Legacy Aluren Primer: Post Acererak

I love Legacy. The idea of being able to play with almost any card, and the practice of playing decks with so much complexity excites me. For the longest time, however, I didn’t have a pet deck to play for online events. I bounced around from Lands to Titan Post to Oops! All Spells, and while it was fun, none of the decks made me want to buy them in paper. Then about a year ago I happened upon Aluren and decided to try it out. I had major success in the UOL Legacy league, and I haven’t looked back since. This upcoming Legacy League is no different, and I’m here to show you my deck and break it down.

The Combos:

Image of Aluren

Aluren is a huge combo piece, reducing the cost of all of your creatures to zero and allowing you to flash them out. Even though it’s symmetrical, oftentimes other decks won’t be able to take advantage of its effect. Luckily for Aluren, it not only has value creatures to help churn through the deck, but it also has multiple combos it can execute, usually needing only one other creature.

Recruiter of the Guard is one such creature that goes infinite. With Aluren on the battlefield, you can fetch Arctic Merfolk with Recruiter of the Guard and bounce it. From there, you replay Recruiter and fetch up Cavern Harpy. Cavern Harpy bounces Arctic Merfolk, and Merfolk bounces Recruiter. Playing Recruiter a final time fetches up Ukkima, Stalking Shadow. From there, you can start a loop of bouncing Cavern Harpy with itself, playing Harpy, bouncing Ukkima, and replaying Ukkima. Since this nets you one life and does two damage, you can do this as many times as it takes to kill your opponent.

Ukkima isn’t the only card with which Cavern Harpy combos. With Aluren, you can play Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and resolve its second ability. With its first ability on the stack, you can flash in Cavern Harpy and bounce Uro. This loop nets you two life, a card in hand, and a possible land on the battlefield. From here, you draw your deck and execute the Ukkima, Stalking Shadow loop. This loop is also possible with Ice-Fang Coatl instead of Uro, but it loses you one life instead. It’s not like Yawgmoth’s Bargain is a bad card, though.

The final combo comes to us from the newest set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Acererak the Archlich happens to bounce itself whenever it’s played, so with Aluren we can play it as many times as we want. With this loop, we can complete the Lost Mine of Phandelver, specifically going through Dark Pool, as many times as it takes to kill our opponent. 

There is something important to note about the dungeon mechanic. Because dungeon abilities go on the stack, you can respond to any of them by casting a spell, notably Acererak himself. This is noteworthy, because the last ability of a dungeon doesn’t need to be resolved in order to have completed it. What this means for Mine is that if an opponent has more life than you have cards in your library, you can still win the game by responding to the card draw by casting Acererak and starting the dungeon over again.

The Tutors and Recruiter’s Target:

Image of Recruiter of the Guard and Living Wish, both tutors for the Aluren combo.

Recruiter of the Guard and Living Wish are the glue that holds this deck together. Combined, they can tutor almost any creature in the 95 (more about Yorion later). It’s worth noting that even though Aluren does a lot of heavy lifting, it can’t free cast Wish or other spells. First, let’s break down Recruiter’s targets.

Recruiter of the Guard: Yes, Recruiter can grab itself! This is very important if you suspect your opponent has removal and will try to snipe you while you’re comboing off.

Image of Arctic Merfolk, Cavern Harpy, Ukkima, Stalking Shadow. Parts of the Aluren combo.

Arctic Merfolk: the main bouncing combo creature in the deck. Other Aluren decks might play Niambi, Esteemed Speaker to combo with Cavern Harpy and generate advantage outside of the combo, but since that combo dies to removal, I decided against it.

Cavern Harpy: the entire reason you play Aluren. It doesn’t die to removal, it combos with multiple creatures, and it blocks creatures like Marit Lage to oblivion. While it’s only supposed to be tutored out, since it’s such an integral part of the deck, I’m playing two copies in case one of them gets exiled or countered somehow.

Ukkima, Stalking Shadow: a tutorable win condition when combined with Cavern Harpy. There’s an ongoing discussion as to whether you should play this or Parasitic Strix. There are times where Strix’s unrestrictive mana cost, flying, and life gain on ETB matter. However, because it’s an artifact and because it’s probably not blocking ever, I would rather have the unblockable creature. It’s up to you to decide which you would rather have in your deck.

Image of Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, and Ice-Fang Coatl.

Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch: While not conventional tutor targets, mana dorks are very important for jumping the curve and fixing your mana in Aluren. Birds has flying and can tap for black, while Hierarch has Exalted. I value Birds more, so I have more of them compared to Hierarchs.

Ice-Fang Coatl: This is the reason to play Snow basics in the manabase. Having the right colors, natural flash, and usually being a 2-for-1, not to mention comboing with Cavern Harpy in a pinch, make Coatl a powerhouse of a card in this deck.

Barrin, Tolarian Archmage: This card has consistently overperformed for me. It’s able to bounce the opponent’s problematic threats like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Marit Lage. It can bounce your own creatures like Coatl and Recruiter and combo with Harpy to draw extra cards. In a pinch, it can even act as a second Arctic Merfolk while comboing off.

Eternal Witness: another card that pulls more than its own weight. This can buy back anything from removal spells to value engines to combo pieces and is your main way to fight through counterspells if you don’t have any in hand.

Grist, the Hunger Tide: A recent addition to the deck, Grist is a powerful value engine and tutorable (and Aluren castable) removal spell. It also fills the graveyard for Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and could even push through that last bit of damage with its ultimate.

Other Spells:

Aluren: the namesake card, and a card whose function has already been discussed. Since it’s an 80 card deck, we can afford to play the full 4 copies.

Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath: one of the greatest creatures ever printed and performs wonders in Aluren. This card is a value engine, combo piece, and win condition all on its own. It’s so good, in fact, that three copies are in the main board and one copy is in the sideboard for Living Wish. The only downside is that it can’t be tutored out by Recruiter.

Endurance: Another MH2 card, Endurance lets you go longer against a good number of decks. Besides the obvious Dredge and Reanimator hosing, it’s surprisingly good against fair blue decks. It can block creatures like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Insectile Aberration and prevent yourself from decking out if you can’t combo. It’s definitely hit or miss, however, so only one is in the main and one more is in the side.

Teferi, Time Raveler: an extremely annoying card. Every ability on the card is relevant, allowing you to 2-for-1 on board threats, play sorceries at instant speed, and safely combo off.

Abundant Growth: more fixing and card draw. I know other similar Aluren lists usually play more, but I value tutorable creatures more, so I’m only playing one copy.

Force of Will, Brainstorm, and Ponder: We’re a pretty fair blue deck; we’re playing a full playset of each of these cards with fetch lands. Enough said.

Swords to Plowshares and Prismatic Ending: our hard removal suite for resolved threats. Swords can hit any creature, while Ending hits any small nonland permanent. We can take full advantage of Ending’s Converge as a 4-colored deck, and its flexibility along with Swords’ efficiency gives us game against a lot of decks.

The Mana Base:

There are 14 fetches and 12 fetchable lands, seven of those being Snow-Covered basics. The abundance of fetch lands helps make sure we have what colors we need with 80 cards and puts away what cards we don’t want with Brainstorm. Since black is the least prevalent color, there aren’t any black fetches. Also, on the note of black mana, I have two black duals because I don’t have enough other fixing to be comfortable removing one of the black lands. Running more Abundant Growth would allow you to cut Underground Sea. Other than that, it’s a fairly intuitive split of lands prioritizing blue over green over white.

The Sideboard:

Living Wish: While not part of the sideboard, it’s important to lead off with the last card in the main deck that hasn’t been explained. There are three things you can do with Wish: tutor silver bullets, tutor a combo piece, or tutor a value engine. We’ve already talked about Endurance and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, so let’s introduce the rest of the sideboard.

Yorion, Sky Nomad: When I first played with Yorion, it instantly became one of my favorite cards ever. Even after the companion nerf, an eighth card in hand that was a massive beater, huge potential value play, and pitchable to Force of Will was more than enough to sacrifice a little consistency. On top of all of that, it’s technically Wishable in a pinch.

Acererak the Archlich: Since it’s not great in the main board, we have one in the side so that Wish can combo with Aluren.

Knight of Autumn: a flexible creature that is good against multiple matchups like Burn, Stompy, and Urza Echoes. It is also a decent beat stick at 4/3 if you really need it.

Plague Engineer: an incredible hoser against tribal decks like Elves and Goblins and a great blocker against any ground creature.

Pernicious Deed: a wildly flexible card that wipes out many strategies. Basically, any aggro deck, Stax, Lands, and more get hit, although you’re also hitting your own stuff so be careful when using it.

Force of Vigor: an amazing 2-for-2 against any artifact or enchantment based deck.

Force of Negation: more copies of Force of Will against fast combo decks like Storm, Oops! All Spells, or even Burn.

Carpet of Flowers: extra mana against blue decks like Delver or Merfolk. 

Deafening Silence: Since you’re a creature-based deck, this is a great hate piece against decks like Storm and Enchantress that like to play a lot of spells each turn.

Conclusion:

Aluren has been a tier 2 deck for a good while. Its flexibility is its greatest strength, allowing it to play multiple gameplans to fight against almost any deck you can throw at it. This particular version utilizes multiple tutors to make up for the inconsistency Yorion, Sky Nomad decks tend to have.


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Author: UncleFlacco

UncleFlacco got into Magic around Innistrad in 2011, but has been seriously playing since Ixalan. He enjoys older formats like Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, and he has an affiliation with enchantments. You can message him on Discord at UncleFlacco#0762.