Aggro Loam Primer

[Admiral_Arzar]

Care to post a list? I'm interested to see if people are putting Fires more in the Lavamancer slot or Pulse or what?

This is my most recent Jund-colored list (yes, it is 61 cards):

4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher

4 Mox Diamond
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Punishing Fire
4 Burning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
2 Seismic Assault
2 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
2 Badlands
1 Forest
1 Mountain

Sideboard
1 Shattering Spree
1 Life from the Loam
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Firespout
1 Perish
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Reverent Silence
1 Worm Harvest

1 Volrath's Stronghold
2 Krosan Grip
4 Chalice of the Void

This list is burn-heavy, which is very appropriate for my meta - full of Stoneblade.dec, Dark Confidant, Cat Sligh, and Tribal decks. Burning Wish -> Devastating Dreams is, for lack of a better word, devastating in non-blue matchups. Burning Wish -> Perish also gives it a shot against NOPRO decks, which are otherwise a very bad matchup. Chalice comes in a against combo or decks like Cat Sligh and Burn where it saves your ass. Combo is still an incredibly bad matchup though, I don't ever really expect to win unless they go all-in on Empty the Warrens or whatever. I run no grave hate because nobody but me plays graveyard decks in my meta. This deck has performed pretty well, but I think I'm going to experiment with cutting black and running Knight and STP, as there's a lot of red spells in my meta and Bob rarely lives long enough to make a difference.

[Koby]

Why are you running the 2nd Badlands in place of the 2nd Taiga? The only black card maindeck is Bob, which more often then not, will be cast off a Mox Diamond. Furthermore, there is no double black requirement in the 75. Aside from that, how has Burning Wish performed as a general utility spell? Do you ever feel like a Terravore or 13th creature would ever become useful for you?

RE: Combo - Consider Raven's Crime to help out. It's easily tutored for with Burning Wish.

[Shawon]

Have you considered Retribution of the Meek instead of Perish? It fights both Progenitus and Emrakul. EDIT: Nevermind, you don't run white.

[Koby]

Have you considered Retribution of the Meek instead of Perish? It fights both Progenitus and Emrakul.

This requires a white splash in a deck that doesn't already run any white cards.

[Nidd]

Fire/Grove is a lousy clock too, netting you only ONE DAMAGE A TURN if you decide to use it on your opponent's life total.

To be fair, decks where you can call Fire/Grove a clock can't handle it - UBG and UW Landstill come to mind. And when it's gonna win but takes a shitload of time, that's fine for you - they won't kill you in 5 minutes next game. So they either scoop because they can't win preboard, or they pretty much hand you the match for free by playing it out and then dying to Fire/Grove after painful 30-40 minutes.

[CorpT]

This is my most recent Jund-colored list (yes, it is 61 cards):

IMO, this is a really great looking list. I think I've given up on 4 color lists after running into all sorts of mana issues with it. I would make a few tweaks, but I think this is a great starting point. I would consider running Grims as has been suggested, but I really like Fires alongside Assault.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Why are you running the 2nd Badlands in place of the 2nd Taiga? The only black card maindeck is Bob, which more often then not, will be cast off a Mox Diamond. Furthermore, there is no double black requirement in the 75. Aside from that, how has Burning Wish performed as a general utility spell? Do you ever feel like a Terravore or 13th creature would ever become useful for you?

RE: Combo - Consider Raven's Crime to help out. It's easily tutored for with Burning Wish.

I only run one Taiga because Grove of the Burnwillows gives me three additional R/G lands, but one Badlands could easily be swapped with one Taiga. Burning Wish is AMAZING. I originally cut it because it wrecked my sideboard, but put it back in soon afterward. It allows you to answer damn near any permanent(s), fetches Loam if you don't draw it/it gets Extirpated, and even fetches a win condition in Worm Harvest. I was running Raven's Crime in the board at one point, but Wish -> Crime is way too slow against combo to save you unless you get a god draw. It also clashes with Chalice, which is still awesome in some matchups.

To be fair, decks where you can call Fire/Grove a clock can't handle it - UBG and UW Landstill come to mind. And when it's gonna win but takes a shitload of time, that's fine for you - they won't kill you in 5 minutes next game. So they either scoop because they can't win preboard, or they pretty much hand you the match for free by playing it out and then dying to Fire/Grove after painful 30-40 minutes.

This. You rarely rely on Fires/Grove as a clock - you kill a bunch of dudes and set up a game state in which any threat you draw will win you the game.

IMO, this is a really great looking list. I think I've given up on 4 color lists after running into all sorts of mana issues with it. I would make a few tweaks, but I think this is a great starting point. I would consider running Grims as has been suggested, but I really like Fires alongside Assault.

Thanks. I have tested lists with 2-3 Grims, but there really isn't room for everything (You need to cut either Bolts or Wishes, or the Pfires engine, to fit them in). Grims were fun, but I found the aforementioned cards to be better after testing. Also, there are occasional times where you don't want to remove cards, as this is a graveyard-based deck (not usually a big issue, but it comes up). The one drawback of cutting Grims is it worsens the tribal matchups a little. This deck is already pretty solid in those matchups though, especially since I added 2 basics (originally there were none and I would get Wasteland + tempo'd out by Merfolk occasionally).

[Koby]

Maybe we should continue this discussion in the Aggro Loam thread. We're starting to derail the feedback on the primer itself.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Maybe we should continue this discussion in the Aggro Loam thread. We're starting to derail the feedback on the primer itself.

Yeah, I didn't actually even read the primer, TBH.

EDIT: Posted my list in the Aggro Loam thread. Continue there.

[CorpT]

Yeah, I didn't actually even read the primer, TBH.

Don't worry, you didn't miss much. The author is convinced he is 100% correct about everything and won't have much of a reasonable conversation. Look at the first lines:

"It is, by definition a Jund deck. Some like to play Jund plus white – that can work, but I don’t think white is necessary. Some believe in Naya. That’s nice, but that’s also wrong. Aggro Loam is fundamentally a Jund deck."

Lot of good discussion you can have when someone starts out telling everyone who disagrees with him that they're wrong. He's basically a mini-IBA. Aggro Loam can be a lot of things. It has aggro cards and loam in it. Neither of those are defined as RGB even though that is the most common Aggro Loam deck. The articles goes downhill from there.

[Aggro_zombies]

Don't worry, you didn't miss much. The author is convinced he is 100% correct about everything and won't have much of a reasonable conversation. Look at the first lines:

"It is, by definition a Jund deck. Some like to play Jund plus white – that can work, but I don’t think white is necessary. Some believe in Naya. That’s nice, but that’s also wrong. Aggro Loam is fundamentally a Jund deck."

Lot of good discussion you can have when someone starts out telling everyone who disagrees with him that they're wrong. He's basically a mini-IBA. Aggro Loam can be a lot of things. It has aggro cards and loam in it. Neither of those are defined as RGB even though that is the most common Aggro Loam deck. The articles goes downhill from there.

Well, he's...actually kind of correct.

The reason Aggro Loam exists as a deck at all is because of synergy; with the exception of Bob (if you're in black), Knight (if you're in white), and possibly Loam, pretty much every other card in the deck is just kind of meh. You make them good by combining them all with each other - the deck is built on synergy and redundancy more than raw power, in contrast to a deck like, say, Zoo or Stoneblade. That was a lot of the reason the old Jund lists from Standard were good - not so much because they were full of ridiculous cards outside of Bloodbraid Elf, but because all of the cards worked together to slowly build up a huge wave of inevitability, and because the deck had enough redundancy that there wasn't any one silver bullet angle of attack you could use to beat it.

I think the Jund colors accomplish this goal better than Naya, and four-color lists are dangerously reliant on Mox Diamond to hold together their (usually) shabby mana. Naya basically just gives you Knight, whereas black gives you Bob, and between them I'd rather have Bob. The closest white equivalents to his role in the deck are Sylvan Library and Scroll Rack, and neither are remotely as good. You could go four-color and have Knight and Bob, but then you ruin your mana to get a couple extra fat dorks and the ability to do some cute stuff with on-demand Crop Rotations, but there's already a wealth of options in Jund colors that sort of invalidate the need for "just" another big guy.

[Antonius]

Don't worry, you didn't miss much. The author is convinced he is 100% correct about everything and won't have much of a reasonable conversation.

Of course I'm convinced that I am right. Are you not convinced that you are right? Would we even be debating this if neither of us believed their own opinions to be correct? It is customary to state an opinion, then to support said opinion with arguments and facts and figures gathered from research or testing in the field (much more of the latter in my case, which is why I did not speak of the SCG List--a man should not speak of what he does not know). I have done that and used five thousand words to quantify and flesh out my arguments. What of you, ser? In other words: Convince me, bro!

I have posted my opinions on the Aggro Loam thread many a time, usually in direct opposition to yours, yet you have never engaged me, so I think that your chafing over how strongly I state my opinions in my article, on my site, is well, unfair. If the severity and conciseness of my language offends you, then I am sorry. Would it have been better if I prefaced every statement, every claim with a weakening in my opinion... or i believe... or it has been my experience...? No, that would be nonsensical because no one has ever strengthened an argument via self-negation. Besides, the first-person structure of the article implies these things already.

Aggro_Zombies has it correct: you will find the most synergy in Jund. I say what I do about Naya be cause I have tried Naya and found it to be lacking. 4 Knight 4 Crusher 3 Terravore 3 Seismic Assault was rather powerful but folded to Daze and Wasteland. I suppose a sloping midrange deck with Wild Nacatls could be used, but Wild Nacatl is a card that feels so under-powered in the late game. I can scarcely imagine a situation where one would be happy to Crush into a Nacatl.

Swords to Plowshares: is very powerful but I feel Dark Confidant is better--I could expound upon this but I believe at this point we all know the arguments and they are all rather strong, Bob is a threat and an engine for advantage, surely preferable to a reactive card--especially when you already have reactive cards that cover those bases in Bob's colors. If you wanted to go four color, then that's on you, but there will be many situations where you would much rather have a basic forest or basic mountain but the sculpt of the cards in your hand requires you to get Plateau or Savannah instead and opens you up to being cut off of multiple colors, the more powerful cards in your deck, and, potentially, using loam to further stabilize your mana base. It is a trade-off, one that I personally think is not worthwhile. Basic lands are very, very powerful.

[soltakar]

Antonius - I believe that some of the issues that people are having with your primer is that typically a primer is only filled with the facts about a particular deck: the development history, results history, successful decklists, possible variations on decklists, etc. While I greatly respect your opinion about aggro loam, in large part due to the success that you've had, it probably doesn't belong in a primer about a deck but instead as a follow-up to the primer itself.

[Aggro_zombies]

Antonius - I believe that some of the issues that people are having with your primer is that typically a primer is only filled with the facts about a particular deck: the development history, results history, successful decklists, possible variations on decklists, etc. While I greatly respect your opinion about aggro loam, in large part due to the success that you've had, it probably doesn't belong in a primer about a deck but instead as a follow-up to the primer itself.

I actually think his primer was fine.

There's a lot of divergence in the deck right now: Naya, Jund, or four-color; Chalice or not; Fires or not; Wish or not; what late-game packages to run and in what amounts. It's difficult to address all of those and, to be honest, in many cases the decisions you make need to reflect your metagame and will probably reflect your stylistic leanings. Naya Loam, for example, is about as big as Big Zoo can get, and it plays very differently from a more traditional Jund build even though they share a lot of the same cards. A four-color build is going to face a host of different issues than a Naya or Jund build, and addressing all of them is messy and time-consuming. Plus, even within the individual color builds, there are divergent card choices, which makes generalization kind of difficult because someone will come back and say, "Well, I didn't have that issue because in my build..."

I think it's fine to narrow a primer down to what you play and what you've experienced and write about that. Not only is it generally easier to write, you can give better advice because you're writing what you know; other people who play other builds can chip in with their own primers. Personally, I think Antonius's build is a perfect place to start because it's the most basic version of the deck: if you take that version and play with it a lot, not only will you learn how and why the deck works, you'll also gain an appreciation for how and why divergent card choices might also work.

[Nonex]

@ Antonius: I have a little doubt about the sideboard. You mention Perish to fight Progenitus. Could Phyrexian Metamorph do the trick? It doesn't get rid of green hordes, but it kills both Progenitus and Emrakul, and worst case scenario it can copy a Confidant or Crusher, or an opponent's Knight or pesky equipment. I'm going to test your list, but I'm still talking from ignorance. What do you think?

[trivial_matters]

Recently, I've been thinking of building Aggro Loam. I've never played it, but it seems interesting and fun -- a deck packing both Life from the Loam and Dark Confidant, who is amongst my favourite cards, has a lot going for it.
Originally I wanted to build The Rock, hence I have stuff like Mox Diamonds etc., but now I think it might be Aggro Loam (and perhaps The Rock later).

When I have more time I'll make sure to read both the primer here on the source and the primer linked to, as well as try some lists on MWS/Cockatrice and see what playing the deck is actually like.

[Antonius]

@ Antonius: I have a little doubt about the sideboard. You mention Perish to fight Progenitus. Could Phyrexian Metamorph do the trick? It doesn't get rid of green hordes, but it kills both Progenitus and Emrakul, and worst case scenario it can copy a Confidant or Crusher, or an opponent's Knight or pesky equipment. I'm going to test your list, but I'm still talking from ignorance. What do you think?

I have considered metamorph but have never played it. It seems as though it would work, though.

[sauce]

i just played the 4 color loam list ( http://decks.mtgoacademy.com/Decks.aspx?ID=43090 ) at a local paper magic tournament.

the entire tournament, i felt like the manabase was definitely very f'd up.
every game i did not have a mox diamond was a battle against my own deck.

i've never played loam in a tournament before, so i just went w/ a 4 color version because it seemed very powerful.
the ability to have kor + stp + vindicate seemed too good to pass up.

throughout the tournament i've vindicated:
batterskull, forest, sfm, tarmogoyf, opposing kor.

obviously the card is a lot more versatile than mpulse, but it also stretches the mana as the deck really just wants to go RG because of goyf/vore/loam/d.dreams, but then it also needs black + white as splashes and getting both of the splash colors (B + W) for vindicate on two different lands reminds me of playing the 5c zoo in extended.
the hardest part is figuring out which land to fetch, etc.

throughout the tournament, i've defeated:

rd1 - i beat gerryt's BUG/team america deck in 3 very close games. stifle+wasteland are very annoying vs this manabase. g3 was won on the back of bbe's out of the board.
rd2 - gw maverick style deck, i won in 3 games, all 3 games were blowouts. something awesome about eot stp your noble, untap, wasteland your dual.
rd3 - uw sfm/visions, i won in 2 games, g1 was very long and he almost got me w/ double equipped batterskull, but i was able to finally hit loam/wasteland and come back since he stp'd huge mclarge kor/crushers to put me back to 15 from 3. g2 he mulled to 6 on the play, bricked on brainstorm and i played t2 goyf, t3 kor.
rd4 - id w/ belcher
-cut to top4-
rd5 - naya zoo, i took it down in 3 games, crusher is insane vs zoo (tell me more!)
rd6 (finals) - id w/ belcher again (phew)


final thoughts:

i am not sure if i want to play this version anymore, i do like the idea of running less colors.

devastating dreams was absurd the entire tournament.

i never got to cast worm's harvest.

[Richard Cheese]

i just played the 4 color loam list...

You should post this in the Aggro Loam Deck forum (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...eck-Aggro-Loam)

That manabase looks really bad IMO. As cute as it is to do tricks with KotR, having things like Bojuka Bog, Karakas, Maze, and Riftstone Portal main is just greedy, as is having 6 fetches and only 5 targets. Dreams is also pretty bad in a list that's trying to stretch it's manabase.

[routlaw]

I've been running that list and not had too much mana problems-and LOVE the three maindeck Devastating Dreams. It's not terribly difficult to eventually resolve against most decks, even blue ones-especially if they are blowing out all their Force of Wills (pitching their conditional counters) to prevent you from sticking Knight of the Reliquary or some other absurd huge creature.

If you do want to make the manabase more stable you can honestly cut the riftstone portal, bog, and maze in that order for more fetches or duals. It honestly works out just fine. Yes, fetching is pretty awkward for the deck but (like in Blue Zoo) it mostly works out fine. The Groves are nice fixing.

Though against blue decks (except for Merfolk) I board them out in favor of the sideboarded Bloodbraid Elves, which are amazing in the control matchups.

I see the white less for Vindicate over Maelstrom Pulse, and instead so you can run Knight of the Reliquary and a small land toolbox. I vindicate lands only about 15-20% of the time.

I'm currently playing the two Swords to Plowshares and am somewhat iffy on them. They are the only two misstep'able cards in my maindeck (I have the REB's on the side, but have been questioning those too, they don't do enough except against Merfolk) and they do often eat missteps where something like Go for the Throat or an edict effect (edict in particular seems good in the format right now) dodges misstep. I do lose some cheap interaction but the format is slow enough now that I wonder if I can get away with it. Blanking opposing missteps seems really good given how miserable Force of Will is against Aggro Loam.

I think the worm harvest is cute but not that all that great. I cast it maybe once every 12-13 games or so, and it's usually win more. Raven's Crime to pave the way for a mid/late game Devastating Dreams might be better in a control meta, and more removal might be better against aggro meta.