cEDH Tymna Thras Aluren [Primer]

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive GWUB Infinite Combo Multiplayer Primer

firerif

Land (28)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Snow-Covered Forest
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Timetwister

Artifact (5)

• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Null Rod
• 1x Sol Ring

Instant (24)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Silence
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Enchantment (11)

• 1x Aluren
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sterling Grove
• 1x Stony Silence
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Wild Growth

Commanders (2)

Creature (23)

• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Cavern Harpy
• 1x Cloud of Faeries
• 1x Containment Priest
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Knight of Autumn
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Runic Armasaur
• 1x Sedraxis Alchemist
• 1x Spellseeker

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Maybeboard

Creature (9)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Beast Whisperer
• 1x Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Manglehorn
• 1x Parasitic Strix
• 1x Skullwinder

Instant (8)

• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Summoner's Pact
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Root Maze
• 1x Suppression Field

Artifact (1)

• 1x Tangle Wire

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Windfall

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Aluren decks are built to abuse the cards Aluren + Cavern Harpy to win the game through creature based tutor chains. It seeks to play a slot efficient combo, with almost all of it’s pieces having uses aside from just comboing. The deck shares similarities with many midrange lists, and is loosely based on PST with a creature based combo rather than a artifact one. This is a large motivation to playing the deck since it allows us to play Stony Silence and Null Rod, making the deck better against fast artifact based combos. Additionally, since so many of our cards are creatures (many of which also fly), the deck is able to capitalize on the power of Tymna the Weaver as a card draw engine quite well.

Opening hands

Tymna

One of the most powerful openings this deck can have is an early tymna with a flyer. An opening hand that can play a turn 2 tymna alongside a Cloud of Faeries or a Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch is often strong enough to keep on its own. Couple this up with a stax piece, tutor, or card advantage engine, and the hand will often function quite well.

Rhystic Study/Mystic Remora/Runic Armasaur/Sylvan Library/Dark Confidant

Not much needs to be said about the power of these cards. Playing them early will often be enough to win the game in their own. The raw card advantage they create is often powerful enough to justify keeping hands with little other support. If I was guaranteed any one of these turn 1 that alone is often enough for me to keep.

Stax

Hands that contain powerful stax effects like Stony Silence or Aven Mindcensor are difficult to deal with. If landed early, they can be back breaking against certain decks, but often you will find that they only affect some of the decks at the table or, if they affect multiple opponents, will be huge bullseyes, and difficult to protect. If you can curve the piece out well, and you know it will be strong against multiple decks it is reasonable to keep a hand based on these pieces, but you should be able to cast a tymna or similar card advantage engine if the stax plan doesn't work out.

Ad Naus/Necro

These cards are extremely powerful, and can be game winning on their own. Knowing how far to go, and when to stop is based on experience, meta, and boardstate. How they factor into opening hands is thus something that you need to decide on you own.

Twister

A T1-2 twister is potentially game winning. If you have the mana to cast an early twister you have likely spent many of your resources to develop your mana, and be low on cards to begin with, and the added benefit of messing with your opponents opening hands makes this play all the better.

Gameplay

Riding off your opening hand, the decisions you make should be towards generating card advantage and setting up to combo. Early tutor targets are mostly card advantage pieces such as Dark Confidant, slyvan library or Rhystic Study and stax pieces like Aven Mindcensor, Null Rod, Lavinia, Azorius Renegade (nice to have on board before aluren) or Gilded Drake (a mindcensor or Linvala).

Don’t be afraid to use your many combo pieces for value. Owing to how the combo uses tutor chains, you will find that even if your combo pieces get exiled, often you will still be able to combo at the cost of a bit more life. If they are exiled or destroyed you merely need to tutor up Riftsweeper or Eternal Witness, put the card back in your hand/deck, and use the recruiter to find it again.

When to fire the combo is a tricky question. It relies on experience to know when the table is out of resources, or you have more resources than them. Fortunately, unlike some decks, we can still win even after a failed combo. Aluren allows you to cast your commanders for free, as well as dump all the creatures in your hand. Even if temporary, this effect can be quite strong - allowing you to create a powerful board presence even if the aluren is destroyed.

Additionally, since Aluren provides flash, it allows the deck to go off at instant speed once resolved, allowing the player to pick the optimal moment to attempt a win (like when a Nature's Claim targeting aluren is on the stack) or do the combo across multiple turns under a Rule of Law or Damping Sphere.

Winning The Game

To win the game your main game plan is Recruiter of the Guard. With Aluren and Recruiter in hand you should be able to lock your opponents out of the game with your main combo line of:

• Play Recruiter of the Guard->Fetch Sedraxis Alchemist
• If you have no blue permanents play Thrasios, Triton Hero from the command zone
• Play Alchemist->Bounce Recruiter->Play Recruiter->Fetch Cavern Harpy
• Play Harpy->Bounce Alchemist->Play Alchemist->Bounce Recruiter->Fetch Knight of Autumn
• Play Knight->Gain 4 Life
• Demonstrate loop of paying 1 life to bounce Knight and gaining net 3 life: Gain infinite life.
• You can now effectively retrigger any ETB effect for free.
• Trigger Recruiter to find Cloud of Faeries->Loop Cloud for infinite mana->Draw your deck with Thrasios
• Then use Assassin's Trophy + Eternal Witness to blow up all opposing permanents (Cyclonic Rift for indestructible or hexproof ones.)
• And loop Witness with Swan Song and any spell that it can counter to make infinite bird tokens.
• If you’re worried still, you can play your stax pieces, use Gitaxian Probe and Timetwister to wheel you opponents hands to oblivion, and even keep up infinite counterspells with Witness.

Notable Interactions/Meta dependent cards

Like storm decks, a Chain of Vapor on our own creatures can be an incredibly powerful play. However with Aluren out it can be even better since we can cast creatures at instant speed to bounce them multiple times with one chain of vapor. This can be a way to setup a win when we can’t use Cavern Harpy for some reason. (cursed totem/Linvala or as a response to some interaction while harpy is on the stack)

With Aluren out, we can play our commanders along with other creatures to convoke a Chord of Calling. A helpful note when trying to set up combo lines.

Nercopotence and Aluren are a build your own shimmer zur. Flash in all your creatures at endstep and combo out.

Nature's Claim, Eternal Witness, Cloud of Faeries and a zero mana artifact can be a sorcery speed replacement for Knight of Autumn.

Suppression Field is a powerful card that the deck can sorta play. We have one “free” tutor in setting up the combo line (ie. one that doesn’t require a harpy activation) that is normally used to get Knight of Autumn so we can combo even at 1 life. However this can also be used to find Sedraxis Alchemist or… Knight of Autumn with a different mode to deal with a cursed totem/Linvala/suppression field effect. However, being a Thrasios, Triton Hero deck, activated abilities, while not super necessary, are nice.

Notable Exclusions

In legacy Aluren decks contain Parasitic Strix to combo with Cavern Harpy on its own. However in the eternal cEDH quest to waste 0 slots, we have opted for a line composed of cards that were already in the deck, and others that aren’t dead draws when we aren’t comboing.

Similarly Cloudstone Curio is often run with aluren in casual edh decks. This artifact allows you to infinitely play and bounce a creature, making it effectively a second Cavern Harpy. However it is not a creature and thus cannot be played off of aluren or tutored by Recruiter of the Guard. This means that it must be tutored up as a third combo piece, and doesn’t work with the main combo line. Thus it was cut from this version of the deck.

Special thanks to:

Soren841 for a lot of decktesting on untap.in. His version can be found here https://deckstats.net/decks/86132/1250016-cedh-thrasios-and-tymna-aluren

Jp1314 for theorycrafting. His take on the deck an be found here: Aluren Shimmer Storm

And the cEDH discord for helping finetune the deck and find places for the format staples.

Top Ranked	Achieved #39 position overall 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH GWUB 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Primer 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Key combos	Aluren + Cavern Harpy
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 58 - 0 Rares 11 - 0 Uncommons 17 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.81
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	Liked Decks, cEDH, #cEDH, Ideas, Deck References, CEDH LISTS, Partner, Favorite Decks