[Deck] Aggro Loam

[Aggro_zombies]

What is Aggro Loam?

Modern Aggro Loam strategies developed from the CALS deck from Extended seasons past, but their true spiritual predecessor is the old Wildfire list of the Urza’s / Tempest Standard format, known famously as being nothing but mana and bombs. Aggro Loam also blends elements of midrange control decks such as the Invasion-era Extended versions of The Rock and it is remarkably similar to modern Standard Jund lists in terms of redundancy, card advantage, and power. The final product of all of this is an aggro-control deck capable of both destructive board control and walloping beats.

Aggro Loam builds have existed in the format for a while but for a long time saw more play in Europe than in America; while popular in 2008 and early 2009, the ascendancy of Counterbalance in March of that year made Aggro Loam a less attractive choice as the deck lacked compelling tools to answer Counterbalance. While the matchup was not impossible, it is probable that many players shied away from the deck in favor of something with a much stronger game against Counterbalance. As the year progressed, Merfolk became the default answer to Countertop’s strong GP performance, but then lost ground to Zoo as the meta began to shift rapidly to decks that could answer the previous tournament’s winners. By late fall of 2009, Zoo began to underperform as Counterbalance builds started using Progenitus as a way to effectively address what had previously been a rough matchup. As the meta began to diversify once again, the last major tournament of the year took place in St. Louis – and it was won by Pat McGregor and his Aggro Loam deck.

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Countryside Crusher
1 Terravore

4 Life from the Loam
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Terminate
3 Seismic Assault
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mox Diamond

4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
2 Mountain
1 Forest
4 Forgotten Cave
4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Firespout
4 Zuran Orb
3 Krosan Grip
1 Thorn of Amethyst

Pat McGregor’s list marks a break with what many might regard as the “traditional” Aggro Loam build using Burning Wish and multiple Devastating Dreams in the main. Several factors had combined to make such an approach less attractive, if not outright obsolete:

- The speed of the format, coupled with the popularity of blue and Spell Snare specifically, make these cards much less attractive.
- Traditional builds of Aggro Loam have a difficult time answering a live Counterbalance and lose a lot of steam when forced to play through it.
- Graveyard hate began to rise in the format as Ichorid became popular in the middle of the year, and the M10 rules changes made Burning Wish much worse at circumventing it.
- Aggro Loam’s primary route to victory – winning through strong internal synergy – fell under siege from several sides: on the one hand, blue disruption was particularly good at unraveling key components of the synergy tapestry, while on the other hand, several decks with equally strong synergy began to appear in the format.

Pat seems to have realized these points and addressed them by running more proactive, pinpoint removal spells and using the deck’s redundancy and to cover its potential softness to hate. While the deck loses some of the internal synergy that made Aggro Loam so impressive before, it makes up for it with raw power.

After McGregor's finish, several players (including myself) piloted similar or identical lists to decent finishes in subsequent tournaments for the next several months. A Russian Naya list, eschewing black for Knight of the Reliquary and Swords to Plowshares, placed just outside a combo-heavy top 8 at GP Madrid several months later, but flew largely under the radar; interest in the deck waned and it stopped making appearances in American tournaments. Mystical Tutor's banning on the eve of GP Columbus did almost nothing to revitalize interest in the deck, and the aftermath of that tournament made the situation worse as Survival rose to become Legacy's preeminent strategy in America (followed, belatedly, by good showings in Europe). Survival was a better midrange deck in virtually every way: it had more flexibility, more mid- and late-game power, and more ability to dodge or neutralize hate. Aggro Loam completely disappeared.

It would take both the banning of Survival in the final days of 2010 and the printing of Mental Misstep in the spring of 2011 to push the deck back into the limelight. Mental Misstep was a game-changer in many ways: not only did it increase the power of various midrange blue decks (decent matchups for Aggro Loam), it also slowed the format down to the point where a deck with a large amount of late-game plays could safely compete. Players looking for a deck free of one-drops, and therefore immune to an opponent's Misstep plan, brushed off McGregor-style Aggro Loam lists and updated them with the addition of cards like Punishing Fires and Sylvan Library. For the length of Misstep's legality in the format, Aggro Loam was a solid non-blue option.

However, Misstep got the axe at the next Banned and Restricted List update, and the format entered a period of drift. Many players assumed the format would revert to the way it was prior to Misstep's printing, but the Starcity Games circuit continued to be dominated by various blue decks well into the fall. Format inertia, and the development of other decks, caused Aggro Loam to slip back into fringe deck territory.

SCG: Los Angeles and The Major Rethink

On January 15th, 2012, SCG held one of its Opens in Los Angeles. While Maverick was the big winner at that tournament, Tony DeVeyra (Antonius) placed 12th with the first truly major, successful redesign of the deck since McGregor's list two years prior. First, the list he played:

2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant
2 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Countryside Crusher

4 Life from the Loam
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Seismic Assault
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mox Diamond

4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
2 Mountain
1 Forest
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold

Sideboard:
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Krosan Grip
2 Noxious Revivial
3 Pyroblast
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Devastating Dreams
2 Thoughtseize

Much of the deck's core remains the same, but a few key changes were made:

• No more Chalice. I'll discuss the various arguments for and against Chalice later, but here I'd like to point out that removing Chalice opened Antonius up to running his own one-drops, giving him more early game plays.
• Different creature configuration. Tarmogoyf has typically been on the weaker side in this deck; you can easily get him to about a 3/4, but vanilla 3/4s are just not what they used to be. Cutting into the Tarmogoyf numbers in favor of Scavenging Ooze gives the deck another large-ish creature as well as maindeck ways to deal with Snapcasters, Knights, Tarmogoyfs, and so on.
• Streamlined spell slots. During the Mental Misstep era, players experimented with a variety of removal options, including Terminate and Punishing Fires, that gave the deck a more attrition-based control bent. Antonius's streamlined spell roster tilted the deck back in the direction of midrange aggro.
• Expanded sideboard options. Noxious Revival in particular is interesting as a non-clunky, far cheaper Eternal Witness.

These changes allowed the deck to keep pace with a metagame dominated by decks capable of generating significant value in the early and mid-games through the use of powerful utility creatures (particularly Stoneforge Mystic, but also Snapcaster Mage, Mother of Runes, and the dork-heavy, GSZ-fueled Maverick lists). Removing Chalice and giving the deck more of a real curve allowed it to compete early without needing a Mox Diamond, but the deck lost very little power in the late game, Aggro Loam's traditional area of dominance.

The Current State of Things

If you're experimenting with Aggro Loam now, Antonius's list is a good place to start. It combines the rock-solid mana of the three-color versions with a consistent core of spells focused on power and card advantage. However, there are two other options available:

Four-color lists: Typically, these lists dip into white for Swords and Knight but stay in black for Dark Confidant and sometimes Maelstrom Pulse and sideboard options. While your spells are all very powerful, your mana generally isn't; you really need a Mox Diamond to effectively cast spells in a deck that wants to hit WGGRRRB in the course of a game.

Naya lists: I have yet to see these gain any traction outside of Russia, but it's worth mentioning them. These decks typically make up for the loss of Bob with either Sylvan Library or an increased reliance on Loam; they get to keep the powerful finishers of the four-color builds but have much better mana. They can also compensate for a generally three-drop-dense curve with two of the best removal spells at one mana, Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares. I'm not sure I like the trade of Bob and Pulse for white, but these lists are not bad by any stretch.

In the next post, I'll address some important card choices and major debates for the deck.

Current as of 22-ii-2012. Banner compliments of sdematt.