Once upon a time, our smart, handsome, and thin content manager convinced me to play the same 75 as him in a tournament.
Survival of the Fittest and Vengevine were legal in this tournament.
Spoiler: It didn’t go well.
That said, Aluren has gotten some upgrades in the past few years, and most of those cards are the ones that turned everyone’s “Sultai Cards I Own” deck
into a cohesive, brutal package known as Shardless Sultai. If those cards can create an entirely new tier 1 archetype in Legacy, perhaps they can power up
a few others.
This deck wants to get Aluren onto the battlefield eventually, but there’s no real rush. It can play a controlling game quite well, but sometimes you do
actually have to kill your opponents instead of toying with them. Aluren allows you to do that instead of trying to hit them a bunch of times with a
Tarmogoyf.
Once you have Aluren, you cast an Imperial Recruiter, each time Recruiting and casting another one. Then, get Dream Stalker, pick up a Recruiter, Recruiter
for Cavern Harpy, gate the Dream Stalker, pick up Recruiter, Recruiter for Parasitic Strix, and drain them out by bouncing the Strix repeatedly with Cavern
Harpy.
This isn’t the fastest combo deck, nor the most efficient, but it is resilient. If they sideboard too many cards that attack enchantments, you can just
side out the combo and function like a bad Shardless Sultai deck. This deck is so committed to the grinding plan that they don’t even have Force of Will.
If they try to break up your combo by holding a pile of removal spells, pressure them with Deathrite Shamans or strip their hand with Cabal Therapy.
Here’s a helpful hint: Once you’re at the end of the chain and ready to kill your opponent, cast the Cavern Harpy and pay a life to return it to your hand
while the gating trigger is on the stack. Then cast Parasitic Strix–If you have a Deathrite Shaman or Baleful Strix on the battlefield (and you should
since you can basically put all of your creatures on the battlefield), you will drain them for two, let the gating trigger resolve, and start the chain
over again. If your opponent is holding a Swords to Plowshares or some other removal spell, they never have an opportunity to break up your combo. Playing
around multiple removal spells typically requires some Cabal Therapy action, but the deck already has a built in resiliency.
Have fun!
Creatures (21)
- 1 Eternal Witness
- 4 Imperial Recruiter
- 1 Cavern Harpy
- 1 Dream Stalker
- 1 Parasitic Strix
- 1 Scavenging Ooze
- 4 Baleful Strix
- 4 Shardless Agent
- 4 Deathrite Shaman
Lands (21)
Spells (18)
