I sees a Harpy, an' a Strixy

Commander / EDH* GWUB

ToolmasterOfBrainerd

Lands (30)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Botanical Sanctum
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 1x Island
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Seachrome Coast
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Control (10)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Drown in the Loch
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Silence
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi, Time Raveler
• 1x Veil of Summer

Ramp (19)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Faeburrow Elder
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

Card selection / advantage (12)

• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Training Grounds

Counterspells (9)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Swan Song

Commanders (2)

Tutors (12)

• 1x Demonic Consultation
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Neoform
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Tainted Pact
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Combo (7)

• 1x Aluren
• 1x Cavern Harpy
• 1x Freed from the Real
• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
• 1x Man-o'-War
• 1x Parasitic Strix
• 1x Thassa's Oracle

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Sideboard

Other (4)

• 1x Devoted Druid
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Pemmin's Aura
• 1x Vizier of Remedies

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Maybeboard

Considerations (35)

• 1x Arctic Merfolk
• 1x Boreal Druid
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Cryptolith Rite
• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Darkslick Shores
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Dream Stalker
• 1x Dusk / Dawn
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Joraga Treespeaker
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation *f-pre*
• 1x Lotus Cobra
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Mother of Runes
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Negate
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Sterling Grove
• 1x Stony Silence
• 1x Sylvan Tutor
• 1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1x Trygon Predator
• 1x Windfall

Upgrades (12)

• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

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This is a WUBG combo deck. There is no 'primary' combo; each of them win the game as well as any of the other. Aluren is a little bit of a pet card of mine, and I built the deck so that I could play it.

Deck inspired by do you like FREE STUFF? (2 CMC avg Aluren combo).

The basic idea

In my opinion, this is a midrange combo deck. Without the super fast mana of Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, and other overpowered mana rocks, this deck will not combo as quickly as other combo decks in the format. Instead, I play quite a few soft stax pieces to slow down other decks as I build towards one of my combos.

The game must always start with ramp. If a hand doesn't have any ramp then it's almost always a mulligan. 2 or 3 pieces of ramp are always better. Because we can draw cards with Thrasios, it isn't really possible to have too much mana. We'll eventually draw into what we need.

Once we have mana, we play a mix of permission, hate, and tutors to find a combo while keeping our opponents behind us. This deck has a lot of different ways to combo off, so the way cards are played changes from game to game.

The combos

There are (more or less) 4 combos included in this deck:

Aluren + Recruiter of the Guard: More details on this combo in the next panel.

Devoted Druid + Vizier of Remedies: This gives you infinite green mana. Make sure you have an extra blue available so you can play Thrasios and draw your deck.

Faeburrow Elder or Bloom Tender + Pemmin's Aura or Freed from the Real: This gives infinite green mana, but these combos also make one blue for you to cast Thrasios.

Thassa's Oracle or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries or Laboratory Maniac + Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact: These just win the game on the spot. Lab Man requires an additional spell that draws a card, but we have a lot of those. Both commanders can do the trick. Gitaxian Probe is awesome for it.

Once you have Aluren and recruiter of the guard

Note that all of the following steps can be done for free.

• Play Recruiter of the Guard and add Man-o'-War to your hand.
• Play Man-o'-War to return Recruiter to your hand.
• Play Recruiter to add Cavern Harpy to your hand.
• Play Cavern Harpy, bounce Man-o'-War, and then pay a life to bounce the Harpy.
• Play Man-o'-War to return Recruiter to your hand.
• Play Recruiter to find Parasitic Strix.

At this time you have Aluren in play and Parasitic Strix and Cavern Harpy in your hand. Now you can do the classic Aluren combo.

• Cast Cavern Harpy and let it resolve. Put the 'return a blue or black creature' trigger on the stack. It doesn't target, so we don't need to pick a creature until resoltion. Hold priority with the trigger on the stack.
• Cast Parasitic Strix (with the trigger still on the stack). Put the gain life / drain life trigger on the stack and resolve it.
• Now let that Harpy trigger resolve and return Parasitic Strix.
• Pay a life to return Cavern Harpy to your hand.
• Repeat

Once you have infinite green mana

Most of the combos don't win the game and only give you infinite mana. With Thrasios, Triton Hero, we can draw our deck and win with something else. When you make infinite green mana, know what's left in your deck. Sometimes you can win on the spot, but sometimes you can't. To win on the spot you have a few options.

The best way to win on the spot is if you have Aluren left in your deck (or hand or board). Cast Aluren with your infinite green mana and the creatures are free after that. You can protect it with Force of Will and Veil of Summer. It's probably best to use Aluren to play Thassa's Oracle or Laboratory Maniac. For Lab Man, you can draw cards with Thrasios.

If you do not have Aluren, then you need to make blue mana and win with Laboratory Maniac. If Lab Man is also gone, then you need 2 blue for Thassa's Oracle. If Jace is all that's left, then you probably need to pass the turn and win on the next turn. There are only a few ways to make blue mana:

• If you went infinite with Bloom Tender or Faeburrow Elder and had Thrasios in play before going off, then you can tap them for mana and float one blue mana (normally you were using this mana to untap them). You won't be able to make any more mana that turn, but that won't matter.
• Mox Amber
• Carpet of Flowers, but only if it's your main phase 1. You can't add the blue mana until the main phase 2. This matters because sometimes we want to draw a card with Tymna before comboing, and that removes this possibility.
• Make a land drop if you haven't yet. Use something like Demonic Tutor or Sensei's Divining Top to find a blue land because Thrasios will simply put it into play.
• If you have an untapped forest, you can use Utopia Sprawl.

Usually you can win with Aluren. If you can't, it's probably because you set up the infinite mana combo with Tainted Pact. Hopefully then one of these options work. Adding Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond would make it much much easier to make blue mana. Lotus Petal, Arcane Signet, and Nature's Lore are tempting cheaper options.

Houston, we have a problem. Help!

Sometimes cards get exiled or end up in the graveyard with no way to get them back, and winning gets more complicated. Here are some of the common occurrences:

Aluren + Recruiter of the Guard, but Parasitic Strix is gone:

• If you have an extra black mana, you can win with Thassa's Oracle.
• First, do the usual thing to get Cavern Harpy and Man-o'-War
• Use Recruiter of the Guard to find Spellseeker and Thassa's Oracle
• Use Spellseeker to find Demonic Consultation

• Win with oracle + consultation

• If you can't win that way, then your best bet is to use Spellseeker and Recruiter of the Guard to put tutors into your hand and creatures into play so that you can combo off and win on the next turn. Hopefully either Thassa's Oracle or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is still in your deck.

Infinite green mana, but jace, weilder of mysteries, Thassa's Oracle, Laboratory Maniac, and a piece of the Aluren combo are all gone.

• You're probably boned. This is not a good beatdown deck.
• The best you can hope for is that you have Aluren but not Parasitic Strix. It's also good enough if you have infinite white and black mana in addition to green. You can play every creature in your deck and use them to beat down the opponents.
• Otherwise, you can't play as many creatures, but you should still play as many as you can.
• Keep Force of Will in your hand because you can lose to Electrickery.
• The creatures in this deck have a combined power of about 30. Cast Cyclonic Rift to clear blockers and get to it.

Individual card discussions

Lands are straightforward and the combo pieces have already been talked about, so they are omitted from this section.

Tutors

• Demonic Consultation, Tainted Pact: Awesome combo pieces that can also be used as normal tutors in a pinch. When using these as normal tutors, it's much safer to use them when assembling an infinite mana combo. Because if you try to put together the Aluren combo, you're likely to exile Cavern Harpy or Man-o'-War by accident, and then you're screwed.
• Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Lim-Dul's Vault: These will find you what you need.
• Enlightened Tutor: It finds Aluren, Pemmin's Aura, and Freed from the Real. It's pretty narrow, but it can find a combo piece for 3 of the 4 combos in here. Mystic Remora is a fine tutor target if you already have the enchantment combo piece.
• Recruiter of the Guard, Spellseeker: Recruiter is obviously part of the Aluren combo. But Recruiter can fetch pieces of the other combos when needed. Spellseeker is great for turning an Eldritch Evolution into a Cyclonic Rift when that's what you really need.
• Worldly Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Eladamri's Call, Neoform, Eldritch Evolution: Creature tutors. We have a lot of them because there are a lot of good targets. At worst they find Spellseeker which can find a key spell or a better tutor. The common tutor targets are Faeburrow Elder, Bloom Tender, Devoted Druid, Vizier of Remedies, Thassa's Oracle, Recruiter of the Guard, and Spellseeker.

Cards I'm not playing:

• Mystical Tutor: Cyclonic Rift and Ad Nauseam are the only good targets. I can't efficiently assemble combos with it. It can get Tainted Pact / Demonic Consultation, but that's not enough to be worth playing.
• Vampiric Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, Imperial Seal: Budget. Vampiric and Sylvan will happen next reprint. Seal won't happen unless it drops to like $50 or less, and even then I'm not sure.

Card selection / advantage

• Ad Nauseam: After an aggressive mulligan, this is the best thing you can tutor to get back into the game. It draws so many cards if it resolves.
• Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Sensei's Divining Top, Gitaxian Probe: The cantrips smooth out the deck. They're great for finding the next land drop or for avoiding combo pieces that we don't want. Probe gets info on if an opponent is holding a counterspell.
• Mystic Remora, Sylvan Library, Rhystic Study: Massive card advantage. Not too much to say here. Rhystic is a little mana-intensive, but still tends to draw a lot of cards.
• Narset, Parter of Veils, Notion Thief: Preventing the opponent from drawing cards is amazing. Both of these come with the upside of also drawing me cards. While the mana cost for each is steep, they can be a huge wrench in the opponent's plan.
• Training Grounds: With Thrasios, Triton Hero, he draws cards for 2 mana. That's insanely powerful.

Cards I'm not playing:

• Windfall: I found I never wanted to cast it because it interrupted whatever plan I could make with the tutors in my hand. It's also risky for me to discard cards because with some cards it's harder to win after I discard them.
• Necropotence: 3 black mana is hard to make and I don't want that much black mana otherwise. Necro is powerful enough that I might jam it in anyway.
• Dark Confidant, Yawgmoth's Will, Timetwister: Budget. Big LOL on the twister.

Control

• Aven Mindcensor: Turning off tutors is devastating to other competitive decks.
• Cyclonic Rift: The only board wipe I think is worth running. I love that I can tutor it with Spellseeker.
• Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, Chain of Vapor, Abrupt Decay: Cheap removal for relevant permanents. Best used on stax or tax pieces preventing us from winning.
• Rest in Peace: I don't use the graveyard other than for Deathrite Shaman, but a lot of decks rely on it. This can prevent some decks from functioning completely, which is well worth the inclusion.
• Stony Silence: Since I don't have Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Chrome Mox, etc., I am best off punishing decks that do. Artifact mana is everywhere in EDH.
• Silence, Teferi, Time Raveler, Veil of Summer: The best combo protection available. While counterspells can protect me from one spell of the opponent's, these buy me an entire turn of safety if they resolve.

Cards I'm not playing:

• Collector Ouphe: It's another copy of Stony Silence, but it can also be tutored with Green Sun's Zenith. I'm not playing it at the moment because I'm unconvinced I want more copies of that effect. I'm playing stony instead because enchantments are harder to remove than creatures.
• Assassin's Trophy: I don't own one yet but will pick it up and put it in when it rotates. But I'm also on the fence about including it. 2 mana removal feels so much worse than one mana. The versatility is undeniable, but the inefficiency is painful.
• Nature's Claim: Just a little bit too narrow. I'm on the fence about it.
• Grand Abolisher: is too hard to make and I don't need more of this effect.
• Gilded Drake: Budget

Counterspells

All the counterspells are fairly standard. 2-mana counterspells that can counter anything and some one-mana counterspells that hit what's important.

Cards I'm not playing:

• Negate: not enough room for it and 2 mana counterspells are sub-par already
• Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm: I don't like soft counters in EDH. I want my counterspells to work every time.
• Pact of Negation and Mana Drain: Budget. I'll pick up pact when it's next reprinted. Mana drain might be awhile, if ever.

Ramp

• Birds of Paradise, Deathrite Shaman, Noble Hierarch, Avacyn's Pilgrim, Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves, Boreal Druid, Arbor Elf: One-mana ramp creatures. To my knowledge, this is all of them. I am playing this many because I am playing more 3-drops than most cEDH decks and being able to play a 3-drop on turn 2 is very powerful. Even if I don't draw a 3-drop, turn 2 Tymna the Weaver is a very good play.
• Sol Ring, Mox Amber, Carpet of Flowers, Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth: More cheap ramp. Same reasoning as above.
• Priest of Titania: More powerful ramp spells. To be honest, if I didn't need Lotus Cobra to win with infinite mana I probably would not play it; I oftentimes do not have enough lands for it.
• Bloom Tender, Faeburrow Elder Devoted Druid: These are both powerful ramp pieces and combo pieces. I love how they pull double duty in the deck. They're always a threat on the battlefield because I could win at any moment, yet they are also never bad draws in the early game.

Cards I'm not playing:

• Lotus Petal: I don't think the one extra mana is worth it for a full card. In some circumstances it is, but not often enough in my opinion. I'm debating adding it back because it can make blue mana after I get infinite mana and draw my deck.
• Arcane Signet, Nature's Lore: Both can be used to add blue mana after I draw my deck. My only problem is that they can't be cast turn 1.
• Lotus Cobra: I don't play enough lands. It can be used to make blue mana after I draw my deck, but it's not worth it.
• Smothering Tithe: Costs too much mana. I'm already high on the curve.
• Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt: Budget. Chrome Mox will happen next reprint. Mana Crypt might happen the next time it's reprinted. Mox Diamond will probably never happen.

Combo Pieces

The combos are explained above, but within the Aluren combo there are options for what to run. I want to use this space to discuss them.

If I could play one more card like Recruiter of the Guard, then the Aluren combo would be immune to creature removal. But alas, Imperial Recruiter is red. If anyone knows of another creature that can tutor other creatures, do let me know! Even if it sacrificed itself it would still work; all I would have to do is add Eternal Witness. Another option would be a spell that I can cast for free that works with Spellseeker. Summoner's Pact doesn't quite work because I need to search for non-green creatures.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 54 - 1 Rares 20 - 2 Uncommons 22 - 1 Commons
Cards	101
Avg. CMC	1.80
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U