[Deck] Aluren

[kiblast]

I have played havenwood battleground before in my lists and its awesome.
Tapping for single mana while waiting to combo out is key to tempo in aluren - hickory woodlot doesn't give us that.

Thing is, Aluren didn't get a single big card in last few blocks (perhaps parasitic strix is its biggest addition yet) and until a card similar to imperial recruiter becomes more available, it will be a t2 fun deck.

to havenwood battlegrounds/ hickory : personally i decided to play a split 2hyckory/1 havenwood. Sure HB can tap for 1 mana, but can also tap for GG only ONCE. This is why i prefer hickory, tapping for GG twice is all i need to have my intuition AND my aluren protected from dazes. It also enables t2 intuition, t3 combo.

i wouldnt really call Aluren a tier 2 deck. I experienced good MU against Aggroloam GBW, TES, Goblins, Sligh, Bant is at least acceptable (50-50)...so i wouldnt place it straightly among tier 2 decks. Aluren is probably in the ''limbo'' between t1-t2 decks.

[swoop]

Its rare and therefor I call it t2. Probably an eternal Limbo deck.
It favors highly non-huge on counters decks. Bant is win after putting in NO/prog.

PT Junk beat me one because of abit more luck on drawing lands.


I prefer consistency over t2/t3 setting up/ going off from sub par positions.

[swoop]

4 Cavern Harpy
4 Coiling Oracle
2 Parasitic Strix
4 Raven Familiar
2 Man o War
2 Vendilion Clique
instant [16]
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Intuition
2 Impulse
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
enchantment [4]
4 Aluren
land [20]
1 Bayou
2 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept heath
2 Floded strand
4 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 UG shockland
60 cards
Sideboard:
2 Eternal Witness
2 Echoing Truth
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Natural order
1 progenitus
1 dryad arbor

So, we went for a tourney today, 8m legacy.

Game 1 I won 2:0 against some mish-mash u-b control, nothing serious, I just piloted safely.

Game 2 I won 2:1 against mono W soldiers, first game I lost after I fizzled with LDV eot.
I was on 5 life, he had some pinger for 1, and in 2-3 swoops with it I didn't find harpy or strix.

Game two I boarded in 5 Prog combo, 3 deeds. I boarded out Impulses, and 1 of some cards.
and a land for arbor. He pressed me hard, put a needle on harpy, dropped some bad guys and
got suprised when i played after oracle Deed. then the following turn I cast NO for prog and he just
scooped after I cleaned his board.

Game three went pretty much the same, he put some needles down, did some pressure and I flew away
to victory with harpy+strix after fighting for a while.

Third matchup was PT junk I lost once before to, we decided to ID and split, but we played serious match.
First I've gone off at turn five, after he didn't draw disrupt and I was practically free to combo out.

I board out FoWs and Impulses and put in therapies and NO combo.

The hand was mediocre and I managed to draw into Prog next turn. He put an early did, wastelanded my tropical,
but after a while he tapped 3 out of 5 lands for Knight of Reliq, and then I've put down Aluren.

I had a harpy, clique, man'o'war, prog and NO in hand. I've dropped clique, removed prog, drew
raven familiar and went off.


I'm loving more and more this deck. and Progenitus combo.

[kiblast]

swoop, i noticed you dont play wall of blossoms or wall of roots, how do you feel the MU against Goblins Zoo other Aggros ?
personally i play 4x wall of blossoms and they're fine.

I want to risk a suggestion: why don't try Regrowth, at least as a singleton? Could be very useful to take another intuition from the grave, or a discarded aluren, and post side provides some extra recursions ( double pernicious if the first gets countered or stifled)

[swoop]

There are only one goblins in my usual meta (I own the second ones - rarely some1 plays them). And zoo just pwns me with tempo/post bord gaedoc teg.

I wanted to try WoB but I kinda forgot to put them in this time and again Man o War has proven to be a huge win over selkie hedge mage.
It bounces for 3 mana (2u) and gives you possibly a turn or two when racing PT Junk or soldiers (WoB would be cool also)

I could put in Wall of Blossoms instead of 2 impulses I have I guess 1 man'o'war or maybe a second strix.

What I love about 2 strixes is that sometimes I just don't have life or time to go through the whole deck with LDV and its rarely a bad card, if nothing
its just canon fodder till I combo out.

Regrowth might be usefull, or just a Regrowth on a stick via Eternal Witness.
Maybe even gaea's blessing in SB against painter combo.

[swoop]

Oh yeah, you can't pitch Wall of Blossoms on Force :(

[kiblast]

Oh yeah, you can't pitch Wall of Blossoms on Force :(

i see your point. In my meta i usually find 3-4 gobbos and at least 2 zoos. So i really need walls, though it doesnt pitch to fow. But it replaces itself wich is a great thing.
I also suggest -1 parasitic cos it's a dead card, if you don't have enough life when going off replace it with a singleton selkie, so when comboing you'll find the selkie to have infinite life and you can go deeper in library. And when you're not going off drawing a selkie is 99% of the times better than topdecking parasitic, wich exposes you to thoughtseize/extirpate = auto loss.

I play 2 eternals maindeck because i play full set of intuition, so intuition becomes a full tutor even for cards that i play 1 of or 2 of (post side even more useful) and eternals are very useful when you're going off cos they bring a fresh harpy/raven familiar/ chain of vapor/ force of will in loop from the grave. Most important is the force of will semi-infinite loop against decks like monoU or Zoo's spot removal.

[swoop]

i see your point. In my meta i usually find 3-4 gobbos and at least 2 zoos. So i really need walls, though it doesnt pitch to fow. But it replaces itself wich is a great thing.
I also suggest -1 parasitic cos it's a dead card, if you don't have enough life when going off replace it with a singleton selkie, so when comboing you'll find the selkie to have infinite life and you can go deeper in library. And when you're not going off drawing a selkie is 99% of the times better than topdecking parasitic, wich exposes you to thoughtseize/extirpate = auto loss.

I play 2 eternals maindeck because i play full set of intuition, so intuition becomes a full tutor even for cards that i play 1 of or 2 of (post side even more useful) and eternals are very useful when you're going off cos they bring a fresh harpy/raven familiar/ chain of vapor/ force of will in loop from the grave. Most important is the force of will semi-infinite loop against decks like monoU or Zoo's spot removal.

With that many goblin/aggro Walls are good. In my meta there are 2 gobs that are never played (mine and one more), one soldiers I can sucessfully race. I didn't play any selkies because there are NONE I could find in my town :) no one played during that period and no one has them.

But I managed to get a grip on few so I'll test 1-2 in MD.

I might squeeze 1-2 witnesses in MD, since they're great, even tho they don't pitch on a force, they do pitch it from GY :)

I'm waiting to see if we'll get anything usefull from SoM set, I hope we do. (a blue recruiter? yes please) :)

[kiblast]

while i was testing online, i noticed how a card ''tutor'' like would improve Aluren reliability. Basically Intuition is a great tutor, and lim-dul's vault a great deck manipulator; but intuition is sometimes costly, while vault doesn't create CA.
So i thought of a demonic tutor-like card, and stumbled upon:



What do you think? could provide an useful turn 3 tutor, maybe we could play it in addition to intuition, as a 1-2 of.
The creature count in my list is 19, so we could easily support this. Is also nice to get a Fow fastly to cover your Aluren.

[Hyped]

http://deckbox.org/mtg/Stonecloaker

Still assembling my Aluren deck, but I really thought this guy would be great graveyard hate for this archetype. Any thoughts?

Additionally, is this deck viable what-so-ever without imperial recruiter? They are increasingly scarce / expensive. Thanks all!

[Lejay]

From the guy who wrote the opening post :

Imperial Recruiter is bad.

[dameus]

http://deckbox.org/mtg/Stonecloaker

Still assembling my Aluren deck, but I really thought this guy would be great graveyard hate for this archetype. Any thoughts?

Additionally, is this deck viable what-so-ever without imperial recruiter? They are increasingly scarce / expensive. Thanks all!

Unfortunately, he's the wrong color. I like him too, but he doesn't rate a slot in the deck.

I wouldn't play the deck w/o Recruiter, but there's plenty that do.

[Nonex]

Offalsnout is great against graveyards, I can't think of a more damaging creature against Dredge. Faerie Macabre is another alternative.

[Nastaboi]

Since some people are still playing Recruiterless version, I could post my list that I split 27-player event finals with yesterday.

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

4 Raven Familiar
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Man-o'-War
3 Wall of Blossoms
2 Cavern Harpy
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Parasitic Strix

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

SIDEBOARD
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Hydroblast

Matches:

Enchantress 2-0
Goblins 2-0 (he mulled to 5 once)
NO Bant 1-1-1 (lost one to fast NO)
Bw Sui 2-0 (won 1st one 4th turn /w Tarmo beatz)
Belcher ID into top8

Bant Survival 2-1 (White Leyline was surprisingly annoying, stopping discard, Intuition and finally Strix)
Ub Merfolk 2-0 (2nd game /w Llawan, he didn't draw may counters)
Ugb Landstill (scooped to my friend to give him some rating he needed to qualify)

The deck seems great again as meta has shifted away from CounterTop. Most common use for Intuition was to get three lands, though I got three Alurens twice and other stuff as well.

I think I could gamble with sideboard removing either Grips or Leylines to make room for 3rd Llawan and more discard and blasts.

[kiblast]

Nastaboi, how are goyfs working for you? and how about only 2 cavern harpy ? they're not even fetchable with intuition.Otherwise pretty standard list...More Llawan in sb sounds useless. No love for E-plague? it is way more useful as hits goblins too.

[Nastaboi]

Goyfs are as good as walls can get. They can easily turn into offensive and enable attack from several angles. I stealed one game where my opponent hastly took Aluren with his Thoughtseize when the real threat was goyf.

Cavern Harpy is awful before combo (pitches fow does not count as an argument). Sometimes I could not find one when going off, but I'll get enough blockers to live to win next turn anyways. Had run one Witness in past but there's just no room as the card is a bit clumsy before going off.

2 Llawan is just fine, 'folk just happens to be the most played deck. Plague is crap against it and not that effective against Goblins either - I'd just concentrate hindering Lackey.

I know the list is nothing revolutionar, just wanted to tell that the deck can still win.

[swoop]

yea well, I dunno. Ever tried pushing in 3 living wishes? it can fetch you almost ANY piece of combo + bojuka bog!

[kiblast]

Goyfs are as good as walls can get. They can easily turn into offensive and enable attack from several angles. I stealed one game where my opponent hastly took Aluren with his Thoughtseize when the real threat was goyf.

Cavern Harpy is awful before combo (pitches fow does not count as an argument). Sometimes I could not find one when going off, but I'll get enough blockers to live to win next turn anyways. Had run one Witness in past but there's just no room as the card is a bit clumsy before going off.

2 Llawan is just fine, 'folk just happens to be the most played deck. Plague is crap against it and not that effective against Goblins either - I'd just concentrate hindering Lackey.

I know the list is nothing revolutionar, just wanted to tell that the deck can still win.

hindering lackey? pretty difficult as your answers to a resolved lackey opponent on the play are 2 chains and 2 blasts post side.
E plague is beautiful because get's rid of all the 1/1 gobbos like matrons, lackeys, siege gang tokens, mogg war marshal ( wich is basically their alpha-strike enabler together with warchief/pile). In early game they have 7-8 answers to clear the blocker you landed, 4 of wich are uncounterable (incinerators) and 3-4 are stingscourers. Sure e E-plague is mostly useless against merfolk and Llawan is more effective, but against gobbos is a great tempo enabler...until you can succesfully set a pernicious deed.

''Cavern harpy is awful before combo'' : this is for sure one of the biggest problems of aluren; i.e. depending from crappy creatures.
To me (3 intuition maindeck in my build) 3 is the perfect number. Also viewing it in multiples while comboing out lets you play in response to double sword to plowshares/removals.

[swoop]

4 Cavern Harpy
3 Coiling Oracle
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Selkie Hedge Mage
4 Raven Familiar
2 Man o War
3 Vendilion Clique
3 imperial recruiter
instant [14]
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Intuition
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
enchantment [4]
4 Aluren
land [20]
1 Bayou
2 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept heath
2 Floded strand
4 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1Volcanic island
60 cards
Sideboard:
2 Eternal Witness
2 Echoing Truth
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Natural order
1 progenitus
1 dryad arbor

Gonna test this build this friday on a 4 proxy tournament.

[KMS]

I would like some advice, I have serious problems when I encounter Counter/Top as well as a Gaddock Teeg.

What should I play to disrupt that?

I configured my deck atm like this:

19 Land

Creatures:

4x Veteran Explorer
4x Coiling Oracle
2x Eternal Witness
1x Rishadan Cutpurse
1x Wirewood Savage
1x Man-O'-War
1x Parasitic Strix
4x Imperial Recruiter
2x Cavern Harpy

Spells:

2x Diabolic Intent
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Thoughtseize
1x Hymn To Tourach
4x Daze
3x Ponder

4x Aluren

I cut the Force of Will because it just costs too much cards, instead I'm doing the dark disrupt.
Veteran explorer is great Cabal Therapy feed as well for diaboic intent.
The singleton Hymn is a tutor target, for example:
Veteran Explorer in play, cast tutor, search 2x swamp search hymn and cast.

The Rishadan Cutpurse whipes the board versus protective cards.


Counter top and gaddock teeg kills me.. any ideas ?