[Deck] Aluren

I tested the idea of removing FoW and replacing them with Deed... however, that made me feel almost naked *grin* and I rarely, if ever, felt that deed was better served.

@ roopa & @ nonex
Thanks for the comments, I can agree with pretty much all of your changes, and actually have seen an increase in consistency as a result

New Mana Base:
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Volcanic Island
3 Tropical Island
1 Taiga (I left this in, but more testing may result in it being taken out)
2 Bayou
3 Forest
2 Island
1 swamp

New Side Board:
SB: 3 Krosan Grip
SB: 4 Extirpate (could be changed to relic of progenitus?)
SB: 2 Pernicious Deed
SB: 3 Red Elemental Blast (could be BEB vs. Goblins?)
SB: 3 Thoughtseize (against combo)

Other changes:
- changed 1 dream stalker for 1 FoW
- changed 1 echoing truth for chain of vapor
- changed 1 ghitu slinger for 1 Intuition (will just use bounce w. man-o-war and complicated stack response tricks to get around mage and canonist)

I find the intuitions + brainstorms + fetches are generally good enough to assemble to combo as I am often focused on control and only need the combo when I want to win... what I miss most is the dig from raven familiar.

@ hungryLIKEALION
If I was playing a non-recruiter version, I would probably run this modified version of your list:

// Lands
2 Underground Sea
3 Flooded Strand
1 Windswept Heath
2 Island
1 forest
1 swamp
2 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tropical Island

// Creatures
2 Parasitic Strix
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Cavern Harpy
4 Wall of Roots
4 Raven Familiar
1 Eternal Witness

// Spells
4 Aluren
4 Intuition
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Chain of Vapor

//Sideboard
3 Counterbalance
3 Krosan Grip
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Thoughtseize
3 Extirpate/Relic of Progenitus

Quote:

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Originally Posted by roopa

Care to elaborate and give a list? I tried switching deeds to the main and force to the board before, and was never happy with it. Deed can flatout win against certain decks, but is dead against others. Force can let you squeek by those same decks that deed wins against, and is far from dead against everything else.

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I see some problems about Force of Will, it doesn't look that far from dead to me:

- It's card disadvantage we can't recover from (our card advantage is virtual)

- Storm-combo decks run Duress, Orim's Chant or Pact of Negation, which negate it easily

- Against aggro and aggro-control Pernicious Deed does the same and better

- It's nearly useless against discard decks

So 3 Force of Will MD and 3 Pernicious Deed SB ended up switching places. Force of Will remained there mainly against storm combo decks, until I saw they could almost ignore it (see above). I was also suggested to try Sensei's Divining Top instead of Brainstorm, with great results. In the end I replaced 4 Brainstorm with 3 Sensei's Divining Top and 1 Wall of Roots, and without Brainstorm there were so few blue cards that Force of Will had to go as well.

Now I focus the deck towards discard and board control, like The Rock:

4 Polluted Delta
3 Windswept Heath
3 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Forest
2 Island
1 Swamp

1 Cavern Harpy
4 Raven Familiar
3 Man-o'-War
1 Spike Feeder
2 Eternal Witness
4 Wall of Roots
4 Wall of Blossoms

4 Aluren
3 Pernicious Deed
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Life from the Loam
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Intuition
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Chord of Calling

SB:
4 Duress
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Counterbalance
3 Krosan Grip
3 Relic of Progenitus


The strategy here is to survive early and mid game, so I guess Pernicious Deed fits the control role better than Force of Will. Besides we gain a 3cc answer in addition to Chain of Vapor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nonex

I see some problems about Force of Will, it doesn't look that far from dead to me:

- It's card disadvantage we can't recover from (our card advantage is virtual)

- Storm-combo decks run Duress, Orim's Chant or Pact of Negation, which negate it easily

- Against aggro and aggro-control Pernicious Deed does the same and better

- It's nearly useless against discard decks

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Although I would have thought this to be heresy, I too have come to a similar conclusion. In a sea of counterbalance / aggro-control decks, I do not think that playing a blue based combo-control really cuts it. In short - they are better at the control element than aluren is, and still have a fairly quick clock. For this reason I have cut my beloved FoW for thoughtsieze and therapy, and play EE as a sweeper which is particularly good in CB matchups, to give a more rock-like feel. This seems to somewhat shore up CB matchups, but I am still concerned that the deck can't quite cut it at the top of such a field. I am also trying out dark confident in this build, as (1) it helps 'dig' for my combo, now that I have lost most of my blue search; and (2) it helps you stay ahead after the initial hand disruption against control or other combo. This is my present version:

4 Polluted Delta
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Tropical Island
3 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Taiga
1 Volrath's Stronghold
2 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Chrome Mox

1 Cavern Harpy
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Parasitic Strix
2 Dream Stalker
2 Eternal Witness
4 Tarmagoyf
4 Dark Confidant

4 Aluren
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtsieze
4 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Intuition

SB (very rough):
2 Duress
2 Pyroclasm
1 Fairy Macabre
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
1 Mogg Fantastic
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Essence Sliver
1 Ghitu Slinger
1 Academy Ruins
1 EE (possibly deed)

I should also mention that recruiters are better than many people give them credit for. There is the obvious 2 card combo element with aluren, but also in so many situations the possibility of recruiting up a witness or confidant can be very strong, as can getting into a loop (over a few turns) against an aggro deck of recruiter (fetch witness), chump with recruiter, witness back recruiter, chump with witness, recruit a new witness. Thereafter you can have a witness in play and one in hand indefinitely. Thus you gain 'infinite' chump blockers and still have a witness in hand to return the original recruiter and go off once aluren turns up. Against decks where a 2/1 witness will trade with something (I'm looking at you, goblin pile driver and warchief), this can be surprisingly strong (much stronger than it looks on the page, as writing it out makes it look rather clunky!).

Sorry but I disagree that Imperial Recruiters make the deck better.

Against decks like goblins, your recruiters will rarely stay in play for long (too easy to kill). Also having to play a non-basic mountain opens you up to a lot of mana-hate. The significant problems with the recruiter ver. is the mana-base is bad. There is no good mana-base w/ the recruiter ver. Also, hard-casting recruiter pre-aluren is usually a bad situation and a sign that you do not have aluren in hand.

In addition they do not speed up the combo. The slowest part of the combo is getting the 4 mana needed to play Aluren. Having a recruiter streamlines the combo, yes, making it easier to assemble your win-conditions. But it isn't faster or slower.

After extensive testing w/ and w/out recruiter in aluren, I discovered that my winning percentage really didn't increase. However I found I was frequently in situations where the recruiter was a dead card w/out aluren. Where as the raven familiar ver. of the deck, I could always hardcast a familiar to dig deeper to get aluren. Also I could always pitch a familiar to force of will to protect my spells or stop my opponent. I had more problems playing force of will w/ recruiters.

Also, the recruiter ver. is actually easier to hate. Specially when you are running only one copy of cavern harpy. You will find yourself in many situations where you have harpy on the stack, and your opponent destroys imperial recruiter. It's much harder to protect your combo pieces against instant hate w/ recruiter-stalker-harpy than w/ familiar-harpy. The fact that your combo hinges on your sequence always having to be recruiter -> dream stalker -> harpy is a weakness. Harpy-familiar can be played in either order and still dig for your win condition.

I noticed your list has only 3 basics. You ought to be running more than that. Being a slower combo than the other combo decks means our mana-base has to be a bit more reslient to hate.

In my opinion, if you own a set of Imperial Recruiters, you are better off playing Imperial Painter than using them in your aluren deck.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kkoie

In my opinion, if you own a set of Imperial Recruiters, you are better off playing Imperial Painter than using them in your aluren deck.

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You may well be right - the same thought has occurred to me...

With regard to recruiter vrs non-recruiter versions, you may well be right in the context of a goblins heavy meta, but that is not really what I see out there at the moment. I prefer recruiters in the current CB heavy fields. But I certainly don't think that anyone is mad for playing either version.

One point though, the recruiter version cannot be disrupted by only one peice of removal - so long as you play 2 dream stalker (as I do). The stalker does not target so you chain recruiter --> recruiter --> recruiter --> stalker (they have to remove all 3 recruiters to cause you to fizzle) --> replay recruiter --> 2nd dreamstalker --> replay recruiter --> harpy (again, doesn't target, so they have to remove both 1/5 stalkers to fizzle). So it is a fairly robust combo.

the non-recruiter cant be disrupted by only one piece of removal either. You play harpy, resp to its CIP ability (which doesn't target) by playing raven. If they try to remove the raven, pay the 1 life to return harpy and replay the harpy.

but like he said, i wouldn't play either with everyone playing counterbalance, grip, pridemage, and blood moon.

I've been thinking about Aluren since 2005 when this thread was only three pages long, but I'm a pretty casual player and don't go to many tournaments. As I've been playtesting, the deck has come far from the original version In the beginning of the thread. The following decklist has taken dozens of hours to produce:

22 Lands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty rainforest
4 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
4 Forests
1 Island
1 Yavimaya Coast

19 Creatures
1 Sage of Epityr
4 Wall of Roots
1 Wall of Blossoms
4 Coiling Oracle
3 Cavern Harpy
2 Raven Familiar
1 eternal Witness
2 Selkie Hedge Mage
1 Parasitic Strix

19 Spells
1 Brainstorm
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
3 Remand
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Intuition
4 Aluren

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Toad

3. HOW DO YOU PLAY THE DECK?

Aluren is probably one of the most difficult decks to play perfectly in Magic, and for sure the hardest deck to play in Legacy. It has dozens of tricks and non obvious card interactions that It gives you fast headaches if you don't have some automatisms with it, since there are plenty plays to do in response to each other and controlling the stack is sometimes tricky. As a reward, the good thing is that your opponent will hardly know when to play his hate cards properly, and that will win you many games. The main Combo is divided in 6 steps.

1. Use Raven Familiars and Cavern Harpies to dig into the deck to find a Man'O-War and the Spike Feeder.
2. Use a Cavern Harpy, Man'O-War and Spike Feeder loop to get a large amount of life.
3. Use a Cavern Harpy, Man'O-War and Wall of Roots loop to get a large amount of Green mana.
4. Use a Cavern Harpy, Man'O-War and Spike Feeder loop to turn your creatures into big monsters.
5. Recur all your Force of Wills and Cabal Therapies with an Eternal Witness loop and pass the turn.
6. Attack on the next turn for the win.

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That is the original deck in the beginning of the article.


It's still a very difficult and complicated deck, but this time the combo is much easier, more powerful and with less "steps".It's probably pretty obvious, but anyways here is the breakdown for this deck:

1. Thoughtseize/cabal therapy your opponents hand

2. Use cavern harpy and coiling oracle/raven familiar to dig through library

3. Play Parasitic Strix

4. Bounce it back into your hand and play it infinite times
and win



Something that I have noticed is Selkie Hedge Mage, which in addition to being a great control against aggro, adds an infinite life combo to the deck by itself. That combined with Coiling oracle or raven familiar is infinite draw without life loss.

Force of Will is probably acceptable with 21 blue cards but unnecessary due to the way remand and Chain of Vapor work with Cabal therapy, and the way Cabal therapy works with intuition. There are 3 chain of vapors because of the tremendous utility(like Saccing all your lands to coiling oracle, only to be replaced again when you start to go off tutoring).

Other things like dream stalker and sensei's divining top seem too slow or useless. And by now I think that we should agree that imperial recruiter isn't as good as it sounds in this deck.

I personally am a pretty casual player, and haven't been to a tournament in years or ever won one anyways. This deck hasn't been tested much in actual play, but I think that Aluren might deserve some more thought than some people have given it so if you're thinking about Aluren then let's get this thread started up again.:cool:

Imperial recruiter is basically the best engine for the deck. Only needing a recruiter in hand to go off makes the deck much better.

When you have Aluren in play:
Imperial Recruiter->(Fetch Man-O'War)->Man-O'War->(Bounce Recuiter)->Recruiter->(Fetch Cavern Harpy)->Cavern Harpy(bounce Man-O'War)->Man-O'War->(Bounce Recruiter)->Recruiter->(Fetch Parasitic Strix)->(Win via Strix/Harpy)
You win off of just recruiter in hand.

Edit:oh that's sad I typed this all up and flapjacker deleted his post...

So recruiter-manowar-recruiter-harpy-manowar-recruiter-strix?

That is 3 mana, red, and dead without aluren.

are you actually saying that

:g: :u: :b: :r: version with recruiters and less(tutoring?)

or

:g: :u: :r: with no discard is better?

?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by J.V.

Edit:oh that's sad I typed this all up and flapjacker deleted his post...

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I'm sorry this is much quicker than I thought

I'm pretty sure Dream Stalker is superior to manowar.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hungryLIKEALION

I'm pretty sure Dream Stalker is superior to manowar.

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well it's true that dream stalker can save an aluren from removal except krosan grip, it's 1/5, and 2 mana but if you dont have both Aluren and a tutor in hand then wouldn't you rather have your draw be a manowar?

- Man-o'-War bounces opposing creatures

- Dream Stalker doesn't target

Now which one is better depends on your approach to the deck.

I'm interested in playing Aluren. Just wondering what the Ideal build is for the deck? What Cards Defiantly Go into the build and what card are controversial?

I know a guy that played this deck. His win condition was running Cavern Harpy and Raven Familiar to draw out his deck then cast Essence Warden and Maggot Carrier, Then obviously reoccur the Carrier till you died.

From what I know, today Parasitic Strix is the wincondition of choice.

I played Imperial Aluren for more than a year and managed to play 3 consecutive finals in small trounaments.
I have not tested the deck since then, but looks like the Recruiter VS non-recruiter issue still goes on.

Recruiter is indeed almost a dead card w/o Aluren, but it saves slots. The main purpose of playing3/4 Recs is saving slots for versatilty and just going off with 2 cards. Think about Ichorid as a combo deck which is able to go off just with the simple "motion" of the cek. ANT for example needs to play its spells and does not require a concrete card (it usually needs one of 3 engines). The approach to this deck will define if you feel better with or without those (expensive) recruiters.

If anyone cares, my last decklist included Intuition and Brainstorm. Looks like ppl use only Raven Familiar. Never tried SDT, maybe those tops can add new fuel to the deck.

Because someone asked for it, here is my old-ish Imperial Recruiter list (I also have a non-recruiter version... but its not different really from the old one I posted here).

I updated this when Zendikar came out simply because the new fetches actually could increase the consistency of the manabase. With this many shuffle effects, running SDT might not be a bad idea; however, I would rather run intuition as they turn on FOW.

There are still issues when facing counterbalance decks, but as those are declining in popularity, it is increasingly less of an issue. Dark Depths combo is interesting in that its really a race to see who can "combo" out first. Of course, all you need is a cavern harpy out to basically force-field their 20/20 flier.

Last explanation of some seemingly sub-optimal choices:
2 x Cavern Harpy - still the weakest card in the deck, but you need it AND having extra FOW fodder + allowing for additional recursion makes me always love having 2

1 x man o' war / 1 x Dream Stalker split - I could only run 1, but that makes the combo susceptible to double swords. The man o' war is an answer to Dark depths (funny enough) and other problems such as mage. The stalker provides non-targeting redundancy and is actually relevant in thresh games.

The 4 x bounce means I have actually "gone off" over multiple turns without recruiter in hand or even without Aluren as I have enough options to bounce and replay different effects.

Again, you need 1 harpy and 1 bouncer at a minimum, plus they are all blue and pitch-able to FOW (which is important as you only have 16 non FOW blue cards).

// Lands
3 [ON] Polluted Delta
3 [ON] Wooded Foothills
1 [U] Volcanic Island
1 [A] Taiga
3 [A] Tropical Island
2 [IN] Forest (3)
2 [APL] Island (3)
1 [CST] Swamp (1)
1 [R] Underground Sea
1 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
2 [R] Bayou
2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest

// Creatures
4 [MI] Wall of Roots
1 [TSP] Dream Stalker
1 [VI] Man-o'-War
2 [PS] Cavern Harpy
4 [P3] Imperial Recruiter
2 [FD] Eternal Witness
1 [CFX] Parasitic Strix
1 [UL] Raven Familiar

// Spells
2 [ON] Chain of Vapor
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
4 [TE] Aluren
4 [5E] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [TE] Intuition

// Sideboard (outdated, may need updating)
SB: 4 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [AP] Pernicious Deed
SB: 3 [LRW] Thoughtseize
SB: 3 [4E] Red Elemental Blast

Is anyone still playing this deck?

I think that aluren can still be good in a metagame consisting of a lot of aggro and/or dedicated control decks. What you dont want to face is combo and aggro-control. I played this in madrid to 6-3 with no byes and I still feel that the deck has more to give. I would like for players who actually played aluren to comment on my list and suggest improvements.

This is recruiterless, and no, I'm not 100% sure that the deck is better without recruiters (though I believe so), but I think the 2 versions are so radically different that they almost deserve separate threads.

4 Aluren

2 ponder
2 sensei's divining top
4 brainstorm
3 Intuition
2 Chain of Vapor

3 Cabal Therapy
2 thoughtseize

1 parasitic strix
3 Eternal Witness
1 Cavern Harpy
2 Man-o'-War
4 Raven Familiar
4 wall of roots
2 wall of blossoms

4 misty rainforest
2 polluted delta
3 verdant catacombs
4 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 forest
2 island
1 swamp
2 bayou

Sideboard:
2 krosan grip
2 faerie macabre
2 tormod's crypt
4 spell pierce
3 carpet of flowers
2 doom blade

I am particularly looking for something to improve the merfolk matchup. Tested deed but it was too slow, more spotremoval (since obviously LoA is the worst threat) but that was'nt good enough. I found that against aggro-control it's usually better to push your own gameplan instead of trying to disrupt theirs, so Im currently playing carpet of flowers against blue decks and it's pretty good but not good enough I think. I also tested more discard but that only led to drawing worse start hands.

Other than that and reanimator, this deck can beat anything and against zoo you almost always win, so that's positive at least