[Deck] Aluren

Hi All,

I've not picked up the cards for this deck in like years (nor even any other cards!) but used to play the extended then legacy recruiter version regularly. I am looking to get back into legacy, and like the look of the BUG cascade version. But can someone answer me this - why is parasitic strix favoured over kalastria healer? Is not the ability to cascade into the kill a massive benefit, in particular if one's life total is under pressure? I appreciate that the body is otherwise anaemic (but the strix is hardly a one bird fighting machine) and that it is not blue, but is that it?

I saw that there was a brief discussion of this back on p.82, but it seemed rather inconclusive.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by Cacks

Hi All,

I've not picked up the cards for this deck in like years (nor even any other cards!) but used to play the extended then legacy recruiter version regularly. I am looking to get back into legacy, and like the look of the BUG cascade version. But can someone answer me this - why is parasitic strix favoured over kalastria healer? Is not the ability to cascade into the kill a massive benefit, in particular if one's life total is under pressure? I appreciate that the body is otherwise anaemic (but the strix is hardly a one bird fighting machine) and that it is not blue, but is that it?

I saw that there was a brief discussion of this back on p.82, but it seemed rather inconclusive.

Thanks

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kalastria healer is not only non-blue, but it is also non-artifact. I know personally I still run Glint-Nest Crane because she grabs everything I could want. Not being able to use Shardless Agent to slam the win con sucks sometimes if you're doing it totally blind and have no choice, but I typically want to be comboing with Baleful Strix or Crane. Shardless just gets those 2 or Ponders for them.

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Originally Posted by ashent

kalastria healer is not only non-blue, but it is also non-artifact. I know personally I still run Glint-Nest Crane because she grabs everything I could want. Not being able to use Shardless Agent to slam the win con sucks sometimes if you're doing it totally blind and have no choice, but I typically want to be comboing with Baleful Strix or Crane. Shardless just gets those 2 or Ponders for them.

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Thanks Ashent, although I do note that many lists (Cartesian for example) seem to have dropped the crane too... ;-)

May as well put my two cents in from last weeks Legacy night.
Sadly I do not have my decklist but I'm running the white recruiter package with Liliana, the last hope.

Ended up in 1st place out of 4 rounds.
Matches consisted of
UR delver
Pox
Omni Show and Tell
Manaless Dredge

UR delver.
2-1. Used decays and strix to provide blockers as well as time that I needed to safely combo off both times.

Pox.
0-2 Nothing I could have done here. Hymn and land destruction hurt a lot

Omni Show and Tell.
2-1 Waited for show and tell to be cast, in both games I won I had the combo in hand so I waited to see if he had a creature or a omniscience.
Game 1
Had the combo in hand. My opponent cast show and tell on his turn 3. I proceeded to combo off then in response to him casting a creature through omniscience.

Game 2
My opponent had a faster hand. Couldn't do much.

Game 3
Had the combo in hand but was set back by pyroclasm for a turn. I had two Force of Will in hand but decided not to cast it. When I finally reached my fourth land. instead of going for Aluren I decided to cast Cabal Therapy instead and name Force of Will. Figured that a counter war would be unfavorable for me. I would have named omniscience or show and tell but it wasn't a big deal since I had the combo.
Seeing my opponent's hand I saw omniscience, blood moon, 2 Force of Will and an Emakrul.
I proceed to past the turn, my opponent goes for blood moon which gets countered and during my turn I just draw, play my land, and pass.
Final turn my opponent finds a Show and Tell gets Omniscience out. Casts Emakrul and with Emakrul on the stack I played my Recruiter of the Guard.


Manaless Dredge
2-1. This was actually my deck so it was kinda unfair in my part since I knew the deck inside out. Let someone borrow it for the night. (Both games won without the combo)

Game 1.
Dredge did what Dredge does. I put up a good fights but couldn't deal with the swarm of zombies fast enough.

Game 2.
Got Deathrite out and had Surigical Extraction in hand. By the time Game was sealed when I played a recruiter for Containment Priest with Force of Will back up.

Game 3
Was able to get a Deathrite out on my turn 1 and with it I only targeted the recursion creatures. Surgicial extracted the Ichorids and just slowly began to work on the graveyard all the while trying to find my combo. The entire game I couldn't find an Aluren but kept on drawing cards I needed. I will admit I did make the mistake of casting a Recruiter for Containment Priest and passing the turn since he used Cabal Therapy it away. Even lost my Eternal witness in hand because of it, but the trade off was worth it due to my opponent sacking creatures and losing board presence over it. Eventually I gained enough life to stabilized from being attacked by creatures and was going to start dealing damage with Deathrite but my opponent conceded due to not having anymore creatures to bring out.
At the end I was able to exile all 4 Narcomoeba, 4 Ichorids, 1 Flayer of Hatebound, 1 Iona and 2 Prized Amalgam.

A follow up question though.
The zombie tokens that are created by Bridge from Below should trigger Prize Amalgam correct? I thought it does but would like to double check.

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Originally Posted by PuppyWuppy

A follow up question though.
The zombie tokens that are created by Bridge from Below should trigger Prize Amalgam correct? I thought it does but would like to double check.

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Nope. The token is not a card in the graveyard and therefore not going from graveyard to the battlefield.

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Originally Posted by Draggo

Nope. The token is not a card in the graveyard and therefore not going from graveyard to the battlefield.

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Much thanks

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Originally Posted by Cacks

Thanks Ashent, although I do note that many lists (Cartesian for example) seem to have dropped the crane too... ;-)

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Yeah totally. Cartesian seems to win with anything that's just 3x Aluren, 3x Harpy, some Brainstorms and anything else he wants to throw in there.

I still really like Crane.

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Originally Posted by ashent

Yeah totally. Cartesian seems to win with anything that's just 3x Aluren, 3x Harpy, some Brainstorms and anything else he wants to throw in there.

I still really like Crane.

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Maybe I'll just register a list with a couple of Cartesians in it.... ;-)

Hey there,

I'm about to participate in a larger tournament with a pretty straight forward Sultai Aluren deck.
Since I've just played the deck in smaller local events, I'm confused about the sideboard.

I expect the Meta to be quite diverse, with decks like 4c Leovold, Miracles, Delver and Elves to make the bulk. According to a friend of mine there will be also a relevant number of Storm Players. Beyond that I reckon players to bring TurboDepths, Big Eldrazi.

While I'm used to play against Delver, Czech Pile and Miracles and played Storm for some years myself I'm lacking experience in playing against Elves, Eldrazi.

My first attempt on the sideboard looked:

1 Abrupt Decay (3 in the MD) serving as "anti-hate" but also nice against any random decks and to bring in more control vs Delver
2 Carpet of Flowers (Delver, SneaknShow) however I dislike it against Leovold and would like to have something more impactful when boarding against Miracles and Czech Pile
2 Flusterstorm (vs Storm) Spell Pierce or Thoughtseize would provide more value when facing decks like Reanimator
1 Vendilion Clique (vs Storm, Miracles and basicly whenever I want to play a more controlish game)
1-2 Umezawa's Jitte (Elves, DnT)
1-2 Marsh Caualties/Toxic Deluge (also Elves, DnT and to some extend Grixis Delver)
1 Liliana, the last Hope (great on paper, while playing I found her to be rather lackluster)
2 Diabolic Edict/Gilded Drake (TurboDepths, Reanimator, SneaknShow) Diabolic Edict would be quite okay vs 4c Leovold and probably Eldrazi, I suppose (?)
1 Karakas (see above)
2 Tormod's Crypt (Reanimator, Dredge if it's still a thing^^)

Well. As stated above I'm confused if I still want to play graveyard hate and if the carpet of flowers are still needed. I'd probably feel more comfortable with

-2 Tormod's Crypt
-2 Carpet of Flowers

+1 Meekstone (Eldrazi, also useful against Reanimator, TurboDepths and to some extend SneaknShow)
+2 Spell Pierce (addition vs Storm)
+1 xy

You may laugh at me, but I also thought about playing two or three copies of Tarmogoyf in the sideboard, I could bring those against Delver over the Carpet of Flowers and they might shine vs Eldrazi and some random deck I might face.

Any opionons or advices are welcome. And I'd like to apologize for any mistakes or inaccuracies since I'm not used to the language.

Why are you not playing any surgical extraction? If you combine it with discard you have great combo hate.
Besides that storm can't play past in Flames and reanimator have to play around somehow.
Against miracles you can exile important cards like removal or win conditions. If you face decks with punishing fire youbwant it too since every creature dies to fire.

Long story short: I don't have any S. Extractions :)

I attended to said tournament (69 players I guess) today.

My list was pretty straight forward:

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

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
3 Cavern Harpy
4 Shardless Agent
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
2 Parasitic Strix

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Force of Will

1 Sylvan Library
3 Aluren

With the addition of Hymn the manabase became a little more centred on having acess to B/BB in the first Turns. I tried the Sylvan Library in the Slot of a third Ponder and it did well for me.

SB:
2 Flusterstorm
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 karakas
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Liliana, the last Hope
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Tarmogoyf (these were a last minute addition since I didn't want to think about my sideboard anymore^^)

A short summary of the games:

Round 1 vs Aluren (1-2)
Game 1: Hymn is quite good :) He discarded a Cadaver Imp and from there on I knew what I was up against. He played an Aluren but just had a Shardless Agent to follow when I had Cavern Harpy and Brainstorm showed me my Parasitic Strix
Game 2: Both of us are trading card for card. In the midgame he managed to stick Cadaver Imp-> return Baleful Strix from the graveyard and has a Cavern Harpy to follow up. I guess that was the moment I struggled to keep up with the card advantage anymore and lost a few turns later.
Game 3: I saw an opener with Dual, Deathrite, Ponder, Brainstorm, 2 B. Strix and somethign else. I was greedy enough to keep it, didn't find a second land in the next *3-4 draws and my opponent is able to make use of the timewalks I granted him.

Round 2 vs Death and Taxes (0-1-1)
Game 1 is over when he chained Thalia into Magus of the Moon leaving me with a Forest and three Mountains^^
Game 2 was probably the longest game I've played on the tournament. I play around Moon by fetching Basics, but he has Rest in Peace+Revoker ruining my day. Leovold and Strix slowly help my to stabilize but he was meanwhile at ~40+ life thanks to a troublesome Batterskull. I'm able to use the ultimate ability of Liliana, the last Hope... unfortunately only after the timeout was called^^. probably I could've won this Game if I scoop Game 1 up a little faster.

Round 3 vs. Redanimator (2-1)
He just stomps me with a typical Redanimator strt involvin Unmask, Chancelor Reveal and an nimated Griselbrand before I even played my first land.
Game 2&3 were solely won by Baleful Strixes who prevented him from attacking and carried me to victory.

Round 4 vs. Food Chain (2-1)
I force his first Manipulate Fate, unfortunately he has a second one and I die to Griffin beats.
In the second game I just had one of those starts involving a Sharless Agent cascading into Hymn to Tourach, resolving an Aluren afterwards and Harpy bring it home.
Game 3 is trading Decays for Deathrites and so on. Another Aluren gets me there.

Round 5 vs. Redanimator (2-0)
I knew what I was up against (again -.-) and just kept a hand with 2 Force of Will+2 blue cards+3 lands. I prevented him from digging anything out for the first two attempts and he dies to a very slow but steady beatdown.
In game 2 he decided to Exhume an Elesh Norn, while my Brainstorm shows me Karakas. Since I've had no clock he was able to recur a Sire of Insanity, but after I took care of the Elesh Norn the Baleful Strixes turned out to be are very hard to beat for him.

Round 6 vs. Grixis Delver/Pyromancer (0-2)
Game 1 is a very short one since he has two lands, two delver (that both flip on turn three), double lightning Bolt, a Daze and a Wasteland between his first ten cards. Couldn't win this game anyway I suppose.
I kept a two lander+Ponder in Game 2 after a Mulligan to 6. He has a Daze (?) for my first play what I didn't expect. When a Ponder of mine reveals Toxic Deluge, Shardless Agent and a cc2 card, I leave those card on top.
He then proceeds to waste me, bolt my Deathrite and I've been sitting there with two dead draws over the next turns while a timely Gurmag Angler is applying pressure. Should have played this Ponder different.

Round 7 vs. White Stompy (2-1)
I win Game 1&3 on the backs of Hymn and Shardless Agent. He wins Game 2 by Chalice followed by Thalia followed by the three Mana Thalia.

All in all I end up 4-3. Nevertheless the deck was pretty solid and I would have finished better if I'd avoided some mistakes as stated above.


My opponent from the first Round turned out to be Cartesian and managed to finish the Event in the Top8. Congratz again ;)

Deathrite got the hammer lol

Ideas on where we go from here. I’m thinking about replacing DRS with Hierach and a sea with a bayou. Also given thought to birds. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by MongrelChild103

Ideas on where we go from here. I’m thinking about replacing DRS with Hierach and a sea with a bayou. Also given thought to birds. Thoughts?

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Birds is probably better than Hierarch since it can make black mana, and I think that's worth the trade-off with Exalted.

I've been having lots of fun and a decent amount of success at my LGS's weekly legacy tournaments with BUG Aluren. Moving forward, maybe I
ll try replacing DRS with 2 Veteran Explorers and 2 MB Cabal therapy. Though cascading into veteran explorer doesn't seem great. A late game cascade into DRS wasn't fantastic either, to be fair.

From a mana ramp standpoint birds are just as good and potentially better than DRS as its reliable and can't be shut off by a mirror bird in same way. Veteran explorer long term may get worse as the mix of DRS banning and greedy manabases getting worse (+ more wasteland initially) could force more decks to use more basics. Part of the allure of VE was that half the decks have 0 basics currently as I saw it. I think for the more combo focused (4c build) birds are clearly better choice, possibly a more midrange shardless BUG can make hierarch work. Of worth noting no probe means less likely to be hurt by Cabal Therapy and more able to bluff aluren in hand or not.

I think interesting question is does the ban make the 4c combo version better if grinding out long games is less of a good meta call as the mana base technically stays same is switched to birds. If anything I suppose if playing forces in side you're weaker to reanimator is the drawback.

This banning was really tough on us. Heirarch and BOP come to mind but both seem bad.

It actually might have made Aluren decks unplayable as we're about to see a resurgence of decks like Reanimator, Storm, and RUG. Shaman was even good against Sneak n Show, giving us early Leovolds and paying for permission spells.

I messaged Cartesian directly and am hoping for his/her feedback soon.


I was previously doing well with the BUG version because it didn't HAVE to use Aluren to win.

Maybe Recruiter builds with a different mana dork are a better choice now, but I'm not wild about Recruiters.

I never liked those builds because you must see - and resolve - both Aluren and Recruiter to win. Relying on just cantrips or Intuition to set that up is tough. Those builds also seem really easy to disrupt and be prone to awkward hands filled with your random one-ofs/multiple Recruiters. The BUG creatures are all good by themselves, whereas the Recruiters and other combo pieces are basically junk without Aluren.


Maybe there's hope for a build that runs Noble Heirarch, Recruiter of the Guard and True Name? ROG could get a TNN and the deck could go aggro if it can't assemble the combo. Kind of like how BUG fell back on the Shardless cards when you didn't draw Aluren.

But I hate to need 4 colors - especially black - without Deathrite. And this deck NEEDS black!

The fact that Noble can't make black is just bad. And the fact that you can't turn 1 fetch to basic swamp and cast him is awkward. I usually don't want a basic forest until later in the game if at all. It's also bad that Noble and BOP are 0/1s. Can't deal with Glistner Elf as easily now.


But while Noble or BOP aren't ideal, we must have at least 4 mana producers and splash black in this deck no matter what

I could be totally wrong and I haven't done my testing yet (I'm focused primarily on ANT and UW Standstill at the moment, the latter of which I feel improved considerably as of this ban announcement) but my initial feeling is that losing DRS hurts a lot but looking for another mana accelerator isn't necessarily correct.

I would prefer to keep the BUG gameplan intact and just out value and grind and replace the DRS slots with more interaction. Obviously Shardless limits our ability to just throw countermagic in the deck, but people have often done fine with the flex spots being Hymns, Ancestrals, Thoughtseizes, Coiling Oracle, Glint-Nest Crane, Liliana the Last Hopes, etc. I'd probably just leave my normal BUG list alone but add another Basic, up the number of Ponders I was playing, and keep on with 3 Abrupt Decay main.

Losing DRS hurts every midrange BUG deck but I don't think it killed Aluren.

Deathrite did so much for this deck, and can't be replaced by simply throwing in 4 Birds of Paradise or whatever - the deck will have to be rethinked in a new way, like Miracles had to rethink itself when Top was banned. The metagame is going to shift now in a big way, and no one knows how exactly - the effects of a ban like this are too complex to predict, and it will take some time for the new meta to figure itself out - possibly years. In the meantime I am certainly not giving up on the deck right away, I am going to try new things with BUG, but whether it is possible for a new BUG version to remain competitive, I cannot say at this time.

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Originally Posted by ashent

I could be totally wrong and I haven't done my testing yet (I'm focused primarily on ANT and UW Standstill at the moment, the latter of which I feel improved considerably as of this ban announcement) but my initial feeling is that losing DRS hurts a lot but looking for another mana accelerator isn't necessarily correct.

I would prefer to keep the BUG gameplan intact and just out value and grind and replace the DRS slots with more interaction. Obviously Shardless limits our ability to just throw countermagic in the deck, but people have often done fine with the flex spots being Hymns, Ancestrals, Thoughtseizes, Coiling Oracle, Glint-Nest Crane, Liliana the Last Hopes, etc. I'd probably just leave my normal BUG list alone but add another Basic, up the number of Ponders I was playing, and keep on with 3 Abrupt Decay main.

Losing DRS hurts every midrange BUG deck but I don't think it killed Aluren.

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Interesting take. The only issue I see there is the mana acceleration DRS gave us allowed us to be fast enough to play early Aluren's, Leovolds, Agents, pay for Dazes etc...without 4 mana dorks I've always struggled due to the higher casting costs in the deck, and noticed that running more than 20 land flooded me too often. Also...there's still the problem that we no longer have a good G1 plan against graveyard decks. DRS was the only reason I had any game at all v reanimator.