[Deck] Aggro Loam [Archive] - Page 4

Aggro_zombies

10-25-2011, 04:10 PM

I'm just not seeing that. On paper Pridemages and Tops instead of Bobs and Crushers just doesn't seem that much faster. Definitely an interesting, and apparently proven, take on Naya Loam.
Bob is a terrible attacker in Legacy (actually, in general as well). He's a 2/1 with no evasion and you rarely want to send him into combat anyway because he's more valuable as a Phyrexian Arena than as damage. Pridemage is at least a Watchwolf alone, a bear when not, and lends his support to bigger creatures when you can't safely attack with him.

Crusher does not seem hot in a format with a lot of StPs (with Snapcasters), bounce spells, GftT/Dismembers, etc. I would rather run Terravore because he's bigger right away, but Knight is probably better than either of those except for the fact that you need white for her.

However, the dorks aside, he runs Bolt, StP, and Top on one when most Aggro Loam lists, even Jund ones, run zero one drops despite not having Chalice. It gives him more options when creating an early-game presence and keeps him from falling too far behind against tempo decks. He is far less reliant on Mox Diamond than most Jund builds, for example, and if I were Canadian Thresh against this deck I would seriously consider Spell Piercing/Dazing the Diamonds because it's practically a Time Walk against most AL builds.

My biggest beef is that I feel Big Zoo with GSZ and planeswalkers is just a better implementation, but he's been playing this build since forever and has a lot of play experience, so that helps.

marcel

10-28-2011, 07:17 PM

He's playing Big Zoo but with an Aggro Loam package. Dreams gives him ways to trump other aggro decks and Loam and Assault give him some late game against blue decks.

His build is one of the ways to fix Aggro Loam's speed issues.

So why any other loam RGBW is not a big zoo with loam package??
I think there is much more than that in his deck

Anyway, what do you think about throwing away completely the black colour?

Aggro_zombies

10-31-2011, 04:13 PM

So why any other loam RGBW is not a big zoo with loam package??
I think there is much more than that in his deck

Anyway, what do you think about throwing away completely the black colour?
I'll answer the second question first.

I think that going Naya colors means you need to speed the deck up, because losing Dark Confidant is an issue if you stay in midrange territory - you don't have enough ways to draw cards or generate card advantage (LftL alone is not enough).

And now for the answer for your first question: why aren't four-color builds also just "Big Zoo" decks? Because Big Zoo is still fundamentally an aggro deck, and Aggro Loam is fundamentally a midrange deck. Put another way: even Big Zoo still has the capability to kill people with very aggressive starts, while Aggro Loam almost never does even when you open on a Mox Diamond. Zoo, even Big Zoo builds that are more top-heavy, values mana efficiency for its creatures over basically everything else; Aggro Loam values size and flexibility. Zoo is dominant in the early game and looks to follow through on its gains in the midgame; Aggro Loam is weak in the early game and looks to take over the midgame and then grind out an inevitable late-game.

In other words, Big Zoo is still an aggro deck that has just slowed down and tried to go over the top, while Aggro Loam is pretty much always a midrange deck. On a spectrum of fair decks from "almost combo-speed aggro" to "grind-'em-out control," Aggro Loam is more or less in the middle while Big Zoo leans towards the aggro end much more heavily.

That's why I feel losing some of Aggro Loam's midrange-ness just makes you a worse implementation of Big Zoo. You have none of Big Zoo's ability to just quickly beat people up sometimes, and you have a lot of the liabilities of being a fair, midrange-ish deck. The Loam engine - with the cycling cards and Seismic Assault - gives you a better late-game, sure, but I don't think Big Zoo is exactly hurting for that if it's running GSZ and planeswalkers and the Loam engine eats up tons of space for something that is fundamentally a late-game engine.

In short, I don't think his deck is "the answer" to Aggro Loam's woes. I think he did well with it because he's been playing it forever and has tons of experience with it, and knowing the ins and outs of your deck and your matchups is a huge deal in Legacy (since many people won't be nearly as up to speed as you are). It's certainly not a bad deck, per se, but it's not the kind of deck that is well-positioned or inherently powerful enough to win a big tournament.

marcel

10-31-2011, 04:27 PM

About the midrange-ness - obv, we lose the Dark Confidant, but we gain the Top. Top is just so powerful and flexible. Confidant gets the first removal spell it can take, except if you have a chalice, but chalice...it's good only if you install it T1, so you have to make a combo of two cards - Mox+Chalice on T1 (+2 lands ofc). It's a 2-card combo that doesn't instantly win a game, so it's a bad one.

Big Zoo - I totally agree with you, but I'm against calling Naya Loam a big zoo with loam package. 11 creatures is not zoo.

Antonius

11-01-2011, 11:18 AM

^^ Or they don't have removal and bob wins the game. And don't buy into the negativity. Bob IS a threat. 2 damage a turn adds up when your deck is full of shit like bolt, seismic and lavamancer.

Richard Cheese

11-01-2011, 11:28 AM

marcel

11-01-2011, 02:33 PM

I just don't see how 3 Pridemages comes anywhere close to creating the kind of early game that Zoo has. Pridemage is usually the weakest guy Zoo plays in terms of power/cmc ratio, but his ability is so relevant that he generally still makes the cut as a 2 or 3-of. I think in this case he's more of a hatebear/utility guy than a beater, but I could be way off. I would still really like to hear from the guy that ran it. I can't help but wonder if it really is a superior build to Jund or if it's a combination of skilled play, a pilot that's really comfortable with his deck, and a list that's unconventional enough that most people aren't prepared to play against it.

They don't. Don't think about it like you think about Zoo. In this deck he does 2 functions - make tarmo bigger or destroy something (equips,vial,moat,etc) sometimes without letting the opponent pass, so this function is somekind similar to vindicate.
This build if far more superior than RBG because of its flexibily given by the 1cc spells, but this list if far more harder to play (sometimes I look in my hand and I say to myself: omg, what the truck shoud I do with this) and the fact that everyone expects black helps a lot also=)

Aggro_zombies

11-01-2011, 02:40 PM

I tried Top at one point and I don't think it's an adequate substitute for Dark Confidant. The Naya build that did well at the GP is probably fine with it because it can play more aggressively in the early game thanks to its 1cc removal and generally better curve (which is why it plays closer to a Big Zoo deck than a traditional Aggro Loam deck; the tempo is different), so Top makes sense there as a bridge in the midgame. I would still want to try a mix of Tops and Sylvan Libraries because the ability to draw multiple cards per turn without having to cash in a Top or spend a million mana to Loam is important.

marcel

11-01-2011, 03:19 PM

Aggro_zombies

11-01-2011, 03:37 PM

You should use loam+cyclers then, but loosing 4 pv (even 8 maybe?) per turn is really painful (...in this deck), but of course it's more mana-effective.
The problem of the mix is that once you have one piece you wouldn't need the other one, don't you agree?
Loam and cycling lands eats up a ton of mana, though. For five mana, four of it colored, you can draw three cards or draw two cards and mill three to get back Loam. Compare that to Jace TMS, which Brainstorms every turn for free, or Bob, who draws a card every turn for free-ish, or Library, that can draw an extra card for life.

You really need two ways to draw in this deck; because Loam is almost strictly late-game, you need something to smooth out your draws in the early and midgames. Bob/Top/Library do that, but I would prefer Library because it is free to use although Top is better with fetches and can draw a card for free at the cost of your next draw being Top. I would want to test a mix because they don't overlap perfectly and one of them is probably better in context than the other, though I don't know that I ever tested them side-by-side. I think mana efficiency is the bigger issue for this deck, so Library might be better, but it's hard to say.

marcel

11-01-2011, 03:41 PM

Loam and cycling lands eats up a ton of mana, though. For five mana, four of it colored, you can draw three cards or draw two cards and mill three to get back Loam. Compare that to Jace TMS, which Brainstorms every turn for free, or Bob, who draws a card every turn for free-ish, or Library, that can draw an extra card for life.

You really need two ways to draw in this deck; because Loam is almost strictly late-game, you need something to smooth out your draws in the early and midgames. Bob/Top/Library do that, but I would prefer Library because it is free to use although Top is better with fetches and can draw a card for free at the cost of your next draw being Top. I would want to test a mix because they don't overlap perfectly and one of them is probably better in context than the other, though I don't know that I ever tested them side-by-side. I think mana efficiency is the bigger issue for this deck, so Library might be better, but it's hard to say.

I see clearly your point, but don't you think that Top is better also because of the ability draw a card on the instant speed?

Aggro_zombies

11-01-2011, 04:48 PM

I see clearly your point, but don't you think that Top is better also because of the ability draw a card on the instant speed?
If your deck is full of effects that happen at instant speed, then sure. But most Aggro Loam decks aren't.

marcel

11-01-2011, 04:55 PM

If your deck is full of effects that happen at instant speed, then sure. But most Aggro Loam decks aren't.

Sure, because the don't play bolt/stp (read: because they are RBG(W)) =)

Aggro_zombies

11-01-2011, 05:03 PM

Sure, because the don't play bolt/stp (read: because they are RBG(W)) =)
Eh...there's a total of seven cards that can played from the hand at instant speed in that build (cycling lands kind of count but not really). That they're all removal spells makes Top more attractive; that there aren't many of them makes it less attractive compared to static effects that draw cards for no extra mana input. Drawing a card with Top is rarely free unless you know some of your top several cards from a previous turn's Top activation; most often you will pay 1, look, reorder, and then tap to draw, making Top a better cycling land except for the fact that your next draw will be a Top.

I like Top more in blue decks because there are a lot more cards that are likely to be live when you're drawing on your opponent's turn. That is why I would want to test a mix of draw spells here: to see how often being able to draw removal on an opponent's turn is relevant versus how often I would rather spend the mana doing stuff on my turn.

Are you/do you know Dmitry Nikitin, the guy who played that 17th place list?

marcel

11-01-2011, 11:44 PM

Eh...there's a total of seven cards that can played from the hand at instant speed in that build (cycling lands kind of count but not really). That they're all removal spells makes Top more attractive; that there aren't many of them makes it less attractive compared to static effects that draw cards for no extra mana input. Drawing a card with Top is rarely free unless you know some of your top several cards from a previous turn's Top activation; most often you will pay 1, look, reorder, and then tap to draw, making Top a better cycling land except for the fact that your next draw will be a Top.

I like Top more in blue decks because there are a lot more cards that are likely to be live when you're drawing on your opponent's turn. That is why I would want to test a mix of draw spells here: to see how often being able to draw removal on an opponent's turn is relevant versus how often I would rather spend the mana doing stuff on my turn.

Are you/do you know Dmitry Nikitin, the guy who played that 17th place list?

Why have you thought so?=)
Any way I'm not, but I know him well. I was playing my list for sometime, very similar to his.

sdematt

11-07-2011, 02:30 AM

Might I say, nice fucking job, Tony?

Does anyone know where Tony's T8 footage is? I missed it since Gran Torino was on :tongue:

-Matt

Goin Aggro

11-07-2011, 02:44 AM

Might I say, nice fucking job, Tony?

Does anyone know where Tony's T8 footage is? I missed it since Gran Torino was on :tongue:

-Matt

Seconded. Congrats man!

Wow, some of these people in the T8 have the most ridiculous occupations.

Lastly of course: REPRESENT WEST SIDE!

Richard Cheese

11-07-2011, 09:37 AM

Congrats Tony.

Edit: Can't wait to read another legendary tournament report.

Aggro_zombies

11-07-2011, 01:05 PM

For those who, like me, had no idea what the above three posts were about (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=42140).

TheShaun

11-07-2011, 08:09 PM

Sadly that decklist doesn't describe how damn pimp his actual deck was. Very nice looking, I am envious.

Antonius

11-08-2011, 12:43 AM

you asked.

Report (http://www.westcoastlegacy.com/press/2011/scg-vegas-given-a-sample/)

Supplemental Vegas Rant (http://www.westcoastlegacy.com/press/2011/supplemental-las-vegas-cultural-anus-of-the-world/)

And yeah, my deck is pretty cool. I'm still missing a Lavamancer and 3 bobs though so it's not really a "Foil" Deck. And don't get me started on that sideboard...

razvan

11-08-2011, 05:02 PM

You honestly have the best reports. Great job on top-8ing, way to give the rest of us Loam players hope!

trivial_matters

11-08-2011, 05:32 PM

Congrats on the great finish!

Could you maybe explain what you used Noxious Revival for and why you decided to play it? Reading your report you seemed to board it in quite often.

Antonius

11-08-2011, 07:11 PM

Surgical Extraction is the primary form of Graveyard hate right now. You can protect Loam from Surgical with Cycling lands, but you can't protect wasteland or cycling lands. That's where Noxious Revival comes in. Also, Noxious Revival can be used to get back Seismic, counter reanimation spells or time walk your opponent.

Nonex

11-14-2011, 12:02 AM

Aggro_zombies

11-14-2011, 03:05 AM

I can say little other than congratulations, sincerely. I have some doubts about what I read, though:

- Looks like some number of Seismic Assaults always get boarded out?
- Would you run more than 2 Noxious Revivals?
- I understand there are matchups where Volrath's Stronghold won't be getting anything back, but being a mana source I'd have a hard time boarding it out. What's the reasoning behind it?
I can't speak for your last two questions, but Assaults are pretty clunky. They're fine late-game options, but you rarely want to see them early except against some tribal decks.

Richard Cheese

11-14-2011, 11:47 AM

Yeah I was also curious about the siding out of Assaults. It looked like it was mostly against control matches, is it just b/c it's a pain to play it around Daze?

Antonius

11-14-2011, 08:52 PM

Seismic assault is great but is usually less effective when they have graveyard hate to hamper loam. That's why I usually switch it out for anti-hate (Noxious Revival) or additional removal (Pyroblast--Perish or Edict, if they're in the board). Against decks like painter, you need to cut down on the amount of lands you run and bulk up your threats/answers. If he was on UR I would have boarded out Volrath's/fourth mox/fourth cave for Pyroblasts, but I had to settle for grips cause he was on mono red. And yeah, I could see running three noxious revival (if I cut Liliana of the Veil) the card was really good.

Richard Cheese

11-15-2011, 02:40 PM

I generally board in some number of REBs against Imperial anyway, at least for game 2. Most of the time they'll name Blue with Painter anyway, to abuse their own REBs and Jaya, so you can catch them off guard. Then if it comes to game 3, the threat alone will sometimes get them to board out some of that stuff and name another color.

Jacemindbreak

11-15-2011, 08:54 PM

Why is your deck so hard to beat with a rock based deck?

Richard Cheese

11-15-2011, 09:12 PM

Pre-board it's tough because Rock-style decks generally aren't fast enough to win before the Loam engine gets going. Discard is largely useless as is Wasteland, and Loam just has a stronger late-game advantage engine.

Luckily, you're in black, so you have lots of boarding options. I saw your board from the other thread, Faerie Macabre really isn't good here because a smart Loam player won't overextend into grave hate game 2/3, esp. against black. Extirpate and Leyline of the Void are your best bets. Not sure what your maindeck looks like, but GSZ gives you access to Scavenging Ooze as well.

Nonex

11-17-2011, 03:10 AM

What I'm going to say will probably sound like danger of cool things at the very least, but when you mention discard, does it include Encroach? I've seen people keep hands assuming they won't touch their lands except for the occasional Hymn to Tourach, so they never see it coming. The possibility of discarding a dual and extracting it surgically the same turn sounds remote, but pretty appealing.

Mtre

11-19-2011, 08:53 AM

Just saw, that this:
http://pmtg-forum.de/wbb2/attachment.php?attachmentid=385
will probably see preint in the next set. Looks like a worse BS in red to me, but i think you can somehow abuse it in this deck.

Aggro_zombies

11-19-2011, 01:10 PM

Looks like a worse BS in red to me, but i think you can somehow abuse it in this deck.
Um, no, it's an exact Careful Study in red, but with flashback.

I'm not sure what this does here. You don't get any particular reward for putting cards in the graveyard unless you're running Terravore and Knight of the Reliquary, and even then this is -1 card up front and +0 cards when you flash it back. I'm not sure seeing four cards is worth it when for the same total amount of mana you have Harmonize, which shows you one less card but lets you keep them all.

I also have no idea what you would want to cut for this.

Nonex

11-20-2011, 03:53 PM

Accustomed as I am to inventing absurd aberrations for all types of tournaments, completely copying a list kind of makes me sick; however, I decided to have no choice before Antonius's version. The main is exactly the same as in his last report (http://www.westcoastlegacy.com/press/2011/scg-vegas-given-a-sample/). The sideboard, however, looked like this:

3 Surgical Extraction
3 Noxious Revival
2 Krosan Grip
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Phyrexian Metamorph

I just can't remember how I boarded in any game, although it was in the lines of X Assaults, or 1 Mox + 1 Bolt + 1 red cycling land, or something like that. Also, I didn't know if there's an established name for this list, so I named it "Ojalá tengas cáncer" ("Hope you have cancer", in Spanish), for no apparent reason. Horrible taste, I know.

Round 1: MUD

He starts with a somewhat innocuous Chalice @ 1 that's followed by a turn 2 Metalworker. I just drop a land and think I'm doomed, just before topdecking a saviour Mox that lets me land a turn 2 Assault and kill his Metalworker. He lands a Lodestone Golem, I drop the third land and cast a Loam to kill his Golem and pretty much anything he could ever play after that.

I remember boarding Grips and some Revivals, expecting grave hate and expecting him to board out Chalices from what he's seen. Awkward error - he starts with Tomb, Chalice @ 0 and Chalice @ 1, frustrating my turn 1 Mox. He then drops a Metalworker, and next turn he taps it to reveal another Chalice, another Metalworker, a Golem and a Kuldotha Forgemaster. Oh how bad I'd have wanted to draw a Wasteland in time.

Game 3 I Waste his first two lands (Mishra's Factory and Rishadan Port) and drop Lavamancer and Confidant. He sticks a Phyrexian Revoker, but barely anything else. I drop a Crusher, followed by another Revoker on his side. The deal is sealed by attacking with Lavamancer, 7/7 Crusher, and a 4/4 Ooze that previously ate his Revokers (one Gripped and the other previously traded with my Confidant).

1-0

Round 2: ANT

I can't do anything in the whole round. I almost win game 2, though, since I drop both Lavamancers ASAP and start attacking and emptying my graveyard when possible, leaving him at 2 life. I should have optimized my land drops, though, by cracking any fetchland before dropping simple duals. I manage to extract his Dark Rituals surgically and Revival a fetchland of his to gain a turn, or at least force him to crack his fetchland if he wants to draw something new. I remember keeping Assaults in for the occasional flood, but boarding Loams out. Ugh, sideboarding is definitely the bane of my existence as a Magic player.

1-1

Round 3: Punishing Zoo

Every living being on each side gets Bolted in the face. Then, I Pulse his Sylvan Library (I could have done it way sooner, had I just searched the correct lands - I seriously need to improve that point) and drop an apparently worthless Assault that becomes invaluable once I draw and cycle into Loam.

I lose game 2 to a baffling life loss that must be comprised of Bolts in my face, Confidants at work and the occasional combat damage. I'm at 1 life and have two Crushers in front of his Knight of the Reliquary and Goyf, then spend my last two mana cycling lands and see an Ooze that will save me the game unless I die now - which I do at the end of my turn, his Knight searching a Dryad Arbor...

Game 3 is simple, my opening hand has some removal and cycling lands, but all I draw from here are more lands. He just goes his way without the need of anything spectacular.

1-2

Round 4: ???

Completely unknown deck that spends both games throwing targeted discard, cantrips and bouncers. At the end of the round I see Tendrils of Agony on top of his deck, yet no Rituals or artifact mana have ever been cast.

2-2

Round 5: RW Boros

Mostly built from the remnants of some Commander precons, it has all the good stuff you should expect from these colors, perhaps too much - I don't think Goblin Guide and Stoneforge Mystic should go together. Anyway, an early Assault-Loam lock takes care of everything game 1.

Game 2 consists of me desperately searching for Explosives while a Mirran Crusader with Swords of Feast/Famine and War/Peace ends the game in a single swing.

Game 3 has some early removal and a Crusher that beats for 10 in a field just ravaged by an Assault.

3-2

Round 6: Faerie Stompy

Completely surreal round, I start with turn 1 Lavamancer and he starts with turn 2 Trinisphere and turn 3 Pithing Needle on Lavamancer. I Waste his City of Traitors and he gets stuck on a single Island for the rest of the game.

Game 2 he mulls to six and does literally nothing on his first turn. I drop Lavamancer and start beating, he drops Island and then a City of Traitors, then Cloud of Faeries and Jitte. I drop a Mountain, I fill my empty graveyard with two cycling lands and kill the Faeries with Lavamancer. He drops Serendib Efreet and I drop an Assault, discarding my last land and activating Lavamancer to kill it. Some turns later he drops a Sea Drake, but at that time an earlier Confidant has already led me to Loam.

4-2

Round 7: RUG Tempo

You know, there are games where they start with Volcanic Island, Delver of Secrets, just for you to go Wasteland, Mox, Bolt. A 3/4 Goyf is pretty much everything I need.

Game 2 has him going agressive with Goyf and Green Sun's Zenith into Noble Hierarch. I drop a Crusher and rely on him to get big, but he thinks being a 3/3 is da nutz. However, when he drops a second Hierarch and a Delver and I chumpblock his Goyf with a Confidant, that still 3/3 Crusher has nothing better to do than leading me straight into Pernicious Deed @ 2. No regrets.

5-2

Explosives and Revivals have been underwhelming, Metamorphs have never come in, and a friend is asking me "why the fuck are you playing Surgical Extraction when you could be playing Extirpate". The conclusion is clear: I'm still a total noob at building sideboards and even worse at using them. These cards need further testing and I'm sure it doesn't hurt to know something about a deck's specific matchups before playing it in a 100+ players tournament. However, I've had so much fun with the deck that I definitely don't care.

Antonius

11-21-2011, 01:16 AM

^^

Bad beats on that Zoo matchup. I haven't lost to zoo in a while, but everytime I match up it always feel like the sort of thing that could go both ways because it's defined as raw power vs raw speed.

Also, I think Seismic Assault (without active loam) is way underrated. One land for a shock still kills like 60% of the dudes in the format. Crazy value.

trivial_matters

11-21-2011, 05:28 PM

I played Aggro Loam in small tournament this weekend (about 20-25 players). I only started playing it recently and my lack of practice and experience with the deck showed, hence I finished with quite a disappointing 1-1-3.

Still, playing the deck was fun and it felt powerful so I'll continue practicing with it.

ESG

11-21-2011, 08:01 PM

I played Aggro Loam in a 42-man event yesterday and missed Top 8 on tiebreakers. Against BUG Control in the last round, I was Surgically Extracted four times in one game, but I still won it. It went down like this: Extraction on Wasteland, Extraction on Loam, Extraction on post-Spell Snare Dark Confidant, Extraction on Loam (got my fourth one out of the board with Burning Wish to kill his Tarmogoyf). The deck was great all day, but I suffered a random annihilation in Round 2 against a guy playing Hive Mind. Such a bad matchup. I had several close games with a Bant/Bant Maverick deck, with him getting the best of me in the end. I probably could have won that one with tighter play. My other matches on the day were Sneak Attack (with maindeck Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon) (2-1), GW Maverick (1-0) and Goblins (2-1).

sdematt

11-21-2011, 08:08 PM

Nice! Then you probably played against James with the Bant Maverick deck :)

-Matt

Richard Cheese

11-22-2011, 11:22 AM

zulander

11-22-2011, 03:18 PM

Went 2-2 this past weekend with my 4c build. Could have been 3-1 if I'd responded to IoK by bolting him, but against ub snapcaster, I thought I might need the extirpate as well, so I let him choose, then he won at 1 life...sadface at bad playing.

Still really happy with the manabase, but undecided on the removal suite. Also thinking of trying to brew a Jund control list with Liliana, anyone test her out much yet?

I'm testing her out right now in b/g/w and she's awesome. Knight > Crusher and white still gives you 1cc removal (stp/pte your choice). Also I love maindeck sylvan library, helps give you so much card advantage it's not even funny.

ESG

11-22-2011, 10:27 PM

Nice! Then you probably played against James with the Bant Maverick deck :)

-Matt

Yep. Our first two games were drawn-out affairs. In the third game, he got a Wheel out on me, and I wasn't drawing an answer to it, which curtailed my development enough that it was looking like we were going to draw, since we didn't have much time going into the game. I had a small Knight out and a Dark Confidant, and he had a larger Knight. Then he topdecked an Elspeth and made his Knight fly over, which put me to 2. I was able to grab a Maze of Ith to stave off the next attack (had to crack a fetch to do so), but I ended up dying to Bob flipping up a Bolt. Good, well-matched games.

Seems Good

11-22-2011, 11:14 PM

I'm not sure what this does here. You don't get any particular reward for putting cards in the graveyard unless you're running Terravore and Knight of the Reliquary, and even then this is -1 card up front and +0 cards when you flash it back. I'm not sure seeing four cards is worth it when for the same total amount of mana you have Harmonize, which shows you one less card but lets you keep them all.

I also have no idea what you would want to cut for this.

Draw two usable non-land cards, pitch two lands. In a loam deck, lands in the yard are virtually lands in the hand, so it's almost like a Thoughtcast with flashback in this build in the sense that you're netting an extra card for 1 mana, but you're actually advancing your "board position" by putting more lands in your yard. Also triggers Crusher's +1/+1 counter ability when pitching lands. Can also be used for loam dredge trigger which seems pretty good. Just a thought.

I agree I have no idea what I would cut for it, though.

Aggro_zombies

11-22-2011, 11:51 PM

I agree I have no idea what I would cut for it, though.
This is kind of the problem. Giving Careful Study flashback doesn't make it any more of an effect the deck wants. If you want to pitch useless lands that badly (instead of just, say, recurring cycling lands and doing it naturally), you can dip into blue for Trade Routes and the superior-to-Looting Desperate Ravings. The filtering effect you get from this card isn't very strong; you can get something much more powerful from Sylvan Library or Sensei's Divining Top. I don't think stapling discard onto minor filtering really improves that card all that much, to be honest. The effect is still just very weak.

alrightgame

11-26-2011, 11:22 AM

Aggro_zombies

11-26-2011, 01:04 PM

What do you think of Chalice of the Void for Saint Louis?

I'm thinking of modifying Micah's list with:

-2 Goyf for +2 Scavenging Ooze
-2 Plowshare +2 Explosives
-1 Wurm Harvest +1 Explosives
-2 Devastating Dreams +2 Chalice of the Void
-2 Vindicate +2 Chalice of the Void
Chalice of the Void is just not very good. I mean, if you open with "land, Mox, Chalice, go" it's okay, but if you don't it gets rapidly worse (and of course, the second and third Chalices are blanks). The issue is that the land, Mox, Chalice opener is not very likely to happen unless you have the luck of the gods, and against tempo decks it's pretty risky unless you're on the play. I would be very leery of raising my curve against Canadian Thresh decks; you are pretty soft to tempo decks, especially if they get a fast start, and the upside of Chalice locking them out of their dig spells and flying Nacatls is massively offset by the turn you lose if you try to resolve one and they counter it, or you wait to resolve one to play around Daze and they counter it anyway with Spell Snare or something.

Outside of tempo decks, I don't really see why you would need Chalice.

alrightgame

11-26-2011, 03:33 PM

Chalice of the Void is just not very good. I mean, if you open with "land, Mox, Chalice, go" it's okay, but if you don't it gets rapidly worse (and of course, the second and third Chalices are blanks). The issue is that the land, Mox, Chalice opener is not very likely to happen unless you have the luck of the gods, and against tempo decks it's pretty risky unless you're on the play. I would be very leery of raising my curve against Canadian Thresh decks; you are pretty soft to tempo decks, especially if they get a fast start, and the upside of Chalice locking them out of their dig spells and flying Nacatls is massively offset by the turn you lose if you try to resolve one and they counter it, or you wait to resolve one to play around Daze and they counter it anyway with Spell Snare or something.

Outside of tempo decks, I don't really see why you would need Chalice.

Cards chalice of the void stops on 1, if it resolves:
reanimate, entomb, stifle, spell snare, careful study, almost everything in elves and burn, noble, mother, swords, vial, nacatl, cabal therapy, top, and thoughtseize.

It also prevents you from folding to storm combo and reanimate, which is relevant in the first six rounds.

If chalice does not resolve, it gives you a significant chance of resolving crusher or reliquary.

I know how dead the card can be when you draw multiples. It is an evil necessity.
Other benefits includes 0 cc for bob, and stopping decks that are for a resolved chalice. I think it might be worth testing again.

Aggro_zombies

11-26-2011, 04:01 PM

Chalice does not stop you from folding to storm. Chalice plus a fast clock does, but this deck's average clock is pretty shitty. Burning Wish for Shattering Spree beats it, Animate Dead and/or Exhume beats it, Elves and burn are terrible, discard still gets you because the chances of you being on the play and having turn one Chalice are laughable, green/white/x decks have Pridemage and GSZ at least and can bring in Grips from the board, any deck running Stifle will have more than enough answers for Chalice, and so on. The card is just bad.

I mean, yes, Mental Misstep showed that Legacy was full of nice one-drops that were fine to counter, but the thing is, MMS still let you run your own one-drops. Chalice doesn't do that unless you are the worst deckbuilder ever. Giving up one-drops to make your Chalice of the Voids better is a huge cost that is not offset by Chalice being ridiculously broken if it resolves. Again, the chances of having it turn one on the play are vanishingly small. Having it turn two on the play (more likely because you don't need to resolve Mox Diamond) is not nearly as good unless the opponent bricks on turn one. Having it turn one on the draw, or turn two on the draw, is so mediocre it hurts. Getting Chalice any later than that virtually blanks the card.

Look, this is not the deck you play if you're paranoid about combo. You can have fifteen anti-combo cards in your sideboard and STILL lose because you sided out a quarter of your deck for cards that are designed to help you "not lose," as opposed to "win." Combo decks are fast and flexible and Aggro Loam is neither. If combo is an issue, play blue.

There are better answers to Reanimator than Chalice, mostly because of Animate Dead and Exhume getting around it.

The old, "But then I bait all of his counters and resolve my good spells!" argument has never worked for me. Crusher is not a good creature anymore. Knight is a fine creature but can still be answered or raced. Against tempo decks, if you are giving up a turn to try to force through your dorks, you are losing because you are doing exactly what the tempo deck wants you to do: durdle while you get beaten up by 3/2 flying dudes and Tarmogoyf. Yeah, they may be down a counter, but the time you've lost, the mana you've lost, and the card you've lost are all more important to you, the clunky midrange deck, than to them, the fast tempo deck whose cards naturally lose value as the game drags on. You'd be better off bringing in red Blasts and fighting them that way.

Honestly, if you're sold on Chalice, nothing I can say will convince you. The card looks great on paper and in theory does all this great stuff but in practice it is not very good and you will still usually lose to all the same things Chalice is supposed to help you beat (combo, blue). But you're welcome to try it.

alrightgame

11-26-2011, 05:40 PM

I'm not entirely sold on chalice. I havn't played chalice in since 2010, but the meta is entirely simliar to how it was then.

marcel

11-27-2011, 02:21 PM

Let's put it this way - chalice is good ONLY if you put it on T1. Imagine a topdeck in midgame: CHALICE OF THE VOID?? NICE!!
Something like this - "damn this delver of secrets attacked me 3 times I need an answer to this, come on, lighning bolt - CotV??" NICE!!
Wait, wait here, is another one - "omg I have to do something with his knight, oh I how I'd like to draw a StP right now, ok, let's see the topdeck - CotV??" NICE!!

Anyway, let's say you kill delver with punishing fire and you vindicate KotR, but what if you land CotV on T2, while you start first:
-(you)land
-land zenith to arbor
-chalice
-land kotr
-??

-(you)land
-land putrid imp
-land chalice
-discard troll dregde land brakthrough for 1 dregde I win
-??

-(you)land
-land delver
-land chalice
-flip delver land goyf attack
-??

-(you)land
-land vial
-land chalice
-land lord of atlantis
-??

Want to see games like this? In every situation above you do NOTHING on T2, it's like you NEVER had it, like you buy a Time Walk for 2 mana but for your opponent. Let flow your imagination in order to see your game while you land CotV on T2 and you are on the draw...oh that story is sooo sad.

So we need 3 factors to make it work:
--Chalice in hand
--Mox in hand
--We start
(--2+ lands in hand)
so this a 3-piece combo that does NOT instantly win the game.
Still want to play it? Good luck=)

Aggro_zombies

11-27-2011, 02:26 PM

I'm not entirely sold on chalice. I havn't played chalice in since 2010, but the meta is entirely simliar to how it was then.
Chalice wasn't good then, either, it just took people a while to realize it and come up with a build that took advantage of having access to one-drops.

ESG

11-27-2011, 05:03 PM

So we need 3 factors to make it work:
--Chalice in hand
--Mox in hand
--We start
(--2+ lands in hand)
so this a 3-piece combo that does NOT instantly win the game.

This is important to remember. I recognize that Chalice can be good, but usually for it to be most effective, you need it Turn 1 on the play, and the odds of that are not great.

Alrightgame, if you are concerned about Reanimator and storm combo for this tournament, then this is not the right deck to run. It IS possible to contort the deck to make it competitive in those matchups, but you lose some strength against the rest of the field.

If you decide to play Chalice, let us know how the tourney goes.

marcel

11-27-2011, 05:36 PM

This is important to remember. I recognize that Chalice can be good, but usually for it to be most effective, you need it Turn 1 on the play, and the odds of that are not great.

Alrightgame, if you are concerned about Reanimator and storm combo for this tournament, then this is not the right deck to run. It IS possible to contort the deck to make it competitive in those matchups, but you lose some strength against the rest of the field.

If you decide to play Chalice, let us know how the tourney goes.

I actually never found reanimator to be that hard to beat if you run a version with white. You play swords to his creatures and if you land a KotR you already won if you run karakas/maze/bojuka/etc. And after sb you have even more options. It's also fun to dredge KotR - I bet he won't play exhume=)

Aggro_zombies

11-27-2011, 07:03 PM

It doesn't seem like it should be that hard for a black version of the deck, either. You have:

Coffin Purge
Diabolic Edict
Extirpate
Pyroblast
Red Elemental Blast

With the latter two as an answer to Jin-Gitaxias. Iona on black could be a problem but I suspect most Reanimator players will reach for Sphinx of the Steel Wind first after Jin, just to blank most of your removal anyway and make it impossible for you to race. Actually, Sphinx is an issue for Naya Loam as well since you can't Karakas it and Maze doesn't keep it from blanking your Knights/Crushers on offense. I guess you can try to Swords it, but I don't want to be in a position where I have to resolve a removal spell against a blue deck with discard in order to attack effectively.

White also has Purify the Grave, for what that's worth.

EDIT: One other thing I've been thinking about recently is the use of Terravore over Crusher. It feels like people are skimping on graveyard hate right now, and when they have it, it's stuff like Extirpate or Surgical Extraction instead of Crypts or Relics (since the former are generally better vs. Snapcaster), which makes Terravore more attractive. Terravore will be bigger than Crusher in the near and medium terms and has trample, making it difficult to blank through chumps or Mother of Runes. Plus, Terravore will almost always be bigger than Knight of the Reliquary.

It might be worth trying, especially in Naya builds.

marcel

11-28-2011, 02:13 AM

I totally agree with you, usually they side out Iona, as you play too many colours, so you always have an answer to her. Gin in not such a problem with red blasts, but sphinx can really win the game. Also Blazing Archon can cause problems.

Terravore seems much better now, it would be nice to play it, but I would not know what to take out? Any ideas?

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 11:07 AM

zulander

11-28-2011, 11:12 AM

Then why not cut red and just rune white for crushers and better removal?

marcel

11-28-2011, 12:22 PM

Then why not cut red and just rune white for crushers and better removal?

You mean cut Seismic Assault, Devastating Dreams, Punishing Fire/Bolt and many sideboard options like Pyroblast?

I would want to try some number of Terravore over some number of Countryside Crusher. Crusher doesn't strike me as being particularly good anymore.

Crusher makes a fine combo with bob and besides, he survives ANY gravehate except the leyline.
But anyway I was talking about RGW bild=)

zulander

11-28-2011, 02:18 PM

You mean cut Seismic Assault, Devastating Dreams, Punishing Fire/Bolt and many sideboard options like Pyroblast?

Yup. Neither of those are 'amazing' and I haven't really missed them in my gbw.

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 03:09 PM

Yup. Neither of those are 'amazing' and I haven't really missed them in my gbw.
Well, I mean, if we cut red...

Scrolling up, I'm going to use the last list I see with a good showing, which looks like this:
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Mountain
3 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Mox Diamond

2 Engineered Explosives
4 Life from the Loam
2 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Seismic Assault

Cutting red frees up 13 non-land slots immediately. Assuming we swap it out for white, we automatically add 4 Knight of the Reliquary and 4 Swords to Plowshares (since we want the removal and StP is the best removal spell we have access to). That leaves 5 slots.

But wait, let's think about this. Life from the Loam gets a lot worse when you lose Seismic Assault, since its remaining uses are: #1 Waste-lock people (exciting), #2 grow your three-drops (meh), #3 draw some cards for a bunch of mana (meeeeeh). Instead of growing our threes or slowly drawing cards, why don't we just make more creatures? Let's cut some of the Loams add 4 Green Sun's Zenith, since that will both give us card advantage and increase our board presence, which is sort of like making our guys really big. But...while we're on the subject of build your own monster, there's more than one way to slice that particular cake. Stoneforge Mystic plus a small equipment toolbox would give us guys who are superior in combat, so let's use Mystic and Jitte and...hmm...Sword of Feast and Famine.

Now that I think about, shaving down on Loams makes Mox Diamonds worse. We don't need access to all the colors and two-for-one-ing ourselves seems weak. Let's cut the Diamonds for 3 Noble Hierarch and one Birds. Cutting Diamonds and Loams means we don't need nearly as many lands, so we'll cut the number down a bit. Let's also add a few miscellaneous GSZ targets so we get the full value out of the card.

But wait, what's black adding to all of this? Bob and Pulse? That doesn't seem like enough to justify making the mana worse for a third color: Pulse is very meh and Bob is better in grindy long games, something in short supply in a largely tempo-defined format. So let's cut black and add in some other ways to generate card advantage: Sylvan Library is a good one, and Elspeth is good at breaking through board stalemates.

And...voila! Here's our new Aggro Loam list:

1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

3 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
3 Noble Hierarch
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Quirion Ranger
3 Stoneforge Mystic

1 Sylvan Library

4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Umezawa's Jitte

1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Thrun, the Last Troll

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Life from the Loam

1 Forest
1 Plains
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Maze of Ith
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Savannah
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Karakas
1 Gaea's Cradle

...

I am only being a little bit of a smartass here. WBG Aggro Loam is a worse Junk deck, which itself is a worse Maverick deck. RG is really the core of Aggro Loam; cutting Crusher does not justify removing the red entirely because at that point most of your card choices start to look really suboptimal. Fixing all those suboptimal card choices rapidly leads you into the realm Maverick or Zoo, and at that point you might as well just build Maverick or Zoo because those decks are tuned.

@marcel: Like I said, I don't think people are running the kind of hate that kills Terravore right now, and Crusher not having trample or evasion is a real cost. Plus, he is really slow to get off the ground and bricking on your Crusher triggers is pretty bad for you because then you actually have to do some work to make him effective.

alrightgame

11-28-2011, 03:29 PM

Would the bgw version look something like this?

2 engineered explosives
4 mox diamond
4 knight of the reliquary
4 dark confidant
4 tarmogoyf/scavenging ooze
4 life from the loam
2 maelstrom pulse/vindicate

What do you replace seismic assault and the 2 flex slots?
raven's crime? living wish? hymn to tourach? wrath of god? stoneforge mystic package? thoughtseize? liliana?

I imagine the sideboard would include path to exile and thoughtseize.

PollePotDK

11-28-2011, 04:02 PM

The decklist Aggro_Zombie have listet is really solid. I'm playing it myself and it's very good against RUG Tempo, Blue Control decks, BW and other Stoneblade decks, Aggro obvious and I could go on. Only combo is difficult (alot :cry:).

Can't see why anyone would want to cut Red in this deck. It's the cornerstone of this deck. Want to splash white, go look at the Rock, Maverick og other threads combined of BGW.

Terravore vs. Crusher? I'm very happy with Crusher. If it sticks, it's a beast and if the opponent doesn't play white, hence Swords to Plowshare/Path to Exile, it's a matter of time, before you win. Yes, Terravore does have Trample, but it dies to any gravehate, and the double Green is a bit tricky, when there's double and triple Red and in my case double Black (Liliana).

Just my 2 cent :smile:

Koby

11-28-2011, 04:06 PM

I very much like the idea of Kessig Wolf Run in builds that also run Knight of the Reliquary. Seems like a slam junk way to turn Crushers and KotR into Terravores.

PollePotDK

11-28-2011, 04:16 PM

@rukcus: I have also looked at Kessig Wolf Run and would very much like to include it into Aggro Loam. Think it could be powerful. But it requires White hence Knight OR Crop Rotation, but there's not enough utility lands in the RGB version, so if Kessig is to be included it should be a RGW version of Aggro Loam.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking against myself (previous post :smile:), I prefer the RGB build AND Red must not be cut, but a RGW build could be interesting, as long it doesn't end as a mediocre Zoo build. The build Nikitin top16 with in Amsterdam is to much a Zoo build in my opinion.

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 04:27 PM

Yes, Terravore does have Trample, but it dies to any gravehate, and the double Green is a bit tricky, when there's double and triple Red and in my case double Black (Liliana).
It...doesn't, actually. Crypt rarely kills it outright (it usually does so after combat damage), Relic does not seem to see a lot of play, and Leyline of the Void turns Crusher into a permanent 3/3 (as opposed to Terravore only getting buffs off of the opponent). Extirpate and Surgical Extraction do not kill Terravore, and those seem to be the most common graveyard hate cards right now because of their usefulness vs. Snapcaster among other things.

I mean, maybe I'm just chronically unlucky with my Countryside Crusher triggers, but I've had numerous games wherein I did not hit a single land on upkeep and had to sink time and mana into making my Crushers not suck (and trust me, 3/3s for 3 in Legacy absolutely suck). Very rarely do you live the dream of hitting five lands at once and getting them. The average for 27 lands, 33 spells seems to be around two or so lands per turn, maybe slightly less. That's not very interesting for a guy that costs three and gets actually, legitimately blanked by Mother of Runes (or chumped by Tarmogoyf, or bounced, or Bolted/Dismembered in response to his first trigger, or whatever). Terravore is better in the near- and medium-terms and I think that's what matters most; you have late-game coming out of your ears but if your midgame was any softer it would actually vanish into thin air.

I mean, yes, if your metagame is all Relics all the time, Crusher is better. But I think Terravore is worth it when that's not the case.

@ruckus: Hmm. I think Skaarg (Skarrg? I forget how to spell it) might be better. You tend to want to use all or most of your mana on your turn, and Wolf Run is three plus Run to give the same power boost of two plus Ska(a)(r)rg. I would have to test it, though.

EDIT: @Polle: Naya Loam tends to end up a lot like Big Zoo just because you share a lot of the cards but shift from being flexible to being top-heavy. I've tried to fix that but have either ended up with an even more top-heavy mess or a Zoo deck. Jund is basically the only color combo that doesn't turn into "[Deck X] But Worse."

Koby

11-28-2011, 04:32 PM

@ruckus: Hmm. I think Skaarg (Skarrg? I forget how to spell it) might be better. You tend to want to use all or most of your mana on your turn, and Wolf Run is three plus Run to give the same power boost of two plus Ska(a)(r)rg. I would have to test it, though.

Objectively, they do the same (give trample). I suspect that Kessig being able to pump more power might be the key however. Imagine going EOT tutor up Kessig, untap, pump for 3 and trample over for 10. Seems better in a race condition than a simple +1 power boost for 2 less mana. It does depend on the amount of mana available however.

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 04:34 PM

Objectively, they do the same (give trample). I suspect that Kessig being able to pump more power might be the key however. Imagine going EOT tutor up Kessig, untap, pump for 3 and trample over for 10. Seems better in a race condition than a simple +1 power boost for 2 less mana. It does depend on the amount of mana available however.
Yeah, that's why I'd have to test it. It does give you another way to win races, but I suspect that Assault plus your other burn already do that fairly well. Then again, the last time I played this deck I was running maindeck Firespout and EE, so "racing" was not something that came up often.

Oh, you know what? I forgot about Scavenging Ooze being a maindeck GSZ target in Maverick. That makes Terravore kind of worse. Hmmm.

PollePotDK

11-28-2011, 04:55 PM

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 05:11 PM

@Aggro: Like you say, I also think the Jund version is the best. Any other combination makes a sligthly worse version of an other established deck.

I was only saying IF Kessig was to be i included I would go RGW.
You know, Kessig or Skaarg are probably fine as singletons in a Jund version. You're already running only one Stronghold and your choice of "trample land" falls into the same general category of card you don't necessarily want or need to see every game but still want in your 75 somewhere in case you need it.

sdematt

11-28-2011, 05:41 PM

I think Crusher gets better with less Jace in the format, and better since Knight gets chewed up by Ooze (F you, Maverick).

Terravore is also good since it counts both graveyards, so you don't get totally hosed by an active Ooze. Assault gives you more ways to remove Ooze, so I'm down for that.

With all the Knight, I think we'll also want more real removal. Bolt is nice, but is Bolt enough?

RE: Skarrg/Kessig: Sure, it's decent, but wouldn't you want the recursion in case you mill your crap away?

Also, with all the Stifle/Wasteland, I think we'd best stick to 3 colours, probably Jund.

-Matt

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 05:45 PM

I think Crusher gets better with less Jace in the format, and better since Knight gets chewed up by Ooze (F you, Maverick).

Terravore is also good since it counts both graveyards, so you don't get totally hosed by an active Ooze. Assault gives you more ways to remove Ooze, so I'm down for that.

With all the Knight, I think we'll also want more real removal. Bolt is nice, but is Bolt enough?

-Matt
Bolt is fine for dealing with stuff like Mom or Ooze. As for Knight...Terravore goes over the top pretty easily, but Knight can find stuff like Maze to take care of that. Maybe Deathmark? There's also Terminate and Doom Blade/Go for the Throat.

sdematt

11-28-2011, 05:52 PM

Aggro_zombies

11-28-2011, 05:58 PM

I think Terminate is the best you can get in Jund. It kills everything. I'm in a huge KotR meta, so Terminate has been stellar for the past five centuries.

I'm also still running Fires combo, so you don't have to worry about the little stuff too much.

-Matt
Ah, okay. I imagine you would want Lavamancer or Fires to clear out the mana and utility dorks vs. Maverick since they're more of a pain than random fat guys (Mom in particular).

sdematt

11-28-2011, 06:08 PM

True. Plus, I'm running 3 Perish and 2 Firespout in the board, so I'm hoping that helps.

I'm thinking something like:

3 Extirpate
2 Firespout
3 Perish
3 REB
2 Grip ( CounterTop lock is bad to see, for sure)
2 Ancient Grudge

-Matt

marcel

11-29-2011, 10:43 AM

It...doesn't, actually. Crypt rarely kills it outright (it usually does so after combat damage), Relic does not seem to see a lot of play, and Leyline of the Void turns Crusher into a permanent 3/3 (as opposed to Terravore only getting buffs off of the opponent). Extirpate and Surgical Extraction do not kill Terravore, and those seem to be the most common graveyard hate cards right now because of their usefulness vs. Snapcaster among other things.

I mean, maybe I'm just chronically unlucky with my Countryside Crusher triggers, but I've had numerous games wherein I did not hit a single land on upkeep and had to sink time and mana into making my Crushers not suck (and trust me, 3/3s for 3 in Legacy absolutely suck). Very rarely do you live the dream of hitting five lands at once and getting them. The average for 27 lands, 33 spells seems to be around two or so lands per turn, maybe slightly less. That's not very interesting for a guy that costs three and gets actually, legitimately blanked by Mother of Runes (or chumped by Tarmogoyf, or bounced, or Bolted/Dismembered in response to his first trigger, or whatever). Terravore is better in the near- and medium-terms and I think that's what matters most; you have late-game coming out of your ears but if your midgame was any softer it would actually vanish into thin air.

I mean, yes, if your metagame is all Relics all the time, Crusher is better. But I think Terravore is worth it when that's not the case.

@ruckus: Hmm. I think Skaarg (Skarrg? I forget how to spell it) might be better. You tend to want to use all or most of your mana on your turn, and Wolf Run is three plus Run to give the same power boost of two plus Ska(a)(r)rg. I would have to test it, though.

EDIT: @Polle: Naya Loam tends to end up a lot like Big Zoo just because you share a lot of the cards but shift from being flexible to being top-heavy. I've tried to fix that but have either ended up with an even more top-heavy mess or a Zoo deck. Jund is basically the only color combo that doesn't turn into "[Deck X] But Worse."

I still don't understand, why in America and in Europe people see RGW Loam as a variation of Big Zoo...yes, you have 4 Goyf and 4 Knights, yes, you have Punishing Fire some times, but the concept of the deck is completely different.
I also don't see, how it's worse, but this is another question=)

Richard Cheese

11-29-2011, 11:56 AM

On Crusher, I was under the impression that his role as a giant beater was secondary to his role as a card filtering engine. In any deck running 26-27 lands, the chance of drawing blanks multiple turns in a row is pretty high, and an active Crusher just keeps you in business spells. Terravore is good because it pushes damage through, and hits the ground fat rather than taking a few turns to get there, but other than that it has no utility. Personally I don't think they should be looked at as mutually exclusive.

zulander

11-29-2011, 02:46 PM

Well, I mean, if we cut red...

Scrolling up, I'm going to use the last list I see with a good showing, which looks like this:
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Mountain
3 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Mox Diamond

2 Engineered Explosives
4 Life from the Loam
2 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Seismic Assault

Cutting red frees up 13 non-land slots immediately. Assuming we swap it out for white, we automatically add 4 Knight of the Reliquary and 4 Swords to Plowshares (since we want the removal and StP is the best removal spell we have access to). That leaves 5 slots.

But wait, let's think about this. Life from the Loam gets a lot worse when you lose Seismic Assault, since its remaining uses are: #1 Waste-lock people (exciting), #2 grow your three-drops (meh), #3 draw some cards for a bunch of mana (meeeeeh). Instead of growing our threes or slowly drawing cards, why don't we just make more creatures? Let's cut some of the Loams add 4 Green Sun's Zenith, since that will both give us card advantage and increase our board presence, which is sort of like making our guys really big. But...while we're on the subject of build your own monster, there's more than one way to slice that particular cake. Stoneforge Mystic plus a small equipment toolbox would give us guys who are superior in combat, so let's use Mystic and Jitte and...hmm...Sword of Feast and Famine.

Now that I think about, shaving down on Loams makes Mox Diamonds worse. We don't need access to all the colors and two-for-one-ing ourselves seems weak. Let's cut the Diamonds for 3 Noble Hierarch and one Birds. Cutting Diamonds and Loams means we don't need nearly as many lands, so we'll cut the number down a bit. Let's also add a few miscellaneous GSZ targets so we get the full value out of the card.

But wait, what's black adding to all of this? Bob and Pulse? That doesn't seem like enough to justify making the mana worse for a third color: Pulse is very meh and Bob is better in grindy long games, something in short supply in a largely tempo-defined format. So let's cut black and add in some other ways to generate card advantage: Sylvan Library is a good one, and Elspeth is good at breaking through board stalemates.

And...voila! Here's our new Aggro Loam list:

1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

3 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Mother of Runes
3 Noble Hierarch
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Quirion Ranger
3 Stoneforge Mystic

1 Sylvan Library

4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Umezawa's Jitte

1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Thrun, the Last Troll

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Life from the Loam

1 Forest
1 Plains
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Maze of Ith
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Savannah
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Karakas
1 Gaea's Cradle

...

I am only being a little bit of a smartass here. WBG Aggro Loam is a worse Junk deck, which itself is a worse Maverick deck. RG is really the core of Aggro Loam; cutting Crusher does not justify removing the red entirely because at that point most of your card choices start to look really suboptimal. Fixing all those suboptimal card choices rapidly leads you into the realm Maverick or Zoo, and at that point you might as well just build Maverick or Zoo because those decks are tuned.

@marcel: Like I said, I don't think people are running the kind of hate that kills Terravore right now, and Crusher not having trample or evasion is a real cost. Plus, he is really slow to get off the ground and bricking on your Crusher triggers is pretty bad for you because then you actually have to do some work to make him effective.

That deck looks terrible, not sure why you think that's what bgw would look like. Here's the deck I'm playing that doesn't play bad cards:

Mana: 28
7 Black Fetches
4 Bayou
3 Scrubland
3 Wasteland
3 Barren Moor
4 Mox Diamond
1 Dryad Arbor
1 V. Stronghold
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith

Beats: 13
4 Goyf
4 Knight
4 Green Sun Zenith
1 Pridemage

Disruption: 11
4 Swords
4 Ravens Crime
3 Liliana

Hawt-Sauce: 8
4 Loam
4 Sylvan Library

Sideboard: 15
2 Darkblast
1 Krosan Grip
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg

3 E. Tutor
2 Choke
1 Crypt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Oblivion Ring

You could cut a library or two if there isn't a crap ton of blue in your meta, but if there is then you want all 4. GSZ is great as an accelerant on turn 1 or can be a beating if you get a turn one mox and turn two GSZ. I could see someone adding in +2 removal spells if needed depending on the meta. You can play a normal board with 5 3ofs or play the tutor board which I find helps out especially when you run redundant cards, and it gets really busted when you bring in the tutor package and creatues as hate which essentially lets you run creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and 7 tutors for them.

Also, Liliana is retarded good in this deck. Library helps you not have to invest mana into drawing cards like cycling, so it's a beast. And doesn't die like bob does, I don't like bob currently.

Only thing I would change in a zoo meta is -2 library, +2 removal (go for the throat, pulse, putrefy, vindicate, wtf ever you need). If you like creatures I'd recommend the following: pridemage, ooze, mystic enforce (2 max). These guys are great in most meta's and can turn into beats pretty nicely. Don't get too cute with stoneforge and equipment. Discard their hand, remove their creatures, and beat them with big dudes. Seems pretty good.

marcel

11-29-2011, 03:00 PM

That deck looks terrible, not sure why you think that's what bgw would look like. Here's the deck I'm playing that doesn't play bad cards:

Mana: 28
7 Black Fetches
4 Bayou
3 Scrubland
3 Wasteland
3 Barren Moor
4 Mox Diamond
1 Dryad Arbor
1 V. Stronghold
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith

Beats: 13
4 Goyf
4 Knight
4 Green Sun Zenith
1 Pridemage

Disruption: 11
4 Swords
4 Ravens Crime
3 Liliana

Hawt-Sauce: 8
4 Loam
4 Sylvan Library

Sideboard: 15
2 Darkblast
1 Krosan Grip
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg

3 E. Tutor
2 Choke
1 Crypt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Oblivion Ring

You could cut a library or two if there isn't a crap ton of blue in your meta, but if there is then you want all 4. GSZ is great as an accelerant on turn 1 or can be a beating if you get a turn one mox and turn two GSZ. I could see someone adding in +2 removal spells if needed depending on the meta. You can play a normal board with 5 3ofs or play the tutor board which I find helps out especially when you run redundant cards, and it gets really busted when you bring in the tutor package and creatues as hate which essentially lets you run creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and 7 tutors for them.

Also, Liliana is retarded good in this deck. Library helps you not have to invest mana into drawing cards like cycling, so it's a beast. And doesn't die like bob does, I don't like bob currently.

Only thing I would change in a zoo meta is -2 library, +2 removal (go for the throat, pulse, putrefy, vindicate, wtf ever you need). If you like creatures I'd recommend the following: pridemage, ooze, mystic enforce (2 max). These guys are great in most meta's and can turn into beats pretty nicely. Don't get too cute with stoneforge and equipment. Discard their hand, remove their creatures, and beat them with big dudes. Seems pretty good.

Why not throw out the whole loam engine and add more discard an removal and play Dark Horizons?=)

Aggro_zombies

11-29-2011, 03:03 PM

Why not throw out the whole loam engine and add more discard an removal and play Dark Horizons?=)
Exactly my thoughts. Loam is pretty garbage as a card advantage engine in a format where Green Sun's Zenith, Jace TMS, and Brainstorm all exist, and you don't need more than 1-2 of them to Waste-lock people.

zulander

11-29-2011, 03:24 PM

Why not throw out the whole loam engine and add more discard an removal and play Dark Horizons?=)
The beauty of loam in this deck is it's flexibility in being able to further the game plan you need to at the time. Whether it's cycling, wastelocking, ravens crime, liliana, or just plain getting the mana needed to cast multiple dudes. I could see cutting one in the deck, but getting rid of it doesn't seem great. As for dark horizons, I can see the similarities, but I think the loam engine gives it more versatility and consistency.

marcel

11-29-2011, 05:23 PM

The beauty of loam in this deck is it's flexibility in being able to further the game plan you need to at the time. Whether it's cycling, wastelocking, ravens crime, liliana, or just plain getting the mana needed to cast multiple dudes. I could see cutting one in the deck, but getting rid of it doesn't seem great. As for dark horizons, I can see the similarities, but I think the loam engine gives it more versatility and consistency.

I see your point, but don't you think it's too slow in the current format. While you will get your combo with crime/liliana/cycles you will be smashed. The only good combo that is still here is a waste lock, but you can play mono green with Mox for that=)
Besides all those 3 combos are i'd say 3 card combos who don't instantly win the game...think about it.

But in any case of Dark Horizons here, I just can't imagine something more consistent than a deck with 7 hymn to tourach that could be cast on T1, followed by some additional discard (thoughtseize/inquisition), board sweep (pdeed), an enormous CA (top+bob) and the best creature of the format KotR.

zulander

11-29-2011, 06:00 PM

I see your point, but don't you think it's too slow in the current format. While you will get your combo with crime/liliana/cycles you will be smashed. The only good combo that is still here is a waste lock, but you can play mono green with Mox for that=)
Besides all those 3 combos are i'd say 3 card combos who don't instantly win the game...think about it.

But in any case of Dark Horizons here, I just can't imagine something more consistent than a deck with 7 hymn to tourach that could be cast on T1, followed by some additional discard (thoughtseize/inquisition), board sweep (pdeed), an enormous CA (top+bob) and the best creature of the format KotR.

I don't think the Loam interactions are slow because I don't believe they are the plays you make turns 1-3, so I'm not sure why you'd be smashed. Playing turn one ravens crime, turn 2 goyf is pretty damn good. Even better is if you get mox diamond involved and library, that's usually a GG. Worst case is ravens crime/loam first few turns, and from my testing that's actually won games much more often than not.

Fast zoo/burn decks are a problem pre-board, which is why I stated that if your meta is filled with them then it's fine to fine-tune it a bit as I'm sure I would as well.

Richard Cheese

11-29-2011, 06:25 PM

Exactly my thoughts. Loam is pretty garbage as a card advantage engine in a format where Green Sun's Zenith, Jace TMS, and Brainstorm all exist, and you don't need more than 1-2 of them to Waste-lock people.

Why do you seem to hate this deck so much lately?!?! I mean you wrote the primer man, why all this negativity?

Aggro_zombies

11-29-2011, 06:50 PM

Why do you seem to hate this deck so much lately?!?! I mean you wrote the primer man, why all this negativity?
The format has kind of moved on from that point. I mean, this deck is okay, but outside of the Mental Misstep meta I don't ever feel like it's the best choice to win a tournament. This deck is kind of clunky and kind of mediocre at a lot of what it does, and durdling for the first couple of turns just doesn't cut it in Legacy.

I guess you could say that my negativity is due to frustration with the deck. It's just not relevant anymore. It's not the most powerful deck at any stage of the game. It has unwinnable matchups against a whole block of the format (combo). Really fast aggro decks like Cat Sligh are too consistent for it. Tempo decks - or more specifically, tempo players - can run circles around you with even mediocre hands because, if you stumble once, the game goes very rapidly downhill.

Furthermore, this deck isn't really open to improvement out of a couple cosmetic changes. Because it's built largely on synergy, if you remove any one piece, the rest of the deck just turns into mushy garbage and the process of fixing that leads you to building some other, completely different deck. You can't take out Loam because then you have Bad Jund which is just Bad Zoo. You can't take out red because then you have Bad Junk which is just Bad Maverick. You can't change the creature configuration too much because then you either end up with a bunch of guys that want to be in an aggro shell but aren't because the Loam engine and its associated cards eat up too much space, or a bunch of late game guys that make it so you can't even pretend to do anything before turn three without a Mox. It's very frustrating because the stock lists for the deck are fun to play, but end up being mostly metagame decks, and even then they aren't metagame decks in the sense of "this answers the metagame," but rather, "the metagame makes this deck not laughably bad."

The deck definitely needs some innovation to remain relevant. The Russian lists are an interesting take on it, as is the list from Vegas (played by I forget who). These people are likely to disagree with me about the deck, since they've seen success with it. But if I were going to a tournament with the intention of winning, I would not consider Aggro Loam at all when choosing my deck (I'd probably play Canadian or Maverick).

Koby

11-29-2011, 07:12 PM

Antonius (Tony DeVeyra) got 5th at Vegas. He's been trying to push the strictly Jund list with Bolts and Lavamancers, along with maindeck Ooze in place of Tarmogoyf.

He's made it work for the Southern California metagame, and it was reflected also at SCG Vegas.

Aggro_zombies

11-29-2011, 07:28 PM

ESG

11-29-2011, 10:41 PM

I guess you could say that my negativity is due to frustration with the deck. It's just not relevant anymore.

I would attribute this to people who shun or mistrust innovation. I would like to see some more curiosity toward lists that deviate from the accepted/stock list, especially if a player posts respectable finishes with it, rather than being written off. Tony has had a lot of success with his build, Micah's four-color build won an Open, Matt in Canada has had success with his build, and I've never had worse than an even finish with mine. We all have different builds. I think this thread could be more productive if we explored why deck builders made certain choices and how they play the deck through different situations. (Maybe even like "You make the play"-type discussions.) I see Aggro Loam as an inherently flexible deck, but I'm not going to have any illusions about its combo matchup. Sometimes it's a good choice for a tournament, and sometimes it's not.

Fade

11-29-2011, 10:56 PM

I played 4c Aggro Loam at my local legacy event to a 3-1 finish and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the deck ran. Here was the list:

Lands:
4x Wasteland
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Forgotten Cave
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Riftstone Portal
1x Dust Bowl
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Taiga
1x Badlands
1x Bayou
1x Plateau

Spells:
4x Life From the Loam
4x Mox Diamond
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Seismic Assault
3x Punishing Fire
2x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Devastating Dreams
1x Worm Harvest

Creatures:
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Countryside Crusher
3x Dark Confidant
2x Grim Lavamancer

Sideboard (This was a train wreck as I didn't have enough time before the event to actually build one):
3x Devastating Dreams
3x Choke
3x Krosan Grip
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Diabolic Edict
1x Shattering Spree
1x Maelstrom Pulse

I'll tell you guys as much as I remember about each match.

Round 1 (U/W Stoneblade):
Game 1: Opening hand consisted of a P. Fire, Seismic Assault, 2x Goyfs, and some lands. I ran out the Goyfs first to catch his counters and P. Fired his third turn Stoneforge Mystic after fetching a Batterskull. I eventually baited enough before landing a seismic assault and dredging back loam for the final 6 points of damage while I was at low life.

Game 2: More of the same except the defining card was choke cutting him off of his blue mana. P. fires caught a delver equipped to a sword of feast and famine that was threatening lethal. Eventually got there with Goyf beats and recurring P. fires.
1-0; 2-0

Round 2 (WBU Discard Midrange?)
Game 1: This game lasted very long with him removing the majority of the threats from my deck, but a grim lavamancer that was controlling the board by killing his snapcasters. He was at low enough life that I just needed to draw one of the three seismic assaults he left in my deck for me to kill him. On the last turn I cycled a land and found the assault, cycled again to dredge loam and then blasted him for the last points of damage.

Game 2: This game was about 5 minutes and once I landed a crusher and had loam recursion he conceded the game as time was called.
2-0; 4-0

Round 3 (Mono Red Burn)
Game 1: I played a dark confidant turn one and I ended up getting burned out on turn four after I played my fourth nonbasic land and he used a price of progress to deal exact damage.

Game 2: I had nothing really in my thrown together at the last minute sideboard for the match so I didn't even board knowing that the match up was terrible for me. My 6 card hand contains a Confidant, Life From the Loam, and Seismic Assault with some lands. I played the Confidant despite better judgement on turn 2. Turn 3 and 4 consisted of casting life from the loam getting some fuel for the seismic assault and the last red mana producing land I needed. Turn 5 I swung with the confidant into a Keldon Marauder and he declines to block. I then play assault and burn him out with the exact amount of lands in my hand.

Game 3: I mulled to a decent five cards but the game state got to the point where I casted a devastating dreams to kill his lands in hopes that he wouldn't have another land in his 2 remaining cards or on top. But he has lands for the next two turns and burns me out.
2-1; 5-2

Round 4 (Mono Red Goblins)
Game 1: He plays turn 1 vial and the goblins keep on rolling and I lose after the turn after ringleader finds him 3 more goblins to fuel his hand.

Game 2: I end up playing a Goyf turn 2 which blocks up the ground long enough for me to get P. Fire to destroy his threat density. Around turn 5 he lands a blood moon which hurt a bit but I had a Mox Diamond out. I later dredged into the Riftstone Portal and made my lands super awesome Mountains that produced green and white mana too. Eventually I land the seismic assault and destroy most of his field with 2x Goyfs and an 11/11 Crusher on the field. He concedes with 15 minutes left in the round so we can start game 3.

Game 3: I get an early assault and loam engine going destroying all his goblin warchiefs and goblin chieftains. Time is called and turn 0 is starts during his upkeep. Turn 2 he plays a ringleader that finds only another ringleader and then matron getting a chieftain. On my turn I do some loaming and fill my hand with shocks. His turn he plays a bunch of goblins which I instantly shock all chieftains that hit play. He attacks and I take it with just 8 life left. I then loam again and fill my hand with shocks for the last combat. He plays more goblins from his hand and threatens lethal on board. I then kill enough to put me at 2 life and I shock him to 10 and cycle my last land for loam. I then cast loam two times on turn 5 of turns and shock him to death.
3-1; 7-3

I ended up in third with the goblins player at first and burn player at second. However, the burn player lost in round 2 where I lost in round 3 so I think something went wrong with the standings but it was still a fun event.

The deck is awesome and I believe the main board is very solid and probably does not need much changing if any at all. After the tourney I believe the side should look something like this:

4x Pyroblast/REB
3x Choke
3x Krosan Grip/Shattering Spree
2x Diabolic Edict
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Pernicious Deed

Let me know what you guys think. My local store is having a dual land event, where first and second will receive a dual land, this weekend and with a few tweaks I think I can become a real contender for winning.

ESG

11-29-2011, 11:20 PM

Round 3 (Mono Red Burn)Game 2: I had nothing really in my thrown together at the last minute sideboard for the match so I didn't even board knowing that the match up was terrible for me.
...
Let me know what you guys think. My local store is having a dual land event, where first and second will receive a dual land, this weekend and with a few tweaks I think I can become a real contender for winning.

Given that list, I would have boarded in more Devastating Dreams. Burn can't do much without land, and if he's running Goblin Guide or Grim Lavamancer, it wipes out his dudes. Ideally, you want to stick a large creature and then cast the Dreams, but it can be profitable just to use it early as a more powerful Raze. Sounds like his topdecks bailed him out in Game 3. Even if he knows you're on that plan, Burn doesn't want to have to keep a land-heavy hand and hope to draw into a chain of business spells. Board out Worm Harvest and Dark Confidant. Back when Zoo and Burn were more prevalent in my meta, I ran Kitchen Finks, which helped a lot. You could also run COP: Red.

In regard to your sideboard, what other decks are you expecting at that tournament?

Fade

11-30-2011, 12:19 AM

Given that list, I would have boarded in more Devastating Dreams. Burn can't do much without land, and if he's running Goblin Guide or Grim Lavamancer, it wipes out his dudes. Ideally, you want to stick a large creature and then cast the Dreams, but it can be profitable just to use it early as a more powerful Raze. Sounds like his topdecks bailed him out in Game 3. Even if he knows you're on that plan, Burn doesn't want to have to keep a land-heavy hand and hope to draw into a chain of business spells. Board out Worm Harvest and Dark Confidant. Back when Zoo and Burn were more prevalent in my meta, I ran Kitchen Finks, which helped a lot. You could also run COP: Red.

In regard to your sideboard, what other decks are you expecting at that tournament?

Yea, I didn't know why I didn't board out the Confidants I also came to the conclusion that worm harvest would be too slow in the match up but running 4 devastating dreams in the main didn't seem right. They were mainly used as fillers for the 15 card side at that event and I think running just one main and one side board may be the right number of devastating dreams.

As for the meta, I'm expecting there to be:

U/W/x Stoneblade (One guy plays black for hymns and other discard)
Some form of Counterbalance/Top
Burn (One guy runs badlands for Confidant)
Goblins
GWB Junk
Enchantress
Dredge

There isn't very much combo or storm in my meta because that's normally the role I have been playing, but I found Aggro Loam to fit my niche of decks I like to play with.

Richard Cheese

11-30-2011, 12:32 PM

Really I think more traditional Aggro Loam isn't a terrible deck. It's something that a lot of people don't know how to play against, and has enough flex slots that you can adjust it to all but the most combo-dominated meta. Still, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that it has serious weaknesses: that it's too slow, and that it folds to combo.

As for speed, I don't really know how to attack that problem. Running either more creatures or more burn is going to make dredging less appealing, and you'll probably just end up with a crappy Zoo list.

To beat combo, or at least have some game against it, we either need to run Blue or discard.

Well, in the interest of innovation, here's a more pox-like build I've been toying with:

4 Bloodghast
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
3 Bayou
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Barren Moor
4 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
4 Swamp
4 Smallpox
1 Worm Harvest
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Forest
3 Innocent Blood
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Marsh Flats
4 Sinkhole
4 Liliana of the Veil
SB: 2 Nature's Claim
SB: 3 Krosan Grip
SB: 3 Hymn to Tourach
SB: 3 Extirpate
SB: 2 Perish
SB: 2 Noxious Revival

This is a really rough list that I've barely tested, but hopefully it can get the ball rolling. I could see adding red for Punishing Fires/Grove, swapping Sinkhole for Hymn, so on and so forth. This is obviously a huge departure from Aggro Loam, so maybe it belongs in the Pox thread instead, or in N&D if it shows any potential, but the point is more to inspire discussion.

I also had the idea for a RUG list that aims to win mainly off Seismic, with Intuition and cantrips to set it up, and counters for protection, but on paper it's just a really slow mana-intensive combo, and you'd probably be better off running Swans instead of Loam.

Aggro_zombies

11-30-2011, 01:19 PM

sdematt

11-30-2011, 01:44 PM

When I'm on my break, I'll try and actually record myself playing some matches, and maybe that will help. Or, if you guys can, that'd work as well.

I've had success with my build, but, the deck is inherently slow at the start. There's not much you can say about it. Sometimes, Zoo can get the best of you, and I wholeheartedly agree that this deck was the tits in the MM meta. I yearn for MM with the fire of a thousand suns. Honestly, I'm still pissed at that banning.

But, I think if you're a really tight player, and you have the right build for the right meta (this, I believe, is the most important, you can't just rip a list off here and play it, you have to design it for your meta), it's a great deck.

Chalice may be an interesting choice. I don't personally agree with it, but with all the 1 CMC garbage running around, it may be worth bringing it up before someone else has to.

-Matt

Richard Cheese

11-30-2011, 01:47 PM

That looks a lot like B/G Pox and should probably go in that thread.

I think Antonius's list is a good jumping-off point. I feel like I should pick up this deck again and grind some matches online so I can rewrite the primer, since it's pretty out-of-date. There's no physical Legacy anywhere near where I live unless I want to bum a ride to Phoenix.

Yeah I know, but the Pox thread sees so little activity that it's hard to get any real feedback there.

Here, maybe this is close enough to warrant discussion?

4 Bloodghast
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
2 Bayou
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Barren Moor
4 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
3 Swamp
4 Smallpox
1 Worm Harvest
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Sinkhole
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Punishing Fire
1 Badlands

Richard Cheese

11-30-2011, 01:53 PM

Also, I'm always down for some testing on Cockatrice.

Aggro_zombies

11-30-2011, 02:02 PM

Yeah I know, but the Pox thread sees so little activity that it's hard to get any real feedback there.

Here, maybe this is close enough to warrant discussion?

4 Bloodghast
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
2 Bayou
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Barren Moor
4 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
3 Swamp
4 Smallpox
1 Worm Harvest
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Sinkhole
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Punishing Fire
1 Badlands

Eh, the type of resource management you do with a Pox deck is different that an Aggro Loam deck. The best Pox decks (snicker) play more like suicide decks than midrange control decks, and Aggro Loam is very much the latter. I'd be very suspicious of taking the deck in a Pox direction because Pox has historically been pretty bad, and people tend to fill it with blanks like Sinkhole, Dark Ritual, and Pox instead of cards that actually do something. That's why it usually plays more like a suicide type deck and why you're better off building using a different shell as a starting point.

I guess I should download Cockatrice and figure out how it works. I haven't tested online in roughly forever, but I'll contact you once I sort out how to get things working. I kind of want to practice Canadian Thresh again.

ESG

11-30-2011, 09:05 PM

As for the meta, I'm expecting there to be:

U/W/x Stoneblade (One guy plays black for hymns and other discard)
Some form of Counterbalance/Top
Burn (One guy runs badlands for Confidant)
Goblins
GWB Junk
Enchantress
Dredge

There isn't very much combo or storm in my meta because that's normally the role I have been playing, but I found Aggro Loam to fit my niche of decks I like to play with.

You'll want Krosan Grips and maybe also Engineered Explosives for the CounterTop matchup. Since Burn will be there, you should have some answers for it or just plan to race it and Plow a big dude for life and/or mana screw them with Devasting Dreams. DD and Engineered Explosives both cream Enchantress. Remember that. DD is also good against Goblins. It usually wins the game outright if they don't have Aether Vial. Dredge is a terrible matchup, so if you want to beat the deck, you'll have to devote a lot of sideboard space to that goal. (I would start with 4 Leyline of the Void and 2 Surgical Extraction.) If there's only one Dredge deck, it might be worth writing it off as a likely loss and focusing on maximizing your other matchups, but if you have the SB space, you can gun for it. Based on the decks you expect, you can probably drop the Diabolic Edicts. Even though you run Goyfs yourself, Perish is a lot stronger against Enchantress and any Zoo or Junk or Bant deck. I probably would run a full set of Grips between maindeck and sideboard, because it's excellent against Batterskull, Counterbalance and the problem enchantments in Enchantress. You could probably get by with 2 Choke. You should have a naturally good game against blue control decks. It doesn't look like you need to be maxed out on Pyroblasts, since a lot of that field is nonblue. Engineered Plague is a flexible and powerful card in several matchups if you know what to name.

I would go with something like:

4x Krosan Grip
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Choke
4x Leyline of the Void
1x Tormod's Crypt
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Devastating Dreams

Obviously, if you decide to not worry about Dredge, you'll have a lot more space to work with. Your maindeck threat count is robust at 11 (before taking into account Punishing Fires and Grim Lavamancer), so you might move out Worm Harvest in exchange for a Krosan Grip. You'll want Worm Harvest for the CounterTop matchup and in a matchup like BUG Control where they counter and Extraction away your threats, but in most of your other matchups, your other win cons should be getting you there.

BantFTW

12-01-2011, 11:09 AM

Aggro_zombies

12-01-2011, 12:17 PM

What do you think of Darkblast in aggro loam?
I was thinking of it because it's another dredger,
but also you can abuse it to kill really much creatures in the format.
Like noble, lavamancer, bop, delver, sfm, ...

What do you guys think of it?
It's a decent sideboard option. Having dredge is a little less relevant than being a reusable way to kill Birds/Hierarch and other accelerators or x/1 and x/2 utility guys early in the game.

Unfortunately, most of the decks you'd want it against are probably better answered by Perish or Punishing Fires.

BantFTW

12-01-2011, 12:26 PM

yeah that's probably true, we'll see. But thanks :)

TheShaun

12-01-2011, 12:49 PM

I agree with the common issues you guys are bringing up with this deck. I did have moderate success against combo, but it required some severe maindeck alterations. If you go back a few pages, I did pretty well at a major tournament by adding 3 maindeck Extirpate and 2 Lilliana to help against storm, reanimator, and dredge. But that is probably not the ideal place to take the deck. Running maindeck discard is an option, but it seems very risky to mess with the balance of the deck too much with cards that suck to get dredged away.

I've been slowly putting together a RUG version of this, though it is still in infancy. It seems like there are several potential ways to go with it, but I'm having a hard time deciding which works best.

First off, by cutting black, the biggest loss is Dark Confidant. There are plenty of other quality black cards, but Confidant is the #1 reason for Jund lists instead of just R/G. So we'll (probably) need some other form of card advantage to make up for this loss.

Additionally, white and black are the best colors for creature removal. By not running either, we are asking for trouble against fatties like Goyf and KotR. Red helps keep smaller dudes down quite well, but right now it looks like the best answer for big guys is to just "go bigger" with Crusher or a matching Goyf.

Some of the ideas I've been tossing around are a very minor inclusion for Daze (Mental Misstep would have been great probably), Brainstorm, and maybe Spell Pierce or Spell Snare?? I don't think that we'd be able to build this deck properly with enough blue cards for FoW so I don't even really want to try it.

We can also go with Snapcaster Mage (cutting Daze since you can't pay alternate cost), Brainstorm, Spell Pierce, Spell Snare? Snapcaster can be amazing, but then you have to consider the possible cards you'd be getting back with him. I imagine you can see Brainstorm, a counter, and your choice of burn spell. Sure he can get Loam back, but I feel like that's a pretty poor choice.

I'll keep working on this (instead of finals like I should be) and maybe we can come up with something that works. I feel it's important to keep the deck aggressive, as it is currently capable of just winning the game over a turn and a half out of nowhere which I love. However, it seems that the bigger the blue splash becomes, the less aggressive the deck becomes. I don't know if it's actually going to be able to work, do any of you have experience with trying to build it?

Fade

12-01-2011, 12:54 PM

It's a decent sideboard option. Having dredge is a little less relevant than being a reusable way to kill Birds/Hierarch and other accelerators or x/1 and x/2 utility guys early in the game.

Unfortunately, most of the decks you'd want it against are probably better answered by Perish or Punishing Fires.

I agree. Punishing Fires have been awesome when I played with them. Plus being able to dredge back a life from the loam and get back a punishing fire in the same turn was crucial during some games.

igri_is_a_bk

12-02-2011, 03:51 PM

In my opinion of the colors, black (and white) contribute the least and should be the first cut.

Assume black is gone. The manabase becomes more consistent and resilient. Space becomes available to add more redundancy in our cards' effects. First, we get more mana accelerates by adding Birds, always good for a deck as mana intensive as this. Second, we get more fat creatures in Terravore. Third, we maintain a diverse answer in Beast Within, offering the same value as Maelstrom Pulse, with a negligible drawback thanks to more fat creatures, and the already present Seismic Assualt and Devastating Dreams. We also don't lose our card advantage by replacing Dark Confidant with Sylvan Library, which has the benefit of never hurting us if we don't want it to. It's also harder to kill and can offer more cards if needed that turn.

Here's what I'm thinking as a starting point;

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
3 Mountain
2 Forest
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Terravore

4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
4 Beast Within
3 Devastating Dreams
2 Sylvan Library

So what's missing from original Aggro Loam?
Dark Confidant
Maelstrom Pulse
Engineered Explosives
Volrath's Stronghold

That's it. I don't think any of those card's effects are irreplaceable, do you?

There are still cards to be considered too. Grim Lavamancer, Lightning Bolt, Burning Wish, etc. I think RG is a viable option that will run more smoothly than RGb or RGbw.

Basically, if Beast Within turns out to be terrible, then this deck may have trouble. Has a version like this been tried before?

Aggro_zombies

12-02-2011, 04:09 PM

I think there have been people who floated the idea of RG in the past, but I don't know if that ever went anywhere.

Looking at your list specifically:

The complete lack of Punishing Fires seems suspect to me. Presumably, it would be easier to support in a two-color deck because you can build your manabase such that it would be easy to produce lots of red mana every turn, and Fires is very good at controlling the early game against creature decks.
Maindeck Dreams seems very sketchy in blue.format, especially when you don't have Stronghold to recover creatures you discard or kill with it.
Birds seems bad. You have no way to make use of them after the first couple of turns and they will be dead topdecks later in the game.
Your curve seems too high. I know this is why you added Birds, but I would rather cut Birds and lower the curve by adding Bolts and Punishing Fires than run Birds and risk getting stuck with two lands and a hand of threes because my opponent saw my turn one BoP and hit it with Punishing Fires/Bolt/whatever.
Beast Within seems suspect. I would not want to give my opponent a 3/3 unless I was already winning; the 3/3 is a fine chump against most of your guys, and you're kind of creature-light as it is, potentially allowing aggro opponents to race you. And no, Dreams doesn't cut it here.

I think the only reason to go RG instead of three colors is to make the deck cheaper to build. Sylvan Library is not a substitute for Dark Confidant, and you lose a bunch of good sideboard options when you limit yourself to two colors. I mean, it's certainly possible to go this route, but...

Richard Cheese

12-02-2011, 08:37 PM

Bob: Card Advantage
Library: Card Selection

Greenpoe

12-02-2011, 09:37 PM

If you're running Bob+Library, just run Mirri's Guile instead.

sdematt

12-02-2011, 11:05 PM

TheShaun

12-03-2011, 12:08 AM

Honestly people, what's so hard to understand? Bob =/= Library =/= Guile. Bob is one of the best cards in the deck. He flips 0's over 50% of the time. That's pretty fucking good. Library lets you Dredge up to THREE times for free, per turn.

More cards is not a bad thing. Sure, cutting Black limits your Sideboard and gives you Swords, but you LOSE Bob. I'd rather stretch to 4 colours and run black just for Bob and sideboard rather than cut Black.

-Matt

All excellent points, but what does Bob do against a turn 2 or 3 kill? I don't think that anybody is arguing against the usefulness and amazing power of Bob, we're just trying to find answers to the major problems of the deck. I do think that 4 colors is a realistic option, but it needs to really be worth it. I don't think that StP alone is worth the hassle of 4 colors, but KotR probably is. However, neither of those cards help against the worst thing this deck can get paired up against: combo!

I don't know what to do honestly. This is probably in my top 3 favorite decks of all time to play, but it frustrates me to have such a large near-auto-loss matchup. All I'm doing is trying to figure out some way for Aggro-Loam to shore up it's weak points without giving up too much from it's strong points.

Turn 1 or 2 Bob with 31-ish 0cmc cards is amazing and will win you the game alone if uncontested for 3 turns or so. But not if he gets Bolted/Pathed/Swords'ed/Punishing Fired/etc, or if your opponent says "nice creature, I win" and casts a Tendrils for 24. I love the card too, but I don't think that it's a "must-keep", and I am willing to at least explore the possibility of playing this deck without him if needed.

Richard Cheese

12-03-2011, 12:43 AM

Aggro_zombies

12-03-2011, 11:36 AM

Like I said before, you want to have game against combo, you have two choices: run Blue or more Black in the form of discard. Maybe drop some stuff like EE or Pulse. Every build seems to include some "catch-all" answers, either Pulse or something like it and I'm not totally sure why. It's nice to have something like that around, but plenty of decks don't. I feel like there's got to be a decent combination of Duress/IoK/Thoughtsieze, Liliana, and Hymn that could actually fit in the deck without completely changing the way it plays.
You would have to change how it plays.

In order to have a high enough density of discard spells to guarantee hitting one in the first two to three turns, you'd need 8-12 slots. Fewer than that and you'll draw your discard so infrequently you might as well run Chalice, because a Chalice at one (or zero) hurts combo more than a single random discard spell. More than that and, of course, you'll have trouble winning because of all the discard. Let's go with the middle-of-the-road option and choose ten discard spells - 4 Thoughtseize, 2 Duress, 2 Inquisition, 2 Liliana. Now look at your typical Aggro Loam deck: 27 land, 33 spells, but really 29 spells because of 4 Mox Diamond. Let's assume that 4 Crusher, 4 Bob, 3 Life from the Loam are absolutely essential and cannot be cut. That's ten discard spells plus eleven essential spells, leaving eight slots left for Seismic Assault; Tarmogoyf; additional removal like Punishing Fires, Terminate, and Pulse; Terravore or other additional large guys like Knight; and so on. Now, granted, we don't have to have all of these discard spells in the main: we could have Duress and Inquisition in the board, and maybe even Thoughtseize as well. But if we lose game one to combo, we absolutely have to win games two and three, and I don't think that will happen at a rate most people who want to "fix" the combo matchup are hoping for.

See, discard is generally less effective against most forms of storm combo than counters. Granted, this is usually a player- and practice-dependent thing, but let's just say that it's *generally* true for the sake of argument. Given this deck's slow clock, it is entirely possible for a combo deck to use cantrips to draw itself into a second copy of its missing piece. Furthermore, if you Duress your opponent and see a hand of Hive Mind, Show and Tell, and Emrakul, you will need a second discard spell to be safe from dying unless you're willing to gamble that the Hive Mind deck can't ramp into Hive Mind before you get your Crushers large enough to kill them - and if they draw a second SnT and drop Emrakul after you Duressed, you're in a pretty tight spot.

In short, not every deck can have a positive matchup across the archetype spectrum. This deck has an unfixable combo matchup. It just can't be done unless you want to fundamentally change the deck or give up massive percentage points elsewhere. If you're that worried about combo, play blue. If you want a decent combo matchup but don't want to play blue, play Junk. But don't play this deck.

Richard Cheese

12-03-2011, 03:38 PM

Eh, Rock lists run 8-12 pieces, and while it's still not favorable against combo, it's at least not an auto-loss. You could start with something like this:

4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Taiga
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Mox Diamond
3 Seismic Assault
4 Life from the Loam
2 Badlands
4 Dark Confidant
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Arid Mesa
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Bayou
3 Hymn to Tourach
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 4 Duress
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 Extirpate
SB: 2 Perish

You'd lose ground in aggro matchups, but you can bring in Terminate/Dreams/GftT/Pulse out of the board, and the core of the deck is largely the same.

TheShaun

12-03-2011, 07:26 PM

I made a rough start for a RGU Aggro-Loam list, though I'm not sure how it would fare. I don't think it's possible to raise the blue count enough to run FoW, but Daze and Spell Pierce are reasonable. Brainstorm could be nice too, getting rid of extra Seismics or letting you protect a Loam if you don't have a cycling land in hand. Here's the start, but please don't hate since I know it's nowhere near optimal yet. I did what I could to keep it aggressive, but it's not easy without black.

4 Life from the Loam
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Seismic Assault
3 Punishing Fire
4 Mox Diamond
1 Sylvan Library
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
2 Spell Pierce

2 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil Thicket
2 Lonely Sandbar
3 Wasteland
8 Fetches (don't feel like figuring out exactly which right now)

Spell Pierce could be Spell Snare, could have more in the board, could even try something silly like Mana Leak potentially. I don't think Snapcaster would make sense at all. Thoughts?

Dark Ritual

12-04-2011, 01:24 AM

sdematt

12-04-2011, 01:27 AM

Hey all, I've written a small piece in the Format/Article discussion, and I talked about Loam a bit. Maybe worth a read :)

-Matt

TheShaun

12-04-2011, 10:47 AM

How about we don't cut our secondary engine (Bob) from the deck. Every iteration of aggro loam I play pretty much starts with Duals, fetches, loam, and bob. I will never run less than 4 bob. Getting a turn 1 bob is also the nut draw for this deck if the opponent lacks an answer that bob will win it for you over 90% of the time easy. Unless you're facing off against combo.

If you want to try to beat combo decks, either play a combo deck of your own or play blue. Aggro loam isn't supposed to be able to get a positive MU percentage against combo unless you dedicate a large portion of your SB to it (I'm talking 10+ slots). And if you do that you lower your percentage against other archetypes. I see zero reason to try to beat combo with aggro loam; if you really really really want to beat combo go play counterbalance/a blue deck.

I see no reason to go straight RG other than budget reasons. RGB is, simply put, superior to RG in every way except when it comes to the manabase. Bob is an integral part. Pulse kills anything. Black has some good SB options depending on meta.

Daze seems awful in a RUG loam list with that high curve. Bouncing a land hurts more than it helps except the rare case where you counter ad nauseam or something ridiculously powerful with it. The only blue card I like in your list is brainstorm for obvious reasons (brainstorm is great with loam and on its own. Also shuffles away excess seismic assaults (I hate drawing multiple seismic's with a passion)).

The goal isn't to get a positive matchup against combo, it's just to make it not be an auto loss. I could see going 4 colors to include Bob still, as there really isn't any card in other colors that can provide the advantage he does. Regarding Daze, I don't really see the curve being all that high. There are 4 3cmc cards, everything else is 2 or less. And it would only be used for something that would win them the game right then, you couldn't use it like you do in most blue decks. It could very well become 4 Spell Pierce instead though, but that would seem to slow the deck down a bit more by not allowing you to tap out turns 1/2/3 for aggro. Again, the only reason blue is in this deck is to slow down combo a turn or two.

I don't understand the comments I keep hearing of "if you want to beat combo, play blue". When I play any deck, I want to win the whole tournament. I understand that no deck will have a positive matchup against everything, if that were the case everyone would be playing that deck instead. The point in my deck decisions are to give myself the best matchup against the majority of what I expect to face. I think that this deck gives me a great matchup against everything except combo, and I'm willing to CONSIDER altering the deck somewhat to improve that combo pairing. Not to make it an amazing matchup, or even 50/50, but winnable. Yes, the loss of other cards will weaken the non-combo matchup. However, at least being able to consider a change allows the possibility of winning when you wouldn't otherwise.

marcel

12-04-2011, 12:12 PM

in my RGW list I play Gaddock Teeg and Leyline of Sanctity. As I also board Pyroblast I can either protect them from their blue bounce, either counter their cantrips, so white gives quite a lot. While he searches some answers to that you just attack them, so they can't Ad Nauseam and they 2 options go through PiF or IGG but here is when the gravehate comes out (Crypt) or storm in goblins and you have an answers to that - EE or Pulse. While this happens you just attack with your KotR or Tarmo

Aggro_zombies

12-04-2011, 01:34 PM

I don't understand the comments I keep hearing of "if you want to beat combo, play blue". When I play any deck, I want to win the whole tournament. I understand that no deck will have a positive matchup against everything, if that were the case everyone would be playing that deck instead. The point in my deck decisions are to give myself the best matchup against the majority of what I expect to face. I think that this deck gives me a great matchup against everything except combo, and I'm willing to CONSIDER altering the deck somewhat to improve that combo pairing. Not to make it an amazing matchup, or even 50/50, but winnable. Yes, the loss of other cards will weaken the non-combo matchup. However, at least being able to consider a change allows the possibility of winning when you wouldn't otherwise.
If your goal is to win the tournament, and you chose this deck, you made an incorrect deck choice. You should have played blue.

I'm not kidding. Adding a couple counters that are at their best in fast decks because their value is so transient to a deck with a slow clock, a ton of lands, and a bunch of durdle cards like Mox Diamond seems...just bad. You won't fix the combo matchup because you don't have enough counters, and Daze and Spell Pierce aren't that hot elsewhere and certainly not worth slots in your main. If you're in blue, why aren't you running Jace TMS, or Intuition, or Trade Routes? These are all cards that make the blue splash worth it.

Look, the problems with combo stem from two sources:

You have no way to disrupt them.
It takes you way too long to kill them even when you do disrupt them because you have so many dead draws.

Even if you fix the former, you will still have problems with the latter. Running 25+ lands does not give you a fast clock. Running Mox Diamond and Life from the Loam does not give you a fast clock. Seismic Assault and Punishing Fire are not fast enough clocks. In order to beat combo on anything approaching a consistent basis, you need to reach a certain threshold of disruption backed by a large number of undercosted, efficient creatures. The game is going to be over by turn three or so; either the combo player is too far behind and you just need to keep up the pressure, or you didn't apply enough pressure and you lose to the combo. Yes, the relationship there isn't perfect, and it's possible for one or the other party to luck out, but it's a good rule of thumb.

Now look at your RUG Loam deck. How much pressure are you going to realistically have applied by turn three? Let's be charitable and say you got a turn one Mox Diamond. What will the combo player's life total be at on turn three, if you were on the play with a Mox Diamond, for an average draw? My guess is, "Too high."

All of this aside, I'm not sure what the obsession is with "fixing the combo matchup." What percentage of the field is combo in any given tournament? If the amount of combo is high, you should just play blue. If it's low, what are your chances of running into a combo deck before the end of the tournament? Is it worth sacrificing points across the board to try to improve a hopeless matchup against a deck you might not even see? That doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I would rather consolidate my strengths to ensure I wasn't losing my non-combo matchups so that, on the rare occasion I did run into combo, I could afford the loss.

sdematt

12-04-2011, 01:57 PM

The only way you can really try to beat combo is packing 3-4 REB in the board and 3-4 Extirpate. You need to basically land a turn 2 Assault with lands in hand, as well.

-Matt

TheShaun

12-04-2011, 07:15 PM

I submit. I will use the same decklist, will not try to innovate, will not try to improve weak areas, or even consider anything different.

Aggro_zombies

12-04-2011, 07:39 PM

I submit. I will use the same decklist, will not try to innovate, will not try to improve weak areas, or even consider anything different.
Your wounded sarcasm is duly noted. However, if you want to innovate the deck, speeding it up and strengthening the tempo matchup would be the first things to do.

Richard Cheese

12-06-2011, 05:22 PM

Your wounded sarcasm is duly noted. However, if you want to innovate the deck, speeding it up and strengthening the tempo matchup would be the first things to do.

The RUG Tempo matchup is definitely tough. We have a shitload of Stifle and Spell Snare targets, and Daze sucks to play around if we don't land an early Diamond. That said, their manabase is super greedy, so opening on Wasteland(s) is good, and Extirpate can really mess with them post-board. On one hand White is really good here because StP can deal with all their creatures, but it's going to weaken the manabase and make you even more open to Stifle. Deed could wipe them out pretty handily if you can survive long enough to stick one.

I've only played against it once, and Stifle, Snapcaster-->Stifle kept me from seeing any Black for Extirpate until it was too late. REBs and Extirpates at least make it seem doable on paper postboard.

Antonius

12-06-2011, 05:31 PM

The RUG Tempo matchup is definitely tough.

Using what list?

Richard Cheese

12-06-2011, 05:51 PM

Using what list?

My janky 4c list, with Bolts and StP. Maybe it's not bad at all if you run Jund and know what you're doing, but it seems like having 2 fetches Stifled and a Goyf Snared is not a problem unique to my list.

Aggro_zombies

12-06-2011, 05:51 PM

Richard Cheese

12-06-2011, 06:07 PM

As a rule, four-color versions of the deck have shitty manabases.

Ideally (from the tempo deck's perspective), they'll land a turn one or two threat and use a combination of taxing counters like Daze and Pierce to deny you early mana (Diamond) and early Loams. The one thing that baffles me about tempo players - or at least, that baffled me back in early 2010 when I last tested the matchup - was that they weren't aggressively countering Loam. Their whole plan relies on using a bunch of cards with rapidly diminishing value to set you really far behind and then beat you to death before you can catch up. If you get Loam going you can just destroy their manabase, blank most of their counters, and blank the Stifle/Waste package, thereby leaving them with a ton of dead draws and creatures that will never get through while you roll them. Of course, this was pre-Delver: they're better at finishing games while you're behind now, but the general rule is the same, I think.

I actually don't like Snapcaster in tempo all that much. It's actually not very easy to flashback spells off of him with only 8 colored mana-producing lands (Wasteland is only sometimes a land). However, it does make your midgame a nightmare since it gives them a lot of extra gas and increases their clock, and it's also some good with Surgical Extraction.

I suspect the Russian lists, and Antonius's list, are much more resilient against Canadian Thresh because they have a real curve and solid mana. Knowing when and how to fetch, as well as optimizing your fetch configuration, helps a lot versus Stifle and Wasteland, and the rest of their deck is fine for you as long as they don't get ridiculous draws and put you on a double-flipped-Delver clock or something. The problems creep in when you're using old lists with few to no one-drops or four-color builds with infinite nonbasics that only function because of Mox Diamond and fetches.

Full Disclosure, here's what I ran:

2 Taiga
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Plateau
1 Bayou
2 Badlands
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Wasteland
3 Life from the Loam
4 Dark Confidant
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Mox Diamond
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Seismic Assault
3 Burning Wish
2 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Volrath's Stronghold
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Arid Mesa
3 Lightning Bolt
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 3 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Tariff
SB: 2 Bojuka Bog
SB: 1 Life from the Loam
SB: 1 Perish
SB: 1 Shattering Spree
SB: 1 Maelstrom Pulse
SB: 1 Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 Firespout

It may have been slightly different, I usually end up making some last-minute change from the list I keep in Cockatrice. For what it's worth, he did counter Loam, Forced a Swords on Delver, and Snared a Goyf, so I was staring at 2x flipped Delver and a giant Goyf. Don't really remember the other game, think I ran out a Crusher without a way to pump him immediately and he got Bolted, which was dumb on my part I suppose. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very good player, but dude also pulled some nutty hands that round.

Antonius

12-06-2011, 06:42 PM

Just look for hands with Lightning Bolt and Loam. As long as you stop them from sticking a threat in the first three or four turns, you'll probably win. If you start resolving loam when their board is empty or weak, you're definitely going to win. Besides being four color, your list also runs burning wish, which is a major liability. Spell Snare is the meta game.

Other stuff that's great--
Grim Lavamancer: RUG may have a lot of answers for him, but that doesn't change the fact that he kills all their dudes except goyf. Its hard for them to win through a lavamancer.
Scavenging Ooze: RUG wins by just barely getting there, so gaining two or three life off a late game ooze can just take the game away from them entirely. Also, a 7/7 ooze will never lose to tarmogoyf.

Richard Cheese

12-06-2011, 07:40 PM

Just look for hands with Lightning Bolt and Loam. As long as you stop them from sticking a threat in the first three or four turns, you'll probably win. If you start resolving loam when their board is empty or weak, you're definitely going to win. Besides being four color, your list also runs burning wish, which is a major liability. Spell Snare is the meta game.

Yeah dropping Wish is on my to-do list, I've just been lazy, and a wishboard seemed nice given the amount of random shit that shows up in our local meta (Dredge, Enchantress, Goblins, ANT, NO-Hulk, Merfolk, Painter).

Aggro_zombies

12-06-2011, 08:05 PM

Yeah dropping Wish is on my to-do list, I've just been lazy, and a wishboard seemed nice given the amount of random shit that shows up in our local meta (Dredge, Enchantress, Goblins, ANT, NO-Hulk, Merfolk, Painter).
Enchantress and Goblins can both be answered by Devastating Dreams. Not sure what the NO-Hulk deck entails, but you can probably stop both it and Dredge with Leyline of the Void. ANT is ANT. Merfolk and Painter can both be answered with red Blasts (since I'm assuming the Painter player names blue). You can also use Grips and/or Nature's Claims to hit Painter and Enchantress.

Richard Cheese

12-07-2011, 01:23 PM

Enchantress and Goblins can both be answered by Devastating Dreams. Not sure what the NO-Hulk deck entails, but you can probably stop both it and Dredge with Leyline of the Void. ANT is ANT. Merfolk and Painter can both be answered with red Blasts (since I'm assuming the Painter player names blue). You can also use Grips and/or Nature's Claims to hit Painter and Enchantress.

NO-Hulk is also called ZeRo (no idea), but Leyline doesn't really bother them b/c they'll just NO into Progenitals, and we had Hive Mind running around as well, hence the Tariff.

The best thing against Enchantress IMO is Deed, because Dreams won't turn off Confinement lock or get rid of Presence, and Grip/Claim/etc. get pretty bad with double Grove in play, but Reverent Silence is a close second. Also Dreams just doesn't seem worth devoting spots to these days with so much Blue running around and Spell Snare getting popular again.

I think I just convinced myself to drop the wishboard and start running Deeds again. I'm still leaning more towards a board control direction for the deck, I just don't see the point of screwing around with Loam/Cyclers if you're hoping to race with beaters or burn.

Aggro_zombies

12-07-2011, 01:58 PM

I think I just convinced myself to drop the wishboard and start running Deeds again. I'm still leaning more towards a board control direction for the deck, I just don't see the point of screwing around with Loam/Cyclers if you're hoping to race with beaters or burn.
This is why I don't really like Life from the Loam in Legacy anymore. If you want your deck to go long, there's Jace TMS and potentially GSZ, both of which are less mana-intensive than Loam and both of which generate more card advantage.

I think Aggro Loam is better as more controlling deck than a more aggressive one. Once you start moving into aggro territory, you run into "[deck X] but worse" syndrome. I'm not sure about Deed because it kills your Mox Diamonds, but EE hasn't impressed me in years so Deed might be the only viable option for an all-purpose sweeper right now.

Richard Cheese

12-07-2011, 05:27 PM

This is why I don't really like Life from the Loam in Legacy anymore. If you want your deck to go long, there's Jace TMS and potentially GSZ, both of which are less mana-intensive than Loam and both of which generate more card advantage.

I think Aggro Loam is better as more controlling deck than a more aggressive one. Once you start moving into aggro territory, you run into "[deck X] but worse" syndrome. I'm not sure about Deed because it kills your Mox Diamonds, but EE hasn't impressed me in years so Deed might be the only viable option for an all-purpose sweeper right now.

Agreed. I keep trying to come up with ways to get around the big issue with Loam of binning a bunch of stuff that's just dead once it hits the yard. Try to abuse the yard more? End up with crappy Dredge or Reanimator. Catch-alls for getting stuff back like Stronghold and Witness are slow as hell, Revival isn't but it eats a draw and is itself useless in the yard. I'd love to run Top or Guile to try and fix that consistency issue, but finding room for something like that is tough, and maybe that issue is better mitigated through redundancy?

Aggro_zombies

12-07-2011, 05:48 PM

Agreed. I keep trying to come up with ways to get around the big issue with Loam of binning a bunch of stuff that's just dead once it hits the yard. Try to abuse the yard more? End up with crappy Dredge or Reanimator. Catch-alls for getting stuff back like Stronghold and Witness are slow as hell, Revival isn't but it eats a draw and is itself useless in the yard. I'd love to run Top or Guile to try and fix that consistency issue, but finding room for something like that is tough, and maybe that issue is better mitigated through redundancy?
Well, in theory, Bob and possibly Library are your redundant draw engines. In practice, Bob has an average battlefield life expectancy of like a turn in a lot of matchups, and Library is a distant second to Bob. Mirri's Guile is just not very good and should only be considered after Library has been added. Top is much better but is a distant second to Bob and suffers from needing you to keep spare mana up when you really want to be pouring mana into cycling or Punishing Fires (if you use that).

I liked Eternal Witness back in the day, but the problem with Witness is not just the speed (an issue the entire deck suffers from), but that it bogs the deck down. There's a temptation to load up on three-drop bombs to max out Witness's usefulness, but then your deck just gets very clunky and, yes, slow. In a quick, tempo-oriented format, you simply can't afford to be the deck full of grindy attrition cards, particularly ones that don't say "search your library," or "0: draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order."

One of the things I tried - and failed - to do was to reduce the deck's reliance on Loam (mostly out of a desire to boost performance vs. graveyard hate because dredge was popular at the time). I noticed the same issues with dredging and the same lack of good solutions. Loam wasn't really hot for your beatdown plan, except when you were using Assault to clear a path for Crushers and Goyfs. I mean, it made your Crushers bigger, sure, but that had diminishing returns against a lot of decks, particularly ones that could chump. It was also not very good at drawing cards because of how much mana it ate up and how many of your cards lose value once you get to the point where you are Loaming to draw every turn. However, if you pull Loam, a lot of the other cards in your deck lose their reason to exist: Assaults get worse, having a million lands becomes a liability, Diamond gets worse, etc. Loam really is the heart of the deck.

So I'm not really sure what to tell you other than, "You need to be mindful of how and when you are using Loam." Even if you have the option of using Loam every turn, you may not want to; I would recommend trying to dredge Loam only when you think it's absolutely necessary. If you are digging for a particular card, use Loam to draw. If you are trying to pump Crushers to end the game as quickly as possible, Loam away. But it may be best to exercise caution if the board state is close, especially if you have a Confidant. Bob and Crusher will dig you out of a lot of messes.

ESG

12-07-2011, 08:47 PM

Dreams won't turn off Confinement lock or get rid of Presence, and Grip/Claim/etc. get pretty bad with double Grove in play, but Reverent Silence is a close second. Also Dreams just doesn't seem worth devoting spots to these days with so much Blue running around and Spell Snare getting popular again.

If you DD away their land, they can't play enchantments, which means they can't draw cards, which means Solitary Confinement goes away. The fact it hits the Enchantresses is a bonus. Groves on their own don't do anything.

Pernicious Deed is a quality card, but I don't like it in 4-color. Your Mox Diamonds are too important to sweep away. It might work with Sakura Tribe Elder, but that card is usually pretty underwhelming.

Aggro_zombies

12-07-2011, 10:51 PM

If you DD away their land, they can't play enchantments, which means they can't draw cards, which means Solitary Confinement goes away. The fact it hits the Enchantresses is a bonus. Groves on their own don't do anything.

Pernicious Deed is a quality card, but I don't like it in 4-color. Your Mox Diamonds are too important to sweep away. It might work with Sakura Tribe Elder, but that card is usually pretty underwhelming.
I would never want to run STE in this deck. It just does not do enough and isn't even good in four colors because you're often trying to hit at least RRGGWB, which leaves you little room for basics after adding cycling lands, fetches, Wastelands, duals, etc.

But yeah, as ESG said, Dreams wipes out Enchantress's mana, which is key. That deck actually needs a bunch of mana to get up to full power, but (last I checked, anyway) it runs a bunch of basics, making Wasteland not very good. Plus, most of them have access to Replenish, making Deed less attractive unless you're Deeding and then winning. It only takes a couple of enchantments to rip through their library when they have a couple Enchantress effects in play.

If Enchantress comes up often, you're best off with a combination of Dreams and Harmonic Convergence. The latter prevents you from getting owned by Karmic Justice and the former locks the deck out of mana.

Richard Cheese

12-08-2011, 11:32 AM

If you DD away their land, they can't play enchantments, which means they can't draw cards, which means Solitary Confinement goes away. The fact it hits the Enchantresses is a bonus. Groves on their own don't do anything.

Pernicious Deed is a quality card, but I don't like it in 4-color. Your Mox Diamonds are too important to sweep away. It might work with Sakura Tribe Elder, but that card is usually pretty underwhelming.

I'll ask the Enchantress guys and see what they think, but to me, trying to wipe out the manabase of a deck with ~8 wild growth effects, a nutty draw engine, and Mirri's Guile isn't the greatest plan when the land destruction is symmetrical. I think probably 8 out of 10 times, they're going to recover faster than us, and it's not like Aggro Loam isn't a mana hungry deck itself. Honestly I've had better luck against it playing Junk and taking out their heavily enchanted basics with Vindicate.

@Zombies: I had no idea Harmonic Convergence existed, guess that's what I get for quitting the game for a decade. I may pick up a couple, I just hate adding really narrow cards to a standard sideboard. Then again, we usually only have 10-12 people, so maybe I should just be a dick like that.

Nonex

12-08-2011, 12:07 PM

As an Enchantress player I hate having my lands blown up, enchanted or not (not to mention it potentially nullifies half my draw engine, or even more if I run Zeniths). Back when Aggro Loam was running more rampant and loved both Devastating Dreams and Burning Wish into Reverent Silence, I had to run Karmic Justice and Sacred Ground just for this kind of matchup. It was pretty even at the time and forgave pretty much no mistakes on either side.

I can't honestly say how things are today. Aggro Loam can't reliably run Devastating Dreams anymore (not MD, at least) and Burning Wish is too slow. Meanwhile, Enchantress feels compelled to run MD Ground Seal because the control matchup is rough and a tool to shut down the omnipresent Snapcaster Mage looks almost mandatory, which also happens to hit Loam. It also got Nevermore to work with. However, Karmic Justice still goes mostly to SB, Sacred Ground is pointless right now, and the high numbers of Vendilion Clique and Delver of Secrets are worsening Moat to the point of questioning its inclusion.

ESG

12-08-2011, 08:41 PM

I'll ask the Enchantress guys and see what they think, but to me, trying to wipe out the manabase of a deck with ~8 wild growth effects, a nutty draw engine, and Mirri's Guile isn't the greatest plan when the land destruction is symmetrical. I think probably 8 out of 10 times, they're going to recover faster than us, and it's not like Aggro Loam isn't a mana hungry deck itself. Honestly I've had better luck against it playing Junk and taking out their heavily enchanted basics with Vindicate.

I play both decks and spend time in both threads. A lot of Enchantress players don't agree with me that Mirri's Guile is really good, so don't take it as a given that it will be in every list. You run Mox Diamonds; they might run Chrome Mox but might not. You run more lands than them. You can set it up so that you likely still have lands in hand. To me, there's no question who comes out ahead post-Dreams. Even if all you do is kill an Enchantress or two, along with some lands, that's basically game-winning. If you're an Enchantress player and your lands get blown up, it's even more of a beating if they're enchanted.

I can't make you play one card over another, but this topic has already been explored, and the conclusions were the same.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=18646

"As of this writing, Lou Christopher just won the StarCityGames.com Los Angeles Legacy Open event with Enchantress."

Stephen Menendian: ... You play a bunch of expensive spells, and you need to curve out quickly. The second main weakness, although this concerned us less, was that this deck had huge trouble with both Dredge and Aggro Loam. Interestingly, Lou, the main concern that Loam was going to be in force really didn’t matter, because those Loam decks didn’t run the one card that was so devastating our playtesting 10 months ago: Devastating Dreams.

Richard Cheese

12-09-2011, 09:41 AM

sourcefire

12-09-2011, 10:32 AM

NO-Hulk is also called ZeRo (no idea)

I believe ZeRO stands for Zenith Rebirth Order, as in (Green Suns)/(Pattern of)/(Natural). Not the most obvious deck name.

ESG

12-09-2011, 09:01 PM

There's only one Enchantress deck around here, and it definitely has Guile (and it is really good). That article, despite being almost a year old, had some pretty good insight. Would you say dreams is really most effective early in the game before there are a lot of enchantress effects or can it still be good late? I ask because blue.meta and the popularity of Spell Snare has made it fall out of favor in the main, but if I'm going to drop wish and go with a normal sideboard, it seems more flexible than narrow enchantment hate like Harmonic Convergence or Reverent Silence. The question then is how many spots I would have to devote to it for it to be effective.

The only times DD isn't great against Enchantress are when the player has a huge head start (permanents all over the table, maxed-out hand, etc.) and is sandbagging land and enchantresses to re-establish the board in anticipation of DD, or if he has all Presences but no Argothians. Even then, I'd probably still do it just to provide a speed bump and eat his Wild Growths.

If there's only one Enchantress player in your area, I don't know if you want to bother hating the deck out. It depends on how likely you are to get paired against Enchantress and how precious the rest of your maindeck and/or sideboard space is, and whether DD (or whatever) would be useful against other decks in your meta. Harmonic Convergence is ridiculously narrow, so you probably want to throw that out unless you have space to burn and want to surprise that Enchantress player. Reverent Silence is mainly for Leyline of the Void, but it's obviously strong against a deck full of enchantments. Other cards that are good against Enchantress and could be good elsewhere are Engineered Explosives, Firespout, Perish and Krosan Grip.

I play in a blue-based meta and haven't had problems with DD, but I run Wishes, so it takes up just one slot. If you don't have Wishes, you have to structure the deck around it more. (Micah Greenbaum's 4C list [http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=39297] is an example of that approach, although he runs some Wishes too.). Just because your opponent is blue doesn't mean he's always going to have cards in hand. Anyone without a hand is vulnerable to Wish --> DD, which is usually game. But, yeah, if you're not careful with it, you can get burned. And, sure, Wishes can get Snared, but so can Bob. Feel free to run something else in that slot if you're not happy with it; just make sure it gives you as much overall as the Wishes give you.

marcel

12-10-2011, 03:22 AM

Guys, I now look at the thread I really can't understand WHY ARE YOU STILL PLAYING BLACK. I'm aware, it's hard to let go Bob, but ...

Aggro_zombies

12-12-2011, 03:49 PM

marcel

12-13-2011, 03:30 AM

An Aggro Loam deck did well at the Invitational, although it was erroneously labelled Red Maverick (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=42671). I think this build is interesting but I don't like his curve or the Wish/Dreams slots.

Black only for sb cards seems strange.
I don't understand what Azusa does in this deck? we just don't need that much lands.
Also he doesn't play seismic assault?..

grim confident

01-11-2012, 12:46 PM

Kessig Wolf Run can put in aggro loam？
It can give kotr and countryside crusher trample.
Huge crusher with trample can easily solve the opponent.
Goyf and qasali pridemage are enormous threats with wolf run.

Justin

01-11-2012, 04:41 PM

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You can fetch it with KotR and get it back with Loam if it's in the yard. It might help you win a turn or two earlier against decks that have chump blockers for the big monsters in this deck.

Antonius

01-17-2012, 10:35 AM

x-2 at scg LA

lost to reanimator (couldn't beat that retarded pile a third time)
and to lucksack jace rip off the top.

BrazenSix

01-17-2012, 03:01 PM

Congrats on the run. What did you end up playing against during the day?

What's your general play strategy against Stoneblade and RUG Delver decks? I always seem to have a terrible match against 'blue' decks in general. :(

Antonius

01-17-2012, 04:16 PM

I might write a tournament report, but seeing as how I lost my notes and am having a hard time remembering exactly what I played against, that might not pan out.

Reanimator (2-1)
Bant (1-2)
Reanimator (2-1)
Elves (2-0)
Reanimator (1-2)
Can't remember ?? but I won.
Delver/Snapcaster RUG (2-0)
Raging Goblin (2-1)

IDK how you could have a bad match against blue decks. Blue decks are typically the fodder that Loam feeds upon. If you start resolving loam before they get a jace, you'll probably get there. If you start resolving loam before they can get anything relevant on their side of the board, you're definitely going to win.

Facethemindsculptor

01-17-2012, 08:41 PM

This guy's deck won the Jupiter games NELCQ, its worth thinking about.

1st Place David Rice
Aggro-Loam
Creatures:

4 Countryside Crusher

4 Dark Confidant

2 Scavenging Oooze

2 Grim Lavamancer

2 Tarmogoyf

Instants/Sorceries:

4 Life From the Loam

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Maelstrom Pulse

Artficacts:

2 Engineered Explosives

4 Mox Diamond

Enchantments:

3 Seismic Assault

Planeswalkers:

1 Liliana of the Veil

Basic Land:

1 Forest

2 Mountain

Non-Basic Land:

4 Wooded Foothills

3 Bloodstained Mire

2 Taiga

1 Bayou

1 Badlands

4 Wasteland

1 Volrath’s Stronghold

4 Forgotten Cave

3 Tranquil Thicket

Sideboard:

4 Chalice of the Void

2 Krosan Grip

2 Perish

3 Red Elemental Blast

3 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Nihil Spellbomb

Antonius

01-17-2012, 09:26 PM

Koby

01-17-2012, 09:57 PM

yeah, some serious thinking about...

no, wait. That's my list. With -1 taiga +1 liliana.

Was just about to say... you don't run Liliana. LOL

Vindicated now Antonius?

Antonius

01-23-2012, 10:09 AM

Was just about to say... you don't run Liliana. LOL

Vindicated now Antonius?

Don't need east coasters for vindication.

IDK why he's running 2 Verdant Catacombs. I would just guess he was short a foothills and a mire. But grats on the prize money. (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=43402)

GoblinZ

01-23-2012, 12:07 PM

Hi, I just begin to play with your list...I like it very much
only question is whether lavamancer is necessary in this deck and if top is better than Bob?

Aggro_zombies

01-23-2012, 12:41 PM

Hi, I just begin to play with your list...I like it very much
only question is whether lavamancer is necessary in this deck and if top is better than Bob?
Top is absolutely worse than Bob. Lavamancer is a good man and gives you early ways to control the board.

EDIT: I'm going to start testing Antonius's list for SCG Phoenix in April. I'll admit defeat: it seems the old Aggro Loam has more fight left in her than I'd thought.

sdematt

01-23-2012, 01:40 PM

My question to you all is this: Why Lightning Bolt over Terminate? Don't get me wrong, I know Bolt is a bit more general, and still kills 90% of the creatures we want to kill (small Goyfs and Knights, Bob, Clique, SFM, etc.), but with all the Maverick, don't you want to kill Knight? I mean, it also hits Jace, which is a bonus, but I'm just curious on your thoughts. I'm still running Fires combo against Jace and the like, so maybe that's just my bias coming in (and I've still had success with Fires, so maybe I'm just not feeling the Bolts).

-Matt

Aggro_zombies

01-23-2012, 02:06 PM

You can outsize Knight with Crusher. Plus, since Scavenging Ooze can remove any card in a graveyard, you can shrink Knights at will by sinking in some green mana. I think people forget that sometimes because it only gets a bonus from removed creatures.

Aside from that, you can run either Perish or Virtue's Ruin if you're looking to specifically punish Maverick.

EDIT: Looking at the DC list, I would probably start by boarding -2 Tarmogoyf, +2 Dreams. I don't think you need Grips versus equipment because of Pulse and EE.

Richard Cheese

01-23-2012, 05:55 PM

IDK how you could have a bad match against blue decks. Blue decks are typically the fodder that Loam feeds upon. If you start resolving loam before they get a jace, you'll probably get there. If you start resolving loam before they can get anything relevant on their side of the board, you're definitely going to win.

I haven't tested the matchup a whole lot, but isn't the sheer number of StPs that UW Stoneblade has access to a problem for Loam? We don't really run a lot of guys or have any way to protect them. If they know enough to save their counters for Assault, it doesn't seem like an easy win on paper. I'm guessing you've had a different experience IRL? What's your game plan in that matchup?

Also @Zombies: Grip can be real good against Batterskull, just because the bounce ability can make it a real PITA.

Aggro_zombies

01-23-2012, 06:33 PM

Grip is mostly bad versus the rest of their deck, though. Like, if there's a board full of creatures on both sides, drawing a Grip is mostly blank while a Pulse is at least a removal spell. Against a deck like Stoneblade I'd want Grips, but I don't think you can afford to load up your deck with situational removal versus an aggro deck. Their Plan A is going to be beating you down, and the equipment is a supplement to that.

EDIT: Against Stoneblade, I'm assuming you bring in Blasts, Grips, and possibly Noxious Revivals. Even if your guys only connect once or twice, it's still damage, and if you can neutralize Batterskull the amount of stuff you have to do to kill them is lower. This is a matchup where I'd really want Punishing Fires, for example, since they have no out to it (even Extirpate can't get the Fires because it's a trigger).

routlaw

01-23-2012, 06:35 PM

U/W isn't a huge problem, as the Loam/cycle land draw engine will just out-attrition their attrition deck and they are not well equipped to play an actual tempo game against you. The U/W matchup was half of what made Aggro Loam so good during the Misstep era (the other half being the metagame beatdown of combo, which is still somewhat continuing thanks to the Delver decks) and it's still pretty true now.

sdematt

01-23-2012, 07:44 PM

It gets better when you also bring in Thruns. I found, for me, the best plan was -3 Countryside Crusher, -3 random for +2 Thrun, +2 Grip, +2 Grudge. Thrun was a beating, and Crusher gets terrible when they can just bounce something you've worked so hard to get big.

-Matt

Aggro_zombies

01-23-2012, 08:13 PM

sdematt

01-23-2012, 11:02 PM

My build is a bit out of date, but I'll be changing it up soon.

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

4 Dark Confidant
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Terravore

4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
2 Sylvan Library
4 Terminate
1 Entomb
2 Punishing Fire
2 Maelstrom Pulse

Board was:

3 Extirpate
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
3 REB
2 Thrun
3 Perish

I'm thinking:

Same-ish manabase

4 Dark Confidant
3 Countryside Crusher
2 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze

4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
2 Punishing Fire
2 Sylvan Library
3 Terminate
2 Engineered Explosives/Devastating Dreams
2 Maelstrom Pulse

Board:

2 Perish
1 Virtue's Ruin
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
2 Dreams/Extirpate (if Dreams isn't main, it's Extirpate)
2 Noxious Revival
3 REB
1 Worm Harvest

My meta is a ton of Stoneblade, the occasional Goblins, Zoo, some Maverick, 0-2 Reanimator, and sometimes High Tide.

-Matt

allek

01-27-2012, 07:06 AM

Has anybody tried playing less creatures and more planeswalkers?
I think that Liliana of the Veil and Ajani/Garruk/Koth are all cards that have good synergies with our gameplan and deed/explosives/dreams.

Aggro_zombies

01-27-2012, 03:21 PM

The problem with the planeswalker plan is:

1) You are already creature-light, and the creatures you are running are all good.

2) Pretty much all the planeswalkers you could run, save Lili, are too expensive.

3) The deck's curve is such that you don't want to raise it any more. Many versions of the deck already have an unhealthy reliance on Mox Diamond to not get destroyed in the early game.

4) The planeswalkers you could run aren't that synergistic with the deck (Lili excepted).

routlaw

01-27-2012, 04:24 PM

I can kind of get behind Liliana as the deck can easily break the +1 symmetry, but four-cost planeswalkers are just too much. There's only one real set of ramp cards in the deck (Mox Diamonds), and Loam is a huge mana->value conversation engine in the deck anyway and brings a lot of the same endgame inevitability role planeswalkers do.

Liliana's main drawback is the BB in the casting cost. That isn't easy to get, especially in the face of Wastelands.

Facethemindsculptor

01-29-2012, 03:08 PM

What do you guys think about faithless looting, and where would you fit it in?

Aggro_zombies

01-30-2012, 04:12 PM

What do you guys think about faithless looting, and where would you fit it in?
I don't think it does anything, and I wouldn't fit it in.

A one-shot draw effect like this is not going to be very good in this deck. You don't get a lot of mileage out of discarding cards, and Looting is raw card disadvantage even after you've flashed it back (drawn four cards, discarded four cards, lost Faithless Looting for +4, -5 cards). You could use it to filter lands out of your hand to pump Crusher, but that does not make it worthwhile considering you already have a number of ways to pump Crusher. Dark Confidant and the Loam engine are fine for draw in this deck, and if you want more, Sylvan Library is better than Looting because it has more synergy with dredge (multiple dredges per turn, every turn) and is reusable.

Looting doesn't do enough.

sdematt

01-30-2012, 05:42 PM

I'm not sure why people are so hesitant to run 2-of Sylvan. Dredging for free multiple times a turn isn't good?

-Matt

Boman

01-31-2012, 11:43 AM

Why isnt anyone playing Chalic of the Void in their Aggro Loam decks nowadays? :)

Jay_Gatz

01-31-2012, 01:46 PM

I'm running 4-of chalice main. Against some decks it is just an autowin on 1, most of the time it just protects my knights from swords.

Richard Cheese

01-31-2012, 05:12 PM

Why isnt anyone playing Chalic of the Void in their Aggro Loam decks nowadays? :)

A number of reasons have been covered in this thread. To save you going back and reading through the last 10 pages I'll try to summarize as best I can.

1. The statistical likelihood of opening with 2x Land, Mox, Chalice on the play is very low.

2. The longer you wait to cast Chalice, the worse it gets. Dropping it turn 1 on the play is by far the best, as it effectively blanks most other decks' first turn, giving you time to durdle around like you need to and get your engine going. After that, how effective it is varies wildly from deck to deck.

3. Multiples are almost always dead draws. Unfortunately, to maximize your chance of landing one early, you have to run 4, so you're really increasing your chances of missing business spells later in the game.

Justin

02-01-2012, 09:44 AM

Also, not running Chalice makes it easier for you to run your own one-drops. Many Aggro Loam decks are now running spells such as Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, and Top.

In particular, I find Top as a strong card in this deck. It's nice to be able to see the top three cards of your library when deciding whether or not to dredge. You can also manipulate your library to put lands on top for Dark Confidant and Countryside Crusher.

Boman

02-01-2012, 11:27 AM

Thanks for the help. :)
But how does this deck fair against combo decks without the chalice then?

kusumoto

02-01-2012, 12:23 PM

Thanks for the help. :)
But how does this deck fair against combo decks without the chalice then?

It loses.

In all fairness it usually lost to combo when playing chalices anyway.

Aggro_zombies

02-01-2012, 12:33 PM

[slightly topical rant]

I really don't understand what people's obsession with the combo matchup is. You are a midrange Jund deck with little to no disruption and a clunky, high-end clock. What do you expect the combo matchup to be like?

The only times I've ever beaten storm with this deck were when the storm player fizzled/died to Ad Noz or once where I got turn one Chalice at one, turn two Tarmogoyf, turn three another two Tarmogoyfs and Chalice at zero (ie, nut draw). Your clock is just not fast enough to kill them before they dig out of it, and if you're playing vs. TES (Burning Wish) or some kind of non-storm combo deck like Reanimator or Sneak Attack or whatever, Chalice gets pretty bad after they cast their first Brainstorm/one mana tutor.

[/slightly topical rant]

This weekend I'll try to update the OP with a current list plus some common arguments that get brought up every other month or so (Why not Chalice / blue splash / white instead of black / etc.?).

Boman

02-01-2012, 02:46 PM

Ok well thanks for the explanations anyways, appreciate it! :)

Fade

02-01-2012, 09:56 PM

Hey guys, here is the recent configuration me and a friend have been playing around with to pretty good success. Since the last time I posted, I decided to move from 4 colors to 3 cutting the white and swords to plowshares from the deck. Some considerations I have been thinking of were Scavenging Ooze, Wormharvest, and Liliana. The Liliana and Wormharvest seemed like win more cards with the exception of Liliana helping out a lot in the combo matchup. I think the Ooze isn't as good as Tarmogoyfs, most due to the 4 Leylines in the side, and Tarmogoyfs gain so much value from the dredging of loams that I didn't want to replace them with a card that requires more investment. Let me know what you think.

Lands (26):
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Wasteland
4x Forgotten Cave
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Grove of the Burnwillows
3x Mountain
1x Forest
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Badlands
1x Taiga
1x Bayou

Creatures (12):
4x Dark Confidant
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Countryside Crusher
1x Terravore

Spells (22):
4x Life from the Loam
4x Mox Diamond
4x Chalice of the Void
3x Punishing Fire
3x Seismic Assault
2x Maelstrom Pulse
2x Engineered Explosives

Sideboard (15):
4x Leyline of the Void
3x Choke
2x Diabolic Edict
2x Pyroblast
2x Krosan Grip
2x Devastating Dreams

Richard Cheese

02-02-2012, 01:13 PM

Fade

02-02-2012, 03:21 PM

Don't knock Ooze until you try it. It poops all over Snapcaster, can gain you a good chunk of life (super important in slower decks), and can get seriously huge, really fast. I think you're making the mistake of seeing it just as a graveyard hate card, where it really isn't super effective. Think of it more as a good aggro guy with a seriously abusable ability. Also don't run it out into bolts.

I also play G/W Maverick and I just switched him to a two of instead of a Ooze/Tarmogoyf split, so I know how useful he can be. I just find in my version of Aggro Loam I would rather be casting Loam or cycling thicket then keeping it open for Oozes ability. So my thought process is I would rather spend an initial investment of 2 mana on a beater than two mana on a beater with a useful ability that you have to put more resources into. I do like the life gain from Ooze though but I just don't see him being better than Tarmogoyf in a deck where casting Loam gives you so much advantages.

FlyingSkull13

02-02-2012, 10:39 PM

I built the version from scg vegas, and ran it at local event went 3/0/1, ooze is amazing main, allowing you to control knights and other spells can not be overstated

the engine swap of Lilliana for seismics 1 and 2 is an awesome thing that opponents do not really see comming and just wrecks them, we're kinda dogs to the combo match anyways, i'd rather shore up other matchups then try to raise something from less than 15 percent any higher.

razvan

02-12-2012, 09:03 PM

I figured I can bring this back up now. Played 2 events this weekend, one was a GPT for Indy, and the 2nd was the Canadian Magic Tour legacy portion of the program.

This is what I sleeved up on saturday:

4 Life from the Loam
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant

2 Liliana of the Veil

4 Punishing Fire
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Seismic Assault
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Putrefy
1 Sylvan Library

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

Sideboard
3 Pyroblast
2 Krosan Grip
3 Extirpate
3 Devastating Dreams
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Thoughtseize

On sunday, the only change was:

-1 Putrefy
+1 Liliana

Both events were 6 rounds.

I lost my life totals, so this is totally by memory with no sleep, but here it goes. I probably will not give too much useful information, because I forgot it all :( .

Saturday.

R1, Deadguy Ale 2-0

Somehow, this match-up always gives me nightmares, but being able to kill his little guys with the burn helped a ton. He didn't really side in too much that I saw.

R2, Forgot, I am sorry :( I think it was UR Delver, 2-0

R3, David, UW Stoneblade, 2-1

I lose game 1 because I keep a greedy one-lander, one-mox, but get there in the 2nd and 3rd game. I think I have a really good match-up.

R4, Wilkin, Deadguy Ale, 2-1

Wilkin is a great Deadguy player, and has a very anti-me sideboard. Somehow. However, this is the games are always interesting. The trick is to win game one and hope to squeeze against the massive graveyard hate. I think game 3 came down to me having a Dark Confidant on the board long enough to grind it out.

These are how these games go anyway, every card matters. I side out at least 1-2 moxes, because I cannot afford to be hymned, then hymn myself.

R5, Hugo, UR Delver-Burn, ID
R6, Charles, Control something, ID

Top-8 David again with UW

He concedes to me since he has the byes already. I win game 1, then game 2 I have almost complete control. Then THIS happens:

I have Liliana at 2 and a Punishing Fire in hand (and other stuff). He has one or two cards, a Mishra's Factory that's tapped (and a land), and one mana open, having just cast Geist of Saint Traft. I even have a REB.

Guess how I punted?

That's right, I should have used Lili's -2 ability, then nuke the stupid factory when he animated it, and that's it for the Geist. I don't know WHY i didn't do it, instead of making us both discard a card.

That Geist single-handed wins the game for Dave. It was incredibly weird.

I lose game 3 due to keeping a land, 2 cycling lands, life, bob, REB and something else, and not getting another land for like 12 turns. It's amazing how your deck stops helping you when you punt a sure-fire game.

I have to play a good UW player next, but I still feel confident (confidant? hah hah...). But it is like 9pm, we all want to go home, and so I get the byes after punting a game because I am SMRT like that. Someone at the GP will be very happy to face me in round 4 apparently.

Anyway, today's games were simply weird. I will only point out the highlight of my dreadfulness:

- I beat combo! 2-0!

- I drew round 1 against Luke with UW, and again I made a lot of errors. I still think that the game is in your favor, even though Luke played a ton of Geists, but you cannot afford to be sloppy.

- I lost round 2 to Lam with Mongeese.dec. Creatures you cannot target are a pain in the ass!

- I lost round... 4? to Remington with Slivers. Yes, turns out... Crystalline Sliver is incredible. Again, creatures you cannot target. At least Geist and Mongeese you can block, but Slivers fly, among other things. Funny enough, I couldn't even kill Mutavaults.

FFS, I sound like a broken record. And I didn't even face the monster of those hexproof bunch, Thrun. I can't even imagine how rough he is.

So. When I started playing Aggro Loam, I had the 3-4 Countryside Crushers, but then I decided to replace them with Lilianas and more burn. I have experienced both the dizzying heights and the terrifying lows with this deck this weekend, so I cannot tell if the idea is good or not.

I really like this build I have, but I think the sideboard needs some changes, and maybe even the maindeck. Having 4 bolts and 4 fires is really good against a lot of decks, but sometimes, I feel like other things might be better (Terminate, for one, or Engineered Explosives). I like how the 4 Fires really help you against blue decks, since their control sort of stops mattering if you have a lot of lands down. UW Stoneblade is quite easy for this build as well.

The other thing is 26 land seems incredibly greedy, especially given my "Oh, I'll run this, I am feeling lucky" propaganda. I think that mulliganning becomes a lot more important, and I am sure I lost at least a few to that.

I like the 3 Lilianas maindeck. I am never sorry to see them (assuming I can cast them), and it allows you to deal with things you cannot otherwise (see: hexproof).

As for the sideboard, I think I might go one of two ways:

1) Take out the Extirpates, take out the Thoughtseizes, put in 4 Inquisitions of Kozilek, and 2 something else. I have played IoK since it was legal, and I am always amazed at how good it can be. You wouldn't put Thoughtseizes in against Burn (hey, seems popular), but IoK is really good. It's still there for your "I think I can beat combo with my Life from the Loam deck". I also will go assuming GY decks are non-existent... OR!

2) Take out the Extirpates, take out the Thoughtseizes, put in 4 Leylines and 2 Extirpate/Cranial Extraction (yes, I am taking out Extirpate to put in Extirpate). This will give you a better match-up against GY decks, of which I HOPED would be less. I feel safe with this selection, but if anyone has advice...

I think the 4 REB and 3 Devastating Dreams are solid. Krosan Grips are good, but I never really bother siding them in unless I face Affinity, Tezzeret or Countertop. I still wouldn't mind keeping them in.

Anyway, I will have to try Scavenging Ooze maindeck, maybe going down to 3 goyfs (or taking out one of something else). I now have to go FIND Scavenging Ooze.

sdematt

02-19-2012, 02:13 AM

So I'm trying a new build. Notice no more Fires.

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

3 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
1 Terravore

4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Sylvan Library
4 Terminate
3 Seismic Assault
1 Noxious Revival (so far, the tits)

BOARD:

2 Noxious Revival
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
3 Extirpate
3 REB
3 Virtue's Ruin

So far, it's been super fun to play. Fires isn't missed. Ring is nice to have a colourless damage source against Mom's and recurring 2 damage against Jace and such if no Assault is up. EE has come back, and it's been stellar. The singleton Revival has been so good, considering sometimes you just mill all your Assaults, and I don't want to play Eternal Witness.

-Matt

Hanni

02-19-2012, 02:23 AM

Is there still no love for the blue splash? Brainstorm and Intuition do so much for the deck, Ruins + EE does just about everything you would need Maelstrom Pulse for, and you even get Spell Pierce postboard for combo.

sdematt

02-19-2012, 02:31 AM

For me, if I'm going to play Blue, I'll run BUG Control with Intuition. I'm not brave enough to switch out Black for Blue yet. I do love Worm Harvest, Loam, Darkblast, and all that great stuff. Maybe I'll give your list a whirl.

@ Antonius

I've been loving the Oozes, especially since we're playing all non-RFG removal. Thanks for playing them :)

-Matt

Hanni

02-19-2012, 02:41 AM

Aggro_zombies

02-19-2012, 02:56 AM

The BUG list is cool too, I had a thread in N&D called The Mind Harvester that seems to have disappeared, but BUG is a pure control deck, whereas the RUG list I'm talking about is still very much Aggro Loam.
Oh god, this again?

Blue is still not worth splashing for. Brainstorm is worse than repeatable draw and Intuition alone is not good enough. This deck doesn't need help finding bombs. It already has plenty, and adding a tutor to the cmc slot of your deck that already has the most competition does nothing to make your early and mid-games less squishy. I suppose you could construe Brainstorm as helping with that but there's honestly nothing I would want to cut for an uber-cycling land I can't recur with Loam.

Hanni

02-19-2012, 03:20 AM

I'm still assuming you never tried it, either. Trying to run Dark Confidant in a format filled with Lightning Bolts just doesn't seem fruitful, and you are seriously underestimating what blue offers.

Why run a ton of cycle lands that are junk in the early game compared to Brainstorm? The cycle lands are only good after you assemble Loam, which still isn't a problem for the blue splash, since the deck still runs 4 cycle lands and can even tutor for them with Intuition if needed.

I can see the point of running 3-4 Loam's being better than 4 Intuition 4 Burning Wish and 1 Loam in a countermagic heavy meta, since even if it's countered, it's still active. However, the ability to Intuition for Loam and the powerful toolbox is just so strong.

Plus you're also ignoring the fact that access to Spell Pierce, and other blue goodies if you feel the need, shores up your worst matchups.

At any rate, I've never stated that the blue splash is strictly better than Jund, but it seems arrogant to discredit it as a viable splash for the deck.

EDIT: My list does run 4 Lightning Bolts. I'm not sure what more early game you want, considering I only cut midrangey stuff to fit other midrangey stuff with the blue splash anyway.

Hanni

02-19-2012, 03:43 AM

My list from back in 2011, for reference:

R/G/u Aggro Loam

// Lands (24)
4 [ON] Wooded Foothills
3 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
1 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [R] Taiga
1 [R] Volcanic Island
1 [R] Tropical Island
3 [UNH] Mountain
1 [UNH] Forest
3 [ON] Forgotten Cave
1 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures (8)
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [MOR] Countryside Crusher

// Spells (28)
1 [EVE] Worm Harvest
1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [CST] Brainstorm
4 [TE] Intuition
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [R] Lightning Bolt
3 [EX] Seismic Assault
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
4 [SH] Mox Diamond

// Sideboard (15)
SB: 1 [EVE] Worm Harvest
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
SB: 1 [TO] Nostalgic Dreams
SB: 1 [PS] Hull Breach
SB: 1 [TO] Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 [SHM] Firespout
SB: 2 [4E] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 [IA] Pyroblast
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 1 [WWK] Bojuka Bog
SB: 1 [LG] Karakas

Antonius

02-19-2012, 04:19 AM

Intuition sounds terrible. Its so slow. So is burning wish.
The new piece that blue adds to the deck since the last time i was discussed is Snapcaster Mage. With brainstorm, lightning bolt, dismember and possibly chain lightning, he could be pretty good. Some play with noxious revival out of the sideboard seems cool as hell too. It still seems like it would be lower in overall power level than what you can get out of Jund colors though.

@ Razvan: That list seems pretty cool. I might try something like it. Have any issues with color consistency? is getting BB with three badlands and a bayou a lot easier? Also, tarmogoyf is trash, man. I would cut him entirely and some of the 3cc removal for crushers and two ooze. With so much burn in your list to keep Jace in check, maelstrom pulse seems less necessary. I mean, other than enchantress stuff and leyline, our deck can just power through the artifacts and enchantments in the format.

Hanni

02-19-2012, 04:31 AM

So slow compared to what? Dropping a Dark Confidant and drawing 1 additional card every turn? I mean, if it survives, you're looking at a few turns until it generates enough card advantage to be on par with Intuition's card advantage anyways, and 2/1's with no equipment don't swing too often in this format.

Intuition can be cast on turn 2 with a Mox. Once you get Loam going, it doesn't take very long to get a swarm of 1/1 tokens on the board to hold aggro at bay, at which point it only takes another turn or two to go Empty the Warrens on someone.

I'm not disagree'ing that Intuition/Loam isn't a little slow, I'm just not understanding why everyone is dismissing the idea like they've actually tried it and failed with it, and with a list with it that was actually built well.

Burning Wish being slow I also don't get. This isn't 2010 where Zoo and Merfolk are the DTB, and you don't have time to Burning Wish for a Firespout before you get destroyed. The format has slowed down alot, and there is alot more midrange decks getting played these days. You actually have time to do shit now.

Antonius

02-19-2012, 04:56 AM

The key here is that a hand with three intuitions is most probably trash while a hand with three confidants is going to blow someone out. You need to re-evaluate some of your generalizations. Two power creatures attack a lot more than you think. And that damage matters a lot more than you think.

see, the primary problem I see with both burning wish and intuition is Spell Snare. Spell Snare on confidant... you can try to play around it, but it happens. Every time someone spell snares your burning wish, though, you're going to grit your teeth while wishing it was a loam, given that you get loam like 90% of the time...

If you intuition up Loam/worm harvest/whatever, then you've pretty much tipped your hand. You might as well tell your opponent: counter my loam until you can tempo me out with dudes or get a clique in hand. If that intuition was just a pocket loam, it would be a much more dubious decision. Countering it could really set you back in mana development or it could open them up to being fucked sideways by confidant/crusher/whatever other resolving threat next turn.

Hanni

02-19-2012, 05:57 AM

I remember why I quit posting in this thread. I guess Burning Wish getting Spell Snare'd is worse than Dark Confidant getting Snare'd, since they both cost 2 mana and 1 card. I guess casting Intuition for Loam gives up too much information, gotta be afraid of that Clique. Not like dredging Loam would get it Clique'd away any differently or anything. Plus, using Intuition to grab Loam is gonna get tempo countered constantly where a hardcast one wouldn't. Thanks for the insight.

Aggro_zombies

02-19-2012, 01:24 PM

He has legitimate points, you know. I know you have a raging hard-on for blue, but not every deck wants it.

Look, if I wanted a tutor in Aggro Loam, I'd start with Entomb. Let's assume that our primary Entomb target is going to be Loam because, hey, the deck is built around Loam, so having consistent access to the card is a good idea. Entomb for Loam does the same thing Intuition for Loam does but for a fraction of the mana; getting the Loam to hand or having multiple Loams available (if you run multiple in the main) is a marginal benefit over just having a Loam, and there's little practical difference between Intuition and Entomb when you're casting them EOT. I'll admit that Intuition for Loam and two cycling lands is usually going to be better than Entomb for just Loam. But...

...but there's no part of this deck's game plan wherein casting five-mana Harmonizes until your good cards show up is your primary goal. Loam is an accessory to what the deck is trying to do: be a midrange control deck. Yes, sometimes drawing cards off of Life from the Loam is the best thing you can be doing, but often your opponents are not going to give you the luxury of time that requires. Often you will want to Loam back fetchlands to build your mana in the early game or Loam back Wastelands to stop your opponent's development in the first couple of turns, and Entomb is just better for that because it costs less. Okay, sure, if your opener had no fetches or Wastelands then Intuition for Foothills, Loam, Wasteland is fine, but I would not want to consume my entire second or third turn to do basically nothing to affect the board state.

Intuition vs. Entomb for other cards isn't that different, either. With Stronghold in your deck, you can safely Entomb for creatures. You can't really Entomb for Assault without Witness (who is meh), but you can Entomb for Punishing Fires, which does a reasonable Assault impression and is not bad in this deck as early-game redundancy. Looking at your build specifically, Intuition for EE is the only thing you can't profitably mimic with Entomb. You got me there.

I'm not sold on Brainstorm with this deck either; I would rather have Bob or Sylvan Library. The important factor here is that they're repeatable sources of card advantage that lessen your reliance on Loam to draw cards. Yes, your build can consistently set up Loam plus cycling lands, but it has to do so in order to have good draws, whereas Antonius's or sdematt's builds don't need Loam to create good hands. If I'm in blue I would actually rather use Jace TMS because, in addition to the Brainstorms, he also gets rid of troublesome utility creatures and blockers and can kill the opponent outside of combat in case they're on the Infinite StPs plan.

Black also offers far better sideboard options than blue. The worst matchups by far are the combo ones and four random soft counters are not going to change the fact that you can't clock the opponent to save your life, your deck is half mana, and you are casting Intuition for Loam and some cycling lands so that you can spin your wheels while they recover from your Spell Pierce. This is, incidentally, why I don't understand the occasional fascination with adding counters to the deck to "improve" the combo matchup; blue-based decks don't win vs. combo by having just a couple of counters, they win by having consistent and early access to lots of counters plus a good clock or some other long-term disruption plan (like Snapcaster). Aggro Loam has neither a good clock nor a long-term disruption plan beyond perhaps trying to Wastelock the opponent, which only works some of the time (ANT, for example, has lots of basics). I would actually rather just run 4 Chalice than 4 Spell Pierce because the Chalices will buy me more time than a random one-of Pierce will.

Basically, I'm honestly not sure what blue provides here that's not better done with Jund. It doesn't really solve any of this deck's problems and actually creates a few more along the way because it pigeonholes you into making certain plays that aren't usually very strong and can be downright costly under pressure.

EDIT: And for the record, I did try blue in the deck, probably before you even brought it up the first time. It was terrible.

Hanni

02-19-2012, 03:25 PM

I didn't mean to come off as an ass in my last response, but I had a bit of a buzz last night. Anyway, I'm going not going to push the issue any further. I like the blue splash, you guys don't, I get it.

Aggro_zombies

02-19-2012, 04:02 PM

If you want to sell people on the blue splash being viable, you need to do a better job of articulating what the Jund splash's issues are and then doing a point-by-point discussion of why the blue splash fixes them. I think most people in this thread would agree that the Jund splash ain't broke, and it's not immediately clear to me from your posted build what the blue splash does to fix known problems without generating a whole slew of its own issues.

I mean, from where I'm sitting, the blue splash looks like you removed recurring sources of card advantage for more powerful but also less impactful ones and then added a clunky tutor so that you can consistently set up clunky late-game engines or do something completely irrelevant like Intuition for three Tarmogoyfs or something. This seems like a very bad trade to me.

lavafrogg

02-19-2012, 04:03 PM

Hanni- I fully support the blue splash and all it has to offer the loan engine. I am having a real hard time not playing white in any of my decks due to the presence of huge creatures for little to no mana. Swords/paths are very necessary in my mind and Every deck in this metagame should have an answer to huge knights/goyfs.

The jund versions of the deck can grow creatures larger than any deck it will face and also has terminate to kill what really needs to die. I don't think that the blue plan offers enough without splashing for the fourth color it's the fear style.

When I play a loam list I always plan on what I have to do when I cannot get the Loam engine online. For me this is dark confidant for others it it grim lavamancer or punishing fires. You seem to have burning wish for loam as a back up plan and that seems weak against anything thy can answer your loam again.

Don't stop innovating the loam list because I love all that you do and plan on building this when I get home, I haven't played blue with loan since ITF was good.

Hanni

02-19-2012, 04:21 PM

AZ, I've done that all before, and spent more words than I'd like to waste again, because it was all for naught. I'd articulate the idea if I thought it was going to get fruitful results, but I'm pretty sure at this point that it won't.

But to respond to your immediate point about not shoring up Jund's weaknesses and having more issues of its own, the only reason backbreaking difference with the blue splash vs black is that I cut Dark Confidant for Intuition. I feel like Dark Confidant in a deck with no way to protect him and no equipment, especially in the metagame right now, is alot worse than Intuition. I also know from experience that Intuition is alot more powerful of a draw engine than you give it credit for. It basically reads draw 3 for 3... sorry, tutor 3 for 3. Which then leads to recurring card advantage through Loam and Harvest. Also, Intuition for 3 Goyf seems a bit dumb when you can tutor for Harvest instead.

Brainstorm also increases the consistency a great deal, which was one the major issues that I always had with Aggro Loam during the early game. The heavy cycle land manabase and loads of nonbasics make the early game mana development sometimes confusing.

I also did address that the blue splash postboard shores up the combo matchup, depending on how many blue spells you want to sideboard for it. I only run 4 Spell Pierce, but it's always possible to run more.

Hanni- I fully support the blue splash and all it has to offer the loan engine. I am having a real hard time not playing white in any of my decks due to the presence of huge creatures for little to no mana. Swords/paths are very necessary in my mind and Every deck in this metagame should have an answer to huge knights/goyfs.

1/1 Worm tokens prevent Goyfs and Knights from doing anything, and most fliers are capable of being dealt with through Seismic Assault. Goyf and Knight can also be dealt with through EE or blocking with our own Goyf or Crusher, so there are ways of coping without needing white. Tombstalker can be a pain to deal with, though.

Anyway, I'm not really interested in continuing this discussion anymore, AZ and Antonious really killed my Aggro Loam mood. Sorry guys.

Aggro_zombies

02-19-2012, 04:39 PM

@Hanni: ...? Okay. I mean, I'm not going to rag on you too much here, but assuming that people should accept the blue splash because it's the blue splash and then getting upset when people point out its flaws seems a little over the top. I mean, yes, we've been over it before, and we decided before that it wasn't good enough. I don't think the format has shifted in such a way as to make it better; if anything, I think casting Intuition for just about any combination of cards is just not good enough in this meta, and certainly not for Loam plus cycling lands. You may not be able to protect Bob, but how many decks are going to give you the time to durdle around with the black holes for tempo that are Intuition, Burning Wish, and Loam? Sylvan Library is a reasonable Bob substitute that generates a ton of card quality for little investment, and it costs less than casting Intuition.

I mean, as far as I can tell, you believe the blue splash is good because of some inherent and circular belief that Brainstorm is worth splashing for because it's Brainstorm and that Aggro Loam values redundancy, therefore we should cram the deck full of tutors. I mean, okay, sure, but like I said, Entomb is an on-color tutor for most builds and it's not even good enough, so why move out of black and sacrifice Pulse, Bob, Extirpate, and Virtue's Ruin/Perish for something we could already emulate?

If you don't want to discuss it, that's fine, but don't bring it up in the first place if you're not prepared or willing to argue your points.

@lavafrogg: I've never been a fan of four colors because the mana becomes excessively greedy. It's bad enough that you often need Mox Diamond to have a competitive curve, but to need it to even start casting your spells is just terrible. You can answer Goyf with Goyf or large Crushers and answer Knight with Terminate, Scavenging Ooze (for lands - remember it can target any card in a graveyard but only gets the bonus from creatures), and EE. The bigger issue is equipment since you have fewer answers to that and it can grant evasion (Swords of X and Y).

Hanni

02-19-2012, 04:48 PM

You cast Intuition once to grab Loam, cast Loam once to have enough lands, and then cast Worm Harvest for some 1/1's tokens for stability. Not sure how that's a blackhole worth of tempo loss, especially when you can hold the mana open for Intuition to cast on EOT, incase you needed to cast Lightning Bolt or something else. Especially since if you had cast Loam from hand instead, you'd still be doing the same thing anyway, minus having Harvest. Plus once you get Loam + Harvest going, it's only a matter of turns before you swarm the opponent with 1/1 tokens for the win.

The main point of the splash is for Intuition, not Brainstorm, but I think Brainstorm adds a tremendous amount of value for the deck at any rate.

And it's not like I didn't plan on coming in here and everyone dropping their Jund lists for blue, but this is also one of the few threads where I come in and suggest an idea that has pros to go with the cons, only to eat a stream of posts telling me me "Oh god, this again?" I'm not stating that the blue splash is strictly superior to the black splash, but the fact that the idea gets slapped down with constant negativity makes it hard for me to want to even bother trying to discuss the issue. This feels like 2008 all over again, when I suggested Counterbalance in Landstill.

sdematt

02-19-2012, 09:30 PM

I haven't had time to read all your responses, but I just want to point out I was playing Entomb in the Punishing Fires version of the deck.

Entomb was pretty solid. It allowed me to go for Ring, Grove, Fires, Stronghold, Loam, Worm Harvest etc. Now with Revival being playable, a 1-2 of Entomb might not be terrible, especially now that MM is out of the format.

-Matt

lavafrogg

02-19-2012, 09:40 PM

Its okay Hanni, I have an entire thread for BGW loam that has been shunned by the entire magic community. As I look at your list could you add snapcaster mage as a pseudo eternal witness and traverse that route. With all of the cards you dredge you have to be able to find what you need in your graveyard.

Also, intuition => snapcaster, riptide lab, loam seems pretty legit with a stocked graveyard.(4 bolts+4 Fires=20 damage)

With brainstorm and bolt as your only targets right now you would have to add more gas to make it work... something like ponder instead of burning wish and fire/ice or stifle to help with mana screwing your opponent, something like a more controlling RUG tempo. If you added cantrips you could hide the cards you don't want to see in a matchup until you need to intuition for them.

Crusher ensures that you always draw gas and recurring burn with snapcaster can help hold the board until you get a finisher online...aka seismic/crusher.

You would lose multiples of your tutor-able bombs like EE and burning wish specifically but you would always be able to intuition for your one of's and engine to plow through the late game.

Something like:

24 land including
4 cycle lands
1 wasteland
1 riptide lab
1 academy ruins

4 goyf
4 crusher
4 snapcaster

3 intuition
4 brainstorm
4 ponder

1 loam
1 ee

4 bolt
4 fire/ice
3 seismic assault

It seems like a tempo list that has a back up plan...and a lot of burn!

To keep the brainstorming alive....why isn't punishing fires in your list(not my list)? Seems like an auto include as intuition finds the whole combo and that seems to be your plan here. More burn would be able to keep the plains-walkers/weenies down.

P.S. Matt: What has the revival been doing for you that Eternal Witness has not? I have gone up to two witnesses in my list due to its sheer ridiculousness in the format right now....especially with Volrath's Stronghold.

P.S.S. Why don't people play Nantuko Monastery in their lists anymore? Is a recurring 4/4 first striker not good enough anymore?

sdematt

02-19-2012, 10:39 PM

Revival is an instant-speed, "Don't grease me with Surgical" whereas Witness is more of a value-creature. I just like having the ability to instant-speed put a Seismic on top at EOT, then cast it, whereas Witness has to be done over two turns and cost 3+ mana, whereas this doesn't cost any.

-Matt

lavafrogg

02-19-2012, 10:43 PM

My argument with witness is that it is used against all of the tempo decks that are floating around the format right now. Where revival is card disadvantage, dependent on not seeing any hate, witness is card advantage and is seldom hated on. Witness for a plow or discard is golden in certain matches where you are trying to build card advantage for a win.

sdematt

02-20-2012, 12:40 AM

I'm fine trading Noxious revival for Seismic Assault. Know what's not cool? Witness for Assault, pass, get it discarded. I understand you get a 2/1, but honestly, I'm more worried about the hate, since Snapcaster + Surgical is heavily played.

-Matt

sdematt

02-20-2012, 12:48 AM

Intuition is also legitimate, Hanni. I don't "like" Brainstorm here. I think if I were going to run Intuition, I'd run it in place of Bobs and that's it (and run Harvest, obviously). Worm Harvest is as much the tits as Hanni is saying. I'm playing it in BUG and it's the bee's knees. But, I'm not sure I want to give up Black for it (since I love me some Black). Also playing Black yourself means you don't have to have GGG to cast it (since most of the time you're on RRRGG if you're lucky).

I'd almost be willing to run it as a 2-of tutor for Worm Harvest and more Loams and not drop Black. That way, you still get to play the everything, and if you get it, awesome, and if not, whatever. The only thing holding me back is the fact that if I'm running RUG Loam, I'd rather play BUG Loam. Don't get me wrong Hanni, I know you've tested RUG Loam and I'm sure it's great, but I really can't squeeze Brainstorm into this deck and like it. I know the synergy, I just can't do it. Maybe it's just old habits dying hard, but I've played Loam this way for a while with great results.

Hanni, what you shouldn't do is stop posting. I'd love for you to update us with testing and results, and maybe we;d all get more out of it instead of posting lists and arguing about it.

TL:DR If you want people to notice, do testing and let us know how it went, since we're all interested.

-Matt

lavafrogg

02-20-2012, 01:07 AM

I guess you can use it in response to a surgical extraction but if they have the snapcaster for the second surgical then you lose the assault to the shuffle effect anyways. Loam is harder to hit with surgical but singular graveyard removal has never hit loam very hard. Extirpate on your loam is bad but I would prefer that to a relic/crypt on the board because the rest of my graveyard is intact.

The card advantage issue seems to be relevant against a deck that builds 2 for 1's until it has an overwhelming advantage over the opponent.

Witness at least needs to be answered as well, as a 2/1 trades with snapcaster and mystic, more so if you brought back another creature(god forbid the other mystic) and they now have to waste a plow effect on the witness, and not a real beater, to prevent witness recursion from winning the game. Also Jace has little effect on witness beat-down.

Against decks with discard isn't loam heavily favored in the first place? With a solid loam enforced manabase and draw engine discard seems to be very ineffective and fighting 1 for 1's(targeted discard) and 2 for 1's(hymn) with a witness seems better than giving up a card to draw a binned card. Considering black decks will certainly have surgical/extirpates the shuffle effect is almost guaranteed to mess up your revival when you decide to play it.

I love the regrowth effect in the deck, I just see no reason to run noxious revival instead of the more synergistic eternal witness(which always seems to get cut from the deck anyways).

Dark Ritual

02-20-2012, 01:41 AM

Eternal witness is the ultimate durdle card in legacy at least. You cast witness one turn, the next turn you cast seismic, and the turn after that you finally get to dredge loam to abuse seismic. While with noxious revival you can play out your cards normally and EoT put seismic on top to start abusing it with loam. And noxious actually makes extraction look silly. Also, 0 mana instant speed cards are typically sweet. All in all, noxious revival is a sweet card in loam.

razvan

02-20-2012, 03:15 PM

@ Razvan: That list seems pretty cool. I might try something like it. Have any issues with color consistency? is getting BB with three badlands and a bayou a lot easier? Also, tarmogoyf is trash, man. I would cut him entirely and some of the 3cc removal for crushers and two ooze. With so much burn in your list to keep Jace in check, maelstrom pulse seems less necessary. I mean, other than enchantress stuff and leyline, our deck can just power through the artifacts and enchantments in the format.
Thanks :)

Well, I have made some changes to that list:

-2 Punishing Fires
-2 Grove of the Burnwillows
-1 Tarmogoyf
+1 Badlands
+1 Forgotten Cave
+2 Scavenging Ooze
+1 Liliana of the Veil

Liliana is simply amazing. Getting to BB is a bit of a trick, but with the 4th Badlands it's not too bad. The reliance on Mox Diamond is slightly increased, but that's the deck. I can always pitch future Moxes to her +1 anyway, when it comes up. Between your burn and removal and blockers, rarely have I played her and had her get attacked to death.

As for consistency, I never have rarely not had the mana, if ever, but this is only 5 tournaments, so the sample size isn't large enough yet. 6 fetches was plenty enough.

You are correct in staying that Goyf is not the greatest, since a lot of the deck is combo killing with Seismic Assault, and I find myself using him mostly on the defensive until he gets big enough. I still am not sure it should be gone.

I could give Crusher another try. He rarely dies to bolt if played properly anyway, but I like the 1G cost on Goyf.

There is such a thing as too much burn though. 4 Bolt and 2 Fire might be too little, but 4/4 sometimes (theoretically) seems too much. I could see myself adding one and cutting the 3rd goyf.

I am glad there are so many decisions though. Makes for a very interesting deck.

Oh, and as for Maelstrom Pulse, it's a lot of paranoia on my end. The Putrefy's are better 99% of the time, but you know, there is always that one little devil on the shoulder that says it's nice to have a card that kills everything.

Do you think complete lack of EE is a problem?

Aggro_zombies

02-20-2012, 04:29 PM

Have you considered a one-of Twilight Mire for fixing? You can't fetch it, but it seems fine with Loam, and you have a lot of black and green costs.

Richard Cheese

02-21-2012, 01:41 PM

Since Misstep is out and CMC1 rules the school again, is anyone back to putting a set of Chalices in the board, or is it still not worth it?

timmycolossus

02-21-2012, 02:27 PM

Hey guys here's a list I have been testing. Let me know what you think.

Total: 60

Creature 14
4x Crusher
4x bob
4x gofy
2x grim lavamancer

Instant 4
4x lightning bolt

Enchantment 3
3x assault

Sorcery 4
4x loam

Artifact 6
4x mox
2x explosives

Planeswalker: 3
3x Liliana of the veil

Land 26
3 badlands
3 taiga
1 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil thicket
4 Wasteland

I do not know what I think about grim lavamancer. I love liliana. Everything else in the deck is pretty basic.

CookedChestnuts

02-21-2012, 06:07 PM

Trade 2 Grim Lavamancers for 1/1 or 2 of Maelstrom Pulse/Putrefy.

razvan

02-21-2012, 06:15 PM

Hanni, there are everal problems with a blue build in my opinion.

You are running Life from the Loam as a one-of, and are relying on Intuition (or Burning Wish) resolving to make it work. Not only that, you can only get Life online on turn 3 or 4, instead of turns 1 or 2. This is a huge problem.

Furthermore, Intuition is a card that people will aggressively counter. Life from the Loam is inevitability, and each time non-tempo decks counter it, they are simply falling behind (although Spell Snare is a great Time Walk), since at some point they will not draw a counter, and theoretically they have no pressure.

Burning Wish might or might not be countered, but if people are aware of your deck, they will counter it if Life from the Loam would be bad for their current board state.

Another problem with Intuition and Burning Wish is that they are incredibly slow. I alluded to it before, but against decks like Delver, you cannot waste a turn achieving status quo. If they get you down to single digits before you stabilize, they can finish you off with Burn and Snapcasters, for which you generally have no way to prevent. This deck is a problem, as the finals of Charlotte showed us: it can race High Tide straight-up.

Now, you do bring up a good point about Bob: Bob is not very good in the Delver match-up. However, on turn 1, with a Mox Diamond, he achieves a lot: worst case, it slows them down from a first turn Delver, and eats up a Bolt. Best case, it survives, and it launches you into the 2nd turn with 3 mana on the table and 6 cards in hand, and a card that WILL take the game down on it's own.

I disagree however with you saying that a 2/1 with no equipment is bad. This deck (well, most versions) are very good at clearing the board. Bolts, Fires, Pulse, EE, Putrefy, Liliana, Seismic Assault... very little should be alive, unless they are f-ing Hexproof, which are a nightmare.

Bobs do attack a significant ammount of times in this deck. I am venturing to say that it's the deck that uses the 2/1 body more than any other. Hell, it's good because it can get in front of an unequipped Geist of Saint Traft.

Brainstorm is another story. I do not necessarily think this deck needs it, but the card is so good, it might work. If you say it works for you, great. You certainly are able to see a lot more cards, given the fetching and the dredging.

bradstone

02-22-2012, 03:30 PM

Since Misstep is out and CMC1 rules the school again, is anyone back to putting a set of Chalices in the board, or is it still not worth it?

Came here to ask the same question. I'm torn right now because turn 1 chalice is just soooo gooood

Aggro_zombies

02-22-2012, 03:55 PM

Came here to ask the same question. I'm torn right now because turn 1 chalice is just soooo gooood
I think having access to one-drops of your own is too important to pass up.

MMS was so good precisely because you could counter an opponent's 1cc cards and then cast your own. Grim Lavamancer and Lightning Bolt might not look like much on their faces, but having them in your deck makes you more competitive without Mox Diamond and helps maximize mana efficiency. This deck is already kind of clunky because of its high concentration of two- and three-drop cards and being close to 50% mana (depending on whether you count cycling lands and Wastelands as mana or "spells"). I would not want to exacerbate that by running what is effectively another two-drop that warps my card choices and has really variable mileage in the format right now.

I mean, any deck with GSZ beats it by GSZ for Pridemage (3 mana). Blue decks beat it with virtually every counter they run - Force, Pierce, Snare, and Daze all counter a turn one or two Chalice at one. Plus, the longer you wait, the more inconsequential Chalice becomes; Chalice at one on turn one on the play may or may not be a total blowout, but turn two Chalice at two on the draw is significantly less impressive (and also the more likely scenario since you don't need Mox Diamond to resolve).

What does Chalice at one counter right now that's really backbreaking, anyway? It hurts burn/Delver but they have Smash to Smithereens for it and you really need to have one as soon as possible for it to matter (otherwise you're in 2+ cc burn range). It stops Brainstorm, Spell Snare/Pierce, and Plow out of Stoneblade but they have a lot of counters for it G1 and can board into removal in games two and three. It stops Mother, Plow, and Hierarch out of Maverick but the cards you care most about there are at higher CMCs. It does a number on RUG but only if you get it out quickly enough - otherwise they have too many answers, and let's be honest, your Chalice is going to look pretty silly on turn two when they flip their Delver.

I still don't think Chalice is good enough.

sdematt

02-22-2012, 07:04 PM

BTW, we need a banner, and I has one:

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b150/AreoCrunch/Loam.jpg

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b150/AreoCrunch/Loam.jpg

I think it'd look hot. Aggro, any chance you'd like to put this on the primer page?

-Matt

Aggro_zombies

02-22-2012, 07:46 PM

Sure. I still need to update that, thanks for reminding me.

I guess that will be my weekend project this weekend.

EDIT: I plan to add the following to the OP:

- Arguments for and against Chalice
- Arguments against adding blue
- Arguments for and against Naya / four-color builds

...at the expense, unfortunately, of the matchups section. If someone wants to ship me percentages and tips I can add those, but I'd prefer not to theorycraft the entire matchups section and I don't have the time to thoroughly test this deck against the Tier I decks.

FlyingSkull13

02-22-2012, 11:04 PM

Ran the Scg List from vegas at a lQ, placed 17th, out of 49 people, will have report up tommorow

Aggro_zombies

02-23-2012, 12:12 AM

Ran the Scg List from vegas at a lQ, placed 17th, out of 49 people, will have report up tommorow
Congrats!

I'm updating the OP now, although I'm pausing for tonight to gather my thoughts. Feel free to post corrections to anything I said in the first post (the second and third ones are still old).

sdematt

02-23-2012, 12:13 AM

I'll keep a look out.

-Matt

razvan

02-23-2012, 11:21 AM

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 ga
You might want to finish that statement. Otherwise, very nice re-write.

I have some thoughts too (run far, and run fast, everyone), I will post them when I can be sure they are somewhat coherent.

Richard Cheese

02-23-2012, 11:42 AM

BTW, we need a banner, and I has one:

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b150/AreoCrunch/Loam.jpg

I think it'd look hot. Aggro, any chance you'd like to put this on the primer page?

-Matt

Would be great except for the doo doo version of the Assault art.

Wait is doo doo supposed to be hyphenated? Doo-doo?

sdematt

02-23-2012, 06:05 PM

Doo-doo is hyphenated. I stole the banner, so I didn't have a choice in the Assault art. If anyone's good at photoshop, they could change it (I'm awful at it).

-Matt

Richard Cheese

02-23-2012, 06:34 PM

Doo-doo is hyphenated. I stole the banner, so I didn't have a choice in the Assault art. If anyone's good at photoshop, they could change it (I'm awful at it).

-Matt

I would try, but it would just end up with penises all over it.

Also I'm a giant nerd so I looked it up:

Use a hyphen in expressions where words have become linked by usage to express one idea.

I believe you are correct sir. Doo-doo it is.

FlyingSkull13

02-23-2012, 08:15 PM

Tourney Report: for IQ in Newington CT

My list of Glory!!!
2x Engineered Explosives
4x Mox Diamond
4x Countryside Crusher (Al Gore!!!!)
4x Dark Confidant (bob)
2x Grim Lavamancer
2x Scavenging Ooze
2x Goyf
3x seismic Assault
4x lightning bolt
4x life from the loam
2x maelstrom pulse
1x forest
2x mountain
1x badlands
1x bayou
3x bloodstained mire
4x forgotten cave
3x taiga
3xtranquil thicket
4x wasteland
4x wooded foothills
1 Volrath's stronghold

The Venue was nice, clean, had lots of space, and had great people. 47 players showed up.

round 1 Reanimator

I win game one with Bob and mox turn one opening, and beat an iona on green after loaming

i lose games 2 and 3 because i cant board correctly
tried g3 +2 lilianna,+2 surgical, +2 green revival, +2 pyroblast, +3 thoughtseize
-2 engineered explosives, -4 bolts, -3 seismics, -2 loams
0-1

Round 2 u/b home brew

I win game won with wasteland recursion and resolving a goyfe
game two is won on back of seismic and loam

1-1

Round 3 Bant w/ Chris

I play Chris all the time, Last two matches, i've been smashed by his deck

G1: he opens on dryad arbitor, and i bolt it, i proceed to wasteland and loam back said wasteland. It gets bad for him, when i pulse his two noble hiarchs.

G2: i board in three thoughtseizes, take out oozes and a forgotten cave
I draw a pulse to get rid of his sun and moon, Grim Lavamancer proceeds to own the board, and i take the game

2-1
Round 4 /w Steven (white Staxs without stax)
G1: he drops down lock pieces, i get loam and assualt going and i kill him even after he geddons

board: 2xKrosan grips for 2xoozes
he has white leyline, i go all in on 2 crushers in opening hand, I get there

3-1
Round 5 Maveric /w Jeremy
Jeremy is also from my store, and I've done pretty well vs Maverics

G1:I waste a Savanah and he does not draw a white source, and i proceed to kill him with large men
I forget what i board out

G2:Punishing fires just kills my small men, and i drew absolutely nothing

G3: I play Assualt, he plays Angels Law, (I'll wait for you to look it up)

ok, loam does decent but i cant get more than 2 lands to throw at him, and i cant control his board and i lose

3-2
Round 6: i'm sorry can not remember my opponents name, but he was on BURN

G1: i play a couple of fetches, get a bob into play, and then get burned out from 11 life.

G2: i play a ooze that eats removal, and i drop down assualt, he drops down vorex, i proceed to 12 him and he dies during upkeep

g3: he draws the nutz and i die on turn 3

3-3
overall the tourney was great, i should have beaten reanimator, and i need help with boarding for matchups. Any help would be great, the deck is fun and feels powerfull, its not "broken" but it feels after awhile that your opponent is just watching you drive the bus. I would love some feedback and some help with boarding for games 2 and 3 for matchups, any help would be appreciated. Thanks for your help and i hope to see your responses

razvan

02-26-2012, 07:30 PM

Incidentally, I am running some tests, it seems we are rather soft to RUG Delver. Especially game 1, without REBs and such.

Delver + Mongoose on turn 1 is a BIG problem, even with all our kill. If you don't have a Lightning Bolt (or it doesn't resolve), it's a big issue. Anyone else run into this?

marcel

02-27-2012, 07:33 AM

You have lots of removal for delver, goyf/ooze can block mongoose for centuries.
he counters bolt? ok, he won't counter crusher/knight/assault also you can just wastelock him

razvan

02-27-2012, 09:13 AM

I know, but in theory, it never works out that way. I was surprised too, but that's what it comes up. I realize it's a small sample space, but in about 20 games (all pre-board), I won maybe 5 or 6, and sometimes, it took him flooding out.

It just comes to a point where the early onslaught gets me low enough that he can just burn, snapcaster-burn me out. If I had 25 life, I think it would be a VASTLY different game.

Maybe it's just a bad streak.

Aggro_zombies

02-27-2012, 11:48 AM

razvan

02-27-2012, 12:15 PM

Tempo actually can be kind of a bad matchup in game one. What's your list like? I think lists with Lilianna and/or Punishing Fires do better G1 against tempo than those without. Also, what's the tempo player countering? You can actually get owned pretty hard if they're aggressive with counters and pressure early because stuff like Crusher will be largely irrelevant when it finally does get into play.

Right now it's this one:

4 Life from the Loam

4 Dark Confidant
3 Countryside Crusher / Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze

3 Liliana of the Veil

4 Lightning Bolt
3 Seismic Assault
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Putrefy
2 Punishing Fire
1 Sylvan Library

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

Sideboard
3 Pyroblast
2 Krosan Grip
3 Devastating Dreams
1 Red Elemental Blast
4 Leyline of the Void
2 ???

----

I changed some stuff around. I even was debating using an old standby, Inquisition of Kozilek, maindeck (I don't like discard in Aggro Loam, but I tried it, and it seemed to go a bit better).

Probably something like:

+4 Inquisition
+1 Taiga
+1 Bojuka Bog
-1 Putrefy
-1 Crusher/Goyf
-2 Punishing Fire
-2 Grove

And adjust the lands accordingly. Seemed to run better after that change, but at this point, I am bastardizing the deck way too much.

And they would counter pretty much everything. I am not sure if most tempo players are this over the top aggressive, but they would counter everything, burn anything, and just expend resources very quickly, and it worked really well.

Sometimes you would have to walk into a Daze, and that always spells disaster.

Aggro_zombies

02-27-2012, 01:52 PM

Yeah, your curve is high enough that you'll be soft to RUG.

I'd actually recommend the following:

-2 Putrefy
-1 Lilianna

+3 Tarmogoyf

Putrefy seems like it's too expensive for what it is (Destroy target creature or target equipment) and 3 Lilianna seems greedy. Tarmogoyf will give you an early blocker for non-Delvers and lower your curve. I'm also not sure about Barbarian Ring. The card was cute but relatively weak when I tested it years ago, and I'm not sure the meta has shifted in such a way as to change that; Grim Lavamancer is basically the same thing but better. If you want to keep the land count as-is, I'd recommend swapping it to another basic.

razvan

02-27-2012, 02:34 PM

Hm. Interesting. I definitely agree on Barbarian Ring, it was just my attempt to squeeze a bit of damage from Life from the Loam.

I am fully ok cutting the Putrefy's, however. I like them, but they were mostly for the stoneblade matchup, where they were fine.

I am still unable to get myself to cut the 3rd Liliana, she is so damn good.

But thanks for the reply, you basically confirmed what I feared. Damn high curve!

Aggro_zombies

02-27-2012, 02:45 PM

The cards that help the most versus RUG are cheap removal and cheap blockers. You are vastly favored going long, but you need to survive the initial onslaught. Cards like Grim Lavamancer, Tarmogoyf, Lightning Bolt, EE, and Punishing Fires are useful for this; the cheaper your interactive cards, the harder it is for them to Daze/Pierce you out of the early game.

On the other hand, most of your threes (Assault excepted) are bad in this matchup. Pulse is too expensive, Lilianna is not that hot (since they go into topdeck mode pretty quickly), and Crusher is basically an Assault that can't also murder all of their guys.

razvan

02-27-2012, 02:58 PM

Aggro_zombies

02-27-2012, 03:24 PM

Yeah, I know. Except I still have to make the deck be viable against the rest of the field. Should I add back up to 4 Punishing Fires too?

I like EE too, but I don't know if I would take out the Pulses for it. Although I guess they do serve a very similar purpose.
EE and Pulse are in the deck for broadly similar reasons, but I don't think it's an either-or issue: you want both if you can have them.

I think two Fires is sufficient. Lavamancer might be better, I'm not sure. Having a turn one play without Diamond is not as necessary in the non-RUG matchups, and having a non-StP-able source of damage versus Stoneforge decks is nice. The again, EE, Putrefy, and Pulse are all decent to good versus Stoneforge, so it's up to you.

Basically, I don't like Putrefy right now against anything, so it's easiest to cut that for two Goyfs. I don't like Barbarian Ring, but I'm not sure if you want to go to 25 lands with 4 Wastelands, 4 Cycling lands, and BBGGRRR mana requirements. One thing I've just noticed - no Stronghold? Again, your mana requirements are stiff, but Stronghold is pretty good as a one-of.

I'd reconsider you mana configuration. Assuming you cut Putrefies for Goyfs, your deck has a total of 12 black mana symbols, 13 green mana symbols, and 23 red mana symbols (counting cycling lands as needing a mana of their respective colors). Loam and Scavenging Ooze are recurring green costs, so you want to focus on red, then on green, then black. Something like this might not be so bad:

3 Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire

2 Taiga
2 Badlands
1 Bayou
2 Mountain
1 Forest

2 Grove
1 Graven Cairns

4 Wasteland
1 Stronghold

4 Cycling lands

Cutting down to two Liliannas would make your mana better, but that's your call. Lili seems fine against the blue decks, but she doesn't seem that great against Maverick. Of course, against Maverick I'd rather have Perish/Virtue's Ruin, and those aren't maindeckable cards.