While Avatar is certainly the current flavor of the month, it’s not the only thing shaking up Magic right now. Back in the mist-cloaked realm of MTG Legacy, a Sultai Aluren deck is putting up strong results for the first time in a long time. This is one of the oldest combo decks in Magic, but metagame shifts have kept it out of the spotlight in recent months. Now, paired with a powerful Tempo shell that plays quite nicely alone, this relic of MTG history is back to take names once more.
Sultai Aluren In MTG Legacy
Aluren is a deck as old as the card itself. Turns out that being able to cast any creature with mana value three or less for free, at instant speed no less, opens up all sorts of combo lines. The version that’s been gathering steam in recent weeks, which both Beexcellent and Otaba took to 5-0 finishes, is a Sultai brew that blends in elements of Tempo. You have the combo as your main win condition, but you can also play a fair game on the way there, and win that way occasionally.
The combo itself revolves around Aluren and Cavern Harpy. With Aluren in play, you can cast Harpy for free to bounce any of your other creatures back to your hand. You can then pay one life to bounce Harpy with its own ability, and cast both creatures again to repeat the process. This lets you endlessly reuse enters triggers on any creature that costs three or less.
Orcish Bowmasters is the prime target here. Since it deals one damage on entry, you can just ping your opponent to death by looping it. Unfortunately, Cavern Harpy’s life requirement means you’ll need to have more life than your opponent to pull this off. Fortunately, you can bring in Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath to solve this issue. You can interrupt Uro’s sacrifice trigger by bouncing it with Harpy, which lets you loop Uro with this engine as well. This provides infinite life gain, as well as infinite card draw to find Bowmasters. Baleful Strix does something similar, providing a means to dig for your combo pieces on an efficient, loopable body.
Keeping The Tempo
What’s really interesting about Sultai Aluren is that, unlike many of its peers in MTG Legacy, it’s not all-in on the above combo. In fact, it’s not even really trying to accelerate it out. You’ll barely find any ramp here, not even Ancient Tomb in the mana base. This is, largely, because Sultai Aluren doesn’t need to rush. The rest of the deck is perfectly capable of holding its own, and even playing for board, in Legacy.
This is mostly down to the deck’s top-tier creature suite. Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is as strong here as it is everywhere in Legacy, since the deck also runs Brainstorm to flip it instantly. Brainstorm, in turn, helps find combo pieces, or interaction like Force of Will against other Combo decks. All of the creatures that slot into the combo, Bowmasters, Uro, and Strix, are great cards to just run out in their own right, too. Even when they’re not winning you the game, you’re never going to feel bad just dropping one of these on curve.
Throw in Ponder for card draw and Witherbloom Command for removal, and you have the core of what Sultai Aluren is about. This deck, in this form, hasn’t really shown up in the competitive standings since February this year, so it’s great to see it return now. Recent versions have made various innovations, too, pushing the deck in new directions.
In Otaba’s brew, for example, Thundertrap Trainer and Kaito, Bane of Nightmares develop the Tempo side of the deck. In Charble’s 4-Color Aluren, however, Recruiter of the Guard adds more redundancy for the combo, pushing things more in that way. The current range of setups and their success points to an evolving archetype still settling on its optimal build.
Back For Good?
However the deck ultimately ends up looking, the big question right now is whether or not Sultai Aluren will be sticking around in MTG Legacy. Looking at the current metagame, it’s hard to say for certain.
Izzet Delver is the best deck in Legacy right now, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag for Aluren. With a reasonable start, Aluren can likely stall it out until it hits the combo. On the other hand, Delver isn’t a deck you’re going to be able to beat fairly, and it can be hard to force Aluren through against countermagic. Otaba’s version of the deck brought in Force of Negation and Flare of Denial to help out here. If Delver continues to dominate the format, this may be the deck’s best chance at success.
The other top decks currently are fellow Combo lists: Mystic Forge Combo and Oops, All Spells. Both are tricky because they’re more focused Combo strategies, meaning they’re more likely to pop off early in the game than Aluren is. That said, these decks also lack Aluren’s strong interaction, which means you can hold them off with free countermagic as you try and get Aluren online. Neither of these strategies will contest you on board much, either, which opens the door for a fair tempo win, too.
Overall, Sultai Aluren is in a pretty reasonable spot in the current metagame. While it lacks any truly dominant matchups, it also lacks clear weaknesses. If players continue to iterate on the list, it could easily become a staple of the new post-ban Legacy metagame.
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