Moved Birthing Pod into the sideboard until I can decide on a suite of 2-3 creatures with 4 CMC to add. After some recent changes to the deck it's unable to bridge the gap between 3 and 5 CMC. Replaced it with Riftsweeper for additional graveyard hate protection.

Heavy revision tonight after some testing and discussion with my group. Streamlining the deck to find the Aluren combo faster and take better advantage of it without cutting any of the Rock-like aspects. Added more tutors, card draw and ramp while cutting the weakest creatures and recursion options.

Testing Sepulchral Primordial in place of Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. Several of the creatures I would want Mike to help are Human so he's not at full power while recurring the Primordial gives an alternative wincon at only 1 higher CMC.

Several changes going into 2-12's FNM reflected in the current list. The deck worked exactly as intended: stabilizing once I got a recursion loop of Merciless Executioner in play that put everyone else back about 2 turns in development. This gave me enough time to get my combo online and I won during my endstep as follows:

Meren's trigger brought out Sidisi, Undead Vizier for a self-sac to tutor up Geralf's Messenger. I had Eternal Witness and the Executioner in hand and was able to combo out despite some removal being thrown my way.

While I did make clutch use of Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed that game to get additional Executioner plays and to bump up Meren's experience count early on I'm considering pulling him out once more to test other cards.

2-19 FNM only had time for one marathon game vs. Child of Alara very heavy control, Marath, Will of the Wild straight out of the box, and Olivia Voldaren mix of voltron and vamp tribal.

So, I did lose the game (first one out) but it took 3.5 of the 4 hours of play and the combined efforts of all three decks. This did mostly come from Child of Alara because that deck was probably half removal and prison effects while the others at least tried to win short of exhaustion. I was also playing at 75% of ideal after a long work day. All in all, not that bad.

The short version (it WAS a 4 hour game) of what happened is as follows: Ramped early in time to recur Merciless Executioner several times to set Olivia's player back to square one while setting up some sac outlets. Alara got Maelstrom Nexus + Spirit of Resistance out and when finally came out from under waves of destruction sent my way to blow them up with Acidic Slime and Reclamation Sage he had a clutch Boros Charm ready. Cast Living Death twice on my next turn (saccing everything in between to Ashnod's Altar) to start to get a handle on things, but I had lost several of my bombs at this point from Alara player's multiple exile effects. Died three turns later right before I would have gone off with the Aluren combo when the other two convinced Marath I was still Archenemy and he had ETB damage triggers while Wound Reflection was in play.

If I could have gotten through Alara's combat protection sooner I think I would have won because I was easily able to keep the other two in check with my removal suite.

Haven't been awed with the performance of Avenger of Zendikar + Craterhoof Behemoth in the deck lately. I know this is practically heresy for any single or dual color deck with green mana, and I also know I could include Tooth and Nail for the pair, but they've always ended up at odds with what the rest of the deck wants to do. Also, one will often end up in my graveyard from Hermit Druid or discard plays by opponents and they hurt to reanimate while bringing them in with Meren gives everyone a full round of the table to beat me down to size.

Going to try replacing them with Terastodon and Woodland Bellower. Bellower seems a little weak when most of my low CMC creatures are black but he gives me a way to grab up Eternal Witness, Reclamation Sage, or even Skullwinder. My most controlling plays have tended to involve repeated ETB from Merciless Executioner in a single turn, so Witness-on-a-Big-Stick isn't too bad.

Testing several other cards that I'll bring up later - Mikaeus may make a return!

Updated with the current list I'm running. This list is much more defensive and disruptive than before by giving up the Avenger+Hoof package in favor of strengthening the removal toolbox. Kalitas and Mindslicer were just added and haven't been tested yet. I'm noticing that, at least in dueling, the combo is deemphasized almost entirely in favor of control now. I've cut Necropotence for now because it's too risky in the face of a recent uptick in enchantment hate in my meta; the triple doesn't help either for early play.

Oh, and why swap Life/Death out for Stitch Together? It's because I'm finding threshold extremely easy to enable even without going to lengths to do it. This makes Stitch better due to lack of life loss.

Planechase game tonight vs. Avacyn (Boardwipes/Control), Sen Triplets, Edric Spymaster (1/1 flyers spam, removal), and Tasigur (Control).

I've never seen so many board wipes and targeted removal spells get tossed out in a short time. Give myself a few bonus points for using Krosan Grip on an O-ring to return Avacyn-player's Elesh Norn to play to clear out a horde of flyers and Thada Adel, Acquisitor that was about to steal Darksteel Forge + Mycosynth Lattice from the Sen Triplets player's library. Nearly found my value win by saccing Mindslicer, put Meren in play and was going to return Mikaeus the next turn but Sen Triplets got the Lattice out and used Austere Command on artifacts. Two very lucky Planechase chaos triggers later, that player got to put 6 basic lands into play from library and won off that head start.