 Pernicious Deed
SB: 4 Faerie Macabre
SB: 1 Force of Will
SB: 2 Krosan Grip


1. i hate living wishes, they're just nuisance in the deck, except in case when some1 doesn't have recs but then they still suck. bad choice but still needed i guess
2. Strix < Oracle. Oracle gets you a card, chumps and most important it accelerates you. It doesn't kill a goyf or KOTR or huge Ooze but gets you mana you need to ramp up to a kill
3. Agents are cool and fun way to include em, and to play em. Should use them more probably.

2 Intuitions are pretty okay i guess, maybe 3, 4 is overkills but with em i should play volrath's + witness + loam for late game.

dunno, this deck is shitty until they reprint rec

[pandaman]

Shardless Agent is intriguing... it immediately reminds me of the RUG lists with Bloodbraid Elf cascading into Ancestral Vision for mega card advantage. But in our case, Agent costs 3, so it comes out quicker, which seems good in theory. However, Visions is a little bit of a dud draw otherwise.

I'll test it and see how it goes. On Cockatrice, that is. And I'll try and trade for some Agents this week to test in real life!

[theBloody]

I gave Coiling Oracle a chance thanks to swoop's sugestion. I didn't like them mainly because they speed us up only with brainstorm so I tried a build with Sage of Epityr as their support. I can't say Sages are awesome, but besides helping Oracles they also provide T2 sacrifice outlet for Therapy and something to return with Cavern Harpy so you get nice chump blocker in return. Sage is Sensei's divining top on legs without card draw ability. I recomend to test them out at least. Also Sedraxis Alchemist was nice Living Wish target.

Tried build in tournament. I lost two matches only due to my mistakes. Went 2 : 3 : 1.
UG Turbo-Eldrazi - 1:2 lose (can win g2)
Mono U Merfolks - 2:1 win (therapy hit two Lord of atlantis)
Mono brown stax - 1:1 tie (sphere of resistance was super annoying)
Mono G elves - 2:0 win
GBw Rock - 0:2 lose (thalia was annoying, but mass hand discard was way worse)
Burn - 0:2 lose (can win g2)

EDIT: Currently I'm also playing one Shardless Agent in SB, so Living Wish have always some nice target.

[swoop]

Just destroyed Nic Fit 4:0 without "coming close" to losing basically.

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
2 Intuition
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
1 Chain of Vapor

4 Coiling Oracle
1 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Man'o'war
1 Dream Stalker
3 Shardless Agent
3 Cavern Harpy
3 Wall of Roots
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Vendillion clique (or 2 even)

2 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp

This should be cool. Loved the build might up to 2 Chain of Vapor and 2 Clique i would like to test GSZ also

[theBloody]

You will hate fizzling Agent into GSZ.

[swoop]

Yeah, I've figured its either gsz or agent..

Anyways, when testing and fiddling around I always tend to add/remove cards on feeling, but this is somehow a base to work on

[lavafrogg]

Has Aluren ever had a "pirates" sub theme?

[Ellomdian]

Someone please make shardless aluren a good deck. I love aluren and I usually play coiling oracle/chain of vapor control with 3 hains to help stall the board and combo off without harpy.

I hear a rumor Meandeck was messing with Shardless Aluren, but can neither confirm, nor deny it.

[Lejay]

To my mind the deck is quite good with shardless. But probably not as good as a well-built shardless bug list.

[swoop]

hope gatecrash brings us something good

[swoop]

http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/37097_679759756022_402389893_n.jpg

Is nice

[TBryant23]

As long as the Imperial Recruiter promo settles around 100$-120$ I'll be happy. I can play my 4 favorite decks then. Aluren, Lands, Storm, and CounterTop. Life is complete.

[theBloody]

Nice. Around 100$ will be affordable.

[br14n^lol]

I love the idea of shardless agent in aluren. I love the cascade idea even tho recruiter aluren is probably just flat out better.
I tried to keep the total CC of the deck over 2. brain freeze decks your opponent if you somehow dont have a way to
find parasitic strix which could easily happen.

Cascade Aluren

4x architects of will
4x cavern harpy
4x dream stalker
2x parasitic strix
4x raven familiar
2x selkie hedge-mage
4x shardless agent
2x court hussar

4x aluren

4x force of will
2x intuition
2x misdirection
1x brain freeze

4x ancient tomb
2x bayou
4x tropical island
4x misty rainforest
2x verdant catacombs
2x polluted delta
2x forest
1x island

I have no SB yet and i have been currently gold fishing the deck.

like i said above i tried to keep everything above CC 2. This deck looks horrible and probably is, but its fun to fiddle around with. it may not win any huge legacy events but it will be fun at the local store for the 5 round tourneys.

I personally like architects of will because court hussar and raven familiar are easily cast-able to dig for aluren or other pieces. architects is my 1 CC baddie cantrip.

[Nonex]

What's the point of Shardless Agent if it barely cascades into anything?

This is what I'm testing right now:

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
4 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp

4 Veteran Explorer
4 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Shardless Agent
4 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Parasitic Strix

4 Aluren
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Diabolic Intent

Look at all the things you can cascade into and how Top lets you manipulate it to your advantage. Also, Harpy - Agent loops eventually bring you some other creature and an Intent to sacrifice it and get Strix.

I can't provide a decent sideboard yet. Sorry.

[theBloody]

How is cascading into Explorer?

[Nonex]

Another chumpblocker or the best cannon fodder for Therapy / Intent. Not as bad as it seems.

The way I see it, current Legacy demands that all decks have at least one of: mana acceleration; undercosted stuff; or disruption against your opponent's plan. If your deck moves at the speed of one land per turn, doesn't have unfair effects for 3 mana or less, and doesn't do anything to make your opponent move at the same speed as you, you're doomed to lose. Since Aluren doesn't really play anything spectacular and can't completely dedicate itself to interact with your opponent because of its combo-ish nature, it needs mana acceleration, both to keep up with the rest of the format and to fight tempo decks.

Back when Legacy had the Goblins - Threshold - Solidarity/Landstill trio as dominating decks, Aluren mostly resorted to Wall of Roots to fight Wasteland and Rishadan Port (it was also necessary to combo into infinite mana). Today, a 2cc drop isn't going to cut it. I like Explorer for its overall synergy with sacrifice effects and the way it uses chumpblocks and creature removal to your advantage. If it didn't exist, I guess I'd try some combination of Ancient Tomb with Birds of Paradise / Deathrite Shaman.

[Cybey]

Shouldn't there be a decent way that we can abuse this guy?

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/coiklp4xfo_en.jpg

[swoop]

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/zz2xe2fvnv_en.jpg

this guy + harpy = mill

and that guy above + husk = swinging for millions.

[Nonex]

Mortus Strider = Endless Cockroaches

Sage's Row Denizen = Merrow Witsniper = Drowner of Secrets


Absolutely nothing new.

[swoop]

yeah, well atleast i'll get shocklands I miss.

wish they were fetches though

[swoop]

So, finally played with my own Shardless Agents.

Love them. Decided to include again Living Wishes (atleast 3) and perhaps Impulse.

Intuition with Agent is bad, and wishes allows for more tech in SB / toolkit instead of
fishing for it with Imperial Recruiters (they're on ebay already!)

Do we have anything we could "set up" with agent except harpy, oracle, brainstorm, and wishes in my build?

[theBloody]

Good luck with topdecking Aluren without Intuitions. Your only option left is Academy Rector in SB.

[swoop]

LDV could work well with agent.

[theBloody]

Cascading into LDV could be nice. I just dislike casting it from hand. Pure card disadvantage.

EDIT: When you go off only with Agent, cascading into LDV hurt. You don't have to care about Intuitions there.

[(nameless one)]

What's LDV?

[UnsungHero]

What's LDV?

Lim-Duls Vault

[Kap'n Cook]

I'd like to share the list I am playing. I'd appreciate comments.

7 modern green fetches
3 island
4 forest
1 swamp
2 trops
1 sea
1 bayou
1 taiga

4 recruiter
4 oracle
3 veteran explorer
2 dream stalker
2 raven familiar
1 parasitic strix
1 cavern harpy
1 e. witness

4 force of will
4 brainstorm
4 aluren
4 cabal therapy
2 chain of vapor
2 diabolic intent
2 intuition

sideboard work in progress
so far
1 bone shredder
1 stern proctor


Some notes.

I realized that gitaxian probe sucked and was better replaced with cards that ramp (explorer) or help search (ravens). chain of vapor over repeal. It took the first gaddock teeg to hit the table to realize that. I don't want any "recruiter is dead pre-combo" or "they're too expensive"

[swoop]

I've found out that the builds depend on your play style. If you're happy with it, its the best one.
Try putting in one Man'o'war instead of 2nd Dream Stalker. Manowar can deal with Taeg, etc. or just stall board, bounce their pressure guy...

Shardless Agent and Phantasmal Image? 2-3 copies. In worst case he goes into cascade once again, he can chump, copy goyf, kill legendaries,
copy goyfs, knights etc...

[swoop]

To buy 2x Rec for 190$? judge foil ofc

[Rainbow Maker]

If you cast image copying shardless; you won't cascade.

[swoop]

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=141080&d=1365394656

OMG not again.

anything white worth adding?

[kkoie]

I would say no. And even if you did want to splash white, would this creature really be better than Dream Stalker who doesn't target? Granted it has flash, but Aluren gives all your creatures flash.

[swoop]

I would say no. And even if you did want to splash white, would this creature really be better than Dream Stalker who doesn't target? Granted it has flash, but Aluren gives all your creatures flash.

It does have MAY in his wording. Also, can remove opp creatures. But still not worth adding probably. Can bounce Taeg EOT though

[Kap'n Cook]

It does have MAY in his wording. Also, can remove opp creatures. But still not worth adding probably. Can bounce Taeg EOT though

Much much worse than dream stalker. You still need to target a creature you control, you just don't have to return it if the ability resolves and it CAN'T return an opponent's creature.

[kiblast]

Splashing white gives you E-tutor, but it's not worth it even with this creature.
Edit: rtfc.

[theBloody]

Restricted to target creature your control. That is sad.
I was thinking about buying recs for 100$ piece but I changed my mind. They still should decrease in price.
Anyway have you guys any success with aluren atm? I'm toying with shardless LDV wishless variant. It is promising in meta without daze.

[BKclassic]

So I have been working on the Shardless build on MODO a bit and I have arrived at something that I believe is fairly competitive:

22 Lands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp

15 Creatures
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Coiling Oracle
3 Baleful Strix
2 Cavern Harpy
3 Shardless Agent

23 Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Living Wish
4 Aluren
4 Force of Will

15 Sideboard
4 Abrupt Decay
1 City of Brass
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Eternal Witness
1 Bone Shredder
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Shardless Agent
1 Parastatic Strix
1 Cavern Harpy

The Recruiter version is now obsolete. Deathrite Shaman, Baleful Strix, Living Wish and Shardless Agent are just leagues better than Imperial Recruiter, Dream Stalker and the other cards that are terrible without an Aluren in play. Against every fair deck you can just jam creatures that 2 for 1 until you trump them with Aluren, and you have a fair shot of disrupting unfair decks until you can resolve Aluren. The sideboard probably isn't perfect, if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve it, I am open to suggestions. I definitely like Abrupt Decay though, it deals with all the permanent based hate (Counterbalance, Gaddock Teeg) and helps buy time against RUG Delver.

[kiblast]

Drop something and add Chain of Vapor, at least 1. 22 Lands are too many, considering you are playing Deathrite you should be fine with 21. Play the 4th Coiling because it's the best creature in the deck. I don't really get why would you play Wish. I might give your list a try but I'm pretty sure Wish sucks.

[BKclassic]

Drop something and add Chain of Vapor, at least 1. 22 Lands are too many, considering you are playing Deathrite you should be fine with 21. Play the 4th Coiling because it's the best creature in the deck. I don't really get why would you play Wish. I might give your list a try but I'm pretty sure Wish sucks.

Are you suggesting running Parastatic Strix maindeck or cutting it all together? Also, given that I am not running any other tutors (Intuition and LDV are terrible), by the time you draw Aluren, you don't want it to be a problem to find Cavern Harpy. And since Cavern Harpy isn't very good on it's own, I would rather run more Living Wish and less Cavern Harpy. I agree Coiling Oracle is very good, but Baleful Strix buys time against creature decks (which is important without tutors you need to be able to buy time to draw Aluren) and Baleful Strix wins the game almost just as well as Coiling Oracle with Cavern Harpy and Aluren. I could see possibly cutting Cavern Harpy from the main deck to fit in Chain of Vapor and Coiling Oracle.

[kiblast]

Are you suggesting running Parastatic Strix maindeck or cutting it all together? Also, given that I am not running any other tutors (Intuition and LDV are terrible), by the time you draw Aluren, you don't want it to be a problem to find Cavern Harpy. And since Cavern Harpy isn't very good on it's own, I would rather run more Living Wish and less Cavern Harpy. I agree Coiling Oracle is very good, but Baleful Strix buys time against creature decks (which is important without tutors you need to be able to buy time to draw Aluren) and Baleful Strix wins the game almost just as well as Coiling Oracle with Cavern Harpy and Aluren. I could see possibly cutting Cavern Harpy from the main deck to fit in Chain of Vapor and Coiling Oracle.

Whoops didn't see the missing Strix md, yeh I'm suggesting it md and cutting wishes. Strix is good, as coiling is, in fact I'd probably run a 4/3 Coiling/Strix split, considering that you want G before B all the time.
Harpy is a very good card even pre combo as lets you have a good matchup vs. grindy discard decks such as monoblack, jund, deadguy ale. Once you reach midgame it becomes the best chumpblocker in the world, and bounces your Coilings and Strixes to draw extra cards per turn minimizing the effect of Iok and Seize. If you want to buy time vs. midrange aggro strategies you need to play a decent number of Harpies.

[theBloody]

Wish is fine if you are playing some form of acceleration and have opportunity to get your hate online on t2. Although i'm not fan of Deathrite (cascading into him seems weak) I can see he is there for reasons. In my actual Wish version I'm trying to break this with Hickory Woodlot. It give Aluren nice explosivenes (t2 wish/intuition) but obviously leading to not so nice synergies with Oracles.

[BKclassic]

So I finally got a chance to play this deck in a daily and it went pretty well. I ran the exact list I posted earlier except -1 City of Brass, +1 Living Wish in the SB. The extra Living Wish is mostly just to help find hate cards in combo match ups. Here is a brief report:

Round 1: Punishing Jund
G1- After durdling around for a while, Aluren into Shardless, Baleful Strix, Baleful Strix, Deathrite Shaman is good enough to hold off his Goyf and Dark Confidant. He concedes when Bob drops him to 1 with Deathrite Shaman in play.
G2 – He destroys my hand and while I get an Aluren in play. I draw the Baleful Strix and Venser that I put on top of my library with Brainstorm, Baleful Strix draws me Cavern Harpy. He didn’t Wasteland me on his turn so I am able to hardcast Venser to bounce Baleful Strix when he goes to bolt it in response to Cavern Harpy.
1-0

Round 2: Sneak and Show
G1- I Gitaxian Probe on Turn 1 and see he is playing Sneak and Show. I cast Living Wish for Venser on Turn 2. We durdle about for a while and then he casts Show and Tell. I Venser his Emrakuel and then cast Living Wish for Cavern Harpy. He ends up countering my Cavern Harpy (to bounce Venser over and over) but I am able to go aggro with Venser and Deathrite Shaman.
G2- He gets the jump on the play against me with a turn 4 Sneak Attack.
G3- I tear his hand apart with Cabal Therapy and eventually drop Aluren, but not before having to Force of Will his Sneak Attack twice, removing my Cavern Harpy and Shardless Agent. The Shardless Agent on top of my library does enough work to win me the game, but it’s closer due to making some unfocused decisions.

Round 3: Slow 4 color Blue control deck feat Intuition, Accumulated Knowledge, Lingering Souls, Sapphire Meddalion
G1-I mulligan to 5 and concede to a turn 3 Jace when I have 2 lands in play, 2 lands in hand a FoW.
G2- I grind him down with creatures until I draw Aluren and then win, he didn’t know what I was on.
G3- I grind him down with creatures, I let him Vendilion Clique away my Aluren because I have 2 Living Wishes to grab Shardless Agent and Cavern Harpy and he is running Surgical Extraction (Countering Clique only to have it countered and Extracted seemed bad).
3-0

Round 4: Slow BUG control, not many creatures
G1 and G2 – These were really easy, I just played a bunch of creatures that are savage two for ones and then eventually played Aluren. There wasn’t much he could do.
4-0

All in all, Aluren is an amazing trump card and makes it basically impossible to lose any kind of mid range match up. I haven’t lost a round on MODO yet, but I have only played in five 2-man’s and one Daily.

[theBloody]

Congratulations! Your round three opponent was probably AJ Sacher. He streamed this deck recently.

[swoop]

1. when you drop Aluren you should win not drop 4 cards and say: "Go"

2. Baleful is awful.

3. Wish is awful.

[BKclassic]

Despite Swoop's very thoughtful and cogent criticism, I went ahead and 3-1ed the most recent daily on Sunday: https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/5323494

Round 1 I loss to Jund Game 1 when he got an early Jitte active that I couldn't win through. Game 2 I stupidly Cabal Therapied for Pyrostatic Pillar, missing the Jitte that was in his hand. I had to sacrifice my Deathrite Shaman to Cabal Therapy to remove it and I couldn't catch up from there.

Rounds 2 and 3 I won in three typical grindy games against BUG Standstill and Canadian Thresh. In game 2, the Threshold player managed a timely Surgical Extraction on my Shardless Agent that cascaded into Abrupt Decay on an empty board (aka nothing), and got another Shardless Agent out of my hand, otherwise it wouldn't have been close.

Round 4 I beat burn in 2 games. This seems like it could be a pretty close match up, but I didn't miss with Cabal Therapy game 1 and game 2 he mulled to 5.

[feline]

Though not quite top 8 this time around, grats again Martin http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=55312 ~16th place out of 261, SCG Seattle Apr-21st-2013

[swoop]

anything new in aluren?

[theBloody]

So after testing LDV list without Living Wishes I have to say the life is biggest issue. In average I need to pay about 10+ lives per game (mainly because of LDV). That is something I can't afford in Jund/Canadian meta.
Starting to test again old-school Hickory Woodlot/Cloud of Faeries/Living Wish/Intuition build with Agent.
Note: if you are playing wishes you want to play at least 1 x Cloud of Faeries. You will be able to cast wish that sitting in your hand in various situations.

[swoop]

care to post lists?

with explanations if possible about "uncommon" choices for your meta?

I used to play magus of the vineyard for a t2 kill...

[theBloody]

This list is targeted to aggro/combo meta. I'm trying to be as consistent as possible with speed in mind. I'm not sure about number of faeries. Actually trying playset in slot of other t2 cantrip creatures. They shine a lot in situations where I have to play aluren and hand looks like: aluren, wish, agent/harpy/oracle/familiar, faerie.

Hickory Woodlot:
+ allow t3 (with faeries t2) kill
+ agent don't care (in opposite to cascade to other possible low costed mana sources eg. deathrite shaman, magnus...)
+ help fight daze
+ if they wasteland it after one activation, you are usually fine (this mean it is at least t2 and you played agent/wish/intuition/familiar)
- slow you down turn you land it (this can be balanced by faeries)
- risky to play it t1 with brainstorm in hand against opponent with discard
- t1 woodlot, t2 oracle seems pretty bad

Cloud of Faeries:
+ hickory woodlot interaction
+ allow you to play tutors at the same turn you played aluren
+ allow you to play t2: therapy with flashback / harpy (imba blocker)
+ easy to cast
- weak by itself
- weak in multiples in hand

SB:
Infest - fight tribal
Carpet of Flowers - fight blue wasteland decks. You can use mana in the same turn.

List:

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
4 Living Wish

3 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
1 Eternal Witness
3 Shardless Agent
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 Raven Familiar

4 Hickory Woodlot
1 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp

SB: 1 Parasitic Strix
SB: 1 Cavern Harpy
SB: 1 Sedraxis Alchemist
SB: 1 Eternal Witness
SB: 1 Faerie Macabre
SB: 1 Shardless Agent
SB: 1 Gilded Drake
SB: 1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
SB: 3 Infest
SB: 1 City of Brass
SB: 3 Carpet of Flowers


Thinking about including deed to SB (t3 deed is slow but t2 looks fine). Looking forward to some tournament for real results.

[swoop]

Got demolished by Canadian ***** x-3. Wasn't a nice exp but I flashed my 3 new Imperial Recruiters. Hit the floor hard...

4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
2 Intuition
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will

2 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Man o War
1 Dream stalker
2 Wall of Roots
1 Selkie hedge mage
1 Wall of Blossoms
2 Vendillion Clique
4 Shardless Agent
3 Imperial Recruiter

3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept heath
2 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
1 Taiga
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp

Not happy with a build.

[theBloody]

I had opportunity to play in small tournament.
5 rounds, 11 participants

Matches:
R1: TES - 1:2 (punted hard game 3 where I pass the turn without flashbacking therapy to discard his burning wish)
R2: burn - 2:1 (decayed his vortex ftw)
R3: UWb stoneblade - 2:1 (waiting game. Snapcaster was his best card)
R4: mono B Pox - 2:1 (t2 kill happened! He didn't see that coming.)
R5: Gr eldrazi - 0:2 (game 2 hand: 3 x branstorm, wish, 2 x rainforest, tropical -> didn't find aluren or intuition in 6 turns)
record: 3:2 (ended 4th)

I'm pretty satisfied with list. Maybe I'll add Academy Rector to board. Hickory woodlot was fine. Faeries too. FoW and Faeries where sided out most of time.


4 Aluren
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Intuition
1 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Living Wish
3 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Force of Will
1 Eternal Witness
3 Shardless Agent
4 Hickory Woodlot
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 Raven Familiar
SB: 1 Parasitic Strix
SB: 1 Cavern Harpy
SB: 1 Sedraxis Alchemist
SB: 1 Eternal Witness
SB: 1 Faerie Macabre
SB: 1 Shardless Agent
SB: 1 City of Brass
SB: 3 Carpet of Flowers
SB: 1 Cabal Therapy
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay

[The Duressed]

So I'm obviously not the first person to think of this, but I was hoping some of you guys had opinions on Baleful Strix, particularly in an Imperial Recruiter build (plus I want to get this forum going again since it's been dead in here). I personally think it's pretty good, and this weekend I'm going to just rip the Coiling Oracles out of my deck and straight up replace them with Strixes. It still draws a card when it comes into play, so with Aluren in play it still combos with Cavern Harpy to produce a Yawgmoth's Bargain effect. It's also obviously superior on defense, and may be what we need to have a little better game against decks like Canadian Thresh.

There are a couple ways in which Strix isn't as good as Oracle, though. It doesn't provide the ramping effect -- is this a big problem? I've never found it to make or break the deck, although I'm rather inexperienced. It also skews the mana distribution of the deck, switching it from green being the obvious second color and black just there for Therapy to green and black being equally represented.

My list I'll be testing, which is 95% based on Martin Goldman-Kirst's recent lists:

4 Baleful Strix
4 Imperial Recruiter
2 Dream Stalker
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
---->14

4 Aluren
---->4

4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Ponder
2 Intuition
1 Life from the Loam
---->13

4 Force of Will
4 Cabal Therapy
---->8

2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Savannah
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta
1 Volrath's Stronghold
---->21
(14+4+13+8+21=60)


Sideboard:
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Peacekeeper
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Harmonic Sliver
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Firespout
4 Thoughtseize
---->15

[oarsman]

You are short two cards by my count.

[The Duressed]

Looks right to me (added counts to the previous post). Maybe you missed the 2x Ponder.

[oarsman]

Indeed, I was wrong.

[swoop]

Played with some good success while testing against Espher blade with shamans.
Some less success against maverick with kotr/darkdepts combo.

our monthly tourney was cancelled due to location being too close to EU entrance shenenigans and homoerotics in zagreb

[The Duressed]

Well I tested Baleful Strix today, and it was absolutely incredible. I was blown away by how good that card is and how much better it was for me than Coiling Oracle. My local event was 4 rounds of swiss with no cut to top 8. There was even one game where I was playing against BUG tempo, and I was able to use Volrath's Stronghold and Baleful Strix to address all 4 of the opponent's threats.

I was very impressed by that card. I highly recommend testing it.

[swoop]

Finished 4:0 a tournament in my LGS.

M1 2:1 against MUD

G1 he mulls to 4 I beat him down with critters as I do not draw Aluren or mana
G2 he beats me with early chalice + trinisphere
G3 he puts on chalice on 1, before that I therapied 1. then he puts down Trinisphere and Lodestone. And that's it for the whole game.

I beat him down with Shardless and Eternal Witness to oblivion. A turn before he'd kill me, or two.

M2 2:1 against UR Delver
G1 I managed to press him and finally kill him without casting Aluren. Critters FTV
G2 We stall for a long time, play around and when I finally have all it takes on board (except strix) he manages to burn me in response to my Harpy while I'm at 5. Bolt for 3 and Price of progres for 4. If I were 1 life higher I could've bounced lands via Dream Stalker.
G3 I manage to push Aluren and protect it so normal game tbh

M3 2:0 against WBUG Maverick or whatever.
G1 he does whatever, I just aluren for win, tries to STP harpy.
G2 same thing basically... it just took a little longer.

I was lucky he didn't draw wasteland or hand distruption

M4 2:1 (we ID'ed actually for split prizes) against some GB junk
Fun games but nothing special. Happened. His veteran explorers actually helped me more than him. and he paid for that a bit later.

My advantage was that no one knew what I was playing, but hey. you can keep that card up your sleeve only so long.

4 Coiling Oracle
3 Imperial Recruiter
1 Dream Stalker
2 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
4 Shardless Agent
2 Wall of Roots
1 Wall of Blossoms
2 Vendilion Clicque
1 Manowar
1 Selkie Hedge Mage

4 Aluren

4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Intuition


4 Force of Will


2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Breeding Pool
2 Island
1 Swamp
3 Forest
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept heath
1 Volrath's Stronghold

[sumbahdy]

Hey man tried out the deck as I've been really wanting to play this since the Recruiters were already a bit cheaper. Tried out your list and I here's a couple of questions:

1) How are the Coiling Oracles as the only "ramp/acceleration"? Missing a land on the flip means you still have to wait until turn 4 before you can cast Aluren.
2) About SHardless Agent: I know he is strong but doesn't it add randomness in your draws? I could understand in BUG where it would shine but here it's just meh.

I would like to remove Shardless Agent and add the 4th Recruiter and maybe 3 Ponders? Maybe adding 2 Ancient Tomb also could help. Tried using the deck against Stifle.dec (RUG, BUG and URW) to see how resilient the deck could be and if it can reach 4 mana in time to pull off and combo against all that hate.

[swoop]

Hey man tried out the deck as I've been really wanting to play this since the Recruiters were already a bit cheaper. Tried out your list and I here's a couple of questions:

1) How are the Coiling Oracles as the only "ramp/acceleration"? Missing a land on the flip means you still have to wait until turn 4 before you can cast Aluren.
2) About SHardless Agent: I know he is strong but doesn't it add randomness in your draws? I could understand in BUG where it would shine but here it's just meh.

I would like to remove Shardless Agent and add the 4th Recruiter and maybe 3 Ponders? Maybe adding 2 Ancient Tomb also could help. Tried using the deck against Stifle.dec (RUG, BUG and URW) to see how resilient the deck could be and if it can reach 4 mana in time to pull off and combo against all that hate.

1. Tbh I love oracles, you might swap them with Baleful strix if you have those, I dont and I didn't try them out yet. Oracle is a great card still.

2. try removing some cards and add up to 3 living wishes. so you can go Agent > cascade > living wish. This card is also very strong as it won me few matches on last tourneys.

I don't have 4 recs, just 3. I tapped out buying these so I'm putting my foot down now. Tombs and Ponders are unnecessary.

[swoop]

oh yeah played also 3x Chain of Vapor in SB, boarded in in 4th against nic fit with deeds.

Agent post or before aluren into Chain of vapor is nice. very nice

[sumbahdy]

Thanks for the reply. Will try what you suggested and also what am planning to add. I'll report back what happens.

[swoop]

Thing with the Aluren is that you don't have the "right" build. It all varies with what you feel at home with, whats on metagame and your play style

[sumbahdy]

Should there be a back-up plan when Aluren gets Extracted? I read somewhere a Natural Order board plan. Your thoughts?

[swoop]

I used to play that plan back in the days. Now I just beat the crap out of them plain and hard.

Try not to get it extracted ;)

[sumbahdy]

Just finished a big tournament here in the Philippines playing Aluren to a 4-3 record. Match-ups are as follows:
Rd 1: URW Miracle 0-2
Rd 2: BYE
Rd 3: Manaless Dredge 2-1
Rd 4: GW Mav 1-2
Rd 5: Junk 2-1
Rd 6: Nine Post (Forgemaster combo) 0-2 (In 1 game, Intuition EOT and while it is on the stack, Forgemaster into Sundering Titan. BAM no lands and just chump blockers. GG)
Rd 7: Burn 2-1


The list:
1x Bayou
2x Forest
2x Island
3x Misty Rainforest
1x Swamp
1x Taiga
3x Tropical Island
1x Underground Sea
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Windswept Heath
1x Cavern Harpy
4x Coiling Oracle
1x Dream Stalker
1x Eternal Witness
4x Imperial Recruiter
1x Man-o’-War
1x Parasitic Strix
2x Wall of Roots
4x Aluren
4x Brainstorm
4x Cabal Therapy
1x Echoing Truth
4x Force of Will
4x Gitaxian Probe
2x Intuition
2x Repeal

SB:
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Karakas
4x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Naturalize
1 Nature’s Ruin
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Thoughtseize
2x Vendilion Clique

Some thoughts:
1) The main deck bounce has been great. This gives me a way to interact with my opponent especially against MD hate.
2) I tested this list against URW Delver(Stifles main) and concluded that the deck has a hard time to get to 4 mana to be able to cast Aluren. The Wall of Roots were okay but I think Wall of Blossoms is better since it replaces itself.
3) Should have ran silver bullet creatures to maximize the Recruiters. So far can’t think of a Harmonic Sliver replacement found in BUG colors.
4) Selkie Hedge-Mage should have been in my SB. It’s a utility card and I would like to put it back MD if I had the space.
5) Had to explain the loop when I was already going to combo. It was fun watching my opponents read all the pieces as I searched and played the pieces:laugh:


@swoop
My Aluren were not extracted but the Recruiters got hit. Luckily I won through a Vendilion Clique beatdown. The deck is a blast to play and would play it again the next time around. Did not get a chance to use the Natural Order plan as it requires 6 board slots so I will have 9 remaining for other match-ups.

[kiblast]

3) Should have ran silver bullet creatures to maximize the Recruiters. So far can’t think of a Harmonic Sliver replacement found in BUG colors.


Stern Proctor? Not exactly the same, but it's ok if you need to deal with pesky permanents and then go off.

[sumbahdy]

Stern Proctor? Not exactly the same, but it's ok if you need to deal with pesky permanents and then go off.

That could work thanks. I've had several instances that I can't interact with my opponent when a Leyline of Sanctity.

[The Duressed]

If stern proctor is good enough, just play Venser.

[FTW]

If stern proctor is good enough, just play Venser.

This is an Aluren deck....

read Aluren, and then read Venser, Shaper Savant...

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Any advice for this list? Kind of a mash-up between Nic Fit ramp, Aluren combo, and Shardless dig.

4x Veteran Explorer
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Dryad Arbor
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Force of Will
1x Diabolic Intent
4x Ancestral Visions
4x Brainstorm
4x Shardless Agent
4x Coiling Oracle
1x Augury Owl
2x Cavern Harpy
1x Parasitic Strix
3x Aluren
3x Forest
3x Island
2x Swamp
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Polluted Delta
2x Verdant Catacombs
2x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
1x Underground Sea

[sumbahdy]

Isn’t it a bit ambitious jamming all three decks together in one shell? The Nic Fit accel package is nice but the deck will have a hard time determining which role it would be using. I would suggest going down to 2 mix Aluren with either shardless or Nic Fit. I THINK somebody toyed with the idea of Nic Fit and Aluren somewhere back. Or maybe move one of the deck pieces to the Sb for another plan of attack dependingon the match up

[swoop]

GSZ is useless other than going t1 for arbor.

Visions outside Cascade is useless.

Intent + explorer = could be used

Also, Owl? why?

[kiblast]

3x Aluren

[nedleeds]

If stern proctor is good enough, just play Venser.

If Venser is good enough in Aluren for you then just play 4 x Angel of Despair.

[The Duressed]

I see I need to clarify my opinion a bit, so let me explain.

I'm not saying that Venser is an excellent fit in Aluren. It's fine in the right metagame -- If you're looking at 90% Show and Tell decks, you probably should include one. In this case, we're talking about a situation where we're apparently very concerned with Leyline of Sanctity (or perhaps Lodestone Golem? Trinisphere?). In any event, you can put yourself in a position where you're 100% sure to get an untap step, so needing to pay mana for Venser is fine. You might also be able to use Coiling Oracle to put 4 extra lands into play, cast Venser, and pick up where you left off.

I said that Venser is better than Stern Proctor, and I stand by that. I didn't say that everyone should play Venser in Aluren, or even that Venser belongs in 50% of builds. Personally, I don't play any of Venser, Stern Proctor, or Harmonic Sliver maindeck, even in my build with a Savannah for the silver bullets in my sideboard.



Stay calm, you guys. There are plenty opinions on the internet, and you probably aren't going to agree with all of them.

[sumbahdy]

Placed 4th in the Duel For Duals here in Manila. Played the same list as posted but with a few changes. (-1 Probe, -2 Wall of Roots for 1x Selkie an 2x Wall of Blossoms MD. SB took out Thoughtseize for Stern Proctor.) Match-ups were:

Rd 1: Philip with URW Delver 2-0
Rd 2: Perry with Jund 1-1 Draw
Rd 3: Jay-El with Jund 0-2
Rd 4: JM with Dragon Stompy 2-0 (This is the first time I’ve won using the beatdown approach since I pitched Cavern Harpy to FOW his equipment. Dream Stalker beats ftw.
Rd 5: Aaron with URW Delver 2-0 (He was drawing blanks even after a Brainstorm, all Delvers never flipped.
Rd 6: Kel with Shardless BUG 2-0
Rd 7: Rodel with Mono U Omniscience 1-0 (Pitched Harpy again to counter his Enter The Infinite via Dream Halls. Stringed Recruiters and friends with Force of Will back-up and attack for 13 damage for the win. 2nd game he plays Show and Tell. He plays Omniscience and I play: Stern Proctor good times. Time was called and I get the win.)

Ended the Swiss 5-1-1 and seeded 6th.

Top 8: Jay-El with Jund 2-0
Grinded out both games and on the 2nd one, he drew blanks while I drew bombs. Top deck after top deck and it all ended with an Aluren in play, me leading with Gitaxian Probe with Therapy back-up. Get Bolt and flashback again for Pyroblast. When he passed, I top decked the lone Strix while Harpy in hand and won.

Top 4: Perry with Jund
G1: I was able to combo off with Aluren.
G2: He was low on life with a Confidant hitting him for damage. He resolved a Liliana and had E. Plague for Beast and another for Humans to kill Bob and proceeded to win the game.
G3: Pretty much same as G2 lotsa discard and him with a board of Liliana, Plague for beast, 2x Goyf, 1x Bloodbraid Elf and 2 active Deathrites against my lone Aluren. Even if I top deck a Recruiter, both Harpy and Strix are in my GY easy pickings for the DRS. GG

Scooped to URW Patriot in battle for 3rd. It was already freaking midnight if we will play it out.

Props:
To Ron for being my ride and waiting for me until I finished.
To Bernard for the chocolate bar. My only food for the night.
To David for the water to wash down the chocolate bar.
To Imperial Recruiters finally you are giving back my investment and for being the nuts.

Slops:
No dinner for me since we ended swiss late.
The restaurant for not placing the order for the food.

I will remove the Leyline of Sanctity from the board. Either I draw them or they get stuck in my hand if drawn later on. The mulligans needed just to get them are just too costly. Might as well put in something to combat discard and something that I can actually cast. The Selkie also did not do anything. Should have been another cantrip spell since if Harpy gets hit, I can’t go infinite also. Or maybe a second Harpy would do.

[swoop]

try cutting out one probe for 1 harpy.

or removing repeal since it fucks up against gaedock teg anyways

[blindspotxxx]

Placed 4th in the Duel For Duals here in Manila. Played the same list as posted but with a few changes. (-1 Probe, -2 Wall of Roots for 1x Selkie an 2x Wall of Blossoms MD. SB took out Thoughtseize for Stern Proctor.) Match-ups were:

Rd 1: Philip with URW Delver 2-0
Rd 2: Perry with Jund 1-1 Draw
Rd 3: Jay-El with Jund 0-2
Rd 4: JM with Dragon Stompy 2-0 (This is the first time I’ve won using the beatdown approach since I pitched Cavern Harpy to FOW his equipment. Dream Stalker beats ftw.
Rd 5: Aaron with URW Delver 2-0 (He was drawing blanks even after a Brainstorm, all Delvers never flipped.
Rd 6: Kel with Shardless BUG 2-0
Rd 7: Rodel with Mono U Omniscience 1-0 (Pitched Harpy again to counter his Enter The Infinite via Dream Halls. Stringed Recruiters and friends with Force of Will back-up and attack for 13 damage for the win. 2nd game he plays Show and Tell. He plays Omniscience and I play: Stern Proctor good times. Time was called and I get the win.)

Ended the Swiss 5-1-1 and seeded 6th.

Top 8: Jay-El with Jund 2-0
Grinded out both games and on the 2nd one, he drew blanks while I drew bombs. Top deck after top deck and it all ended with an Aluren in play, me leading with Gitaxian Probe with Therapy back-up. Get Bolt and flashback again for Pyroblast. When he passed, I top decked the lone Strix while Harpy in hand and won.

Top 4: Ian with URW Patriot
I scooped to him getting the 4 Shardless Agent for my troubles.

Props:
To Ron for being my ride and waiting for me until I finished.
To Bernard for the chocolate bar. My only food for the night.
To David for the water to wash down the chocolate bar.
To Imperial Recruiters finally you are giving back my investment and for being the nuts.

Slops:
No dinner for me since we ended swiss late.
The restaurant for not placing the order for the food.

I will remove the Leyline of Sanctity from the board. Either I draw them or they get stuck in my hand if drawn later on. The mulligans needed just to get them are just too costly. Might as well put in something to combat discard and something that I can actually cast. The Selkie also did not do anything. Should have been another cantrip spell since if Harpy gets hit, I can’t go infinite also. Or maybe a second Harpy would do.

A-Lauren! Congrats! :) Top 4 out of nowhere! So many URW Decks in the tournament yesterday

[TerribleTim68]

So seriously, every list runs Recruiter. I get how good it is in this deck. But I also get how much I can't afford them. Is it possible to build a non-Recruiter list that doesn't suck? I have all this stuff and I want to actually use it instead of it just sitting there in my binder. :frown:

Any help? If you had to go Recruiter-less, what would you do? :confused:

[evilGod]

I have to say you need Recruiters. I don't play the deck (yet anyway) but being able to land Aluren with a Recruiter in hand wins you the game, at instant speed no less. There's no other card you can put in that slot that has the same effect.

[combolover]

I started with none and came in 1-2-3 in consecutive weeks at my LGS. After that i had saved up enough to buy TWO and put one in the board and one in the main with 4 Living Wish. So yes you can build it without Recruiters. It's not as consistent but it can be done. Try running Living Wish if you're not already it can help you get your combo started or get you the last piece you may need. If you can post your list I'm sure theres more than a few people here than will give you suggestions.


Ok since reading over most of this forum I really want to rebuild Aluren. This is the new list I have been thinking of.


4 Aluren
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Living Wish
3 Baleful Strix
3 Imperial Recruiter
3 Coiling Oracle
3 Raven Familiar
2 Pact of Negation
2 Cavern Harpy
1 Eternal Witness
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Dream Stalker
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Ancient Tomb
2 Bayou
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Taiga
1 Underground Sea


Sideboard
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Drake Familiar
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Slaughter Pact


Thoughts? Criticisms? Don't be nice, the bad guy won't :)

[Nonex]

So seriously, every list runs Recruiter. I get how good it is in this deck. But I also get how much I can't afford them. Is it possible to build a non-Recruiter list that doesn't suck? I have all this stuff and I want to actually use it instead of it just sitting there in my binder. :frown:

Any help? If you had to go Recruiter-less, what would you do? :confused:

This is what I do:

4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
4 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp

4 Veteran Explorer
4 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Shardless Agent
4 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Parasitic Strix

4 Aluren
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Diabolic Intent

This is from right when Decay was printed. If your meta has changed (which probably has), you might want to change some Decays for something else. Sideboard is subjective, but 3 Pernicious Deed are always in my mind.

[sumbahdy]

I think the deck could survive with at least 1 Recruiter. Recruiter with Aluren out is just game. You could try Shardless build posted a few pages back but what I dont like with Shardless is the randomness of the cascade flips. Sure you can flip into Draw or creatures but sometimes it will just crap on you thus needing to pass the turn. (not reading. Combolover’s deck has recruiters)

@combolover

How has the Tombs been for you? I know i read somewhere somebody trying a Faster Aluren build uing Hickory Woodlot with Cloud of Faeries. Ideally a second turn Aluren and win from there. No MD bounce also just clog the board with creatures?

[theBloody]

So seriously, every list runs Recruiter. I get how good it is in this deck. But I also get how much I can't afford them. Is it possible to build a non-Recruiter list that doesn't suck? I have all this stuff and I want to actually use it instead of it just sitting there in my binder. :frown:

Any help? If you had to go Recruiter-less, what would you do? :confused:

List I ran last time is here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?2599-Deck-Aluren&p=728696&viewfull=1#post728696). I would move 1 faerie to SB. One advice: Always run at least 2 universal tutors. Even with all the value you want to kill your opponent as consistent/fast as possible.

[combolover]

I did read about the Faries/Woodlot combo and its very pretty also requires one less card than with running the tombs. I prefer a T1 Bayou Cabal Therapy myself. The tombs are good but the problem with my old build is it was a T3 minimum Aluren. It also gave me the possibility to wish for anything which is why i ran the Tomb/Fetch in the SB for the guarantee of the next land drop. It was Nice to have them in there because I hate tapped lands. I have also seen Lists that run Phyrexian Tower with Veteran Explorer and that is also a possible turn 2 Aluren but its also a 3 card combo like my old build. I may proxie up the faries/Woodlot to see what happens though.

[TerribleTim68]

Thanks guys, appreciate the insight to a Recruiter-less build. I'll have to think about how I want to go about it a bit more, then I'll post up a list and go from there. :cool:

[swoop]

I think of taking out shardless. they're fun but they need some tinkering with.

Eg - no veterans with them or stuff like that but instead more draw.

Shardless > veteran explorer = sucks
Sharless > harpy = happy ride
Shardless > Cabal Therapy = sucks
Shardless > Coiling oracle = is nice

[dameus]

Seems like the new card Commune with the Gods might be a real contender for this deck. Great digger. It might even tip the scales toward the Veteran Explorer version with the extra chance to get a Cabal Therapy in the 'yard fast as a side effect of digging. But it should be good without it. Tutoring has always been a challenge for this deck. Intuition or LDV gets you by, but was never ideal.

[swoop]

LDV has instant speed over this.

This has put a creature or ench in hand.

It's green, easier to cast than UB.

Not sure what to throw out for this. This might be good with Shardless Agent. Put Agent in - reveal this, with active aluren put something else... dig around.

Who knows..

[Nonex]

I don't see myself playing this over Impulse. The Cabal Therapy shenanigans are too situational IMO.

Even then, I still think Diabolic Intent is the best choice.

[swoop]

so no additions this fall

[Whippoorwill]

Recently decided to pick up a set of Recruiters for Imperial Painter and built this on the side. I ended up having more fun goldfishing this than I did with Painter so I changed my focus from Aluren to Painter. There weren't any recent decklists so what I ended up doing was I started with swoop's list from 7-7 (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?2599-Deck-Aluren&p=735816&viewfull=1#post735816) for a base list since I liked it the most. From there I adjusted using the TC Decks lists from this year. (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/tipo.php?archetype=Aluren&format=Legacy) I ended up with the following list:

2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Savannah
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Windswept Heath

3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Coiling Oracle
2 Baleful Strix
1 Dream Stalker
1 Cavern Harpy
4 Imperial Recruiter
3 Shardless Agent
1 Eternal Witness
1 Raven Familiar
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Sedraxis Alchemist

3 Cabal Therapy
1 Life from the Loam

4 Brainstorm
2 Intuition
4 Force of Will

4 Aluren

Sideboard:
3 Thoughtseize
2 Swan Song
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Echoing Truth
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Peacekeeper
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Phyrexian Revoker

Prior to the tournament my sideboard had another Thoughtseize and Abrupt Decay in place of the Swan Songs. But I bought a Fat Pack before the tournament started and pulled the 2 Swan Songs so I thought I'd give them a try.

Deathrite seems odd, but my reasoning for it was due to a few things:
-the comments in this thread about what to do if Aluren is extracted.
-I wanted an early play against Dredge and Goblins (Lackey).
-it also can help with mana accel.

We ended up with only 8 players, so the tournament would only have 3 rounds.

Round 1 vs. Jen with UR Twin (Modern)
Jen is the store (http://www.exaltedgames.com/) owner and her and her husband will play whenever we're short players just to make sure we can have a tournament. Today she was borrowing one of our normal Legacy players' Modern deck.

Game 1: I resolve an Aluren and we end up having a non-game issue*. When she gets back from dealing with it I start to combo off. Recruiter resolves and I get Dream Stalker. I try to cast that and she responds with a Pestermite. I respond with Recruiter. She responds with Exarch. I respond with Recruiter #3. She's pretty much a casual player so I had to explain to her that the stack resolves one at a time instead of all at once. it eventually gets explained and I proceed with the kill.

---Sideboard: Nothing

Game 2: I keep a weak hand with 1 land, a Brainstorm and likely combo pieces. I struggle to find lands and she gets a Pestermite in play, thankfully after I had Therapied away a Splinter Twin. The Pestermite lives up to it's name and shocks me while I try to find lands. At 1 life I'm finally able to assemble the combo and proceed to kill her thanks to the shitty counters available in Modern. Yay for Dispel doing little against me.

1-0 (2-0)

Round 2 vs. Matt with Punishing Miracles
I already know what he's on since he usually plays this. He still thinks I'm on UWR Delver as that's what I played for a month up until last week (he wasn't here).

Game 1: He mulls to 5 then comments that he shouldn't keep that hand since it would be much worse if I'm holding Force. So I do what anyone would do in my situation: I showed him the Force. He keeps anyways and leads with Land, Top. He expects it to get Forced, but I don't (I didn't have a 2nd blue card or I probably would have). I believe I started with Land, Therapy which threw him off. His hand was Jace, E.Tutor and Entreat, so he was all in on that 1 land + Top. He doesn't really draw anything super important by the time I resolve an Aluren and proceed to combo off. One thing I did screw up on that I had to fix was setting up the kill. I played Harpy but didn't have a Blue or Black creature in play and forgot to bounce it back to my hand. When he pointed that out I showed him I still had it since I just play the Harpy then with the trigger on the stack I play Parasitic Strix (already in my hand before I played Harpy). Alternately I suppose I could have just played the Strix first then the Harpy, but that didn't occur to me since I was just thinking that there was no point playing it if it was going to do nothing.

---Sideboard (I think): -3 Deathrite, -1 Baleful Strix, -3 Therapy; +3 Thoughtseize, +2 Swan Song, +2 Abrupt Decay

Game 2: On his first turn I believe he played a Pithing Needle naming Cavern Harpy. On my first turn I'm able to Thoughtseize him and I see Punishing Fire, Force, some lands and a blue card (maybe Spell Pierce). I take the Force. He's mostly drawing blanks but he does have Punishing Fire for the creatures I do play. He gets to the point where he starts hitting me for 1 a turn with the Fire/Grove (Take 2, gain 1). I eventually draw and resolve an Aluren. He still has Pithing Needle out and Fire in hand. When he Fires me at the end of my turn I make my move. Instead of waiting for Fire to be on the stack, I started in response to the trigger even though he had another Grove untapped. Thankfully he didn't realize to trigger it again and I ended up getting Sedraxis Alchemist to bounce the Needle while Harpy was on the field. Then I passed the turn. Well, it was about that time that I notice that my opponent was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the protozoic era**. I also noticed that I could have killed him that turn by bouncing my Recruiter with the Alchemist. He replayed the Needle naming Harpy again. From there we played Draw-Go for a couple turns until he made the first move. He cast Punishing Fire so I proceeded to combo off in response netting the win.

2-0 (4-0)

Round 3 vs. Thomas with UWR Miracles

Game 1: I believe he mulled down to 6 starting with a Plains. On his turn 2 he plays a Mountain followed by Rest in Peace. On my next turn I Therapy him naming Helm of Obedience and make the 1/60 hit. I start attacking him with creatures since he's not drawing much and I'm not finding combo pieces. He keeps casting Terminus clearing my board but Shardless helps me recover with pressure. I eventually get him to 7 but he ends up getting a Counterbalance + Top assembled and I can't get out of it so I scoop saying that I can win the next 2 fast enough.

---Sideboarding: -3 Deathrite (sensing a trend?), -3 Therapy (Stupid RiP), -1 Baleful, -1 Shardless (I think), -1 Loam; +3 Thoughtseize, +2 Decay, +2 Swan Song, +2 Deed

Game 2: My notes have Thoughtseize revealing lands and Bonfire, Top and REB. I took the Bonfire because that can screw with both my win conditions (Comboing and Beatdown). My notes have my life only going down from Fetches (getting basics to play around the Blood Moon I know he runs) and 1 hit from a Swan token (which had countered a Counterbalance, he had to Terminus the following turn). I went off shortly after that when I finally drew Aluren.

---Sideboarding: No changes.

Game 3: Not a whole lot happened early on aside from Oracle beatings, but the end of this game was pretty exciting. I have double Recruiter in play due to going the aggro route to kill his Jace. On his next turn he puts my Recruiters in Detention with the Sphere he tutored for a couple turns earlier. On his end step I put Witness back on top. I play it on my turn and it resolves so I debate between Deed (to kill the Sphere and an eventual top) and Swan Song. I choose the Swan Song. I think on his next turn he played Counterbalance (I had been holding Decay) and Fatesealed me. I draw Deed for my turn then pass to him. He goes to pass the turn then proceed to Decay his Counterbalance. On my turn I play Deed and it resolves. I activate it for 3 busting out my Recruiters from Detention. I start to go off and he tries to REB my Harpy so I give him a Bird to play with while I proceed to kill him with mine.

3-0 (6-1)

I ended up with 1st place for the night. I wish we would have had more people, but I'll take it.

Overall I really like the deck. Some cards will be going in place of better options.

-Deathrite didn't do much for me, so they're going out.
-Life from the Loam wasn't very important either, so I'll likely cut it as well. I think I only used it once to get back a Fetch when I was hurting for lands.
-Therapy was okay, but I liked Thoughtseize more overall. I'll likely do a combination of them since flashing back Therapy is nice on the turn I go off.
-Alchemist was great, he's definitely staying in the 60 main.
-Baleful Strix I'm not too sure on yet. May try replacing it with Lim-Dul's Vault.
-Shardless Agent was good, so I'll likely go back to 4.
-Swan Song was great and I plan on keeping 2-3 in the 75. The range it has is nice for how small the drawback is. It's best against traditional control and combo since you don't care if they have a 2/2. Obviously it's not as good against Aggro orientated decks. 2 is likely the right number.
-Selkie will possibly be moved to the main depending on what I do with the open slots from Deathrite.
-Abrupt Decay and Echoing Truth are considerations for the main.


*This is around 7:30pm and almost all of the other businesses in the shopping center area are closed or about to close. Some guy walks into the store as we're playing. He was either in his late teens or early 20s. The owner asks him if he needs any help since it's still business hours and he says he's waiting for his ride. She doesn't mind since it's pouring outside. He starts talking on his cell phone and keeps looking outside. The owner starts getting concerned since there have been cars broken into recently in the parking lot, even during the day. A couple people go outside to check things out and there was a car out in the parking lot that didn't look like it belonged, but otherwise everything was okay and the car apparently left. About 10mins go by and the guy is still being pretty weird so the owner calls the police as a security measure. The police get here in the middle of round 2 and while we're playing we can hear the cop laughing. We later find out that the guy had been driven down here (about an hour away from his home) by his father (from what I heard) to buy some weed from some guys. Apparently he didn't have enough money and the guys took what money he did have and were after him or something (explains the out of place car I guess). And he didn't have a way to get home so that's why he was waiting for his ride. So the guy basically goes an hour away to get weed then gets his money taken from him, has no ride home, has people after him and gets no weed.

**I threw that in there just to see if anyone read this.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I played Aluren for the first time at my local last Saturday, finishing a mediocre 2-2. I beat Death and Taxes and U/B Tezzeret control, while losing to Jund and Dredge. Here is the list I played:

3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
1 Cavern Harpy
2 Dream Stalker
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Sylvan Library
4 Aluren
4 Force of Will

2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Volcanic Island
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Bone Shredder
1 Vendilion Clique

Round one I played against Jund. I ended up losing both games, but in each game I had significant time to draw a business spell and it didn't happen - I felt like these games were definitely winnable but the variance gods weren't on my side. Round two was Dredge, which is just a bad matchup overall. The deck is faster than us and their Therapies are much stronger than ours. I will be running Yixlid Jailer in the board from now on. Notably, I probably could have taken game two if I had thought to board in Bone Shredder - I lost to Elesh Norn but otherwise had plenty of time due to Extraction on Grave Troll. Death and Taxes and U/B Tezz weren't particularly hard matchups. Abrupt Decay and Deed were both fantastic post-board. I will be playing this at another local tonight, but with these changes:

-1 Vendilion Clique
-3 Ponder
-2 Sylvan Library
-1 Polluted Delta

+2 Coiling Oracle
+2 Intution
+3 Shardless Agent

Theoretically these changes (based on the list in the post above mine) should enable me to grind out card advantage against the midrange decks better, while having an actual tutor in Intuition. I do miss Sylvan Library though as the card is insane, I may end up re-adding it later. In the sideboard I cut the Clique for Yixlid Jailer and might drop a Surgical for a Scavenging Ooze as well. Hopefully I will have some results to report back on after tonight.

[Whippoorwill]

How was Deathrite for you through the night? Mainly did you think it was worth the inclusion or would you have rather had other cards in those spots?

[Admiral_Arzar]

How was Deathrite for you through the night? Mainly did you think it was worth the inclusion or would you have rather had other cards in those spots?

Deathrite is batshit fucking insane and deserves 4 slots. It accelerates mana, hates on the yard, provides a clock, and just does so many things. My only regret so far is only playing 3 lol.

Anyways, as promised I have a short report from last night. I top 4'd the tournament with a record of 2-1-1. I beat Dark Maverick and U/R Tempo, lost to Canadian Threshold, and drew with Grixis Tempo. This is the list I played:

3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
2 Coiling Oracle
2 Dream Stalker
1 Cavern Harpy
4 Imperial Recruiter
3 Shardless Agent
1 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
2 Intuition
4 Aluren
4 Force of Will

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Volcanic Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Island

Sideboard

2 Surgical Extraction
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Bone Shredder
1 Viridian Shaman
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed

The Maverick matchup is quite favored for us. Their clock is slow and their combo hate is more of a speed-bump for us (whereas stack-based combo like Storm or High Tide folds to Thalia, we just get delayed a turn). The version I played against had discard post-board, and wrecked my hand game two. However, my opponent was unable to back this up with a clock, and so I played a bunch of derpy dudes and won by beatdown (!). I killed a Teeg and a Canonist as well, although it ended up not mattering because beatz. Sideboard was -4 Force of Will, -2 Coiling Oracle, +2 Abrupt Decay, +3 Pernicious Deed, +1 Viridian Shaman.

Against U/R Delver I had a very close game one, comboing off at three life while the opponent had active Grim Lavamancer. Cabal Therapy bombardment removed all of his meaningful interaction although I almost died to Delver beatdown. Game two I swept a bunch of dudes with Pernicious Deed and took over the game with more dudes, eventually winning when I ripped a combo piece off the top (so yeah, Dream Stalker is a pretty good blocker against tempo decks with small threats). Sideboard was -2 Coiling Oracle, -1 Force of Will, -2 Intuition, +2 Abrupt Decay, +3 Pernicious Deed (Intuition came out because, as a veteran High Tide player, I fear Surgical Extraction).

Canadian Threshold is a bad matchup. It has a faster clock than the other tempo decks and thus punishes you more for keeping loose hands, drawing poorly, etc. I narrowly took game one by comboing off, but mulliganned for lands in games two and three and got ran over. Sideboard was similar to U/R Delver except I removed another card instead of the FOW.

Grixis Tempo became a grind fest, because the deck is basically U/R Delver with discard. We both Therapied the heck out of each other during all these games, each of us grinding out a win. Our game three went long and we went to time - ending on turn five with neither of us having cards in hand or nonland permanents in play (!). Sideboard was similar to the other tempo matchups except I brought in 1 or 2 Flusterstorm (and cascaded into it like a n00b).

The first lesson I took from this tournament is that dropping to 21 lands was a mistake. I basically never mulled for lands with 22, I mulled for lands at least 4 times out of those 10 games with 21. Deathrite is insane and I am a bad player for only playing three, I will be adding another. Additionally, Shardless Agent is very, very good, and adding it made the deck perform better as well as feel much more powerful. Cascading into Cabal Therapy is insane. Tempo matchups are hard but winnable. Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm have limited utility against them because having that extra mana delays our combo even farther (it's already bad enough we have to pay for Daze). I realized that those cards are mostly there for combo, but I'm thinking of dropping them for discard, which has utility against both combo and tempo. Also, cascading into Flusterstorm is the worst feeling ever. I also want an additional Abrupt Decay or two in the board, this will help the tempo matchup as "Delver, go" is incredibly hard for this deck to come back from. I'm even considering playing a more specific hate card like Carpet of Flowers or Defense Grid for tempo matchups, as my meta is just infested with them right now. Some changes I'm pretty sure I will make before the next local (tomorrow) are:

Maindeck

-2 Coiling Oracle (worst card in the deck and got boarded out continually)
+1 Deathrite Shaman
+1 Polluted Delta/Tropical Island

Sideboard

-2 Surgical Extraction
-2 Spell Pierce
-2 Flusterstorm
-1 Scavenging Ooze

+2 Nihil Spellbomb/Tormod's Crypt
+4 Thoughtseize
+1 Abrupt Decay

We'll see how it goes, hopefully I won't get 75% tempo matchups again.

[swoop]

I love all the love you give to Aluren guys.

I'm really thinking hard about Commune with the Gods http://store.tcgplayer.com/Products.aspx?GameName=Magic&Name=Commune%20with%20the%20Gods&partner=AUTOANY

if you flip it with shardless it's good, better than strix, or oracle. (with aluren active).
it digs 4 deep and goes batshit.

there's a tourney coming up on 19th and I might be not working that say. So if I end up with a 12th weekend in row working (either sun, sat, or both) I might just go there.

[theBloody]

Commune can be good. Problem with cards like this is scenario where you cascade into oracle/strix and draw one (aluren active and you probably don't have mana to hard cast it). I'm going to test it in rec-less build.

[Whippoorwill]

Played against last night, but decided to take the deck in a completely different approach from the usual, partially in part to Admiral_Arzar's reports.

2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Volrath's Stronghold

4 Baleful Strix
1 Dream Stalker
1 Cavern Harpy
4 Shardless Agent
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Sedraxis Alchemist

4 Ancestral Vision
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Intuition
4 Force of Will

2 Pernicious Deed
4 Aluren

Sideboard:
3 Thoughtseize
2 Swan Song
1 Krosan Grip
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Golgari Charm
1 Plague Spitter
4 Leyline of the Void

After reading Admiral's insight on Coiling Oracle, I decided to drop them completely and go to the full 4 Strix. Getting the land in play isn't as important as having the hidden information from my opponent. Ancestral Vision is to increase the effectiveness of Shardless Agent, especially when trying to combo off. It's also nice to suspend when preparing to go off and helps refill your hand against discard strategies and the card loss from Force (also pitches to Force when needed). Deed and Pulse main are to add a more controlling line to the deck to give me time to set up the win.

The sideboard is still a work in progress. I originally had 3 Decays, but changed 1 to a Grip for the Split Second effect. Charm was for Maverick and such as was Plague Spitter. I went with 4 Leylines because I still don't really feel that Deathrite is fast enough against graveyard based decks like Dredge and Reanimator. Especially when Manaless is running Chancellor of the Annex.

We had 10 people this week, so 4 rounds.

Round 1 vs BJ with Jund Zombie Thing

Game 1: I get mana flooded and his deck does it's thing. He has Lotleth Trolls, Vengevines, Carrion Feeders & Gravecrawlers with Buried Alive.

Game 2: I get Aluren out and he has a Lotleth Troll and Goblin Bombardment. I start to combo and he plays the Gravecrawler from his graveyard. I didn't even notice that or I would have Decayed the Bombardment at the end of his turn before casting Aluren. Thankfully Dream Stalker saves the day by bouncing Aluren with his Gravecrawler on the stack. He Therapies me on his turn but can't remember the name of Cavern Harpy (and I wasn't going to tell him even though he knew everything else about the card), so he names Aluren instead. A few turns later I find another and combo out (possible in response to his Gravecrawler).

Game 3: He Thoughtseizes me on the play taking Shardless Agent (I had 4 lands, Agent, Witness, not the greatest keeper). I eventually Witness back the Shardless to build up my board and draw and play Aluren shortly afterwards and manage to get there due to him not drawing much of anything.

1-0 (2-1)

Round 2 vs Greg (phazonmutant) with Grixis Delver
I knew what he was playing from watching his game the previous round but he didn't know what I was on.

Game 1: He plays land-go and I suspend Vision on my turn. He plays a Delver on his turn 2 and I play a Strix. His Delver flips (I think) and he bolts my Strix and swings for 3. I cast Shardless shortly after and the cat is out of the bag as I reveal Aluren before hitting a Vision. I draw a bunch of lands from the Vision. He ends up Dismembering my Agent so stop my clock while he hits me with his Delver. My suspended Vision resolves and I hit more not-Alurens. They changing point in the game was when I had an Agent on board trying to race his Delver and we were both in top deck mode. I drew Sedraxis Alchemist and bounced his Delver then Therapied it away. From there I was able to win with my Grizzly Bears. Not how I expected to win, but I'll take it.

Game 2: He gets out an early Delver, but it doesn't flip for a few turns. I get a Plague Spitter and his (now) 2 Delvers flip the following turn before I can kill them off. So close. He hits me for 6 and on my turn everything takes 1. I swing back with my Spitter then sac it to Therapy successfully killing off the Aberrations and taking his Young Pyromancer (he didn't have any red mana yet). He draws a red source the following turn (That was close) and from there it was more durdle beatings. Only saw the 1 Aluren in 2 games despite the amount of Visions I resolved. Vision definitely kept me in these games longer than I should have been.

2-0 (4-1)

Round 3 vs David with Zoo
Neither of us knew what the other was playing going into the round.

Game 1: I don't draw much and he has a fast clock that overruns me. I don't think I got Aluren out this game.

Game 2: He keeps a risky hand with 1 land, Gaddock Teeg and some removal I think. He was going to GSZ on his t1, but he decided against it because he boarded out Arbor (he told me after). I Decay his Teeg then a couple turns later he GSZ's for a 2nd one. Thankfully I have removal for that one as well. Vision filled up my hand enough to find Aluren + combo pieces and I managed to pull out the win with him at 19 life and myself at 3.

Game 3: Still haven't seen a Wasteland in the previous games, but I started with a couple basics and fetched a dual at one point. He played a Wasteland shortly after, but by that point my lands were mostly set and I was able to fetch out the rest of the basics. He kept a strong hand against me again and I started with a Strix which got sent to the fields. He played a Nacatl which ended abruptly. From there I build up my hand til I found an Aluren and some combo pieces. I can't remember the exact line of play right now, but I remember casting Shardless Agent and him responding to it. At one point he killed one of my creatures with a Bolt (possibly recruiter with the trigger on the stack) and I ended up Cascading with Shardless into a Brainstorm which found my Witness to allow me to combo off. Really wish I had wrote down the line of play last night afterwards.

3-0 (6-2)

Round 4 vs Thomas with UWr Miracles
He asked if I wanted to play EDH instead and offered to conceed, but I told him we could just draw since I was the only undefeated.

ID

3-0-1 (6-2)

Overall I'm quite happy with the changes. Vision worked out as good as I hoped (even if it was only filtering out dead draws). Never really drew Deed/Pulse when I needed it, so I can't comment on the effectiveness, but I like having them there. I'll likely be cutting the Intuition for something else, not sure what yet. Plague Spitter was great and I plan on keeping it in the 75 since it works well against small creature decks like Elves, Maverick and such. I never drew Leyline in the 1 match I boarded them in, but it also wasn't important enough for me to mulligan further for. Swan Song I still like, but the spots are still open to changes. Same with Charm.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I made top eight at my local on Saturday, but got crushed by Jund and didn't make it any further. I have been unable to beat that deck, it just grinds me out on card advantage and my deck refuses to provide good draws against it. Anyways, I played this list:

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
1 Cavern Harpy
2 Dream Stalker
4 Shardless Agent
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
2 Intuition
4 Aluren
4 Force of Will

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Volcanic Island
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard

1 Necrotite Spellbomb
1 Relic of Progenitus
4 Thoughtseize
1 Yixlid Jailer
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Bone Shredder
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Pernicious Deed

I lost round one to Infect Stompy. Game one I died to the unblockable dude after my desperation Aluren got Dazed. Game two I killed the first unblockable guy with Bone Shredder but died to the second before I could find another removal spell.

I won the next three rounds, beating Imperial Painter, Dredge, and a third deck I can't remember. The deck performed well overall until top eight, where I drew poorly against Jund (which I have become convinced is a bad matchup regardless). The combination of hand disruption, oodles of removal (which largely nullifies our "beat with derpy dudes" plan B), and massive card advantage is really bad for this deck (postboard Surgical Extraction didn't help either, it's hard to win without Recruiters). I almost want to make room for Leyline of Sanctity or something like Divert or Misdirection in the board. However, playing Ancestral Vision as postulated in Whippoorwill's post above this one might actually be a better solution. In that case, I would go -2 Intuition, -1 Dream Stalker, +4 Visions and just play 61 cards like a noob (or something to that effect). I may not play this deck again for a while though, because absent a solution to the Jund matchup my position is untenable (There are 3+ Jund-playing regulars at my LGS).

[DemolitionColorScheme]

I've been assembling Aluren for a while now since I haven't seen it really being played here in the Netherlands and I'm a big sucker for underdog decks.

Current decklist:

[20] Lands:
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
1 Savannah
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Polluted Delta
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp

[16] Creatures:
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Coiling Oracle
3 Shardless Agent
3 Baleful Strix
2 Cavern Harpy (1 could be removed for 1 Eternal Witness main)
1 Dream Stalker
1 Parasitic Strix

[20] Instants / Sorceries:
4 Living Wish
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Intuition

[4] Enchantments:
4 Aluren

[15] Sideboard: (under construction)
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Sedraxis Alchemist (which I thank this thread for! Way better than Stern Proctor!)
1 Yixlid Jailer (not only useful for Storm, but for Goyf's as well! ;) )
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Peacekeeper
1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
1 Shardless Agent
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Abrupt Decay

-----------------------------------------------------

First, the maindeck. I haven't seen a lot of lists with Deathrite Shaman, besides in this thread recently (I just noticed), but I feel - in the current meta - that it definitely has its place. It provides us with an extra ramp and it is an awesome utility tool for taking away certain key cards in the graveyard, including responding to a opponent using his DS to swallow a fetch and just steal it so it fizzles or an opponent's Cabal Therapy, for instance. Same goes for its other abilities. It can be a real nuisance! It can also be a game-changer for long and grindy games. DS also gives us a nice 1-drop, which this deck was lacking in terms of creatures. It also gives a surprise factor, throwing people off to what you're actually playing. Sadly, it does not do anything combo wise, so Cascading into a Shaman isn't always neccesarily wanted, though it isn't bad either.

As you can see, I'm not running an Imperial Recruiter main, but simply Living Wish it via the sideboard. I proxied up 4 Recruiters and ran them main and honestly ... they felt like dead draws most of the time and in most cases required running a Taiga (when not having a DS out), which is just asking to be Wastelanded. Cascading into a Recruiter is also a huge bummer and you don't really want it in your hand. It's just asking to be discarded, really. Living Wish -> Recruiter -> Dream Stalker -> Imperial Recruiter -> Cavern Harpy -> Dream Stalker -> Recruiter -> Parasitic Strix is all you really need, honestly. I don't see the use for 4 Recruiters. If the Recruiter gets countered, we'll just go for Eternal Witness. If that fails, it doesn't mean the game is over, you can still combo with the other creatures via Cascading, Intuition or Lim-Dul's Vault. Having 3 DS's out is no slouch as well! Critter beatdown + DS is always an option!

Baleful Strix is also a huge improvement over Wall of Blossoms. Wall of Blossoms can't be combo'd with via Cavern Harpy, Baleful Strix however can be a combo-piece (albeit slow). It's also a huge threat, buying time. An opponent simply won't attack with his Goyf if there's a BS on the battlefield, which buys you a lot of time. If he does decide to attack, you've just gotten rid of a Goyf for 2 + a draw! Most of the time it's a good source for Abrupt Decay / Lightning Bolt, which means it has served its purpose perfectly! I think it's one of the most excellent draws you can get. You're never bummed out Cascading into one or drawing one, since it always pays for itself.

Coiling Oracle; not all of you are super thrilled with this guy, but I love him. He's another potential combo-piece (albeit a slow one as well) and it feels awesome playing it on turn two via DS or a land and then bumping into another land, means we're solid on 4 mana for the next turn. He synergises well with Cabal Therapy, Brainstorm and Lim-Dul's Vault!

Cavern Harp is not only a combo piece, but also a great chump blocker. Just throw it in front of a Goyf or a Delver of Secrets / Insectile Aberration; declare it as a blocker and before combat damage resolves, return it to your hand for 1 life and the combat damage fizzles. You've just bought another turn. It can be a great staller and it's actually a pretty good beater. ;)

Shardless Agent; what can I say ... I prefer it highly over running Recruiters main and it's also a decent beater for the longer grindy games. I would love to run into an Ancestral Vision, but I don't know if the deck can really support it. What would you swap out for it anyways?

Intuition is an awesome card, but I do feel it's the weakpoint of the deck; getting 3 Aluren's and 2 discarded is just asking for it to be extracted via Surgical Extraction, though playing it for 3 Cabal Therapy's is absolutely awesome and can be a huge game-changer. I see it as a back-up plan.

Lim-Dul's Vault is one of my personal favorites. The lists using it varies wildly, but it has saved my ass multiple times, especially when combo-ing with Shardless Agent and just hoping to run into it so you can find a Parasitic Strix (which you can pick up via Coiling Oracle or Baleful Strix) or running into a Living Wish or even early-game when finding Aluren or a Force of Will. It's a solid-cantrip-like-tutor which synergises well with Shardless Agent.

I thought about adding Sol lands (mainly Ancient Tomb), but I feel the deck can't really afford getting it on the draw, since so much is multi-colored.

The sideboard ... it's still very much under construction. Right now it focusses on Living Wish targets for sollutions or ramping (getting some ramping with an Ancient Tomb or possibly another Deathrite Shaman), but it leaves little room for actual sideboarding. I'm thinking off throwing out:
- 1 Shardless Agent
- 1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
Also not totally sure about 2 to 3 Abrupt Decay

I would actually love to incorporate more discard (Thoughtseize) or aggressive removal via Surgical Extraction, since Cabal Therapy can be used agressively in this deck. Surgical Extraction would also give us a Gitaxian Probe-like peek, which I ran before, but often didn't really feel like a draw I wanted. I've also seen lists that included Tarmogoyf, which seems interesting, but I don't think it's optimal. I've thought about adding 1 Vendilion Clique, but I think it would be too random and it can't be tutored by Imperial Recruiter, sadly. Snapcaster Mage could be interesting, but I think it might rip the core of the deck out of its context too hard, perhaps.

Anyways, did a bunch of playtesting recently and am really loving the deck. Yesterday, for instance, I playtested vs. Jund (which seems to be a hard match-up for this deck), but came out 3-1, with turn 3 kills on my side.

Thoughts? I especially want to sculpt the SB further!

[Whippoorwill]

[15] Sideboard:
1 Yixlid Jailer (not only useful for Storm, but for Goyf's as well! ;) )

Unfortunately it doesn't affect Goyf since the cards retain their card types. It just stops things like Flashback, Dredge, Persist, etc.


As you can see, I'm not running an Imperial Recruiter main, but simply Living Wish it via the sideboard. I proxied up 4 Recruiters and ran them main and honestly ... they felt like dead draws most of the time and in most cases required running a Taiga (when not having a DS out), which is just asking to be Wastelanded. Cascading into a Recruiter is also a huge bummer and you don't really want it in your hand. It's just asking to be discarded, really.

I usually won't fetch a Taiga until I have the rest of my mana set or I know it's safe to fetch it. I usually don't care about casting Recruiter anyways until I have Aluren out. Having 2+ in hand just makes it even easier to win since you cast the extras when they respond to your first Recruiter.

Also, Cascade won't draw/cast Recruiter since it has the same cost as Agent.


Baleful Strix is also a huge improvement over Wall of Blossoms. Wall of Blossoms can't be combo'd with via Cavern Harpy, Baleful Strix however can be a combo-piece (albeit slow). It's also a huge threat, buying time. An opponent simply won't attack with his Goyf if there's a BS on the battlefield, which buys you a lot of time. If he does decide to attack, you've just gotten rid of a Goyf for 2 + a draw! Most of the time it's a good source for Abrupt Decay / Lightning Bolt, which means it has served its purpose perfectly! I think it's one of the most excellent draws you can get. You're never bummed out Cascading into one or drawing one, since it always pays for itself.

I agree on all points. Strix is a magnet for removal. I'd suggest going up to the full 4 though.


Coiling Oracle; not all of you are super thrilled with this guy, but I love him. He's another potential combo-piece (albeit a slow one as well) and it feels awesome playing it on turn two via DS or a land and then bumping into another land, means we're solid on 4 mana for the next turn. He synergises well with Cabal Therapy, Brainstorm and Lim-Dul's Vault!

He's nice, but he also gives your opponent quite a bit of information. If you don't hit a land, then your opponent gets to see what you drew which is why I removed them completely and went to the 4 Strix. And just playing it makes it obvious you're playing Aluren (to those know are aware of the deck) since I don't think any other decks play it. Being able to misrepresent your deck can lead your your opponent playing differently which will cause them to potentially misplay.


Shardless Agent; what can I say ... I prefer it highly over running Recruiters main and it's also a decent beater for the longer grindy games. I would love to run into an Ancestral Vision, but I don't know if the deck can really support it. What would you swap out for it anyways?

I would suggest the Intuitions and Lim-Dul's Vaults. But I think it really depends on the complete build since you have much more things to Cascade into. Based on your current list (adjusting 1 Harpy for a Witness) you have 25 cards (9 different cards) that you can Cascade into which would lower the chances of hitting Vision. At that point I don't think Vision is worth running.


Intuition is an awesome card, but I do feel it's the weakpoint of the deck; getting 3 Aluren's and 2 discarded is just asking for it to be extracted via Surgical Extraction, though playing it for 3 Cabal Therapy's is absolutely awesome and can be a huge game-changer. I see it as a back-up plan.

If you expect Extraction you can always side it out after game 1.


Lim-Dul's Vault is one of my personal favorites. The lists using it varies wildly, but it has saved my ass multiple times, especially when combo-ing with Shardless Agent and just hoping to run into it so you can find a Parasitic Strix (which you can pick up via Coiling Oracle or Baleful Strix) or running into a Living Wish or even early-game when finding Aluren or a Force of Will. It's a solid-cantrip-like-tutor which synergises well with Shardless Agent.

Definitely a solid card in this deck.


I thought about adding Sol lands (mainly Ancient Tomb), but I feel the deck can't really afford getting it on the draw, since so much is multi-colored.

Definitely too hard on the mana base since you need access to 3 (sometimes more) colors and the number of cards to actually use the mana on are limited.


The sideboard ... it's still very much under construction. Right now it focusses on Living Wish targets for sollutions or ramping (getting some ramping with an Ancient Tomb or possibly another Deathrite Shaman), but it leaves little room for actual sideboarding. I'm thinking off throwing out:
- 1 Shardless Agent
- 1 Selkie Hedge-Mage
Also not totally sure about 2 to 3 Abrupt Decay

That's one of the biggest downsides to the Wish builds and part of why I avoided it. Plus it makes you want to fit in more and more cards you don't need just because you can. Going to 4 Shardless main is good, no reason to have it in the side really. Selkie I liked at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't need it. The life gain is nice, but why am I gaining life instead of just winning? Maybe if Strix got removed or something, but that should be generally easy enough to avoid since there's no point casting it until we go off. Obviously it can be discarded then removed, so that is a valid concern.


I would actually love to incorporate more discard (Thoughtseize) or aggressive removal via Surgical Extraction, since Cabal Therapy can be used agressively in this deck. Surgical Extraction would also give us a Gitaxian Probe-like peek, which I ran before, but often didn't really feel like a draw I wanted. I've also seen lists that included Tarmogoyf, which seems interesting, but I don't think it's optimal. I've thought about adding 1 Vendilion Clique, but I think it would be too random and it can't be tutored by Imperial Recruiter, sadly. Snapcaster Mage could be interesting, but I think it might rip the core of the deck out of its context too hard, perhaps.

Thoughtseize is definitely good, so I would run those if you have the spots.

I like Extraction, but Extirpate *may* be worth considering over it due to the split second since it is in our colors. There are decks like Tin Fins and Manaless Dredge that can respond to the Extraction. But other times the Split Second won't matter, so it's really a personal choice.

Goyf isn't worth the spots. It just changes the deck to a bad aggro deck since everything else is still a 1/1 or 2/2.

Clique is nice since it has a bit of flexibility in that it can give us information about our opponent's hand, cycle a card in our hands, pitch to Force or help us with the aggro plan. Not being able to tutor for it with Recruiter isn't much of a drawback since there's usually key cards to tutor for instead. More so when only running 1 Recruiter since that Recruiter pretty much has to find Stalker/Strix or something to win the game.

Snapcaster doesn't fit with the deck due to the low number of Instants/Sorceries. Plus Cascading into it with Shardless with no mana open sucks.


Thoughts? I especially want to sculpt the SB further!

My main suggestion is to decide what they key things are that you want from your Wish board then cut all the non-essential things. The deck has a lot of flexibility which makes it easy to go overboard on creatures in the sideboard. You don't really want to get to the point where you have your main deck and just a wish board. I think T.E.S. has a good example when it comes to Wish boards - 7 Wish targets and 8 others. That way you still have a decent amount of cards to board in that aren't dependent on Wish. For those cards, I would suggest 2-3 Abrupt Decay, X Graveyard hate (Deathrite alone isn't enough, Bog is nice in a Wish build though), probably some Thoughtseizes and depending on how many spaces left, metagame calls. Possibly a Karakas if Reanimator/Sneak and Show is big in your meta.


_____________

Again stealing from T.E.S. - What do you guys think of putting Xantid Swarm in the side? It would be mainly for the control matchups but I could see it being brought inagainst decks that can also use Aluren in order to stop them from using Aluren on your turn. Being able to tutor for it with Recruiter is also a plus. I think I might try it out in the Swan Song slot in my most recent list.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Again stealing from T.E.S. - What do you guys think of putting Xantid Swarm in the side? It would be mainly for the control matchups but I could see it being brought inagainst decks that can also use Aluren in order to stop them from using Aluren on your turn. Being able to tutor for it with Recruiter is also a plus. I think I might try it out in the Swan Song slot in my most recent list.

I have considered both Xantid Swarm and Carpet of Flowers (the latter for tempo, getting Aluren Dazed blows). I just haven't tested either of them yet, although they could be good.

[theBloody]

Carpet doing work. Recommended.

[GoblinZ]

I have considered both Xantid Swarm and Carpet of Flowers (the latter for tempo, getting Aluren Dazed blows). I just haven't tested either of them yet, although they could be good.

I tested carpet of flowers before, it can easily ruin a blue based tempo deck on its own. I play xantid swarm in Ant and tes agianst snt decks or reanimaters, but I donnot think it fits aluren very well.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Unfortunately it doesn't affect Goyf since the cards retain their card types. It just stops things like Flashback, Dredge, Persist, etc.
Ah! I recently read that it affected Goyf as well, though it does actually make sense that it doesn't. ;)


I usually won't fetch a Taiga until I have the rest of my mana set or I know it's safe to fetch it. I usually don't care about casting Recruiter anyways until I have Aluren out. Having 2+ in hand just makes it even easier to win since you cast the extras when they respond to your first Recruiter.
I'll give you that. Having a backup is nice, but it comes at a price (not just financially, but in terms of deckspace as well)


Also, Cascade won't draw/cast Recruiter since it has the same cost as Agent.
My point. It just skips the Recruiter, which is a key-piece that I want out. If Recruiter had a CMC of 2, I would - indeed - play 2 main, or even 4.


I agree on all points. Strix is a magnet for removal. I'd suggest going up to the full 4 though.

(Regarding Oracle) : He's nice, but he also gives your opponent quite a bit of information. If you don't hit a land, then your opponent gets to see what you drew which is why I removed them completely and went to the 4 Strix. And just playing it makes it obvious you're playing Aluren (to those know are aware of the deck) since I don't think any other decks play it. Being able to misrepresent your deck can lead your your opponent playing differently which will cause them to potentially misplay.
Giving away the intel, that is a downside, I do agree, but you could say the same for Dark Confidant. ;) The thing is, Oracle gives a huge advantage vs. combo's like ANT/TES and OmniTell, whereas I'd probably even side the Strixes out for discard / hate if I encounter those. I agree that the element of surprise is a nice thing, but it'll last you for 1 round of even shorter; the opponent just needs to Probe you / cast a discard and they'll probably know what you're all about once they see an Aluren and a few 2 / 3 CMC creatures.


I would suggest the Intuitions and Lim-Dul's Vaults. But I think it really depends on the complete build since you have much more things to Cascade into. Based on your current list (adjusting 1 Harpy for a Witness) you have 25 cards (9 different cards) that you can Cascade into which would lower the chances of hitting Vision. At that point I don't think Vision is worth running.
Agreed. I don't think Vision has its place, sadly.


(Intuition) : If you expect Extraction you can always side it out after game 1.
Agreed. It'll probably always be the first thing to go when sideboarding.


That's one of the biggest downsides to the Wish builds and part of why I avoided it. Plus it makes you want to fit in more and more cards you don't need just because you can. Going to 4 Shardless main is good, no reason to have it in the side really. Selkie I liked at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't need it. The life gain is nice, but why am I gaining life instead of just winning? Maybe if Strix got removed or something, but that should be generally easy enough to avoid since there's no point casting it until we go off. Obviously it can be discarded then removed, so that is a valid concern.
Yes, agreed. I've already adjusted the sideboard to focus less on Wishing creatures. I also feel the same way regarding Selkie. It just stalls and it's basically a wasted Wish.


Thoughtseize is definitely good, so I would run those if you have the spots.
They're in the SB right now. How about removal, like Abrupt Decay?


I like Extraction, but Extirpate *may* be worth considering over it due to the split second since it is in our colors. There are decks like Tin Fins and Manaless Dredge that can respond to the Extraction. But other times the Split Second won't matter, so it's really a personal choice.
While I agree that Extirpate is better on paper; having Aluren ready to cast with 4 mana and having a Surgical in hand gives us the ability to pay the 2 life; perhaps even remove a Force of Will. If that gets countered, we've gotten rid of a counter, if not, we've just extracted FoW. If there's nothing of importance to extract, we can still peek their hand and see if we can go off. So, I feel Surgical takes the crown for that application! We are piloting a combo deck, so, speed is in our interest - so is our manabase.


Goyf isn't worth the spots. It just changes the deck to a bad aggro deck since everything else is still a 1/1 or 2/2.
Agreed. I wouldn't be able to find a place for it anyways.


Clique is nice since it has a bit of flexibility in that it can give us information about our opponent's hand, cycle a card in our hands, pitch to Force or help us with the aggro plan. Not being able to tutor for it with Recruiter isn't much of a drawback since there's usually key cards to tutor for instead. More so when only running 1 Recruiter since that Recruiter pretty much has to find Stalker/Strix or something to win the game.
While I absolutely love Clique, I don't think I can justify the spot. It can't be Cascaded into, it can't be tutored and when not having Aluren out, we're often focussing on ramping and hate. I wouldn't hate drawing it, but it isn't really a suitable combo-piece in this deck. Shardless Agent can finish the game via Cascading constantly, whereas Clique just makes us swap our own cards or discards a card of the opponent and them having to randomly maybe even draw a solution in return. It's a never-ending random loop that I think just doesn't work in this deck - at least, optimally.


Snapcaster doesn't fit with the deck due to the low number of Instants/Sorceries. Plus Cascading into it with Shardless with no mana open sucks.
I agree. We can't miss the mana, so it's kinda dead card mid-combo.


My main suggestion is to decide what they key things are that you want from your Wish board then cut all the non-essential things. The deck has a lot of flexibility which makes it easy to go overboard on creatures in the sideboard. You don't really want to get to the point where you have your main deck and just a wish board. I think T.E.S. has a good example when it comes to Wish boards - 7 Wish targets and 8 others. That way you still have a decent amount of cards to board in that aren't dependent on Wish. For those cards, I would suggest 2-3 Abrupt Decay, X Graveyard hate (Deathrite alone isn't enough, Bog is nice in a Wish build though), probably some Thoughtseizes and depending on how many spaces left, metagame calls. Possibly a Karakas if Reanimator/Sneak and Show is big in your meta.
Absolutely agreed.

The current sideboard is:
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Phyrexian Revoker / 1 Ethersworn Canonist / 1 Meddling Mage / 1 Yixlid Jailer / 1 Sedraxis Alchemist (I haven't decided yet which would provide the best hate and buys us enough time)
1 Bojuka Bog (ramp + graveyard hate; useful for Storm, Dredge and even Threshold - can't be countered, only Stifled)
2-3 Abrupt Decay
2 Thoughtseize
2-3 Surgical Extraction

Optional (depends on the amount of hate-creatures I put in):
1 Deathrite Shaman (access to ramping and is actually a solid Wish which can probably be played instantly in the same turn as the Wish)
1 Karakas (I had that in, but you brought it up again with good reason! Karakas isn't to be trifled with!)
2 Carpet of Flowers


Again stealing from T.E.S. - What do you guys think of putting Xantid Swarm in the side? It would be mainly for the control matchups but I could see it being brought inagainst decks that can also use Aluren in order to stop them from using Aluren on your turn. Being able to tutor for it with Recruiter is also a plus. I think I might try it out in the Swan Song slot in my most recent list.
I love Xantid Swarm, but it is a dead card mid-combo, sadly. It IS quite handy when drawing it before we hit 4 mana and Aluren, though after that it is completely useless, sadly. I would hate Cascading into it when comboing with Shardless Agent. I wouldn't know where to place it ...

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Alright, a little update regarding the current sideboard:
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Meddling Mage
1 Sedraxis Alchemist
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Thoughtseize
3 Surgical Extraction

Couldn't really find an optimal use for Karakas here. Show and Tell is actually quite an easy match up. Or you play Meddling Mage or you drop an Aluren with his Show and Tell. He drops Omniscience. You take priority with your Flash creatures and keep priority via the creatures and cascading. This works, right? I mean, even the Cascaded cards, even though they're Sorceries, are just triggered via the Cascade, correct. I retain priority. He can drop an Enter the Infinite or 'Kul, but not at instant speed, which means I can keep bouncing a Harpy and an Agent.

Meddling Mage provided to be a winning condition vs. ANT as well. Just name Infernal Tutor. Those were reasonable easy matches, especially after sideboarding more discard and Surgicals. Cabal Therapy on Infernal Tutor, Surgical on Tutor. GG. Cascading into a Surgical is ... haha, so awesome.

[Darkenslight]

Demolition: either way, you can go off in response to their casting the spell if you have the parts in hand, so you could theoretically win with their wincon on the stack. In addition, how useful is Coiling Oracle here with the Harpy?

[DireLemming]

In Shardless Wish version there is no point in playing Strix main. Also, the utility of Recruiter is so marginal that it does not outweigh the 2 slots (Stalker main and Recruiter in SB) it takes. I'm having decent results with:

2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta
3 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp

3 Coiling Oracle
4 Shardless Agent
4 Baleful Strix
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Eternal Witness
1 Vendilion Clique

4 Living Wish
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Intuition
4 Aluren
2 Chain of Vapor

Sideboard:
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Sedraxis Alchemist
1 City of Traitors
1 Bojuka Bog
10 meta

The Clique and (at least) the second Chain are marginal but I haven't found anything I like more in those slots. If this were about half a turn faster, it would be a real contender.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Demolition: either way, you can go off in response to their casting the spell if you have the parts in hand, so you could theoretically win with their wincon on the stack. In addition, how useful is Coiling Oracle here with the Harpy?
Exactly. Like I thought.
Coiling Oracle is simply a ramp, sacrificial food for Cabal Therapy and is a possible combo piece. It's an early drop that can speed things along. If the Oracle might be all I have at the moment with a Harpy, it can still get me Shardless Agent or something else.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

In Shardless Wish version there is no point in playing Strix main. Also, the utility of Recruiter is so marginal that it does not outweigh the 2 slots (Stalker main and Recruiter in SB) it takes.
I disagree. What if Shardless Agent is all you have at the moment and you happen to Cascade into a Living Wish. You'd pick Harpy to get going and hope to Cascade into another Wish or a Lim-Dul's Vault.
I had the exact same feeling you did, that Recruiter didn't do much, but without it, we are gambling quite a bit with Lim-Dul's Vault and Cascading. I've also had times that I could drop out Aluren (after peeking the opponent's hand, seeing that I was free of counters/discard) and just did so to have it out there safely (knowing they can't remove it on the board), having a Living Wish and a few lands in hand, no creatures. Next turn would have to be a Wish for Recruiter which would start the entire chain. If I wished for a Harpy ... that's all I would have, 1 Harpy. You can't do jack with 1 Harpy. ;)

The downside of a list without atleast 1 Recruiter is that the Harpy -> Shardless Agent loop is a life-clock waiting to hit something. It can work, and it has worked, but trying that vs. something more burn/aggro based is a BIG no-no. You can't permit to gamble that life away and being burned down to 5 or so just leaves too much gambling room you can't afford. At least, that's my experience.

Getting 1 Recruiter instead gets you:
Recruiter -> search Dream Stalker -> Bounce Recruiter w/ Stalker -> Recruiter again -> search Cavern Harpy -> Play Harpy w/ Bounce effect -> Dream Stalker -> Recruiter Bounce via Stalker -> search for Parasitic Strix -> end. The upside is that you can even get Eternal Witness and bounce that to secure victory, depending on your Graveyard. Get a Cabal Therapy back (which you can even loop, depending on your open mana) or a FoW, Surgical Extraction or whatever.

Recruiter basically needs 1 Wish, whereas Shardless is random. Playing 1 Harpy main means you probably won't pick it up fast, so you need 2 Wishes; one for Harpy, one for Strix. If one of your Wishes gets countered or the Strix or Harpy gets countered, you're pretty much screwed. I also see you run 1 Eternal Witness main, without Stalker you can't even bounce it. It's a one time play, might work, but ... how do you get it? You can't Cascade into it, so you just hope to Lim-Dul's Vault it and then pick it up with Baleful / Oracle. Very random and you just can't depend on it, if you ask me.


If this were about half a turn faster, it would be a real contender.
Deathrite Shaman ... ;)

[DireLemming]

If you go off right it's very unlikely you will fizzle. Even the original version with Man o'War and Raven got there consistently. You just have to be careful with the little things like how to stack cascade and draws, the interplay between Oracle, BS and Shardless, how to maximize CoV chains, ...

You can still recur Witness in my version via Sedraxis Alchemist (but it might be, a second Witness main is warranted) and the Recruiter version is just as soft to counterspells.

Deathrite helps you play Aluren faster, but for the price of consistency later, which might be why we differ as to the necessity of Recruiter.

Also I don't see the point of Stalker with only 1 Recruiter. MoW can at least tempo the opponent.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

If you go off right it's very unlikely you will fizzle. Even the original version with Man o'War and Raven got there consistently. You just have to be careful with the little things like how to stack cascade and draws, the interplay between Oracle, BS and Shardless, how to maximize CoV chains, ...

You can still recur Witness in my version via Sedraxis Alchemist (but it might be, a second Witness main is warranted) and the Recruiter version is just as soft to counterspells.

Deathrite helps you play Aluren faster, but for the price of consistency later, which might be why we differ as to the necessity of Recruiter.

Also I don't see the point of Stalker with only 1 Recruiter. MoW can at least tempo the opponent.
Raven had the ability to at least dig deeper, so that 1 life you paid for Harpy became less of a risk. You can't deny that Shardless Agent and its Cascading is a gamble, always. I mean, I can't see you disagreeing with that, right? It's not consistent and it's very much luck-based, until you hit a Lim-Dul's Vault (which needs life as well) or a Living Wish, soon. I love it and it works, but it is always a gamble which you need to pay for with life. It's my backup plan.

I love Sedraxis, but it doesn't work for me main, at least not with my Recruiter-Wish-build. I need a blue permanent next to it to work. I do have it sided for Leylines, etc.
I prefer Dream Stalker over Man-o'-War due to the CMC of 2 (can be Cascaded into, which gives you a free Shardless once more), its 5 thoughness (can't be bolted away, or no Grim Lavamancer can burn it) and while Man-o'-War is useful; in the meta of Goyfs, Dark Confidants, Stoneforge Mystics, Nimble Mongooses, Shardless Agents and Delvers (which is useful to bounce if its flipped), etc. bouncing creatures with Aluren out is absolutely useless because they can instantly just drop them back on the board ...

Also, all I need is one Stalker, so not sure what's not to get of running only 1 with 1 Recruiter. 4 Recruiters is therefore pretty much a waste for me. Single chain once more:
Wish -> Recruiter -> Play Recruiter for Dream Stalker -> Play Dream Stalker and bounce Recruiter -> Play Recruiter for Cavern Harpy -> Play Cavern Harpy to bounce Dream Stalker -> Play Dream Stalker to bounce Recruiter -> Play Recruiter to find either Eternal Witness (if you need to re-use stuff from the Graveyard) or end it directly via looking for a Parasitic Strix.

I'm not seeing your point regarding losing consistency with Deathrite Shaman? It actually ups the consistency of the deck and in the current meta it can be a HUGE game changer. It can stall the opponent, eating their fetch so they can't accelerate with their own DS, it can accelerate our own gameplan so we can drop an early Living Wish or whatever, it can remove stuff like Life from the Loam, for instance. It makes the back up plan of stalling with critters and shooting with Shamans viable.

[theBloody]

I prefer Dream Stalker over Man-o'-War due to the CMC of 2 (can be Cascaded into, which gives you a free Shardless once more)...


Shardless is still on stack so you can't use Dream Stalker to return him.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Shardless is still on stack so you can't use Dream Stalker to return him.
I actually meant when having out multiple Shardless / any drawing creature. Should've clarified that.

[DireLemming]

I actually meant when having out multiple Shardless / any drawing creature. Should've clarified that.
If you bounce a Shardless the net effect is the same as if Stalker would have been any 3cmc creature and you would have plowed pass; while in the case of a drawing creature, I would rather have a cascade target than risking a random draw.


Raven had the ability to at least dig deeper, so that 1 life you paid for Harpy became less of a risk. You can't deny that Shardless Agent and its Cascading is a gamble, always. I mean, I can't see you disagreeing with that, right?
On average Shardless digs about 0.5 card less than Raven, but you are guarantied what you cascade into will advance your board state while Raven would often show 3 useless cards, especially if you had no mana available. So no, Shardless is far more consistent than Raven. What could be debatable is which is better before Aluren. Here Raven's ability to find Aluren has to be weighed against it's echo cost. However the Shardless version has so many cantrips and tutors I never had problems finding Aluren.


I love Sedraxis, but it doesn't work for me main, at least not with my Recruiter-Wish-build. I need a blue permanent next to it to work. I do have it sided for Leylines, etc.
I wasn't suggesting you run it main, merely pointing out it suffices for Witness tricks as these tend to include Harpy which is conveniently blue.


I'm not seeing your point regarding losing consistency with Deathrite Shaman? It actually ups the consistency of the deck and in the current meta it can be a HUGE game changer.
I was referring to consistency in going off. With Shaman your cascades suddenly become "a gamble", while in my version the worst you can cascade into is raping their hand with Therapy.

[Darkenslight]

...That's a point: would Tidehollow Sculler tricks be useful for backup hand evisceration?

[DemolitionColorScheme]

If you bounce a Shardless the net effect is the same as if Stalker would have been any 3cmc creature and you would have plowed pass; while in the case of a drawing creature, I would rather have a cascade target than risking a random draw.
The difference is that you get one of your possible combo pieces out and the net difference is the same, since I found you can in fact use it to bounce Shardless. It comes into play, bounces itself, you play it, it bounces Shardless (optimal with Aluren out, though). You won't hear me complain about that. Anyways, I could try Man-O'-War, since its upside is that it can bounce creatures that might be CMC3+ and getting Dream Stalker pre-combo does kinda suck. Downside of Man-o'-War is that it's slightly more easy to get rid of. I'll give it a shot, though!


On average Shardless digs about 0.5 card less than Raven, but you are guarantied what you cascade into will advance your board state while Raven would often show 3 useless cards, especially if you had no mana available. So no, Shardless is far more consistent than Raven. What could be debatable is which is better before Aluren. Here Raven's ability to find Aluren has to be weighed against it's echo cost. However the Shardless version has so many cantrips and tutors I never had problems finding Aluren.
Not sure what your point is, haha. It's not like I was picking Raven over Shardless. No way!


I was referring to consistency in going off. With Shaman your Cascades suddenly become "a gamble", while in my version the worst you can cascade into is raping their hand with Therapy.
I get your point there. You can still Cascade into a Brainstorm, which kinda always sucks. Well, it's not neccesarily bad, but for Cascading, it's not really wanted. I do see what you mean. However, see it like this; pre-Aluren a Deathrite is never an unwelcome addition, post-Aluren Cascading into one isn't such a big deal, since I only run 3. By that time I've Cascaded into either a Living Wish, Lim-Dul's Vault, or one of the draw creatures. It's not a huge deal to pay 1 life for another bounce for Shardless, really. Mid-combo, it's useless, but pre-combo it can be everything you'd want at that moment. We're piloting a combo-deck, so speed is in our interest, that's one, but we're also not a terrible fast combo-deck, so we kinda take a control-ish role pre-combo where DS can very much be of service. Also, when you happen to fizzle your combo due to countering or whatever reason, having 3 of these guys out with 4 mana is pretty scary. ;)

[DemolitionColorScheme]

...That's a point: would Tidehollow Sculler tricks be useful for backup hand evisceration?
I've seen this one before, but I'd even pick Ravenous Rats over this ... ;) The upside of Tidehollow is the peeking, which can be very important, but bouncing Rats leaves them with an empty hand, at a cost, though.
No, seriously, I couldn't fit these cards in, though. I think Cabal Therapy + Flashback + SB discard / hate should be sufficient.

[Whippoorwill]

...That's a point: would Tidehollow Sculler tricks be useful for backup hand evisceration?

Not worth the cost of the white mana. You can use Mesmeric Fiend for the same effect though if you really want the effect.

[swoop]

I wouldn't really want to cascade into LDV...

I'd rather get something that gets me a card on board, or makes me go further. LDV just makes a setup while you say "go"

i'm proud of you all little padawans

[DemolitionColorScheme]

I wouldn't really want to cascade into LDV...

I'd rather get something that gets me a card on board, or makes me go further. LDV just makes a setup while you say "go"

i'm proud of you all little padawans
LDV does that? I mean, we're Cascading with Agent + Harpy, that was the situation I was sketching. It makes finding the right piece to Cascade into a lot more consistent and it makes setting it up more effective. I mean, we still need to Pay 1 life for Cascading and for that wouldn't want to Cascade into a Brainstorm or another draw card (most of the time we're tapped out due to casting Aluren). There are a bunch of targets we can Cascade into and Cascading on itself is a gamble. LDV means we can look for that Wish (in my case) to get that Recruiter instead of having a board full of Strixes, Oracles, Harpy's, Shamans and used Brainstorms. ;) In the case of playing a Strix or Oracle, you kinda feel bummed out when you draw a Wish with closed mana. It doesn't mean that's the end, since then we'll be bouncing Oracle + Harpy for 2 landdrops. Anyways, it's also useful when having used a lot of resources, like multiple lost Aluren's or Wishes since Intuition sucks here. 1 Wish, 1 Aluren, 1 Harpy, doesn't matter what you pick, if you have 1 or 2 left of your important pieces, the person will just pick the most threatening pieces and you're left with 1.

So, this brings me to Intuition; I'm just really not a fan of it in this deck. It's a risk, it removes potentional Cascade targets (straight into the graveyard) and it gives the opponent intel;
"Oh, you just looked for 3 Aluren? Alright, let's actively Brainstorm for some Discard and we'll be rid of 3 of them!"
In OmniTell it serves me quite well, but I feel awkward using it here, besides using it to look for 3 Cabal Therapy. I might try to cut them out completely. Not sure what to replace them with. Maybe Diabolic Intent (doesn't just tutor for a creature, can tutor for Aluren as well), quite a good Cascade target, as long as you have another creature out. Might be a bit too much of a gamble, really. It does mean that you can instantly get a Parasitic Strix mid combo, so it might actually be a good alternative if something fails. Or you run into this, or Wish, which ups the targets to 6 instead of 4. Could work.

[swoop]

LDV does that? I mean, we're Cascading with Agent + Harpy, that was the situation I was sketching. It makes finding the right piece to Cascade into a lot more consistent and it makes setting it up more effective. I mean, we still need to Pay 1 life for Cascading and for that wouldn't want to Cascade into a Brainstorm or another draw card (most of the time we're tapped out due to casting Aluren). There are a bunch of targets we can Cascade into and Cascading on itself is a gamble. LDV means we can look for that Wish (in my case) to get that Recruiter instead of having a board full of Strixes, Oracles, Harpy's, Shamans and used Brainstorms. ;) In the case of playing a Strix or Oracle, you kinda feel bummed out when you draw a Wish with closed mana. It doesn't mean that's the end, since then we'll be bouncing Oracle + Harpy for 2 landdrops. Anyways, it's also useful when having used a lot of resources, like multiple lost Aluren's or Wishes since Intuition sucks here. 1 Wish, 1 Aluren, 1 Harpy, doesn't matter what you pick, if you have 1 or 2 left of your important pieces, the person will just pick the most threatening pieces and you're left with 1.
If you have harpy + agent you've already won the game.



So, this brings me to Intuition; I'm just really not a fan of it in this deck. It's a risk, it removes potentional Cascade targets (straight into the graveyard) and it gives the opponent intel;
"Oh, you just looked for 3 Aluren? Alright, let's actively Brainstorm for some Discard and we'll be rid of 3 of them!"
In OmniTell it serves me quite well, but I feel awkward using it here, besides using it to look for 3 Cabal Therapy. I might try to cut them out completely. Not sure what to replace them with. Maybe Diabolic Intent (doesn't just tutor for a creature, can tutor for Aluren as well), quite a good Cascade target, as long as you have another creature out. Might be a bit too much of a gamble, really. It does mean that you can instantly get a Parasitic Strix mid combo, so it might actually be a good alternative if something fails. Or you run into this, or Wish, which ups the targets to 6 instead of 4. Could work.
If you cast Intuition for 3 alurens you've cast it in their EOT and that means you've already won the game.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

If you have harpy + agent you've already won the game.
That's nonsense, of course ... it greatly ups the chances, but it does very much depend on your total life, of course. Let's say you're at 5 ... it's gonna be a gamble.


If you cast Intuition for 3 alurens you've cast it in their EOT and that means you've already won the game.
Not neccesarily ... You cast Intuition, look for 3 Aluren and in response that that, still in the EOT, he Surgical Extracts it ... I've won many games in that exact same way vs. Show and Tell, Sneak and Show, you name it. It's a huge weak point, unless you're packing counters, which we only run 4 (and also requires a blue pitch).
Besides that, it depends on if you have a Shaman out + a dead fetch or one land in hand or if you top deck a land.

I've been testing Diabolic Intent for a bit right now and I find it suits me better since it's a bit more sneaky. Once you have a little critter out, it's actually not a big deal to sacrifice one of it if it has served its purpose. The upside of DI is that there's no revealing phase, which I dig. I can look for an Aluren, a FoW if I have all of it complete, a land, a critter, you name it. It makes the whole ordeal less susceptible to getting Cabal Therapied or Surgical Extracted. It can be Cascaded into it as well due to its CMC of 2, which finishes games just like Cascading into Living Wish does.

The thing with Intuition is that once you start looking for other pieces besides Aluren, most of the times it might be a Harpy, or a Living Wish, whatever; if you have less than 3 of them left in your deck, it'll be harder to assemble a good Intuition-3-piece where you can combo-off with any of the opponent's picks.

[swoop]

That's nonsense, of course ... it greatly ups the chances, but it does very much depend on your total life, of course. Let's say you're at 5 ... it's gonna be a gamble.

In that case you pray you flip something you can use.



Not neccesarily ... You cast Intuition, look for 3 Aluren and in response that that, still in the EOT, he Surgical Extracts it ... I've won many games in that exact same way vs. Show and Tell, Sneak and Show, you name it. It's a huge weak point, unless you're packing counters, which we only run 4 (and also requires a blue pitch).
Besides that, it depends on if you have a Shaman out + a dead fetch or one land in hand or if you top deck a land.

What if... they COUNTER it? of course you need to account those possibilities. But do not overthink this deck. Play it simple and win.



I've been testing Diabolic Intent for a bit right now and I find it suits me better since it's a bit more sneaky. Once you have a little critter out, it's actually not a big deal to sacrifice one of it if it has served its purpose. The upside of DI is that there's no revealing phase, which I dig. I can look for an Aluren, a FoW if I have all of it complete, a land, a critter, you name it. It makes the whole ordeal less susceptible to getting Cabal Therapied or Surgical Extracted. It can be Cascaded into it as well due to its CMC of 2, which finishes games just like Cascading into Living Wish does.

The thing with Intuition is that once you start looking for other pieces besides Aluren, most of the times it might be a Harpy, or a Living Wish, whatever; if you have less than 3 of them left in your deck, it'll be harder to assemble a good Intuition-3-piece where you can combo-off with any of the opponent's picks.

Living wish, diabolic intent.. those cards are bad. mostly. as I said, this deck needs to be played simple. Simple gameplan, simple execution.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

In that case you pray you flip something you can use.
Exactly ... ;)


What if... they COUNTER it? of course you need to account those possibilities. But do not overthink this deck. Play it simple and win.
Yeah, maybe. I'll keep swapping and see which I'll prefer. In Reanimator, for example, it's an absolute must.


Living wish, diabolic intent.. those cards are bad. mostly. as I said, this deck needs to be played simple. Simple gameplan, simple execution.
I guess we disagree here. This deck isn't Belcher and won't go off until at least turn 3, so, we need to be a bit more careful.
I presume you prefer the 4 Recruiter main-deck version then?

[DireLemming]

That's nonsense, of course ... it greatly ups the chances, but it does very much depend on your total life, of course. Let's say you're at 5 ... it's gonna be a gamble.
Out of curiosity I tried the following experiment:

My list, 5 life
board: Aluren, Shardless, Harpy; Tropical, Tropical, USea, Bayou (all tapped).
hand: /
graveyard: /

(i.e. the worst possible scenario)

17/20 I straight out won, 1/20 I made a mistake and passed the turn with a commanding board position and an opponent with no non-land cards in hand and would win the following turn and 2/20 I had a commanding board position but would take several turns to win. And that's with the worst possible scenario. Goodenough for me. In tournament play I would probably be more conservative and in cases where I had a FoW in hand pass the turn at 2 life.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Haha! Awesome that you tested that. Just shows that the deck is kinda made to work nicely with Shardless.

[swoop]

I guess we disagree here. This deck isn't Belcher and won't go off until at least turn 3, so, we need to be a bit more careful.
I presume you prefer the 4 Recruiter main-deck version then?

But that's what I'm saying. Play simple and play cards that enable you to win. LDV is a setup, used to be good, used to play it a lot, but now I don't see why should I.
Diabolic intent - only possibly with veteran explorers, but still don't see the benefit to play it.
Living wish - sorcery, too slow, two mana, if you pop 4 mana for t3 or t4 aluren... you really don't have mana to use it to go tutoring for the missing piece right?

I used to play recruiterless version, but now since rec's are cheap as fuck (compared to what they used to cost..) i play 3 rec version. gonna buy fourth pretty soon I hope though

[DemolitionColorScheme]

But that's what I'm saying. Play simple and play cards that enable you to win. LDV is a setup, used to be good, used to play it a lot, but now I don't see why should I.
Diabolic intent - only possibly with veteran explorers, but still don't see the benefit to play it.
Living wish - sorcery, too slow, two mana, if you pop 4 mana for t3 or t4 aluren... you really don't have mana to use it to go tutoring for the missing piece right?

I used to play recruiterless version, but now since rec's are cheap as fuck (compared to what they used to cost..) i play 3 rec version. gonna buy fourth pretty soon I hope though
I wouldn't say Recruiters are cheap as fuck. ;) I can't currently miss 4x €75,-
Anyways, Wish isn't so much about casting it neccesarily, Cascading into it is all you need. I've had times I had to get rid of a Leyline and I wished for Sedraxis Alchemist and bounced it. Now, we could also use Chain of Vapor but that means we'd need actually to run those main, which is an option, but for the matches that usually don't call for it, it's always a dead card and I'm never really glad drawing it. I've also had multiple wins vs. Reanimator / Sneak and Show when wishing for a Karakas.

I dunno, I can see benefits for both builds, to be honest. 4x Recruiter might be more direct, but often felt slow and you never really wanna draw a Recruiter pre-combo, though you HAVE to, since you can't Cascade into it. It's an easy to remove combo-piece and you run 4. If its gets discarded / countered, you're pretty much just playing on luck, hoping to Brainstorm into it or draw it via Baleful Strix (and/-or Coiling Oracle). You don't use LDV and you only run 4 cantrips (Brainstorm). Decks like Show and Tell are packed with 12 cantrips (14, if you count Probe) which makes replacing your lost combo piece a lot easier.

For me, personally, running a Wish variant gives me acces to solutions / winning conditions I need at that specific moment and that's why I prefer it.

[DireLemming]

CoV is almost never completely dead. With 2 creatures and Aluren in play it's your second best draw engine netting you 8+ cards.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

CoV is almost never completely dead. With 2 creatures and Aluren in play it's your second best draw engine netting you 8+ cards.
On that I very much agree! But if I set it side by side to Diabolic Intent, drawing into DI ends the game, since you simply look for that one Parasitic Strix or in a worse case scenario, with Leyline of Sanctity out, you look for a Wish. If you're out of mana you bounce Coiling Oracle a few times to get two land drops and get Sedraxis Alchemist via Wish.

The upside of CoV is that huge draw engine, but the downside is that it can't be used offensively with Aluren out. You bounce something that needs to be cleared and they simply sacrifice a land to bounce Aluren, right? Or can you then take priority and respond to that? I presume an opponent sacrificing a land is part of CoV's casting cost of that action, so that action needs to be cleared first. Just checking. I'd love to know that since I haven't written off CoV at all.

For kicks we did loads of playtesting yesterday vs. Belcher, since Belcher can be insanely fast and Aluren ... well, isn't, haha. The first match up is hard, though I still won with a lucky Cabal Therapy on Burning Wish. After sideboarding:
-3 Baleful Strix
+3 Surgical Extraction
-2 Diabolic Intent
+2 Thoughtseize

The plays changed dramatically. You mulligan until you atleast have a FoW and/-or Surgical Extraction or multiple discard and the game will be severely stalled. I've won a bunch games purely due to Wishing for Meddling Mage (mostly played on the intel you've gotten via Cabal Therapy / Thoughtseize / Surgical Extraction) and then getting lucky and Wishing for Phyrexian Revoker to shut down a Goblin Charbelcher. In at least two matches I extracted a Burning Wish, played Meddling Mage for Emtpy the Warrens and played Phyrexian Revoker on Goblin Charbelcher, which, in all honesty, just felt awesome, haha. One thing I didn't account for was that once Aluren is out, he can just throw down Elvish Spirit Guides and Simian Spirit Guides for free, which was fun, since I'm sure those cards never saw the battlefield before! :D It didn't matter much, since I still won, but it was a surprise and learning moment.

[DireLemming]

The upside of CoV is that huge draw engine, but the downside is that it can't be used offensively with Aluren out. You bounce something that needs to be cleared and they simply sacrifice a land to bounce Aluren, right? Or can you then take priority and respond to that? I presume an opponent sacrificing a land is part of CoV's casting cost of that action, so that action needs to be cleared first. Just checking. I'd love to know that since I haven't written off CoV at all.
You can continue going off in response to the copy (you generally want to pass priority so that the bounce happens). Upon the resolution of CoV (after the bounce; but you can't do anything between the bounce and the copy trigger) the controller of the permanent that got bounced has the option of sacrificing a land, if she does, she can place a copy of CoV on the stack. From there on it's the same as if she had cast CoV. (The situation is analogous to storm where you can respond to individual copies.)

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Thanks! That's very good to know. Makes sense, since it generates a copy. Interesting!

[Whippoorwill]

Just a quick report. Can type up more later if requested.

Played in an SCG IQ last night with the same list I've been running with the following changes:

-1 Maelstrom pulse
-1 Intuition

Sideboard:
-2 Swan Song
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Abrupt Decay

36 players (I think)
6 Rounds, cut to Top 8.


Round 1 vs. BG Pox
Vision made me able to recover from all the discard.

1-0 (2-0)

Round 2 vs. Manaless Dredge
Game 1 I win off a Topdecked Recruiter after he Therapies me for FoW, sees 2 Alurens and passes the turn with another Therapy in his graveyard. He had lethal on board for next turn, but the mistake cost him.

Games 2 and 3 I don't see a single Leyline but I win game 3 due to him having a bad opening hand and bad draws.

2-0 (4-1)

Round 3 vs. Belcher
Game 1: I played 2 lands
Game 2: Land, Thoughtseize on the play. I see the following:

Elvish Spirit Guide
Simian Spirit Guide
Lion's Eye Diamond
Seething Song
Seething Song
Empty the Warrens
Goblin Charbelcher

I take the Belcher, and manage to not draw another land (or Deed or Charm).

2-1 (4-3)

Round 4 vs. Death and Taxes
Game 1 I Force Mirran Crusader then combo out shortly after.
Game 2: He has Stoneforge (Jitte), MoM and a Revoker out. I play out a Jace and Brainstorm to find a 5th land. He attacks and kills Jace. On my turn I play Deed and wipe the board. I combo shortly after but had to do it again because Fiend Hunter screwed me when I played things in the wrong order. Got there anyways.

3-1 (6-3)

Round 5 vs. ANT
Game 1: I win with silly Grizzly Bears and Scryb Sprites.
Game 2: He starts to combo off on turn 2 and screws up realizing he didn't have red mana. He essentially wiped out all but 1 card in his hand for nothing. A couple turns later he activates LED to discard PiF which I Force. I proceed to win.

4-1 (8-3)

Round 6 - ID

4-1-1 (8-3-1)


Cut to top 8 and I'm the 5th seed.

Quarterfinals vs. BG Pox
I thought he was on Miracles at first, but I found out I was wrong quickly.

Ancestral Vision and Jace >>>>> Liliana and discard.

In game 2 he got out Night of Souls' Betrayal but conceded to Jace about to ultimate when I had Alchemist + Shardless in hand.

5-1-1 (10-3-1)

Semifinals vs Miracles
Game 1 went for over an hour. I nearly killed him with a lone Baleful Strix as he wasn't drawing removal. The game was back and forth a lot with both of us removing the other's threats (Deed for Entreat). The game came down to us both at 1 life, me with 0 cards in library (Stronghold in play tapped, planning to use on upkeep) and he Vensers it. Great game and everyone watching enjoyed it. One thing worth noting was him not realizing he could cast his Clique for free - something most players tend to overlook (though to be fair, mine are also in Japanese).

Game 2 he drew what he needed when he needed it and got there with a semi-early Entreat.

5-2-1 (10-5-1 overall)

Miracles ended up losing to Jund in the finals and I finished 3rd/4th.

Overall, I'm very happy with the Jace addition as it's extra card draw in addition to an alternate win condition. Ancestral Vision is still amazing. I also received multiple complements on the deck by people that saw it in action. I feel completely comfortable with the main deck at this point, but I'm going to do some changes to the sideboard again (likely 2-3 cards). I'll be playing this next week at the Seattle Open, so hopefully I'll manage to get a feature match and give the deck some time in the spotlight.

Also, one of my favourite things about Aluren is when people try to get you to tap mana for creature spells.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

I'm actually quite curious to see your decklist. :)

[Whippoorwill]

2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Volrath's Stronghold

4 Baleful Strix
1 Dream Stalker
1 Cavern Harpy
4 Shardless Agent
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Sedraxis Alchemist

4 Ancestral Vision
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

2 Pernicious Deed
4 Aluren

Sideboard:
4 Thoughtseize
1 Krosan Grip
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Golgari Charm
1 Plague Spitter
4 Leyline of the Void


I edited in the changes mentioned above.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

I've gotta say, that list looks pretty ... weird. Not negatively or anything, just ... weird and interesting. How is that Jace really working out for you? Have you used its -1 ability on one of your own creatures pre-Aluren? :cool: Or did you often just straight went for its ulti?

I've thought about adding Ancestral Vision as well. It's absolutely awesome Cascading into it, but if not, did it work for you? It takes 4 turns for it to actually do anything for you which might be a little slow for this particular deck, since it's not really a gigantic threat pre-combo.

You didn't miss any acceleration or ramping via Coiling Oracle and/-or Deathrite Shaman?

I've wanted to add Pernicious Deed as well, but felt it was a tad slow.

[Whippoorwill]

It's definitely different, but it's been working out great for me. I decided to try Jace mainly for the card draw, but also as an additional win condition. And yes, I did end up bouncing my own Shardless at least once during the night (think it was against the Pox deck in the Quarterfinals).

I've suspended it quite a bit actually, and the 4 turns usually go by pretty fast. It shines best against the slower decks (discard strategies) since you know you're going to have the turns to unsuspend it and you can keep dropping threats during that time.

I haven't missed Oracle at all. Strix is infinitely better due to the threat it poses to your opponent's creatures. Oracle is nothing more than just hoping to ramp/draw a card. Deathrite I kinda miss, but not for the mana acceleration. I really think mana acceleration is overrated in this deck. The only decks that have been fast enough (or potentially) to beat me are those that would beat me before turn 3 anyways which would be the soonest you could play Aluren off Oracle/Deathrite.

Deed is slow, but it also buys you time against a lot of decks. It was very important when I played against Miracles since it allowed me to get rid of Counterbalance and his Angel tokens. Against Death and Taxes it wiped his board and against BG Pox I was able to kill a Mox Diamond and Mishra's Factory that was attacking me (he kept killing my creatures with various spells/Liliana, so it was a legit threat at the time).

[swoop]

Well dunno guys.

Until this deck does something outside our kitchen, its all down to personal preferences.. right?

Can't attend local monthly legacy, first saturday off in two months -.-

[Whippoorwill]

Martin Goldman-Kirst placed 15th with the traditional list he runs:

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=3&start_date=2013-10-20&end_date=2013-10-20&start=1&finish=16&city=Seattle

I ended up going 3-4 drop yesterday at SCG Seattle. Changes made:

-3 Therapy
-1 Windswept Heath
+3 Thoughtseize
+1 Volcanic Island

Sideboard:
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Thorns of Amethyst
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Plague Spitter
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Surgical Extraction

I added the 4 Thorns due to the Belcher match I had the previous week and it also double as hate against Dredge (especially manaless)

Changing the Heath to a Volcanic was a mistake that ended up costing me.

Round 1 vs Punishing Jund

Both games she gets strong draws/plays and has a fast enough clock to kill me before I can really do anything. Multiple Bloodbraids tend to do that so I don't worry about it to much.

0-1 (0-2)

Round 2 vs Shardless BUG
Game 1: Pretty sure I had the combo in hand, but couldn't find a 2nd green source to cast Aluren before I died.

Game 2 I mull to 5 then manage to pull get back in the game thanks to Vision. I eventually get Aluren out and start comboing with Harpy + Shardless. He eventually responds when I have Strix on the stack and he concedes when I cast Recruiter.

Game 3: He Thoughtseizes me when I have Jace + Aluren in hand and takes the Jace. I draw a Recruiter and cast Aluren then combo out.

1-1 (2-3)

Round 3 vs UWR Delver
Game 1 I cracked a fetchland and he Stifled it, so I Forced back. He Forced that so I Forced it again. I didn't really draw any more lands anyways.

Game 2: I never drew more than the 2 lands I started with.

1-2 (2-5)

Round 4 vs Goblins
His deck was almost completely Korean with APAC Mountains which was nice to see.

Game 1: He's on the play: Mountain, Chrome Mox, Piledriver. T2: Goblin Chieftan. T3: Something. T4: Kill me. I had the combo pieces in hand ready to kill him on my turn 4. This was the first time where mana ramp would have helped me.

Game 2: I return the favor and kill him on my turn 4. He attempts to use Scrapper to kill Strix, but I have Cavern Harpy to save it. He used Stingscourger on Harpy as well, maybe to just get it in play.

Game 3: I kept a hand I shouldn't have and he just overruns me with threats, even after I Deed away the board.

1-3 (3-7)

Round 5 vs UW Helm/Miracles
Game 1: I Thoughtseize and see RiP, Humility and some lands. I take the Humility. He then kills me a few turns later with an E.Tutored Helm.

Game 2: I Seize again and this take take his Top to slow him down. It works and I eventually get the combo off.

Game 3: I go with the aggro plan and he eventually gets out RiP+Energy Field. I Decay the RiP and resume my clock. He eventually gets Jace out and uses to to Brainstorm. He has Counterbalance out and I know he has a Detention Sphere floating around (he used it to counter my Sedraxis Alchemist) so I play a Jace of my own and start fatesealing him while continuing to apply pressure (choosing to ignore his Jace). He casts Pithing needle on Cavern Harpy which I'm always fine with. I eventually resolve Aluren but don't cast anything because of the Sphere. I get my Jace up to 13 with him at 5 life and he casts Entreat on his turn for 3 Angels followed by Detention Sphere to remove both Jaces. I make my move and cast Recruiter which resolves so I chain them all out then get Witness to get back Alchemist and bounce Needle to kill him on the spot.

2-3 (5-8)

Round 6 vs Rock
Game 1: Can't remember, but I might not have drawn many lands. He beat me down with Batterskull.

Game 2: Full disclosure: I only won this because my Pernicious Deeds are foreign. He had 2x Knight, Deathrite and Liliana on board and I Deed on his upkeep when he had 2 Golgari Charms in hand. He used his Knights in response to fetch lands to make future knights bigger then went to put his board in the graveyard. I did inform him that it didn't kill Liliana, but I neglected to tell him that he could have regenerated his creatures. I combo out a couple turns after that.

Game 3: Semi-long game that came down to both of us in top deck mode. He gets out a Cannonist which was slightly annoying, but I was on the aggro plan for the most part. Cannonist also saved one of my creatures by preventing him from casting StP after he had cast another spell. I end up getting there, I think with Aluren.

3-3 (7-9)

Round 7 vs Jund (non-Punishing)
I'm paired against a friend who is borrowing the deck from me. Always fun.

Game 1: Jund stuff.

Game 2: I kill him with the aggro plan. (I intentionally boarded out combo pieces since he knows what I'm playing and has Slaughter Games in the board)

Game 3: He keeps a light hand but recovers somewhat and has 2 5/6 Goyfs staring me down. I take a hit from both choosing not to block either then Deed away the board shortly after. From there I just overload him with creatures and manage to kill him.

4-3 (9-10)

There were still 2 more rounds and since the friend is planning on going to GP DC I gave him the win so he could still be in the running and get more practice with the deck since he was considering it as an option. I then dropped.

Final official result was 3-4.

I feel comfortable against the slower decks, but the faster decks like Jund (Bloodbraid having haste being one of the main issues) I'm not terribly sure about. It's still possible to win those, but having Strix die before it gets a chance to block the larger threats is one of the main issues. And as always, not drawing lands sucks.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Whip,
do you still feel Deathrite is out of the question? The common theme I see in the match-ups is that you were mana-screwed plenty of times. Am I correct? Do you feel DS could have possibly changed all that?

[theBloody]

... It's still possible to win those, but having Strix die before it gets a chance to block the larger threats is one of the main issues.

This is the reason why I switched from Strix to Oracle. Just kill them asap.

[Whippoorwill]

Whip,
do you still feel Deathrite is out of the question? The common theme I see in the match-ups is that you were mana-screwed plenty of times. Am I correct? Do you feel DS could have possibly changed all that?

Against the decks I played, not really. The Miracle Helm deck was the only one light on removal, in every other match my opponents seemed to have plenty of removal. if anything I would rather have 1-2 more lands, and at that point Oracle would be the better option for ramping.


This is the reason why I switched from Strix to Oracle. Just kill them asap.

They're still likely going to kill the Oracle in order to push their damage through (unless the creature would deal less damage than the removal spell), so I feel that Oracle would only be better if it flipped a land to ramp.

[theBloody]

That was my point. Even if they kill Oracle it still can help you. Drawing a card isn't such a big deal if you are one land drop away from win.

[Pilhas]

Hey guys,

I am building an Aluren Wish version and want your opinion on the list,

First of all I am not running Imperial Recruiter, in part because I can't afford it, and because I think it adds more death cards to the deck. I will try it in a couple of weeks since my LGS lets us use 12 proxies once a month to test things out.

Here is my list:

Land (20)
1x Bayou
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Forest
3x Havenwood Battleground
1x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Swamp
2x Tropical Island
1x Underground Sea
4x Verdant Catacombs

Enchantment (4)
4x Aluren

Creature (14)
2x Cavern Harpy
1x Cloud of Faeries
4x Coiling Oracle
4x Deathrite Shaman
1x Parasitic Strix
2x Raven Familiar

Sorcery (12)
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Green Sun's Zenith
3x Living Wish

Instant (10)
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Lim-Dul's Vault

Dryad Arbor : I wanted a way to accelerate in case of GSZ in hand first turn, didn't come up yet so can't really say how it has been.

Havenwood Battleground : Really not sure how I feel about this card. It has been great in some explosive draws, but it also under-preformed some times.

Raven Familiar : This card has been great for me. Since I don't run Imperial Recruiter I can go through my deck to find my combo much quicker with Aluren+Cavern Harpy out. Also great food for Cabal Therapy.

Green Sun's Zenith : Great for finding the lost pieces, acts like my 4th Living Wish.

Lim-Dul's Vault : I still can't quite make this card work, but I believe is for lack of practice with it.

Sideboard:

1x Cavern Harpy
1x Raven Familiar
1x Parasitic Strix
1x Eternal Witness
1x Bone Shredder
1x Sedraxis Alchemist
(Meta LGS Calls from here down)
1x Yixlid Jailer
1x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2x Go for the Throat
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Swan Song
2x Abrupt Decay

Really not sure about the Raven Familiar in the sideboard and not shure if I shoud be running the Eternal Witness in my main.

I still didn't test both Shardless Agent and Baleful Strix. Although Strix sounds marvelous I only imagine me taking the Oracles out. Shardless Agent doesn't sound that good to me but since so many people are using it I will also give it a try.

Feel free to comment away, Wednesday will be champion this sweetie to the win.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

First off, I'm not really seeing the point of Green Sun's Zenith, because I don't really see a source for 'missing green creature' in the combo? Am I missing something? Are you comboing out purely via Coiling Oracle? Since it's basically the only combo piece you can look for with it in your deck, since you don't run Shardless Agent. If you run Coiling Oracle only as the main combo piece with Harpy, do realize you're setting a pretty hefty clock on yourself, since you need to bounce it at least a few times to get 2 land drops after dropping Aluren in the same turn and then hope to run into a Wish or that 1 Strix you run main. The upside to Shardless Agent is that you can combo out with Harpy quite a bit more easily since cascading into a Wish or Lim Dul's Vault pretty much means 'win'.

If you run a Wish-build, I would just highly suggest running 1 Recruiter in the SB and running 1 Man-o'-War or Dream Stalker main. That just combo's you out, since you can then look for a Harpy and then bounce the Man-o'-War / Dream Stalker with the Harpy to bounce the Recruiter with them and then look for the Strix, which is GG.

I also don't think that 1 Cloud of Faeries really warants a spot on the list. It's just too random in my opinion. I would perhaps just drop the GSZ and if you want to play with Probe, drop 1 Probe for 1 more Living Wish. I used to run Probe as well, but I felt this deck needed other cards. I love Probe in other decks, but was never really super happy to draw it in Aluren.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday I attended the Legacy Grand Prix Side Event in Antwerp, Belgium and played this:

[20] Lands:
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
1 Savannah
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Polluted Delta
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp

[16] Creatures:
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Coiling Oracle
3 Shardless Agent
3 Baleful Strix
2 Cavern Harpy
1 Man-o'-War
1 Parasitic Strix

[20] Instants / Sorceries:
4 Living Wish
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Diabolic Intent

[4] Enchantments:
4 Aluren

[15] Sideboard:
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Meddling Mage
1 Sedraxis Alchemist
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Thoughtseize
3 Surgical Extraction

I went 3-3 after a while. We were with 5 guys and me and a friend of mine were the only ones left after the third round, so he and I decided to keep on going. We both went 3-3 (he played RUG Delver) and while we technically didn't need to drop, we decided to not keep the other guys waiting and just dropped after we both went 3-3 (ironically sitting right next to eachother when that happened, haha).

Aluren performed well in the current meta due to the surprise factor and a lot of player-mistakes my opponents made, like trying to bolt a Harpy or bolt something else on the field with them knowing I just returned a Harpy to my hand at the end of my turn. Bolt Deathrite Shaman. Okay, in response play Harpy, return DS, Bolt fizzles and at the end of his turn, both of them get dropped again. Or them outright trying to Swords or Bolt a Harpy, with me in response paying 1 life to just return it to my hand.

I had some fun match-ups, like the first match vs. Miracle Control where a Blood Moon dropped when Aluren was out and me just drawing basic lands with a Harpy and Deathrite Shaman out and him just having a Clique out. Chump blocking Clique with Harpy, returning it and bashing the next turn with the Harpy and DS with a basic Swamp, haha. Kept a Forest in hand and eventually drew Living Wish. Dropped the forest, LW, Recruiter and that was the end of that. He was just flabbergasted, since he didn't really knew what to do after I killed his Jace, played Oracles + Cabal Therapy and me just FoWing his first-turn Top. He didn't draw any solutions to Aluren and was just taking his time thinking what he should do. Probably one of the longest matches I've ever played and during the last match, we were one of the few that we're still at it with loads of people surrounding us, checking out what I was doing, explaining it to their friends. After the 2-0 win some guy walked up to me and congratulated me on the interesting game and commended me on playing Aluren and playing it quite well. So, that was fun!

The one thing I noticed was that I didn't use Diabolic Intent ONCE. I never was super happy drawing it, since the meta is filled with removal, so each creature counts. Having to sac some to Cabal is enough and I can't use any more saccing. So, those are gonna go out of the deck right away. The current meta is also filled with Wasteland, even more than I feared. So, what I might swap the two Diabolic Intent for are;
2 Sylvan Library
or
2 Life from the Loam

Both are Cascade targets, both are early drops and both are Green, which is definitely our base color. Sylvan Library can give card filtering with Fetches or just card advantage when we really see the opening for it. LftL can play around Wastelands and can recycle lands when we really need that last land or two. I think both can fit quite well.

[Pilhas]

Dunno why, was playing with GSZ tutoring for any creature. Dumb me is dumb. Thanks for the tips. How is shardless agent being for you?

[GoblinSettler]

Game 2: I return the favor and kill him on my turn 4. He attempts to use Scrapper to kill Strix, but I have Cavern Harpy to save it. He used Stingscourger on Harpy as well, maybe to just get it in play.


Hi there, first off, nice to meet you!

Second, about my play here. I have only a vague picture of how the Aluren combo plays out. I was fumbling around just to see if I had a way to interact at the moment. Also to try and get a better understanding if I could be better prepared to interact game three. My verdict was, nope. So I just had to race.

[DemolitionColorScheme]

Dunno why, was playing with GSZ tutoring for any creature. Dumb me is dumb. Thanks for the tips. How is shardless agent being for you?
Shardless is one of the core pieces of the deck and synergises well with the Cascade targets, like Living Wish and Lim-Dul's Vault. It's basically always a 2-for-one. Even if they counter the Shardless, you still get to Cascade, making it virtually always hit the board, since no one counters the Shardless, instead just opts to wait for the actual Cascaded spell. After that it isn't much of a threat to anyone, but it is however one of our combo pieces, a decent beater and gives some board presence. You can't hit Aluren while Cascading, of course, but basically anything else is a great Cascade target, besides Brainstorm, since you'd rather just opt to play it from your hand whenever you need to (like with in reponse to discard and Fetches). I don't think the deck would work that well without Shardless, really, especially if you don't run a Recruiter or multiple ones.

Raven Familiar is just worse, really.
You cast Aluren, you're tapped out ... Shardless and Harpy can continue to give you casted cards, for 1 life. With Coiling Oracle you need to get 2 landdrops to play Living Wish and you probably hit cards you don't want to draw, like a FoW, another Aluren, anything that's above CMC2 basically and doesn't net you any advantage to your comboing out. Coiling Oracle is a great ramper, a sacrifice for Cabal Therapy, a chump blocker and a last-resort combo-piece (like Baleful Strix). Raven Familiar basically gives you the exact same problem as the one Oracle; you're tapped out and get to look at extra cards, draw one, drop the rest. You then STILL need a Coiling Oracle for extra land drops, since drawing that one Parasitic Strix in your deck is a pretty long shot with just a Raven and a Harpy, and then look for a Living Wish or Lim-Dul's Vault to actually get the Strix. So, basically a bunch of extra hassle.

Shardless skips a bunch of stuff that doesn't really matter when comboing out (though it is always a matter of luck!) and makes sure you get to cast them right away. Most of the time you hit Baleful Strixes, Oracles, etc, which then allow you to hit more additional draws. It's the reason why I now play Man-o'-War instead of Dream Stalker since pre-Aluren, getting a Dream Stalker on the field is pretty shitty since if it gets shot off, your Recruiter basically becomes quite useless if he's the starter of the chain. Besides, Man-o'-War let's you bounce your opponents' creatures as well.

[Hexar]

Hey guys, I'm just getting into legacy and my friend told me I should go here to get help! I'll post my list and thoughts and maybe you guys could help with getting started?

4 Aluren
(4 Enchantment)

4 Cabal Therapy
3 Gitaxian Probe
2 Thoughtseize
(9 Sorcery)

4 Brainstorm
3 Force of Will
3 Intuition
(10 Instant)

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Coiling Oracle
2 Dream Stalker
1 Eternal Witness
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Cavern Harpy

(17 Creature)

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath's Stronghold
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Wooded Foothills
(20 Land)

Life from the Loam
Force of Will
Scavenging Ooze
Bone Shredder
Phantasmal Image
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Abrupt Decay
Phyrexian Revoker
Krosan Grip
Eternal Witness
2 Thoughtseize
Sedraxis Alchemist
(15 Sideboard)


I'm looking for advice

After testing, I realize the Coiling Oracle's should probably be Baleful Strix's.
I just changed birds of paradise to deathrite shaman and it's been amazing. You can just win the game without comboing sometimes, especially if your opponent turn 1 deathrites, t2 thoughtseize exile cavern harpy with the deathrite shaman. You are still in the game

I believe I should swap Volcanic Island for Tropical Island as I should only need 1 red land (9 fetches to get it) and 4 Deathrites seems good for colour-fixing.

I'm playing 3 Force of Wills main instead of 4 because I believe the split of Force of Wills and Thoughtseize to be slightly better and cover more bases. You can always side out one or the other for it's counterpart. Thoughtseizes main also lets you cut a probe and hit more often on Cabal Therapy.

For my sideboard, having lots of tutorable answers along with bringing in the second witness means I can intuition for witness/witness/card I want, and ensure that I hit something.

Lemme know what you guys think I should do!

[swoop]

I'd take out thoughtseizes and put in one more harpy and one more FOW.
Out with 3 probes 1 intuition in with 4 Shardless Agents.

Or instead Thoughtseizes put 2 lands.. are 20 enough for you with deathrite shamans? haven't tested em

[gato con botas]

Hello boys that version to play now for that I me her am considering to mount and not that configuration is the ideal

[swoop]

I'm probably playing alluren in next week's LGS tourney. I expect five rounds to go, no top 8.

I'll probably go with DRM version, also just for the lulz been thinking a version with magus of the vineyard and t2 kill :D That would be sweet

[nedleeds]

Running 2 Dream Stalker over Stalker / Man o' War seems bad ... you have no outs to Revoker on Harpy in that list and MoW is obviously decent vs, Show. Mow, DS, Image is actually what you want access to.

[mulder]

How good is Weird Harvest? When I used to play Aluren, a long time ago, I thought it was pretty nice, since it gets you all your combo pieces at once.
And Eladamri's Vineyard to speed into a turn two Aluren?

[sippingcider]

How good is Weird Harvest? When I used to play Aluren, a long time ago, I thought it was pretty nice, since it gets you all your combo pieces at once.
And Eladamri's Vineyard to speed into a turn two Aluren?

Both seem kind of ehh since they help your apponent as well, especially wierd harvest.

[mulder]

I'm in the process of gathering the cards to build Aluren. I'm gonna test both Weird Harvest and Eladamri's Vineyard and post my findings here. The Vineyard may not be that good since you have to pass the turn, and your opponent can take advantage of it first, but Weird Harvest wins the game when you play is under an ALuren.
I'll report back later with my findings ;-).

[swoop]

So does Imperial Rercruiter...

Also, I played in 16m tourney yesterday and I will never talk about that experience EVER again. 1-3 (were only 4 rounds).

R1 against dredge.

He fails to dredge both games, 2:0

R2 against budget burn

Two games I fail to make a run for it. 1:2

R3 against Team america

0:2

R4 against counterbalance

0:2

Rounds 2 and 3 I won "casual" third games easily. Couldn't draw a good hand if my match depended upon it

Played with 4 DRM. I might be taking Therapies out, kinda hate them. Was fun

[Whippoorwill]

Aluren got a Deck Tech at SCG Seattle:

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_aluren_with_alex_led.html

[mulder]

Aluren got a Deck Tech at SCG Seattle:

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_aluren_with_alex_led.html

I'm not convinced about the Shardless Agents. They don't cascade into Recruiter, Aluren or Intuition. Most cases they'll give you a Baleful Strix, a bounce creature or a discard spell, which isn't bad at all but I don't really think that they help in your primal game plan, which is finding and resolving an Aluren.

[Razorwynd]

I'm not convinced about the Shardless Agents. They don't cascade into Recruiter, Aluren or Intuition. Most cases they'll give you a Baleful Strix, a bounce creature or a discard spell, which isn't bad at all but I don't really think that they help in your primal game plan, which is finding and resolving an Aluren.

Shardless Agent + Harpy enables your combo when Aluren is on the board. One life to cast a 2cc card until you get a strix or at which points one life to draw a card until you actually find the combo. To me it seems absolutely worth it.

[mulder]

Shardless Agent + Harpy enables your combo when Aluren is on the board. One life to cast a 2cc card until you get a strix or at which points one life to draw a card until you actually find the combo. To me it seems absolutely worth it.

So why is it better than Raven Familiar? The Familiar also helps you to find an Aluren when you don't have one... .

[CaptainTwiddle]

So why is [Shardless Agent] better than Raven Familiar? The Familiar also helps you to find an Aluren when you don't have one... .

Shardless Agent is better in games when your Aluren is shutdown (via Surgical Extraction, multiple counters, etc.). While it's certainly not the ideal angle the deck wants to take, Agent enables enough advantage when hardcast/bounced repeatedly to win attrition wars.