Supreme Blue w/ Loam

[Jayzonious]

Hello, recently I've been trying to put a deck together similar to AggroLoam but with Blue. I really couldn't find a thread where this seemed to belong so I figured I would start this one.

The idea of the deck is to be able to run Counterspells with Chalice of the Void, along with all the loam tricks.

I apologize for the short primer, but this is being posted in the New and Developmental Decks for a reason :cool:

So far this is what I have come up with, I would appreciate any new ideas and welcome all crtique.


Lands (24)
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand

1 Forest

4 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Underground Sea

1 Maze of Ith
1 Volrath's Stronghold

2 Lonely Sandbar
2 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland


Creatures (14)
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Rhox War Monk
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Eternal Witness

Spells (22)
4 Mox Diamond
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Life From the Loam
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Firespout

Sideboard (15)
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Krosan Grip
3 Meddling Mage
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Firespout
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Tormod's Crypt

[Rune]

Isn't your blue count (13) too low to support FoW?

[Vacrix]

You ought to cut down on your business like your Loams and such, and run more cantrips that way you can sift through your deck to find exactly what you need for the situation. In fact, Intuition much? Its great with Loam.

[Aggro_zombies]

Isn't your blue count (13) too low to support FoW?
Yeah, it is.

This list feels even more like a rip-off of New Horizons, where you removed a bunch of the tempo elements to add a mish-mash of control elements. However, I don't feel like the deck really meshes well together, probably because it lacks the kind of clear goal that tends to boost cohesiveness. Your deck kind of plays out like a midrange aggro-control deck, which is to say that it runs a bunch of awkward answers that it needs to draw at precisely the right time in precisely the right order; failure to do so results in a lot of draws where you don't really do anything and your opponents run over you. You're kind of like Counterbalance in the sense that you're trying to have a powerful way to control access to the board, but Chalice is no Counterbalance, and Top is so ridiculously powerful that it would be worth running in many blue decks that were not otherwise interested Counterbalance, if such decks were viable. As it is, Life from the Loam feels really tacked on here, because you're not doing anything particularly good with it: recurring Wasteland is basically it, and the cycling engine is pretty bad in blue decks relative to Top or Jace. You run a pretty top-heavy curve, but you run Daze and have a low land count for a Loam deck.

In short, I'm not sure what this deck is trying to do. It feels like you decided that you wanted to try blue in Aggro Loam, so you made a deck that's sort of like New Horizons, but much worse than it; recognizing this, you decided to make another thread in the hopes that someone would help you make your deck not worse than New Horizons. Blue doesn't really do anything for Aggro Loam because that deck's design and philosophy are such that it values power and redundancy very highly, and plays like a more aggro-oriented Rock deck. I've tested a lot of blue decks running LftL over the years, and they tend not to work out very well, mostly because the Loam engine doesn't give blue anything it doesn't already have: blue has no shortage of late-game card advantage engines, most of which are much less mana-intensive than Loam. Loam gives you resilience to mana denial strategies, but so does solid mana base design; recurring Wasteland can be achieved with Crucible without the need to support a heavy green count (and Crucible works well with Academy Ruins, which these kinds of decks want to run anyway). Loam doesn't do anything for you early on because it has zero impact on the board, and fast board impact is what Legacy is all about right now. Loam late is competing with Jace TMS for the card advantage slot, but Jace also doubles as a win condition and board control element that requires no mana investment after he's played. Granted, you have to protect him, but both aggro-control and regular control can do that handily. Like I said, Chalice is much worse than Counterbalance because it can't protect itself from incoming removal spells and warps your deckbuilding rather than working with it. Your blue count is too low to support Force of Will, but removing the counters basically removes all the incentive you had to be in blue to begin with, so...besides, being a blue deck basically makes you automatically weak to Zoo and Lands, with the upside being that you gain percentage in the uncommon combo matchup and have some improved ability to stop broken things from happening - but most of the decks that can do broken things, like Reanimator, have ways to protect them and are much better at using Force of Will than you are. In most cases, you'll end up having to pitch a counter to cast Force, which is bad when your opponents will often have enough blue cards to Force and Daze.

Basically, I'm not sure why you'd want to play this over either Aggro Loam or New Horizons (which is basically the deck you're looking for).

[Vacrix]

Basically, I'm not sure why you'd want to play this over either Aggro Loam or New Horizons (which is basically the deck you're looking for).
Agreed.

Jayzonious, you ought to provide some justification for your choices. Why play Counterspells and Chalice together? Grafting some Blue spells and Chalice on top of an Aggro Loam shell isn't really a strategy, its just throwing cards together. It becomes a pile of cards instead of a deck. Please update your primer so we can help you out.

[Redshift]

Hey all,

I've been reading these forums for years and never really felt compelled to post. However, I feel like I can add something to this thread. I've been working on the following list for a few years now, mostly casually up until the last few months. I decided to start getting into M:TG more competitively and have played the deck at a few local tournaments, generally placing between first and third. Most recently I split the finals of a ~30 man tourney after going undefeated through the rounds. Anyway, here is the list:

Lands (24)
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Wooded Foothills

1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Island

3 Taiga
3 Volcanic Island

4 Forgotten Cave
1 Maze of Ith
1 Academy Ruins
1 Wasteland
1 The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale
1 Riftstone Portal

Spells (36)
4 Mox Diamond
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Life From the Loam
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Seismic Assault
4 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Worm Harvest

Sideboard (15)
3 Krosan Grip
3 Firespout
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Spell Pierce
1 Karakas
2 Pyroblast

Depending on the match-up the deck either plays very controlling or very aggressive with Seismic Assault filling the role of kill condition as well as a control piece. The plan is to generally to control the game until there is a reasonable opportunity to find and/or play an Assault and just destroy the opponent's board or life total.

The deck has tons of library manipulation in Loam/Cave/Intuition/Top/Brainstorm which makes finding answers and sculpting a great hand very easy. With the acceleration provided by Mox Diamond it is not uncommon to have an active Assault powered by Loam on the table turn 2 against aggro decks at which point winning becomes a formality. Intuition allows for incredible access to answers; Loam, Ruins, EE is a strong plan against enchantment and artifact based decks or decks that use tokens (dredge) and low cost creatures. Loam, Maze, Tabernacle can be devastating against creature based aggro or just three Assaults if you already have an active loam and need a quick kill or board wipe. Against control, Loam, Cave, Wasteland is a huge beating.

I don't use any creatures in order to blank opposing removal. Worm Harvest is included as a recurrable late game bomb (which can easily be intuitioned up) as well as providing infinite chump blockers and insurance in case of something like Extirpate on loam.

I don't think this deck is something that can be played effectively without a little practice as there are tons of potential plays at almost every opportunity. It also requires understanding when to play control and when to switch into aggro mode. With an Assault on the table and a Cave in the graveyard, five mana and a Loam equals ten damage a turn which can end things in a hurry.

As someone who has been playing around with this deck for a long time I definitely think it has some serious potential. Let me know what you think!

[Vacrix]

Might you have too many Loams in your list? Cutting it to 3 seems better. I'd say the same thing about Seismic Assult. Do you really need 4 of each?

Otherwise it looks like a more optimized version of Jayzonious's list.

EDIT:
On second glance, its nothing like Jayzonious's list. Different colors, different win cons, etc. You also don't run Chalice, which is something he wanted.

[Jayzonious]

Lands (24)
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Wooded Foothills

1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Island

3 Taiga
3 Volcanic Island

4 Forgotten Cave
1 Maze of Ith
1 Academy Ruins
1 Wasteland
1 The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale
1 Riftstone Portal

Spells (36)
4 Mox Diamond
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Life From the Loam
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Seismic Assault
4 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Worm Harvest

Sideboard (15)
3 Krosan Grip
3 Firespout
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Spell Pierce
1 Karakas
2 Pyroblast


I agree that Loam and Seismic Assault could go down to 3. You could really take advantage of the SDT by going -1 SDT -1 Loam -1 Seismic Assault and +3 Counter Balance.

The deck seems to lack win conditions, so maybe those slots could be better used for those?