Aluren Gencon report (Top 8 in the prelims, 23rd in champs)

I am certainly not a legacy expert and I don’t really follow legacy on a regular basis. However, since I was going to Gencon, I figured I would at least play in the Legacy events. I needed a deck and I didn’t want to play goblins, I don’t like rit based combo, and I don’t own any tarmogoyfs. However, I do have Imperial Recruiters, so Aluren seemed like a good deck to play. First, my decklist is from the legacy champs, which was a few minor changes from the Legacy Prelims.

4 Aluren
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Wall of roots
1 Raven Familiar
1 Eternal witness
1 Ghitu slinger
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Man-o-war
1 Dreamstalker
1 Spike Feeder

4 FOW
3 Cabal therapy
1 Deep analysis
1 Echoing truth
4 Brainstorm
2 Impulse
4 Intuition

3 City of Traitors
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Tropical island
2 Bayou
1 Underground sea
1 Taiga
2 Forest
1 Island

SB
3 Pernicious Deed
4 Divert
3 BEB/Hydroblast
3 Stifle
1 E-truth
1 Cabal therapy

I decided to cut some of the crap out of the deck that you don’t really need in order to streamline the deck. This makes it much easier to get the 2 card combo and win immediately. However, I am still not happy with the list that I ran. First of all, Deep analysis was cast once in the two days of tournament plays. It was sided out all the time. I also had problems getting Aluren, Recruiter, FOW and a blue card in hand with 4 mana on the table. I think this could be alleviated with some generic draw, for example, including the Accumulated knowledge engine in the deck. I never once used echoing truth in a game 1 and it is way too random as a 1-of that can not be tutored for. Which leads me to say that I would like to have another E-witness in the deck in order to tutor for the 1-ofs. Only having 1 E-witness did actually cost me a match.

Overall, the deck is very powerful and actually quite resilient. I did literally no testing with the deck and had only played the deck a week or two ago at the Springfield Icon, going a disappointing 4-1, losing to my friend Blaine in the top 8.

I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies in my tournament report. I didn’t take very good notes and played a lot of magic this weekend.

Legacy Prelims

Round 1 James King of ICBM with UGR Thresh
Game 1 James leads with a mongoose and I must have cabal therapied on turn 1 possibly hitting some counter magic. James beats me down to 6 with Mongoose, Dryad, and a Tarmogoyf…but I assemble my combo on turn 4 and win. I think I flashbacked therapy (off a wall) and I think I hit a counterspell to get aluren through.

Game 2 James gets stuck on 1 land after a brainstorm or serum visions missed. I have my combo in my hand with force backup, but I play conservatively by casting intuition and letting James force it. Next turn, I untap and play aluren (turn 4).

1-0 (2-0 in games)

Round 2 James Harris with RG Goblins
Game 1 I play first and just get some mana. He does mostly irrelevant stuff and I play a turn 3 aluren and win.
Game 2 James leads with lackey. I BEB it since I am still waiting for my combo. My opponent gets another lacky and attacks me on his third turn. Warchief enters play and he casts Matron getting piledriver. I untap, play city of traitors, Aluren, and win.

2-0 (4-0)

Round 3 Jeremy Houg and ETW combo
Game 1 He plays first, and mulls to 6. At some point he starts storming, and I counter a spell that would get him to 4 mana. He is left with one card (ETW) in his hand and I lazily combo out on turn 5.
Game 2 I therapy early and see a lot of acceleration. Again, he tries to combo out and I counter a seething song leaving him with little in his hand. I combo out sometime shortly after that.

3-0 (6-0) After starting this tournament at a relatively late 5pm there is a computer glitch that causes a TWO AND A HALF hour delay between rounds 2 and 3. I could have entered in everyone’s results during that time and noone knows why it took them so long to figure out what was going on. This would eventually cause the top 8 to be really really early in the morning.

Round 4 Michael Buckley with RG Spirit guide Belcher
Game 1 I don’t remember what happened, but I combo out on turn 4.
Game 2 He hits me for 6 from a fizzled activation on charbelcher (I think) and I combo out just after that.

4-0 (8-0)

Round 5 vs defending Legacy Champions Roland Chang, with his UG madness deck
Game 1 Roland plays first, mulls to 6 and manages to get me down to 7. I cabal therapy him a hitting circular logic (I think) and I manage to combo out through 2x stifles.
Game 2 Unfortunately I don’t remember this game, but it was incredibly intense. I end up at 1 life and combo out, possibly through another stifle. I think I made a huge play mistake by forgetting to flash back therapy, but I topdeck like a champ and win. Sorry Roland.

5-0 (10-0) I ID my way into the top 8.

Top 8 Mike with RG goblins
Game 1 My opponent goes first and gets first turn lacky. I cant recover in time and he manages to kill me.
Game 2 I go first with an uneventful turn. My opponent gets first turn lackey. Since I went first, I could recover with BEBs and Wall of roots as blockers. I assemble the combo at 7 life and win.
Game 3 My opponent goes first, leads with first turn lackey. How lucky. I force it, but he follows it up with another lackey. I am at 12 life and finally assemble the combo, but have to pass the turn. He doesn’t have enough guys on board to kill me. However, he plays matron to get piledriver and does exactly 12 damage to me and I lose.

5-1 (11-2) I’m disappointed, but relieved to go home and get some sleep as it is 3:30 in the morning when I finish this match.

Legacy Champs
Round 1 starts at a very early 10:00 am and I am still half asleep. I play some guy with mono black sui. I don’t remember much of this game, but I do know he played 4 duresses and a hymn to tourach over 2 games. I lose both of them.

0-1 (0-2)

Round 2 I play Kris with UB despotic scepter.dec
Game 1 I win. What did you expect?
Game 2 More of game 1. Yes he was playing that despotic scepter.

1-1 (2-2)

Round 3 Nick Calcaterra, vintage champs top 4 player, with goblins
Game 1 I crush him, taking very little damage.
Game 2 I get down to 8 life, but combo out easily.

2-1 (4-2)

Round 4
Mark Ames with ETW Belcher
Game 1 I beat him pretty easily, possibly with a well timed FOW.
Game 2 I therapy on my first turn, but he drops a bunch of ETW tokens on his 2nd turn. I have the echoing truth and combo out with ease.

3-1 (6-2)

Round 5 Terry with truffle shuffle
Game 1 I beat him by theraping away a pair of vindicates and combo out early enough.
Game 2 He duresses, castigates, duresses, castigates, me till I have nothing left. Then he beats me down with a gigapede.
Game 3 He doesn’t do much for the first couple of turns. I intuition for 3x recruiters and have witness on board for some reason. (maybe I needed a fetch)… I try to combo and have my two remaining recruiters and a witness in play. I play dream stalker. In response, he plays Funeral charm, funeral charm, STP and kills all my dudes. Wow. Didn’t see that one coming. I can no longer win, after a pernicious deed or two, but my opponent fails to kill me before time is up and it’s a draw.

3-1-1 (7-3-1)

Round 6 I completely am missing any notes from this section, but I win 2-0

EDIT: Vroman reminded me that we got paired against each other this round and I wanted to skip the vintage prelims and continue playing legacy, so he scooped to me and joined the vintage prelims. Thanks Vroman. I had much more fun playing legacy than vintage at gencon.
4-1-1 (7-3-1)

Round 7 vs Rich Shay with 4c? Threshold
Game 1 I mull to 5 (which is like the 2nd or 3rd time I have mulled this tournament) With lethal on the table, I have to combo out. I therapy rich, but he forces. Then he has a second force for my aluren. GG.
Game 2 I mull again, this time to 6. I think I lost a counter battle and Rich gets a Fire/Ice onto an isochron scepter and buries me in card advantage. At least I got knocked out of the tournament by Rich Shay, who did outplay me. I actually like his threshold list and I hope he shares it with me at some point.

4-2-1 (7-5-1)

Round 8 vs Chris Boomer and UW fish
This game goes 3 matches and I win through a stifle

5-2-1 (9-6-1)

Bottom line is that this deck, with some tweaks, should be a major competitor in legacy. Its definitely vulnerable to early lackies (on the draw) and to heavy discard decks…but with what I consider a suboptimal list I ended up with a record of 9-3-1 (20-8-1) in matches. The deck does reward tight play and it will occasionally draw you out of bad situations. I actually had an enjoyable time playing legacy and would bring this deck to future tournaments.