Mantis
10-29-2012, 05:39 PM
Faithless Looting is a card that sparked my interest ever since it was printed. Flagstones of Trokair and Loam always were among my favorite cards and Haakon is another card I have always wanted to build a deck around. Now when you combine all of these cards and some a couple of other cool cards such as Smallpox, Liliana of the Veil and Lingering Souls and you wind up with the pile beneath.
// Lands
4 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Karakas
2 Scrubland
1 Taiga
1 Bayou
1 Plateau
1 Savannah
1 Badlands
2 Marsh Flats
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Arid Mesa
1 Wasteland
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Barren Moor
4 Mox Diamond
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Life from the Loam
4 Smallpox
4 Lingering Souls
4 Faithless Looting
2 Unearth
1 Flame Jab
2 Vindicate
2 Swords to Plowshares
// Sideboard
SB: 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB: 3 Engineered Plague or Firestorm?
SB: 4 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Bojuka Bog
SB: 4 Meddling Mage
SB: 1 Underground Sea
I think most of the synergies speak for itself. The way the games I win usually pan out in a grindy fashion and usually Life from the Loam has a big part in the games that are won. It works extremely well with Smallpox, Faithless Looting, the cycling lands and the dredges get cards in the yard. In my opinion, Loam is the closest thing to Ancestral Recall we have in this format (okay, I may be exaggerating a bit here). By now we all realize just how powerful and lopsided planeswalkers can be and Liliana is the one for this deck. The power of Knight of the Reliquary has been demonstrated by the sustained success of Maverick, which is entirely built around getting Knights into play as consistently as possible. While they have GZS, we have Haakon here. I originally had 4 Haakons, but as you only ever need 1 and they are among the weakest cards in the deck I cut down to just 2. Faithless Looting is quite alright, but I am not entirely sold on the card yet as it requires us to dip into the fourth color but on the flipside it helps find Loam and can generate card advantage with an active Loam. It also helps to prevent running out of business cards, which can occasionally happen with 27 mana sources. I love Lingering Soul and it's a great joy to pitch it to Lili, Smallpox or Looting. Martell didn't win the GP without reason and Lingering Souls had everything to do with the win, I happen to think that Souls is even better in this deck than it was in his (although the metagame might a more hostile time for it nowadays). Unearth is a recent addition and is basically a Dark Ritual with card parity here, sounds good right? I wish I could play 4 Vindicates, but that would hurt the curve so 2 Swords to Plowshares are probably in order. Flame Jab is questionable at best, I could very well see it being cut at some point depending on how the metagame shapes up.
So there you have it. The deck is a joy to play but obviously is quite fragile to graveyard hate and I'm not sure it can survive if Rest in Peace turns out to be a big contender. Meddling Mage is there to hopefully put an halt to RiP while simultaneously helping out against Show and Tell and miscellaneous combo decks. It's probably less of a glass cannon than something like Dredge is, but then again isn't quite as powerful. The deck offers a lot of avenues to outplay the opponent, is a lot of fun to play but requires some refinement and a lot of testing hours as well. A comparison to Aggro Loam might be more apt, a deck that has an easy time dealing with aggressive decks but struggles against combo and certain control decks (especially those packing Counterbalance). I think this deck is more allround in that it has an easier time against combo and perhaps control, but requires a bit more work against aggro but the matchups are a bit more balanced. Nevertheless, I do realize that with the upswing of UW RiP/Helm.dec this is probably the worst time every to bring up a deck like this but I'm doing it anyway. Both Rest in Peace and Counterbalance in the same deck seems to be a pretty hard beating.
I wish I could talk about how all the matchups pan out, but to be frank I haven't had the time and opportunity yet to test them all out. A sideboard guide doesn't seem necessary as it's usually just bring the removal package out and put in the controlling cards or remove some controlling cards in favor of removal, but I'd be more than happy to type one out once I get more testing done if requested.
I'm curious to hear your thought or experiences with similar approaches and would be delighted if someone out there was kind enough to help me test or help me work on this deck!
// Lands
4 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Karakas
2 Scrubland
1 Taiga
1 Bayou
1 Plateau
1 Savannah
1 Badlands
2 Marsh Flats
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Arid Mesa
1 Wasteland
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Barren Moor
4 Mox Diamond
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Life from the Loam
4 Smallpox
4 Lingering Souls
4 Faithless Looting
2 Unearth
1 Flame Jab
2 Vindicate
2 Swords to Plowshares
// Sideboard
SB: 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB: 3 Engineered Plague or Firestorm?
SB: 4 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Bojuka Bog
SB: 4 Meddling Mage
SB: 1 Underground Sea
I think most of the synergies speak for itself. The way the games I win usually pan out in a grindy fashion and usually Life from the Loam has a big part in the games that are won. It works extremely well with Smallpox, Faithless Looting, the cycling lands and the dredges get cards in the yard. In my opinion, Loam is the closest thing to Ancestral Recall we have in this format (okay, I may be exaggerating a bit here). By now we all realize just how powerful and lopsided planeswalkers can be and Liliana is the one for this deck. The power of Knight of the Reliquary has been demonstrated by the sustained success of Maverick, which is entirely built around getting Knights into play as consistently as possible. While they have GZS, we have Haakon here. I originally had 4 Haakons, but as you only ever need 1 and they are among the weakest cards in the deck I cut down to just 2. Faithless Looting is quite alright, but I am not entirely sold on the card yet as it requires us to dip into the fourth color but on the flipside it helps find Loam and can generate card advantage with an active Loam. It also helps to prevent running out of business cards, which can occasionally happen with 27 mana sources. I love Lingering Soul and it's a great joy to pitch it to Lili, Smallpox or Looting. Martell didn't win the GP without reason and Lingering Souls had everything to do with the win, I happen to think that Souls is even better in this deck than it was in his (although the metagame might a more hostile time for it nowadays). Unearth is a recent addition and is basically a Dark Ritual with card parity here, sounds good right? I wish I could play 4 Vindicates, but that would hurt the curve so 2 Swords to Plowshares are probably in order. Flame Jab is questionable at best, I could very well see it being cut at some point depending on how the metagame shapes up.
So there you have it. The deck is a joy to play but obviously is quite fragile to graveyard hate and I'm not sure it can survive if Rest in Peace turns out to be a big contender. Meddling Mage is there to hopefully put an halt to RiP while simultaneously helping out against Show and Tell and miscellaneous combo decks. It's probably less of a glass cannon than something like Dredge is, but then again isn't quite as powerful. The deck offers a lot of avenues to outplay the opponent, is a lot of fun to play but requires some refinement and a lot of testing hours as well. A comparison to Aggro Loam might be more apt, a deck that has an easy time dealing with aggressive decks but struggles against combo and certain control decks (especially those packing Counterbalance). I think this deck is more allround in that it has an easier time against combo and perhaps control, but requires a bit more work against aggro but the matchups are a bit more balanced. Nevertheless, I do realize that with the upswing of UW RiP/Helm.dec this is probably the worst time every to bring up a deck like this but I'm doing it anyway. Both Rest in Peace and Counterbalance in the same deck seems to be a pretty hard beating.
I wish I could talk about how all the matchups pan out, but to be frank I haven't had the time and opportunity yet to test them all out. A sideboard guide doesn't seem necessary as it's usually just bring the removal package out and put in the controlling cards or remove some controlling cards in favor of removal, but I'd be more than happy to type one out once I get more testing done if requested.
I'm curious to hear your thought or experiences with similar approaches and would be delighted if someone out there was kind enough to help me test or help me work on this deck!