(Archive) [DTW] Aggro Loam [Archive] - Page 4

ykpon

01-26-2009, 07:56 AM

hey.

i'm not an agroloam player but i hope u still can help me. actually it sometimes seems to me i'm the only one who doesn't play agroloam in my meta. ok, obviously there are a lot of other decks here but this one is popular enough to start sometimes with 0-2 drop losing against 2 loams and to see 2 other loams splitting the final.

so i have to find a solution. i know something like ichorid or ant would be good here but i havent LED's at all as well as a lot of other combo cards and i don't think i can get them fast enough. so i want to ask u about 2 matchups: mono red burn and armageddon stax.

burn. looks like very bad mu for agroloam if unexpected, doesn't it? nobody plays any lifegain in loam here so the only threat they have is CotV which can be easily destroyed after sb. what do u think?

stax. i cant afford full set of moats now so no dutch stax for me and i can play only traditional geddon one. i've played some matches and it seems to me stax is quite good mu for agroloam, especially postboard (krosan grip targeting CotV with 2 counters ftw). so i'd like to know how can i improve it. what u don't like most of all playing against stax? can adding crypts or any other grave hate help?

i suppose i should ask such things in burn and stax threads, respectively, not in this one. but i also think my opponents' opinion can be more useful in such situation.

ty anyway.

kroelai

01-26-2009, 03:23 PM

Aggro_zombies

01-26-2009, 03:54 PM

The Burn matchup depends on whether or not the Loam deck runs Chalice. Chalice at one is a kick in the nuts and the creatures are all usually to big to be killed by single burn spells.

Matchup is probably 50-50 at best for Burn if the Loam deck runs discard.

ykpon

01-26-2009, 05:58 PM

u can see our agroloams on deckcheck. there are a lot of them in events named "Legacy League Moscow". i can make a summary for 5 decklists which top8'ed recently:
2 of 5 run neither chalices nor discard but has white splash for maindeck stp's. i suppose swording terravore or even goyf can sometimes hurt burn.
3rd list runs 4 seizes md and 4 chalices sb.
4th list runs 3 duresses and can wish for raven's crime.
5th list runs 4 chalices md and doesnt play any discard at all.

so only 1 of 5 lists runs md chalice (after sb smash to smithereens should deal with it imo). also 2 lists has some discard but i dont think seizes are good against burn especially after siding chalices in. and i'm not sure about 2 lists splashing white. looks like if they stp their own creature for lifegain they lose a clock and it gives burn some more turns at the same time. hm, it seems to me burn is a good choise to beat our agroloams. but ok, it sucks against nearly everithing else and isn't fun to play at all..

are there any other LEDless decks with a good agroloam mu? dunno about playing agroloam too.. i think i just havent enough experience with it to win a mirror after mirror.

GreenOne

01-26-2009, 07:35 PM

are there any other LEDless decks with a good agroloam mu? dunno about playing agroloam too.. i think i just havent enough experience with it to win a mirror after mirror.
The things that come to mind are affinity with MD relic of Progenitus, Solidarity, Spring Tide/Permanent Waves, Cephalid Breakfast, Enchantress with MD sacred ground and/or karmic justice, Aluren.

luckymartyr

01-26-2009, 10:07 PM

I have only just started playing this deck and have had a hard time playing against counterbalance decks. Short of boarding in krosan grips does anyone have any general advice against this matchup?

leander?

01-27-2009, 09:49 AM

I have only just started playing this deck and have had a hard time playing against counterbalance decks. Short of boarding in krosan grips does anyone have any general advice against this matchup?

Worm Harvest is king in this MU. Just dredge into it and win the game.

georgjorge

01-27-2009, 01:05 PM

I've played plenty of games against CBalance decks and haven't had any problems with them so far (no exaggeration). Playing 1cc-discard helps since you might get CBalance before it gets you, and later they will try to always keep a 2cc-spell on top so it has a good chance of resolving. Use Wastelands aggressively, since maintaining a CBalance + Top soft lock requires 2-3 mana a turn, and if they only have three lands they won't be playing much else. Don't play around Daze with your spells on the first or second turn, as it makes that CBalance land one turn later. But DO slowroll your Crushers and 'Vores (your CBalance-proof threats) to avoid Daze, usually you won't be under too much pressure for that, and without Daze they only have 7-8 outs to those threats in their deck.

If you still have problems, try maindeck Explosives although I'm not a fan of those otherwise.

This is just general advice, and the game situation may ask for different plays. But they've helped me fine so far.

Aggro_zombies

01-27-2009, 03:00 PM

I run sideboard Grips as well as maindeck EE, Chalice (@1 to stop Top) and Pithing Needle (anti-Top). I don't really have much of a problem with it.

luckymartyr

01-27-2009, 06:36 PM

Aggro_zombies

01-27-2009, 06:58 PM

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate all the help that I can get. Isn't maindeck pithing needle and chalice of the void a nombo. Don't you pretty much always want to chalice for 1 as soon as possible.
You don't always have Chalice in hand, or you may not be able to resolve it. In this case, Needle just acts as redundancy. There's also some matchups where Chalice comes out but Needle is still useful, such as ITF/4c Landstill.

Loxodon Baileyarch

01-27-2009, 09:57 PM

I just started playing this deck recently, and i was curious.

How is it's 43Land matchup?

It seems like it would be miserable for both players. But i think AggroLoam has the edge with Seismic Assault.

Thoughts?

kkoie

01-28-2009, 03:53 PM

I have played 43land against this deck, and it is a pain. Aggro Loam has a much faster clock, and you are correct about Siesmic Assault. If it hits the table, 43land cannot deal with it, except perhapes post board.

georgjorge

01-28-2009, 05:01 PM

Wretched Banquet B
Sorcery

Destroy target creature with the
least power or tied for least power.

Seems like a decent Wish target instead of Edict, the one mana difference can be crucial, and I haven't seen many creatures around that are bigger than ours :smile:. Probably not good enough for the main since it can't kill 'Nought (and sometimes Tombstalker), but with Wish you'd get Spree for the Nought anyway.

Aggro_zombies

01-28-2009, 05:13 PM

luckymartyr

01-28-2009, 08:27 PM

Is the consensus that playing burning wish is superior to the no wish builds?

Captain Hammer

01-28-2009, 09:08 PM

I'm just curious. Is it possible to build a WG Aggro Loam type deck. Perhaps using Crucible of Worlds instead of Loam too.

4 Goyf
4 Terrageddon
4 Knight
4 Armageddon
4 Cataclysm
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
4 Wasteland
2 Mishra's Factory/Treetop Village
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Maze of Ith

etc.

How would you do it?

raharu

01-28-2009, 09:22 PM

georgjorge

01-29-2009, 05:44 AM

Is the consensus that playing burning wish is superior to the no wish builds?

Most people playing the deck seem to see Wish as an auto-include, but some, such as myself, don't.

As to a WG build...I like the Knight, and I think that with blue being everywhere, 'Geddon might even be as good as Dreams. But getting all of your threats crippled by a single Relic is harsh, and Crusher is perfect at avoiding that. And I wouldn't play Cataclysm as a 4-of since many decks play single large creatures as well, making it into a bad Armageddon.

donnhart

02-01-2009, 04:59 PM

Hello Guys,

i just want to know what you think about this pile:

MKM Loam

4 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Devastating Dreams
4 Duress
4 Life from the Loam
2 Raven’s Crime
2 Seismic Assault
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mox Diamond
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
3 Forgotten Cave
2 Mountain
2 Taiga
3 Tranquil Thicket
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
1 Offalsnout
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Jund Charm
3 Krosan Grip
1 Devastating Dreams
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Engineered Explosives

Perhaps anybody have some idea how to increase the Combo-Mu?
If not, feel free to discuss random other points ;)

greetings

georgjorge

02-01-2009, 08:24 PM

Looks too controllish for my taste (Raven's Crime, Explosives, Tops and Witness, but no Terravores - what, even two more Explosives in the board!!!). But if you want to go that route, Burning Wish would fit in very well, especially since drawing Loam seems to be very necessary for your build as DDreams is lacking the interaction with 'Vores.

You have more than enough artifact/enchantment hate if you count the explosives, so either Grip or Grudge isn't necessary. The 'Snout seems random too.

The best addition against combo is a) Thorn of Amethyst b) more discard (Thoughtseizes...which I would play over the Crimes in the maindeck anyway) to prevent them from going off before you can drop Thorn or Chalice. I'd say your matchup becomes decent with +3 Thorn +2 Thoughtseize (if you keep the Crimes maindeck), the additional discard being very needed against Landstill anyway.

Arkham

02-01-2009, 08:40 PM

Aggro_zombies

02-01-2009, 09:43 PM

So. I don't know how many of you have been keeping up with the Conflux previews, but it looks to be an excellent set. Especially, because, it looks like Aggro Loam will end up with some new additions to the deck. But, I wondered what your folks opinion was on these cards and whether or not they warrant some testing in the deck;

-Path to Exile
-Knight of the Reliquary

I believe that the cards are rather exceptional and should be given some thought, and I will be testing them myself, but I'd almost be willing to say that I'd go back to white for either of these if they are as good as I'm imagining they'll be.
I've already voiced my opinions on Knight, so I'll address Path.

Recurring Wasteland and DD are both huge control aspects of the aggro-control outlook of this deck. Mana denial allows you to safely get one or two big threats in play and ride them to victory without having to worry much about the opponent interfering through blockers or removal. That said, getting them land seems really, really bad, especially considering that you wouldn't want to play more than 4 Swords and that you will almost always more than make up for the life they gained in your next attack step. Removing their Goyf only to fetch them that second Island they needed to drop Counterbalance seems bad compared to removing their Goyf and then smashing for 10+ with Crusher.

Arkham

02-01-2009, 10:05 PM

Aggro_zombies

02-01-2009, 11:14 PM

Personally, Aggro, I'd rather give Dreadnought it's extra land since it's easier to control than having to plow through 12+ life if I StP it. But, I guess different methods to different people. The reason why I liked Path to Exile was because it got rid of the creature, isn't color dependent like terminate, and I'm not giving opponents a leg up that can't be easily cut down.
Path requires white, which is a splash color. Terminate requires red and black, of which black is a splash color and red is a primary color. Since both require access to a splash color, I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Life gained off of Swords can almost always be cut down by one swing with Terravore or Crusher, maybe two swings if your guys aren't big yet and you remove a Dreadnought. A basic land can only be dealt with through Devastating Dreams, and it allows them more latitude to do things under a Wastelock.

Basically, you're advocating playing a worse version of Swords in addition to Swords. At least, that's what I'm assuming, since I'd like to think that any white-splash version would run four Swords first and I don't see why you'd need more than four targeted removal spells on top of EE and Deed.

I'm also curious if you'd voice your opinion again on KotR. I can understand the downside since the bonus is only coming from your graveyard, but he does put land into your graveyard, give you other lands, and is a mini-terravore at that. I wouldn't necessarily cut Countryside Crusher for him, but he shows some promise.
This deck's problem isn't a lack of big creatures - it's swimming in big creatures. The problem is that the deck needs big creatures that don't require the graveyard to be relevant. You're already running Loam as a central engine and Terravore and possibly Tarmogoyf as beaters, making graveyard hate and Chalice/Counterbalance some of the most effective hate pieces an opponent can field against you.

Granted, Terravore and Goyf check both graveyards, but that won't change the fact that Leyline makes Terravore difficult to get out of the 3/3 or 4/4 range. Losing Loam makes Devastating Dreams much more one-sidedly devastating (lulz, Mind Twist myself), and one-shot Wastelands are good but not as damaging as Wastelands every turn. Given the number of decks that can either put you on a fast clock (aggressive strategies running Crypt or Relic) or back up their disruption with counters (every Threshold variety, every Landstill variety, etc), you can't always count on using Burning Wish to get yourself out of trouble in a relevant time frame.

Now that the background is out of the way, let's look at Knight. It has three parts that are important from this deck's standpoint: the graveyard clause, the land search, and the :1::g::w: casting cost. In order of increasing importance:

1) The white splash may or may not be comparable to the black splash, but if you don't do four colors you're losing Bob, Stronghold, and discard, which is a lot to lose when you're only getting this and Swords.

2) Searching for lands seems great until you realize that you have to sacrifice lands in order to do it, and specific types of lands at that. You'll rarely sacrifice a Plains more than once, so most often you'll be feeding Taigas to it to get...what? If you get and use Wasteland, you've essentially done the same thing as just playing and using a Wasteland, except now you're down a colored source that you can't get back next turn if you want to use Wasteland again. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume you've got Exploration and your opponent Magical Hacked his Urborg to make all lands into Forests. Why is this ability better than simply going into blue and using Intuition? Intuition can find you lands from a toolbox in addition to finding you Dreams, Wishes, Loams, Vores, Crushers, Goyfs...as far as a tutor goes, Intuition is so much more powerful it isn't funny. And this is ignoring how much worse this guy's ability gets without an active Loam (Intuition for land, land, Loam gets around this). It also ignores the fact that using the ability requires him to tap, which in this deck precludes him from attacking...which is what you want your big guys to do.

3) Mini-Terravore seems cool until you realize that this guy doesn't trample and can never get as big as Terravore or Crusher. Furthermore, you're using yet another creature that needs your graveyard to actually be good, making your opponent's Crypts, Leylines, and Relics that much more relevant and painful. Sure, he's a 2/2 after a Crypt, but the only hate piece that one-hit kills Terravore is Relic, so Vore will almost certainly be bigger after a Crypt or Leyline. Furthermore, a two power guy in Legacy that doesn't say "Draw an extra card every turn" or "Target opponent can't play a problem spell or your choice" or "Your whole team gets haste and costs less too" probably isn't a good two power guy. He can't even find you cycling lands to power up Loam.

Even if we ignore that whole "I'm deliberately making my opponent's hate better" aspect, how are you going to fit this guy in? 4 Goyf, 4 Crusher, 4 Terravore, some number of this guy? Great, now you've got at least twelve big guys. How does that improve any of your bad matchups? You're still getting ass-raped by combo, you're still going to have trouble with decks running Counterbalance, you're still not going to be happy to see Deed and a card-drawing engine across the table from you. Basically, you've cut relevant slots to add redundancy, and unnecessary redundancy at that. Of course, we could imagine a situation where the opponent runs 4 Meddling Mage, 4 Swords, 4 PtE, 4 Relic, 4 Planar Void, in which case Knight would be better than Terravore and might be on par with Crusher. But any deck running all of those cards is going to be Shitty.deck. In a more realistic situation, this guy is worse than Terravore and Crusher and probably worse than Goyf in the early- to mid-game, and his land search ability is slow and worse than other available options in a fourth color (Intuition).

If he had a bigger starting body or cost less, I'd say he's worthwhile. As it is, he's the weakest option the deck realistically has for the "Huge Three Mana Guy" slot.

Legacy

02-05-2009, 03:34 PM

Hello, my name is Kolt Beauchamp and I am a Legacy addict. This is my first post.

This is directed toward Donnharts post of MKM Loam.

I like the raven's crime in the deck. They give you another outlet to the lands you draw from lftl and mid to late game you just emptied you opponents hand. I see some people not running seismic assault or ravens crime, no real out let to all the lands they get from lftl. sure you have cycling lands, but you dont' always have them in your grave and espeically 3 of them. What i really like about this deck is being able to lftl the full 3 lands when possible and not worrying about terravore early game being to small and knowing soon you will get a ravens crime in the grave then you can just empty your hand of lands and your opponent loses their hand.

My biggest concern is what do you do against an early dark confidant or a tarmogoyf?

With only 2 DD , 2 seismic assault and 2 EE as creature removal i fell it is too slow to deal with early must deal with threats like dark confidant. And as we all know, leaving a dark confidant unattended usually means gg.

Also dealing with tarmogoyf, i find this deck has a very hard time. Either have to get seismic and lftl online or EE it away. Devastating dreams usually can't take it out. This is speaking from frustration of facing this BG deck. Lots of creature hate like diabolic edict, smother, slaughter pack etc. Lots of times he plays goyf, i respond with goyf, he kills my goyf and swings. I play countery side crusher, he smothers it. swings with goyf. i play terravore. he play slaughter pack. swing with goyf. I have DD in my hand and seismic assault but DD'ing will not kill his goyf but instead just turn it into a 5/6 from its current 4/5. Plus he had wasteland hassling.

I suggest slashing white. put in 4 stp. or some other point removal for the above mentioned. take out the sensei's diving top maybe.

SB for combo match up. Gaddock Teeg answers belcher, cephalid breakfast, TES plus stops force of will wrath of god, decree of justice nervenrayls disk, humilty etc in land still. Splashing white adds stp option as well. Other wise chalice as you already have plus chalice hurts sligh and thresh. also thorn amethyst is good.

Also donnhart at ASL Legacy 17.01.09 what deck did you lose to and what couldn't the deck deal with? I would guess merfolk with mind harness...

georgjorge

02-05-2009, 03:59 PM

Welcome to the Aggro Loam thread.

As to 'Goyf, I understand it to be frustrating playing against removal.dec, but Aggro Loam rarely has problems in dealing with a Goyf. It sometimes happens that the deck can't get through a defending Goyf for a couple of turns, but actually losing to Goyf beats is not very common.

kroelai

02-05-2009, 05:59 PM

oops ^^

kroelai

02-05-2009, 06:00 PM

I am not totaly sure, but a lot of people say/think combo decks like TES/ANT are (by far) our worst nightmare (matchup).
my experience against those decks is pretty good, with main wastelock/dd/chalice and side 4 thorns i just seem to win a lot :smile:

my record on tournaments is against ANT 2-0, 2-0 and against TES 2-1, 2-0, 1-2.

How do you guys experience this matchup?

Jaiminho

02-05-2009, 07:40 PM

How do you guys experience this matchup?

From the ANT side, I've never lost a match to Aggro Loam. Chalices and Thorns are owned by Serenities and bounce. Never got Wastelocked (which can't happen before turn 3), as my opponent was always busy playing things to impose a relevant/threatening board position.

donnhart

02-06-2009, 01:49 AM

@ georgjorge:

Burning Wish is to slow in my opinion, you dont want to wish for a Solution espacially today when the mate is full of tempo.decs.
3 Grip is always autoinclude to deal with cb+top. The grudge was a meta choice, i expected lots of affinity and they performed well.
The one of Snout does not seem random, it is! :D When you got him in the first turns you will win against Ichorid and in the mirror he will probably do something.

@ Legacy:

I lost to the Meerfolk.dec, which was placed on the sixth, first round. Game1 he gets the second turn Nought, Game2 he has 4 Lords...:frown:

Sometimes you loose against Goyf+Removal.dec, but it isnt very common. An early Confidant is a problem, sure.
I´d spend lots of hours with thinking about a w-splash for stp and teeg and came to the point thats isnt worth. I love the manabase with 4 basics, which are awesome against B2B, Moon and Wastelock (mirrormatch anyone?).
If you expect lots of aggro.dec (Meerfolk,Goblins, Confidant.dec) you can cut the sdt´s and ee´s to add 4 Lightning Bolts.
This will give you enough tempo to get lftl online to deal with everything ;)

Legacy

02-06-2009, 10:05 AM

I have noticed the change to running 4 lftl and losing the burning wish. Most reasons are it is too slow and i agree. I didn't see if this was discussed before, but what if we added aether vial?

While we lftl second turn or cast burning wish or are land cycling the counters are building up and your playing creatures that can't be countered. Improves all blue match ups (landstill especially).

The main point is that it would free up mana to cycle lands and draw cards and you won't feel the effect of the slow burning wish for you are still aether vialing creatures into play.

Here is a sample list:

creature [15]
4 Countryside Crusher
2 Terravore
1 Eternal Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
4 dark confidant
sorcery [9]
4 Burning Wish
2 Devastating Dream
3 Life from the Loam
enchantment [2]
2 Seismic Assault
artifact [10]
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Aether Vial
4 Mox Diamond
land [24]
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Plateau
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
3 Forgotten Cave
1 Mountain
3 Taiga
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
60 cards
Side Board:
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
4 Gaddock Teeg
1 Life from the Loam
1 Devastating Dream
1 Shattering Spree
1 Hull Breach
15 cards

Is this feasible?

georgjorge

02-06-2009, 10:25 AM

Actually, both Burning Wish and Aether Vial were discussed in the last ten pages or so of this thread...as far as I know, Vial hasn't been tested much though, but to me it seems the slots could be better filled with additional threats unless you play LOTS of creatures (like 4 Crusher 4 Vore 4 Confidant 4 Goyf and then some Knight of the Relinquary).

risethehandsofreason

02-06-2009, 05:32 PM

I have played Aggro Loam casually for several months, but I have never played a proper tournament with the deck and I haven't thoroughly tested many of the match-ups. That said, I am considering testing with Soul's Fire as an alternate or faster win condition and/or added spot creature removal. I can imagine circumstances where this option would be great, but it may be that it just isn't necessary.

Has anyone tried this or any other Fling-type option? To those of you who run the deck regularly and know it thoroughly, do you think that this is worth testing in a large testing session?

nodahero

02-07-2009, 09:24 PM

In response to the Souls Fire suggestion I ask you this... Why? You say it can act as a faster win condition or as additional removal but again I ask why?

If you want a faster win condition consider that this Souls Fire is a dead car (almost a mulligan) until it wins you the game with a sufficiently fat threat. Thus this provides two more issues A) You are setting up for a 2+ card combo that you could have taken one more turn to out right kill them instead and as for B) consider what might happen should they kill your critter. You just got two for one'd.

If you want removal there are many more viable and less draw dependent options. The primary two I would consider are StP and Terminate with (honestly) explosives comming in third.

If what you really want is options... Look at what deck your playing and (what should be in your deck) Burning Wish then consider how many options you have access to that are not so 2 card combo dependent.

myselves

02-08-2009, 06:39 AM

I have noticed the change to running 4 lftl and losing the burning wish. Most reasons are it is too slow and i agree. I didn't see if this was discussed before, but what if we added aether vial?

While we lftl second turn or cast burning wish or are land cycling the counters are building up and your playing creatures that can't be countered. Improves all blue match ups (landstill especially).

You suggest AetherVial to improve Mus like landstill, while you are running neither Chalice of the Void nor Burning Wish and Landstill playing Relic postboard.

Another problem on cutting Burning Wish is the fact, that you are running 7 copies of LftL (with Wish) or 4 copies of LftL (without Wish).
If the variants with no Wishes are build to be more aggressive (at least they should, cause they are more vulnerable to hate) they would need more copies of Loam to get their 1st one faster, with decreasing the number of LoftL MD this seems to become a problem.

georgjorge

02-08-2009, 10:37 AM

If the variants with no Wishes are build to be more aggressive (at least they should, cause they are more vulnerable to hate) they would need more copies of Loam to get their 1st one faster, with decreasing the number of LoftL MD this seems to become a problem.

That's a common misconception about the role of the deck, I think. By aggressive, I mean playing cheap discard to force your fatties through. Loam in itself is only aggressive if you're recurring Wastelands VERY early, or if you have an Assault (it also helps with DDreams, but with the time involved in getting a fatty down and setting it up with Loam, I would call that play more controllish than aggressive). I often use Loam as an uncounterable draw engine AFTER I run out of threats (by which time I often have cycled into one), though of course I won't pass on the chance to screw an opponent with an early Wastelock or setting up a DDreams, but the former is not so common, and the latter, like I said, is not particularly aggressive.

myselves

02-08-2009, 12:59 PM

That's a common misconception about the role of the deck, I think.

Depends, I was saying that a deck without B.Wish is more vulnerable to hate, to put this disadvantage into perspective you would have to be more aggressive, and some cards in the deck (SA/Vore, under some circumstances DD) are reliant on LftL to be aggressive.

When you play Discard, than you would have to cut CotV, haven't you?
Despite the fact that CotV is 'aggressive' for the same reason Discard can be agressive and that CotV can be backbreaking for a lot of decks in the current format...?

georgjorge

02-08-2009, 01:26 PM

Chalice vs discard has been explored on this page in the thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?p=271390&highlight=chalice+discard#post271390) (wow, has this thread grown to many pages in a short time)...

Loxodon Baileyarch

02-08-2009, 11:36 PM

I top 8ed recently with this deck in a 30 person tournament. I think this deck is REALLY strong and i'm practicing with it alot for the GP.

My list:

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

4x Countryside Crusher
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Terravore

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Mox Diamond
3x Life from the Loam
4x Burning Wish
2x Seismic Assault
2x Engineered Explosives
2x Krosan Grip <--MVP
2x Devastating Dreams

Sideboard

4x Sphere of Resistance
3x Choke
1x Krosan Grip
1x Devastating Dreams
1x Life from The Loam
1x Devastating Dreams
1x Worm Harvest
1x Crime/Punishment <--My pet card
1x Chainer's Edict

I ended up losing to TheRock in the top8 by mana screw thanks to Vindicate. I've noticed this deck is either hit or miss, well at least for me. I either get land screwed or topdeck Mox Diamonds like a champ. Krosan Grip in the maindeck is also very techy. It helps in so many random matchups. My sideboard is also a metagame call. So much blue stuff runs around.

I usually board out Tarmogoyf because i end up play VS Shackles or Threads, stuff like that. Plus with playing Crusher and Vore, Goyf is very.... wimpy haha.

Hanni

02-09-2009, 05:20 AM

I don't see why people are hating on Knight of the Reliquary. I've been wanting to put together Terrageddon for a long time now, because I really hate Devastating Dreams, and I love Armageddon and Cataclysm. The printing of Knight of the Reliquary finally made me get around to building a new age Terrageddon list.

G/W/r Aggro Loam (Terrageddon)

Lands (24)
4 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Flooded Strand
3 Savannah
1 Taiga
1 Plateau
1 Forest
1 Plains
3 Tranquil Thicket
2 Secluded Steppe
4 Wasteland

Creatures (12)
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Terravore
4 Knight of the Reliquary

Spells (24)
4 Burning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
4 Armageddon
3 Cataclysm
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond

Sideboard (15)
1 Life from the Loam
1 Ravages of War
1 Cataclysm
1 Reverent Silence
1 Shattering Spree
1 Hull Breach
1 Pyroclasm
4 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Krosan Grip

The sideboard could potentially use some work.

The landbase could potentially utilize singleton lands like Boseiju, Tabernacle, Maze of Ith, so on and so forth. Right now I'm just playtesting with a solid manabase without singleton lands... that could quite possibly change soon.

I think KotR is an amazing creature. Sure, it's still graveyard dependant, unlike Crusher, but Crusher feels like Dryad to me. What I mean is, Crusher is small when first played, no matter the game state, and only grows over time. Without a Top in play, sometimes he can grow very slowly. True, he makes it so that you're constantly drawing business every turn, and I'm not saying he's not amazing... but KotR is a fine replacement for him, IMO.

Just like Crusher, KotR has a built in engine too... in KotR's case, he can create Wastelocks without Loam (or eventually, grab singleton lands like Tabernacle, once I figure out what singletons would be good, if any).

Even through graveyard hate, KotR still remains a 2/2, and unless the grave hate is a Leyline or something, he can easily pump himself back up after a Crypt or Relic.

So I'm not saying KotR is better than Crusher, and I'm not saying he's worse. I'm saying he's a fine replacement.

Now, dropping the heavy red committment allows the deck to access white, which gives much better tools, IMO. I hate Devastating Dreams, it's a strong card but the card disadvantage is horrible. Catalcysm is savage, and that's all that really needs to be said about the card. Armageddon is also a strong spell for this general type of strategy, and gets the job done better than Devastating Dreams as far as land destruction goes. Oblivion Ring rounds out the white spell package, giving the deck access to answers to everything from Counterbalance, Moat, etc, whatever. I only run 2 O Ring because multiples clash with Cataclysm, and I didn't have any more room for any more.

4 Armageddon, 3 Cataclysm, and 4 Burning Wish gives the deck a shitload of mass destruction spells. The consistency with that gameplan is awesome; redundancy at its best.

White also gives the deck access to Ethersworn Canonist in the sideboard as an additional combo hate tool postboard.

At any rate, I've been enjoying this version alot more than the standard GRb Aggro Loam and I highly suggest to those out there curious about the white splash to try it out.

jazzykat

02-09-2009, 11:51 AM

WRT Hanni's List:

1. I think the idea is fresh and exciting

2. Terravore is a lategame card, don't play more than 3.

3. Devastating dreams is really powerful because all of your creatures live through it and all of your oppponents normally die. Also when using DD you normally play it so that you can leave enough mana open to cast loam next turn. Armageddon doesn't give you that type of selectivity. Cataclysm is actually a lot better for this deck than Armageddon considering you usually only have 1 dude on the board, you normally do have an artifact and you obviously have a land.

4. Seismic Assault is a non-creature win condition, which is sometimes an important factor.

5. I have recently switched to Dark Confidants in a more traditional chalice+confidant list like Leander's (a few pages back)with more basics. The confidants truly do make a difference in a swingy game, normally taking the game over to your favor...remember your average CMC is ~1 and with the amount of 0's you can luck sack for a couple of turns and take none.

6. I think that the build proposed is way to graveyard dependant. Crusher uses the deck and sets up your draws better, and confidant just provides you more cards. Tormod's also becomes way more effective and relic of progenitus basically owns the deck. Hoping that Chalice = 1 comes down before/if they have relic is a not a plan.

7. 2 Basics? Your manabase opens you up to more non-basic hate.

8. Lastly, the deck doesn't do much more to address the abysmal combo matchup. Your Armageddon and Cataclysms are completely irrelevant against them and everything except Chalice and to a lesser extent Goyf takes to long to play and/or become relevant.

Overall a cool direction but I don't see it being any better than traditional lists.

IMO if you want to explore this idea more I would suggest cutting red completely, getting rid of Oblivion rings and adding a black splash for Vindicate. I would also look at seriously cutting down on the number of Cataclysm/Armageddon in the MD.

I apologize if this is overly critical but my experiences over 3 years from working on developing CAL to trying to refine Aggro-Loam along with the printing and prolificness of Relic of Progenitus cause me to have many reservations about your proposed build.

Legacy

02-11-2009, 10:35 PM

Hey, let me know what you guys think.

creature [17]
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Eternal Witness
Instants[4]
4 Terminate
sorcery [10]
4 Life from the Loam
4 Duress
2 Raven’s Crime
artifact [4]
4 Mox Diamond
land [25]
3 Badlands
2 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
60 cards
Sideboard:
4 Jund Charm
4 Thorn Amethyst
4 Thoughtseize
3 Krosan Grip
15 cards

This may be a very controversial build with the elimination of DD and Seismic Assualt and EE. First and foremost this deck pretty much severs all reliance on Lftl (ie cutting the DD and Seismic). I found a lot of the time without burning wish i had seismic or DD and no lftl.

I have found that most decks don't have mass amounts of creatures and i would always rather terminate to get rid of bob or tarmogoyf. SB jund charm can deal with gobs or merfolk. Plus we have wasteland recurrence for their lands so missing DD isn't that bad.

Figure of Destiny smooths out the curve allowing me to always have a 1 drop plus it is quite possible to crank it up to the 8/8. I have geared the mana base to produce all red except the basics.

thanks for your comments.

jazzykat

02-11-2009, 10:49 PM

Well I don't know what to say about your list. You take a different tack on a deck that kills just about everything but combo and manage to make the combo matchup worse...?

Also, this deck is unbelievable for a lot of reasons one of them being Devastating Dreams. Without it you might as well play Loam/Deathcloud Rock.

kkoie

02-12-2009, 11:01 AM

Well I have a question, I have been working on this deck for several weeks and having a bit of fun with it. So far I've done fairly well with most of my matchups against a variety of decks (goblins, ugw tempo thresh, tendrils, elves...). The one style of deck I've found to have lots of problems with is Merfolk and others similar. A mostly basic land manabase with fast creatures, lots of control, and sideboard cards that are not gamebreaking, but can be a real pain.

Here is the list I've been using so far:

4 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
4 Terrevore
2 Siesmic Assault
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
4 Burning Wish
3 Devastating Dreams
3 Life from the Loam
1 Tabernacle at Pendrellvale
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Wasteland
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil Thicket
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Badland
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
4 Taiga
1 Mountain
1 Forest

SB
1 Devastating Dreams
3 Gattok Teeg (Ok I can't spell, I admit it)
3 Krosan Grip
3 Jund Charm
1 Life from the Loam
1 Reverant Silence
1 Shattering Spree
1 Firespout
1 was hull breech, then something else, now I'm wondering if regrowth my not be worth a try.

Anyway I know most people play only 2 dreams and 3 'vores. I've been having a really nice results everytime I get a dreams off, and drawing into them seems to help a lot. Though I may go down to 2 just to fit something else in maindeck.

I like 4 'vores because it seems like I really need that extra creature in some aggro matches like Goblins in order to pull through, but I could be wrong.

And while I've seen a lot of lists cut the wishes, they just provide too many answers for me not to like.

thoughts?

jazzykat

02-12-2009, 11:13 AM

I like 4 'vores because it seems like I really need that extra creature in some aggro matches like Goblins in order to pull through, but I could be wrong.

And while I've seen a lot of lists cut the wishes, they just provide too many answers for me not to like.

thoughts?

TARMOGOYF, SERIOUSLY.

OK, at the risk of being the cratchetty old man who doesn't change in the Aggro Loam thread let me first post my list:

// Lands
1 [U] Badlands
1 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
2 [5E] Forest (1)
3 [ON] Forgotten Cave
2 [DM] Mountain (2)
3 [U] Taiga
3 [EVG] Tranquil Thicket
1 [SH] Volrath's Stronghold
3 [TE] Wasteland
4 [ON] Wooded Foothills
1 [7E] Swamp (3)
1 [R] Bayou

// Creatures
4 [MOR] Countryside Crusher
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
2 [OD] Terravore
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant

// Spells
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
2 [TO] Devastating Dreams
2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
2 [7E] Seismic Assault

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [TO] Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 1 [NE] Reverent Silence
SB: 4 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 3 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [OD] Haunting Echoes

Overall, I am very happy with this list and to the extent that yours is similar I like it as I have been working on this deck for a long time. The fact that you are missing Tarmogoyf is a big part of the reason that swarm decks kick the tar out of you. He is another big dude that blocks and goes sideways! I think that 3 Terravores is the absolute max and I have always felt that the Eternal Witness while a cool thing is unecessary. The fact that you don't have EE MD means that Aether Vial (another swarm card) will go unanswered until it is too late and you resolve Burning Wish for Shattering Spree.

I HATE that you have so few basics when you are really only playing 2 colors with a very light splash. I don't think you need 4 Wastelands but if that's what you are into, I'm going to leave it alone.

Your wishboard looks standard and tight. The other stuff you have in there is a bit weird (Jund Charm, Firespout) but I will assume they are appropriate for your meta (i.e. Jund Charm is fast enough to take out Graveyards and you need more removal with a Firespout instead of just using Devastating Dreams). What I take serious issue with is Gaddock Teeg. He takes white which you don't easily produce and if you tighten up your manabase may or may not be able to produce easily. I use Thorn of Amethyst which ALWAYS comes down turn 2 as it doesn't have weird color requirements.

With regards to my list I really like having 4 Confidants main but either I feel like I either I need to put another black source in and cut a Forest or go to a 3/3 Confidant/Terravore Split. The Haunting Echoes in my board is sort of a snickety joke which I use about once a tournament to curb stomp a removal.dec usually just decking them. The rest is pretty standard.

Lastly, to address your direct points:

DD: Is a liability vs. a deck that can counter it but they can't counter everything and it is VERY powerful vs. Creature Swarm.
Burning Wish: Is slow. It also lets you play with 7 Loams and as many DD as you need. I haven't tested the non-wish versions but if your meta is slow enough then I strongly suggest keeping the wishes as they give you a lot of flexibility and if your deck is agressive enough you should only need to resolve a wish board card once (with the obvious exception of LftL).

kkoie

02-12-2009, 12:56 PM

Thanks for your list, I'll give yours a try. Someone else had suggested to me to make room for Tarmogoyf, but I had been debating what to cut to make room for it. Though I see no tabernacle in yours... it may be unnessessary... but its such a fun card!? Do you not have one due to not owning it... or do you really not like it?

I had been using jund charm because I thought it was good as yard hate and helped against aggro matches as well. Same with firespout, I didn't like having only dd as my boardsweeper. There were a few games where if I dd'd it would screw up my board position as well as theirs, they had more mana out than I, but I needed to wipe out their creatures.

I hate to admit it, but I will probably be giving up on the Teeg plan for combo. The thorns do make a lot more sense.

I like your haunting echo's and I'd be tempted to try one, but as soon as I do I would be the joke among my friends due to my endless ranting of how I hated the card when it was first printing.

Someone had told me I should consider firestorm as another side option. Has anyone here tried it to any effect?

jazzykat

02-12-2009, 01:46 PM

Tarmogoyf is not debatable.

Teeg doesn't help your burn matchup which is surprisingly bad even with Chalice=1.

WRT Tabernacle: I don't have any so that somewhat precludes me from playing it. That said you do have a fair amount of dudes yourself, I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve with it.

Also, I have perhaps once in all my time playing magic cast hull breach and killed both an artifact and an enchantment.

Whatever you do with your SB don't get cute with all of the situational wish cards. There are 4 cards that almost no one argues with:

LftL
DD
Shattering Spree
Reverent Silence

Then you normally have:
2-4 Krosan Grip (CB with a 2cc floating > Deck)
4 Combo hate (Often Thorns)
3-4 Graveyard Hate (Often Tormod's Crypts)
1-2 "Audibles" (Mine is a Haunting Echoes, others use: Nostalgic Dreams, Chainer's Edict, Wing Snare (hello Tombstalker!), Regrowth, or some Pet Card.

While this deck is customizable, I think that many people get carried away on the customization and lack in matchups that they need help on while continuing to marginally increase their chances against decks they stomp.

Your main enemies are burn, and combo. You handlily beat most everything else.

kroelai

02-12-2009, 05:22 PM

I realy like the jund charms to, because of the flexibility of the card I would really recommend it if you are going to a large tournament.

I use Worm harvest in my wishboard.
Because of the fact Landstill and MUC are very populair here in Holland, it is really good to board it against those decks, for other MU it just turns B-Wish into an optional (expensive) threat.

Aggro_zombies

02-12-2009, 06:24 PM

Tarmogoyf is not debatable.
Oh, but he is. Not every deck that runs green should run Tarmogoyf with no questions asked.

For example, I cut Tarmogoyf a while ago and haven't looked back - then again, I run Exploration, so I have a much higher rate of turn-two Crusher than most Aggro Loam lists. Regardless, Tarmogoyf is by far the weakest creature in the deck because:

a) he's your smallest Big Guy
b) he doesn't do anything useful other than turn sideways

...the second of which leads you back to point a, since creatures without useful abilities in this deck are there because they're big.

I don't think Goyf should be taken for granted in this deck, but I need more testing.

Pinder

02-12-2009, 06:37 PM

FWIW, the guy who plays Aggro-Loam at our local cut Tarmogoyf a long time ago, and never looked back. Between 'Vore, Crusher, and Stronghold you have enough guys to get one to turn sideways.

jazzykat

02-12-2009, 10:02 PM

I stand corrected Tarmogoyf is debatable. Everyone post their goyfless lists for us to test that don't have problems with Aggro.

kkoie

02-13-2009, 01:58 PM

I haven't had a chance to try out Jazzykats suggested changes yet, but I can see when comparing his list vs mine that it has a much better match-up against annoying decks like mono-blue merfolk, specially w/ the tarmogoyfs (his manabase looks a lot smoother than mine, and I'll be stealing it for my deck - thanks!).

Regarding tormod's crypt vs jund charm: granted the charms are slower than the crypts, and won't resolve sooner than turn 2 if you are lucky. But I like the fact that you can also sweep the board with them, which can be helpful in some other matches as well, in addition to dreams. I can't think of any deck where you need very fast yard-hate except Ichorid. Are their other decks where you want yard-hate online sooner than turn 2 or 3?

b4r0n

02-13-2009, 02:14 PM

(his manabase looks a lot smoother than mine, and I'll be stealing it for my deck - thanks!)

Actually, that manabase doesn't look completely smooth to me. A basic Swamp with only 1 way to fetch it? Only 5 fetchlands total?

This is what I would suggest:

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

Minor tweaks, but still. Manabases are important.

jazzykat

02-13-2009, 02:16 PM

I don't normally take issue with sideboard cards (as I assume you have a different meta than mine) and I certainly don't with Jund Charm per se.

First, don't just blindly use my manabase if you don't run the appropriate color mix. My suggestion is to cut cycling lands down to 3 a piece and then consider what your color requirements are and adjust as necessary.

To answer the question though against other loam decks to neuter their engine before it gets online and they can cycle in response to you crypting to get back a loam. Against the random reanimator deck you would want it. It really is totally up to you though.

To everyone else, I'm still waiting for the goyfless lists that can handle aggro (which seems to be on the rise).

kkoie

02-13-2009, 02:30 PM

I never take anything blindly without at least first doing a statistical analysis. Though since I'm not going to be running anything that requires double black, I will probably be using two badlands over the basic swamp.

Aggro_zombies

02-14-2009, 02:48 AM

To everyone else, I'm still waiting for the goyfless lists that can handle aggro (which seems to be on the rise).
Okay.

4 Countryside Crusher
3 Terravore
1 Eternal Witness

3 Exploration
3 Seismic Assault

3 Intuition

4 Burning Wish
2 Devastating Dreams
2-3 Life from the Loam

4 Mox Diamond
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Engineered Explosives
1-0 Pithing Needle

1 Academy Ruins
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Maze of Ith
1 Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Wasteland
3 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
2 Mountain
1 Forest

SB:
1 Shattering Spree
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Life from the Loam
1 Firespout
1 Reverent Silence
1 Worm Harvest
1 Chalice of the Void
4 Krosan Grip
4 Leyline of the Void

Frankly, with some number of Devastating Dreams and Seismic Assaults common to virtually all Aggro-Loam lists, and the possibility to run multiple Wraths in the sideboard, I don't see how you'd find aggro problematic. But in my case, I have access to recurring EE of up to four and Tabernacle/Wasteland in addition to the aforementioned control cards. The only aggro matchup you can't turn your brain off for is Merfolk, and only because walking into a Daze is retarded.

Really, the aggro player should shit his pants once he figures out what you're playing, Goyf or no. If he doesn't, ur doin it rong.

(Also, the numbers in my list are variable because I'm testing some number of Needles as anti-Counter-Top weapons. The lower Loam count for maindeck Needle hasn't proved to be a serious problem in those matches because you'll never resolve Loam anyway if they have active Counter-Top.)

leander?

02-14-2009, 07:07 AM

Aggro_zombies

02-14-2009, 04:04 PM

I'd really like to play some explorations in Loam. But i'm just wondering how the interaction with chalice is. It seems that, as soon as you drop a chalice@1, you have 3 dead cards in your deck. Is exploration really that good to live with that consequence?
Yeah, actually, it is.

Exploration has two main purposes in this deck: accelerate you through about turn three or so, and allow you to Wasteland multiple times per turn (or once per turn without hurting your development). I have yet to run into a matchup where I wanted to side out Exploration, but Chalice does come out in a number of cases.

I prefer Chalice to discard as the disruptive element in the deck because a) it's better against Threshold because it hits their cantrips as well as Goose and Top, and b) Chalices at zero or especially at one buy you a few turns against combo, which can be all you need. One shot discard effects may be less narrow in their application, but Chalice is better at what it does despite the lack of synergy with Exploration.

If someone can convince me to run discard instead, I'll cut Chalice for it. But as it stands, I see no reason to do so right now.

Legacy

02-16-2009, 12:25 AM

Reasons to run discard is if your meta has lots of control. I would then run 4 duress and 2 Raven's Crime like in Donharts list a page back or so. Raven's crime will be the mvp and keep your opponent with no cards in hand.

I have a 1st place mox ruby tourny coming up and can't decide between these two lists. Assume i have no knowledge of the meta game.

List A
creature [13]
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
instant [4]
4 Terminate
sorcery [6]
2 Devastating Dreams
4 Life from the Loam
enchantment [2]
2 Seismic Assault
artifact [10]
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
land [25]
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
1 Swamp
3 Forgotten Cave
2 Mountain
2 Taiga
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
60 cards
Sideboard:
3 Extirpate
3 Jund Charm
3 Krosan Grip
2 Choke
4 Thorn Amethyst
15 cards

List B
creature [11]
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Terravore
instant [4]
4 Swords to Plowshares
sorcery [7]
3 Devastating Dreams
4 Life from the Loam
enchantment [4]
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Seismic Assault
artifact [9]
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mox Diamond
3 Sensei's Divining Top
land [25]
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Mountain
1 Savannah
2 Taiga
1 Plains
1 Plateau
2 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
60 cards
Sideboard:
4 Gaddock Teeg
4 Thorn Amethyst
3 Krosan Grip
3 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Anceint Grudge
15 cards

Please post the good and the bad of each, suggestions of change, or what is missing, then final decision on which list. Thanks for the replies.

Aggro_zombies

02-16-2009, 03:04 AM

I don't like Bob in the first list, and Extirpate should really be something else, either Leyline or Crypt. I don't like Terminate either, but I can see why some people would want to run it.

The second list might have a better matchup against combo because of Teeg, but a worse matchup against control because of a lack of discard (as you pointed out) or recursion. Losing threats is a much bigger deal for the second list because it has no way to get them back.

I don't really like the white splash unless it runs Solitary Confinement, and even then it's only "meh." Black can do pretty much all of the same things anyway, and more besides.

tl;dr black seems better if you drop Extirpate.

georgjorge

02-17-2009, 05:02 PM

I'd really like to play some explorations in Loam. But i'm just wondering how the interaction with chalice is. It seems that, as soon as you drop a chalice@1, you have 3 dead cards in your deck. Is exploration really that good to live with that consequence?

As none but the most controllish versions play it, I'd say it's not good enough to be played even without the Chalice dissynergy. It seems that few people have really tested it, but when I just threw it in for some opening hands, it seldom did me any good because you only have enough lands for it if you start Loaming very early, which I seldom want to do.

BullBar

02-18-2009, 03:36 PM

During a geez through the last few pages, I've seen Burn described as a poor matchup. I agree. My meta is fairly permeated with it, and when building AgLoam some few months ago (DD kerbstomps rest of meta) I eventually found Zuran Orb to be key in the matchup - since I've not seen this tech mentioned here I just thought I'd open my fat mouth. (georgjorge may have seen it mentioned over at Sally). This deck really loves synergy, and the ZOrb has it in spades even if it's win-more vs the rest of the field.

Cheers.

jakolhops

02-21-2009, 07:05 PM

I looked through a few pages But didnt see what i was exactly looking for. Could this card be a good 1 or 2 of in Most loam decks?

Ill type it out to not make you have to look it up

Scorched Earth
Tempest
Sorcery
R X
Choose and Discard X land Cards: Destroy X target Lands

Seems like it can break a game and i think its a 1 of at least.

jeremyfuentes_ftw

02-21-2009, 07:11 PM

re: Jak, I think the problem is that you have to PAY X in addition to discarding X land cards.. It would probably be awesome in the late game though or at X = 3 or higher. Might be worth testing though.. Like as a Wish target or something?

I relatively new to Legacy, but I'm getting into it and already locked in to go to GP Chicago.. However, I've been playing Dev Dreams/ Terravore since it was legal in Ext, so I'm quite familiar with the deck.

What are the decks that Aggro Loam absolutely beats and what decks do we have a problem with? Thanks for the help!

Pinder

02-21-2009, 09:01 PM

Yeah, it seems like Devastating Dreams is >>>>>>> Scorched Earth. The discards are random, but not having to pay X for each and every land you discard is probably better. Plus, you can discard nonland cards to DDreams, although a majority of the cards will probably end up being land anyway.

mark_story

02-21-2009, 09:13 PM

So I took aggro-loam to a local event in toronto, and finished in 2nd place. I think its a fairly standard build. I think I have a few suboptimal cards though, mainly the genesis in the main, and rude awakening in the board. It was a mostly aggro meta, and I lost in the finals to w-u landstill. I got locked under pithing needle and tormod's crypt while being beaten with an exalted angel. One card that worked really well was seismic assault. It single handedly won a match against elves and allowed me to stablize at one life against goblins. I found that a bob sometimes can become a liability especially with more high casting cost spells like crusher and assault. But I'm at a loss of what to replace them with. I also found that devastating dreams though insanely good when its good can be tough to cast if you get behind in life. I think I'm going to try a zuran orb or two in the board next time.

4 Terravore
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
1 Genesis

3 Life from the loam
3 Burning wish
2 Devastating Dreams
2 Seismic assault
2 Krosan grip

4 Mox Diamond
4 Chalice of the void
2 Engineered explosives

4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Tranquil Thicket
2 Forgotten cave
3 Taiga
2 Bayou
2 Mountain
1 Forest

Sideboard:
1 life from the loam
1 devastating dreams
1 hull breach
1 nostalgic dreams
1 rude awakening
1 krosan grip
1 shattering spree
4 thorn of amythest
4 tormod's crypt

100miles&runnin

02-22-2009, 02:57 AM

was it Rich who you played in the final round

Solaran_X

02-22-2009, 07:50 AM

Attended the Grand Prix Trial yesterday in Tarentum, PA. Pretty sad showing (only 10 people...boo!), so only had 4 rounds of Swiss followed by a cut to Top 8 then the typical Top 8 single elimination.

Creatures:
3 Countryside Crusher
3 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Terravore
Spells:
4 Burning Wish
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Devastating Dreams
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
2 Seismic Assault
Lands:
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
3 Forgotten Cave
1 Mountain
3 Taiga
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Volrath's Stronghold
Sideboard
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Life from the Loam
1 Reverent Silence
1 Shattering Spree
1 Worm Harvest
3 Blood Moon
3 Pithing Needle
4 Vexing Shusher

Round 1:
Played against a 4C Threshold. First game, I held him off as best I could considering he had board superiority. When I finally got a Devastating Dreams, he had three Tarmogoyfs at 3/4, two Dark Confidants, and a Nimble Mongoose. I had a single Tarmogoyf at 3/4 and a Countryside Crusher at 3/3. Resolved Devastating Dreams for 4. Crusher became 7/7, the board was cleared, and opponent conceded. Game 2, I didn't see a Shusher and he countered my Blood Moons. Game 3, I got a Shusher down and then used it to bring down a Chalice at 1 and then a Chalice at 2. Brought down Blood Moon. Wished for Worm Harvest (used Shusher to force the Wish through) and then Wished for Life from the Loam. Opponent conceded.
2-1 // 1-0
+4 Vexing Shusher
+3 Blood Moon

Round 2:
Played against It's the Fear. Game 1, used Tarmogoyf and Terravore and such to draw down his counters. Resolved Seismic Assault and Life from the Loam. Tarmogoyf and Seismic Assault win. Game 2, I drop a Shusher and a Chalice for 1. Countryside Crusher comes down a turn later, and I beat until he blows Pernicious Deed. Then drop another Goyf and Shusher. Opponent concedes.
2-0 // 2-0
+4 Vexing Shusher

Round 3:
Played against Ichorid. Lost game 1, obviously. Combo is a horrible matchup. Game 2, I drop Chalice for 1 on turn 1. Proceed to win with Countryside Crusher. Game 3, I lose when my Terravore only tramples over 7 damage and my opponent was at 8 life.
1-2 // 2-1
+3 Pithing Needle

Round 4:
Should've played against Dreadstill. But everyone who was guaranteed a Top 8 slot of the original 10 after the third round ID'd.
ID // 2-1-1

Top 8 (Round 5):
No clue what I played against. I saw B/g, so I thought it was Eva Green. Then I saw B/w, so I thought it was Deadguy. Honestly, I can't remember much of this matchup - I'm still getting over the flu and the three games it took me to win took an hour and a half. But I do remember making him go through like 3 Swords, 4 Vindicates, 3 Pernicious Deeds, and 1 Engineered Explosives. When I finally won Game 3, I had a whooping 1 Countryside Crusher and 1 Tarmogoyf left in game PERIOD (3 Terravores Extirpated, and 2 Crushers and 3 Goyfs RFG'd via Crypts and Relics, and I sided out Confidant and Witness). I remember dropping Tarmogoyf when I saw that I needed to swing one more time to win (Crusher already in play) so that he'd need a Pernicious Deed to survive and not just Engineered Explosives. He drew Explosives, conceded...and I had to get a drink after that hour and a half of hell.
2-1 // 3-1-1
+I forget...

Top 4 (Round 6)
Replay of Round 1. Game 1, I have to mulligan since my only lands in the opening hand are cycling lands. Next hand...same thing. Keep it anyways. He resolves Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top. Once again...can't remember much (been awake too long for someone who is still partially sick). Game 2, I remember using Shusher to negate his CounterTop.
2-0 // 4-1-1
+4 Vexing Shusher
+3 Blood Moon

Finals (Round 7)
Played against a Team America / Landstill hybrid with ScepterChant in the sideboard. Game 2 is a standstill with his CounterTop holding me off of 2 and 3 (with a Trinket Mage on top). Eventually he draws the Trinket Mage, allowing me to drop Engineered Explosives for 2 Sunburst at 3 CMC. Blow Explosives to kill Counterbalance. Resolve Terravore and Tarmogoyf. Drop a Devastating Dreams for 4. Opponent Swords Terravore in response. Tarmogoyf wins. Game 2 I don't remember much, but I do remember a 12/12 or 13/13 Terravore taking him to 1 life, him drawing something that wasn't Swords to Plowshares, and then conceding.
2-0 // 5-1-1
+4 Vexing Shusher
+3 Blood Moon
+3 Pithing Needle

So...finished first, got a box of Conflux and a three round bye for GP Chicago. Not bad for $20, and having a three round bye for my first ever Grand Prix will be nice. No need to worry about losing to a random scrubby deck and then sweating it later since X-2 makes Day 2.

Deger

02-22-2009, 08:08 AM

Solaran... So does this mean you are bringing loam to CCG next week... (since you got a bye no need to go to columbus right..) I actually wish I had known about this one I would have come out.. Way to go..

All: In the I don't know if bob is good but how do we replace him.. Does Sylvan Library totally suck here??? I mean casting cost is almost the same mana cost and it fits better because of the green. and you can stack the cards better to get stuff in the yard... I used to play it in other GRX decks and it did well.. just a thought...

Solaran_X

02-22-2009, 08:22 AM

Yeah, I'm bring Loam next week. Bob isn't what doesn't belong in this deck...I'm starting to agree with the others who say Goyf is what doesn't belong. He doesn't Trample, he doesn't thin my deck and make Vore bigger, he doesn't draw me a card every upkeep, and he doesn't bring a card back from the yard.

And Bob is better than Library for a few reasons.

1) He swings for 2 and chump blocks when needed.
2) The most life we lose to draw a card is 3, and over half of the deck costs us 0 (my build has 25 lands, 4 Chalices, 4 Mox Diamonds, and 2 Engineered Explosives - 35 of 60). Library costs you 4 life to keep a card beyond your initial draw.

leander?

02-22-2009, 08:59 AM

and 3 Goyfs RFG'd via Tombs

Do you actually mean Tombstalker with this? If so, I think you and your opponent might have misread the card. If not, wat do you mean?
And how does the random Witness work for you? I love the card, but in the end I had to accept that 1 Witness is much too ramdom and slow.

Btw, I really like the Shushers in your SB. Playing Shusher and Chalice@2 and still being able to play your 2-CMC'ers is awesome :P

Solaran_X

02-22-2009, 09:09 AM

Do you actually mean Tombstalker with this? If so, I think you and your opponent might have misread the card. If not, wat do you mean?
And how does the random Witness work for you? I love the card, but in the end I had to accept that 1 Witness is much too ramdom and slow.

Btw, I really like the Shushers in your SB. Playing Shusher and Chalice@2 and still being able to play your 2-CMC'ers is awesome :P
I meant Crypts, sorry. Tormod's Crypt. Mind still isn't fully recovered from the flu, and I got to work 12 hours tonight. And Witness is there to work with Volrath's Stronghold. Dredge her rather quick with Life, and use Stronghold (Dredged and recoverable with Life) to bring her back to let me use her as an infinite chump blocker and recursion engine.

The one change I'm considering is possibly dropping Goyfs from the deck and replacing them with Exploration to power out a turn 2 Crusher reliably.

luma

02-22-2009, 10:46 AM

What build would you recommend to an aggrocontrol-dominated meta? We're having a local tournament next week with ~24 players expected. From what I've heard, there'll be max two combo players (one Ad Nauseam, one Dredge/Ichorid). Previously, the best decks have been a couple Deadguy / Eva Green, Dreadstill, Thresh variants and Geddonstax. This is what I'm considering: abandon the whole combo-matchup, concentrate on stomping everything else and hoping I don't get paired with both combos :cool:

Here's a list I'm planning to play, the last sideboard slots are still to be decided. The Terminates are there because Tombstalkers have been plenty in the meta, and I've had problems with them in testing. Any changes you would recommend? How about the sideboard?

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

4 Countryside Crusher
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Terravore

4 Mox Diamond
4 Burning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Devastating Dreams
2 Seismic Assault
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Terminate

SB:
1 Life from the Loam
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Shattering Spree
1 Reverent Silence
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Worm Harvest
3 Choke
3 Krosan Grip
3 ???

leander?

02-22-2009, 12:15 PM

This is what I'm considering: abandon the whole combo-matchup, concentrate on stomping everything else and hoping I don't get paired with both combos

A wise choice. The chance of facing both combo players is much too small to use SB slots for it. Just make sure you crush everything else.

Speaking of the SB slots: maybe the termintes 3 and 4? Or maybe some Vexing Shushers (never tested them, but they seem really cool in an aggro-control meta)

kkoie

02-22-2009, 12:56 PM

I dunno, in testing and a few mini-tournaments we've had here at the shop, I can say my build w/ tarmagoyf's performs a lot better now than the previous build that did not have goyfs. So even though it doesn't do anything special like draw cards or trample or what-have you, it is a most effective blocker, and pair's nicely w/ crushers in that its one more threat for my opponent to deal with...

My only current concern is my one last sideboard slot. Currently it's nostolgic(sp?) dreams. But I'm trying to think of something that I might replace it with that would work better against combo. I see people in some lists run haunting echo's, but I hate the casting cost. I wonder if bitter ordeal might not be interesting, specially when you have a sacland out in play when you go to cast it.

Aggro_zombies

02-23-2009, 12:00 AM

My only current concern is my one last sideboard slot. Currently it's nostolgic(sp?) dreams. But I'm trying to think of something that I might replace it with that would work better against combo. I see people in some lists run haunting echo's, but I hate the casting cost. I wonder if bitter ordeal might not be interesting, specially when you have a sacland out in play when you go to cast it.
Searching for two cards will only cripple some combo decks - ANT mostly, since it usually only has 1-2 Tendrils main and rarely if ever runs Burning Wish. Against TES, losing two cards from their library is totally irrelevant, since they run more than two Burning Wish.

Running four Chalices seems like a start. If you want more and don't have white, perhaps consider something like Thorn of Amethyst.

Solaran_X

02-23-2009, 12:31 AM

I'd just take Combo matchups as a loss and put more stuff in your sideboard to shore up other matches you have a better chance at pre- and post-board.

Yes, Aggro-Loam CAN win against Combo. But it is very difficult at best - you have nothing on your side aside from maindeck Chalice (although a Chalice at 1 can stop most Combo decks). Honestly, I used to try to put up a fight against Combo - but in my experience, it's not worth limiting my options against other decks just to marginally improve my chances against an archetype that is a bad match pre-board, and only slightly better (but still bad) post-board.

In that light, you'll want Vexing Shushers. I'd suggest 4 of them - even if you have to find room. Not only do they basically nullify the CounterTop single handedly, they let you drop a Chalice at 2 and still get your 2 CMCs through the Chalice...which is a massive bonus.

Aggro_zombies

02-23-2009, 01:28 AM

In that light, you'll want Vexing Shushers. I'd suggest 4 of them - even if you have to find room. Not only do they basically nullify the CounterTop single handedly, they let you drop a Chalice at 2 and still get your 2 CMCs through the Chalice...which is a massive bonus.
At first I went "Holy shit!" before I remembered that Shusher has an ass of 2. D. Dreams's land destruction effects are relevant against Threshold, making him worse because you won't side Dreams out, and losing your enabler when you have Chalice at two down is a classic case of "shooting oneself in the foot".

Solaran_X

02-23-2009, 02:15 AM

Aggro_zombies

02-23-2009, 02:52 AM

Dreams is relevant against Threshold, but there are other ways of shutting them down without Dreams. Plus, in my opinion, Dreams should never be used solely as a land destruction tool. It is, in my eyes, more of an enabler for Crusher and Vore by clearing the road and making both much larger. Given Threshold's fragile mana base, a Wasteland and Life from the Loam should achieve the land destruction needed to keep them off balance quite well.
Any Threshold player worth his proverbial salt should know how to play around at least one Wasteland activation, and most Threshold lists that aren't pure tempo run some basics. The burn isn't really relevant unless you drop a lot of cards, since Goyf will be a 3/4 at least, and probably a 4/5 once the spell is finished resolving and the damage wipes out a Mongoose or something. All the other typical Threshold guys (save Bob) have big asses.

I'm not saying that Dreams should only be viewed in terms of half its effect, I'm just saying that Dreams will almost always kill your own Shusher, effectively locking you out of the game until you find another. If you've got a large Crusher or Vore in play, Chalice at two probably wasn't necessary to begin with. I know this is coming from the guy who runs both Exploration and Chalice main in his build, but I'm a bit leery of blanking half your deck by losing just one dude.

And I have been known to side Dreams out against Threshold - taking me from a 6 possible copies (2 Dreams, 4 Wishes) to a mere 4 possible copies (4 Wishes).
I agree that it's not that great against tempo Threshold because the symmetry of the effect plays into their hands unless you play it in the late game, at which point you're probably winning (since you survived that long).

Loxodon Baileyarch

02-23-2009, 08:03 PM

Will someone analyze my build please and critique it please. I want to be as prepared as i can be for Chicago.

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

4x Countryside Crusher
4x Tarmogoyf
2x Terravore
1x Eternal Witness

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Mox Diamond
3x Life from the Loam
4x Burning Wish
2x Seismic Assault
2x Engineered Explosives
2x Krosan Grip <--MVP
2x Devastating Dreams

Sideboard

4x Thorn of Amethyst
3x Choke
2x Krosan Grip
1x Devastating Dreams
1x Life from The Loam
1x Devastating Dreams
1x Worm Harvest
1x Crime/Punishment <--My pet card
1x Chainer's Edict

I feel myself wanting more Seismic Assault. Krosan Grip is just so good in the Maindeck. It plays well for me i just keep thinking i could be doing something better with it.

b4r0n

02-23-2009, 08:26 PM

Just out of curiosity, what are you hitting with Grip that you can't answer with EE or Wish? Counterbalances?

You have 2 Devastating Dreams in your sideboard, listed separately. Is one of those supposed to be Shattering Spree/Reverent Silence?

Aggro_zombies

02-23-2009, 10:55 PM

EE can easily answer Counterbalances, just pay :r::r::g::g:.

I don't like the lack of graveyard hate in your sideboard, and I'm not feeling the two Terravore, one Witness split. You have no way to consistently find Witness and Terravore tends to be an important card.

Solaran_X

02-24-2009, 10:44 AM

No Shushers in the board is a big mistake as well in my eyes. Chalice at 2 or a CounterTop can really slow Loam down or even shut you down. Shusher is invaluable, especially considering we're likely to see a lot of Thresh at Chicago.

You also want 2 Forest/1 Mountain - not 1 Forest/2 Mountain. Otherwise, you won't be able to drop Terravore or Witness under Blood Moon.

b4r0n

02-24-2009, 11:05 AM

Solaran_X

02-24-2009, 12:24 PM

Why is Shusher better than Grip? Grip destroys Chalice/CB whereas Shusher just allows you to dodge it until they find removal. Grip is also more flexible, giving you additional answers to Humility/Moat/Relic/etc.
Vexing Shusher is a proactive answer against not only Counterbalanace/Sensei's Divining Top and Chalice of the Void, it's also proactive against Force of Will, Daze, Counterspell, Spell Snare, etc., etc.

First off, Shusher cannot be countered at all. Krosan Grip, despite Split Second, can be countered by a Counterbalance with a 3 CMC on top, and (if it becomes relevant enough) it can have it's target changed by Willbender.

Second, Shusher seems to mess with your opponent more. If you Grip their Counterbalance (I'd Grip the Top first, myself), they know they can rebuild easily. But when you have a Shusher in play, it's no longer a matter of them rebuilding - it's a matter of them dealing with an issue on your side of the board.

Third, Shusher turns sideways. Always a good thing in Legacy, if your Shusher can come through one or twice uncontested for some cheap shot to the dome. Also, Shusher can deal with an early game Mongoose.

from Cairo

02-24-2009, 12:54 PM

It can have it's target changed by Willbender.

QFT! Take note Krosan Grip is no longer the best card at dealing with Artifacts and Enchantments.

Seriously the only valid pro you listed is turning sideways. It's easy enough to bait a Top/CB activation and Grip when you know there isn't a 3cc on top. Shusher doesn't help against Daze and Counterspell sees next to no play.

I'd much rather have an additional answer to: Phyrexian Dreadnaught, Survival of the Fittest, Blood Moon, Back to Basics, Aether Vial, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Humility, Moat, Mishra's Factory, etc etc, than have a 2/2 that helps dodge Spell Snare and Force of Will.

Aggro_zombies

02-24-2009, 02:31 PM

QFT! Take note Krosan Grip is no longer the best card at dealing with Artifacts and Enchantments.

Seriously the only valid pro you listed is turning sideways. It's easy enough to bait a Top/CB activation and Grip when you know there isn't a 3cc on top. Shusher doesn't help against Daze and Counterspell sees next to no play.

I'd much rather have an additional answer to: Phyrexian Dreadnaught, Survival of the Fittest, Blood Moon, Back to Basics, Aether Vial, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Humility, Moat, Mishra's Factory, etc etc, than have a 2/2 that helps dodge Spell Snare and Force of Will.
This.

Also, Shusher makes red Threshold's burn relevant. You could make the argument that using a removal spell on him keeps them from using a removal spell on one of your big guys, but when losing Shusher to Swords means you can no longer play Burning Wish, Life from the Loam, or Devastating Dreams,
I'd be inclined to say that was still a pretty damn good removal spell.

Also, did you know that Krosan Grip can be countered by both a lucky Counterbalance trigger and Voidmage Apprentice? Mark my words: now that the cat is out of the bag, stay tuned for Voidmage Apprentice to show up in sideboards everywhere as the techy new Counterbalance protection.

Solaran_X

02-25-2009, 12:46 PM

Let's look at it this way then.

With Krosan Grip, you are trading 1-for-1. You're exchanging one answer (Krosan Grip) for one threat (Counterbalance, Sensei's Divining Top, Back to Basics, Phyrexian Dreadnought, etc., etc.). A versatile answer card, but it's just 1-for-1.

With Vexing Shusher, you're trading 1 card for their entire counter-based control suite - until they answer Shusher (although bringing down a Chalice for 1 right before or immeadiately after Shusher will vastly improve Shusher's life expectancy). You're essentially trading Vexing Shusher for all their Counterbalances, Dazes, Forces, and Chalices.

It's more of what you're playing as to which card is better. If you need a general purpose removal for Artifacts and Enchantments, Grip is far better (obviously). But if you need an answer to a counter-based control heavy metagame, Shusher is clearly superior.

b4r0n

02-25-2009, 03:26 PM

Aggro_zombies

02-25-2009, 05:06 PM

With Vexing Shusher, you're trading 1 card for their entire counter-based control suite - until they answer Shusher (although bringing down a Chalice for 1 right before or immeadiately after Shusher will vastly improve Shusher's life expectancy). You're essentially trading Vexing Shusher for all their Counterbalances, Dazes, Forces, and Chalices.
And when they kill your Shusher, they essentially just traded their Swords for all your Burning Wishes, Life from the Loams, and Devastating Dreams. PROTIP: counters aren't a central engine in Thresh or Landstill, but Life from the Loam is almost certainly the most important card in this deck.

Relying on a creature to hold your deck together in the face of counters is just silly. Any deck that packs counters is also packing at least some removal, and you can bet that they're going to aim some of it at Shusher as soon as they possibly can. Sure, that's one less piece of removal they have to point at your Big Guys Rawr, but if you have a Big Guy Rawr in play, you're probably winning, or at least ahead. At that point, if you can end the game in two or three turns tops, losing Loam or Wishes isn't going to hurt you much. However, there's still a pretty high chance that they can come up with something to stop you in that time period, something you won't be able to shrug off because your best proactive cards are twiddling their thumbs on the sidelines. Unless you topdeck like a fiend or your opponent is removal-light, an unprotected Shusher is an awfully poor response to counters.

I should add here that b4r0n is completely right about which counters are relevant. You have a very high density of must-counter cards, and chances are you'll run them out of Forces or Dazes before they run you out of "Oops, I win" threats. Not being able to play through these is just sloppy play on your part.

Counterbalance and Chalice change all of that dramatically because they're infinite counter engines - you can't just play through them because they won't go away. Grip gets rid of both those cards, and they can't counter it (in most cases). Shusher lets them sit on the table to become relevant again when he dies or disappears. IMO "gone" is better than "on hiatus".

Also, let's face it: the only decks in the format that would realistically drop Chalice at two against you are X Stompy and Stax, both of which have numerous ways to get deal with Shusher (in Faerie Stompy, they can steal him or kill him with SoFI, and in Stax they'll just drop 3sphere, Magus of the Tabernacle, or Smokestack and try to run you out of cards).

kkoie

02-26-2009, 11:19 AM

Whats wrong with siding in both 4(or 3?) shushers and 3 grips? Or is that too much to sideboard? I was thinking that shushers sounded like a good idea in addition to krosan grip, but obviously not as a replacement.

jazzykat

02-26-2009, 11:40 AM

ee=0 removes chalice, mox diamond, opposing ee, tormod's crypt, etc. EE=2 CMC >= 3 removes counterbalance.

Why is this discussion happening? Play EE MD. SB Krosan Grip. Play threats and disruption hot and heavy, never let someone with CB breathe. Chalice=1 shuts off their top from being played. Rape their manabase with wasteland, and put early creature pressure on them. While more decks are putting more cmc 3 into their deck you still usually have more. Burning Wish--> Reverent Silence.

I think the greatest evidence of the power of this deck is that different color combinations, as well as disruption, removal and creature, packages some of which look like total shit to me, continue to place in large tournaments. Respect CB but do not fear it, most decks with U should be fearing you.

Legacy

02-28-2009, 08:54 AM

Remind me how we beat Team America again? I am finding that my deck can't deal with tombstalker unless i DD for 5 or get seismic assault and loam going.
How do you guys find that match up?

scrumdogg

02-28-2009, 10:34 AM

@Loxodon Baileyarch: I would also rather see 2 forest/1 mountain than the reverse, but that depends on how much preference you place on Seismic Assault/Crusher. Personally I prefer the green options in the deck to the red ones, but to each their own. On that Note, 4 Crusher/2 Terravore looks extremely wrong to me, but I understand the bias through which I view a decklist :cool: I would much rather see a 3/3 split but I do believe you are correct in running the Eternal Witness (I also run a Genesis) and the MD Grips.

@Shusher debate: I fully agree that EE + Wish + Grip > Shusher. Not mentioned so far is the fact that if you run Shusher, you have effectively stopped yourself from DDing as well...

@ Team America issues: they play no basics lands and you have Loam + Waste & DD as a core theme in your deck...plus huge critters for cheap...how exactly are you experiencing difficulties? Also, playing Black allows us many fantastic options beyond easier EEs, such as Chainer's Edict in the SB. Edict is a fantastic Wish target most of the time as A) decks like TA are only going to have 1 threat B) decks which are under serious mana pressure (esp. after being DD'ed) are likely to have only one threat and C) with the rise of Progenitus, it is nice to have an answer there as well. The fact that occasionally it flashes back is a nice bonus also.

luma

02-28-2009, 11:35 AM

Played today in a 25-man tournament, went 5-0 :cool:

I've posted the decklist before, the only change was filling the last sideboard slots with 2 Terminates and 1 Engineered Explosives.

Round 1 against UGB Dreadnought (no Standstills)

I lost the die roll, and he leads with a Thoughtseize. Can't remember what he took. Second turn, I try to resolve Chalice@1, he has FoW. I play a Vore, but he's got a Dreadnought. Next turn, I topdeck a Burning Wish to Shattering Spree, and Vore goes the distance.
Side: +3 Choke, +3 Grip, -2 DD, -2 Assault, -1 Loam, -1 Chalice

Second game, again a turn 1 Seize. I resolve a second turn Tarmogoyf and third turn Choke, and he's got nothing to do.

Round 2 against WBG Rock

He starts with Birds, Jitte, Doran. I have Wish to Spree for Jitte, and Terminate for Doran. We both play creatures, until he's got a Birds, Doran and Hierarch and I two Tarmogoyfs (5/6) and a Terravore (5/5). He gets me down to one life until I topdeck a Terminate for the Birds and finish him with big beaters.
Side: -4 Chalice, -1 EE, +3 Grip, +2 Terminate

Second game, he keeps a hand with no lands and a Leyline of the Void. That's kind of bad, because my hand was a Mox, Forest, two Fetches, two cycle-lands and a Terravore. Well, he has naturally mana problems, and I beat him with a 3/3 Crusher and 2/3 Tarmogoyf with EE taking care of blockers.

Round 3 against UB Dreadstill

First game I resolve an early Tarmogoyf and get him down to four until he gets a Dreadnought. He smothers my Goyf and attacks with the naught, but luckily doesn't have any counters, so I get to resolve Loam and Assault for the last four points.
Side: +3 Choke, +3 Grip, -2 DD, -2 Assault, -1 Loam, -1 Chalice

Second game he leads with an Island. I try a first-turn Chalice@1, but he has a FoW and a second-turn Dreadnought. He beats me to seven, but I topdeck a Terminate, then some beatsticks and kill him quite fast.

Round 4 against UGr Threshold

Chalice@1 keeps him at bay, while the Loam engine does exactly what it's supposed to. Life total for him: 24 (silence) -> 17 -> 7 -> lose.
Side: +3 Choke, +3 Grip, -2 DD, -2 Assault, -1 Loam, -1 Chalice

Second game goes on like this:
- Fetch on EOT
- Submerge your Goyf
- Well, no can do *shuffle*. Untap, draw Tarmogoyf.
- Nice topdeck, mister
Repeat three times. He ran out of Submerges before I ran out of Tarmogoyfs.

Round 5 against UGw Threshold

I win the roll, and lead with a 1st-turn Wish into Reverent Silence (I knew what he was playing). He StoPs my 2nd-turn Vore, but Crusher sticks and is enought to beat him down. I wish for Worm Harvest in case he StoPs / whatever my Crusher, but don't need to cast it.
Side: +3 Choke, +3 Grip, -2 DD, -2 Assault, -1 Loam, -1 Chalice

Second game, he has a FoW for everything I try, and beats me with two angry Mongooses before I can do anything.

Third game, I take a risk and keep a hand with mox and two lands. I spend my first turn getting a pitched Wasteland back with Loam. He doesn't want to play his (only land?) Tundra to be eaten by wasteland, so he just discards a Mystic Enforcer (luckily he didn't get to play any) and passes. I resolve a Chalice@1, but afterwards I'm stuck on four lands, while he has two Counterbalances and a Goyf. I resove EE for two by spending four mana, but he's got a third land on top of his deck and Grips (which he revealed to counter my Choke) my EE. I get a Vore and a Crusher to slow down his Goyf, who has beaten me to four, until I topdeck the other EE, again playing it with four mana (he reveals a Meddling Mage), that sticks until my next upkeep, where I sac it, destroying his CBs and Goyf, and proceed to win the game.

First place, got two Tropical Islands, one of which I traded for a Tundra given to second place (needed both for my Highlander deck), and three draftsets of packs.

The meta was about what I expected: lots of Threshold / Dreadnought, very little combo (only one TES and one Ad Nauseam, luckily didn't get paired with either). I'm not quite sure how I should have sideboarded against Dreadstill and Threshold, any ideas on that?

Solaran_X

02-28-2009, 12:57 PM

@Shusher debate: I fully agree that EE + Wish + Grip > Shusher. Not mentioned so far is the fact that if you run Shusher, you have effectively stopped yourself from DDing as well...
What's more devastating (pun intended) to this deck? Getting a Devastating Dreams for 3 or 4 countered, or losing a Vexing Shusher to a resolved Devastating Dreams.

leander?

02-28-2009, 01:32 PM

Side: +3 Choke, +3 Grip, -2 DD, -2 Assault, -1 Loam, -1 Chalice
...
I'm not quite sure how I should have sideboarded against Dreadstill and Threshold, any ideas on that?
I would never-ever board out even a half chalice against Threshold or dreadstill. If you can stick a chalice@1 you've almost won already. It stops al of their cantrips, dreadnoughts, tops, mongeeses, StP's, Hydroblasts, Relics (Progenitus') etc, etc.
This means that they have no answers to your creatures anymore, no graveyard hate, no Dreadnoughts or Mongeeses, no ways to find stuff and no way to get a countertop engine online.

Besides, I'm not sure wether I agree in boarding in Chokes against Dreadstill (and maybe not even against Threshold). As long as you're capable of handling Dreadnoughts and Countertops, there's not much to worry about. So just board answers against those two (Grip FTW obviously, but EE does the job too) and don't change the basis of your deck too much by cutting loams and chalices.
Choke might seem really cool and ultra-devastating against blue.deck, but it's not an answer to any of our problems and "just" a really situational lock card. Again, you'd better leave the basis of the deck alone and only board in answers to problems.

Grats with the finish btw. Really nice result :)

Aggro_zombies

02-28-2009, 03:05 PM

What's more devastating (pun intended) to this deck? Getting a Devastating Dreams for 3 or 4 countered, or losing a Vexing Shusher to a resolved Devastating Dreams.
The latter, because in both cases they'll still have Counterbalance on the board.

@luma: I'm going to echo leander? here and question the use of Chokes. I run blue in my build and therefore would never use these, but even if I didn't, I'm not sure they're that effective against anything but UW Landstill. Thresh and Dreadstill can operate on very little mana.

luma

02-28-2009, 04:47 PM

Yep, afterwards I think I should've just boarded in more Terminates / EE instead of Choke.

georgjorge

02-28-2009, 06:04 PM

I know, people are putting Natural Order + Progenitus + Dryad Arbor into every deck right now. But I think it would fit in this one as well. Reasons: a) it can get up to four mana with no problems at all b) destroying Arbor to prevent you from casting Order is not a good strategy against a deck running four Life from the Loam.

I made a rough draft of a Gb version (I'm not exactly sure why I cut red, but I somehow thought it fit better that way - Order takes the place of Crusher, and not needing double red allows for more utility lands. Keep in mind that I don't play Burning Wish anyway). The unusual stuff is...

Manabase:

1 Dryad Arbor
2 Volrath's Stronghold

Creatures:

0 Crusher
1 Progenitus (the side would feature a Phantom Nishoba or Empyrial Archangel)
3 Natural Order (if you draw Progenitus, you can at least get a 'Vore off an Arbor)
4 Terravore

Spells:

0 Terminate/Explosives
0 Devastating Dreams
2 Smother
2 Nostalgic Dreams (not exciting, but I need something for Progenitus)

I toyed around with a light blue splash for just Brainstorm and maybe Intuition, and it looked very promising but did not work well with the Chalices.

Another approach would be to just put a copy of Order into the sideboard of a regular URb Loam, and a Progenitus and Arbor (plus maybe one or two extra Orders) in the main. I really don't like losing the surprise factor of Order, but it might work

b4r0n

02-28-2009, 06:46 PM

Wish -> Order seems like a solid play. I feel like a Grb version might be best. Something like:

26 Land (including 1 Dryad)

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Werebear
4 Terravore
1 Progenitus

4 Mox Diamond
4 Thoughtseize
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Burning Wish
3 Life From the Loam
3 Natural Order

I have no idea whether that would be good or not. I feel like you might draw into Progenitus too often.

from Cairo

02-28-2009, 06:47 PM

I like the idea of working NO+P into Loam.

But if you're dropping Red (Burning Wish, Dev Dreams, Crusher), I would definitely want the light Blue splash for Intuition. Burning Wish fills a pretty important utility role in the deck, and the closest way to fill that void would be Intuition piles, imo.

I'd probably want to make use of Raven's Crime, and thus run 4 Thoughtseize, and a Crime over MD'd Chalices. Raven's Crime can also cover the Progenitus in hand situation if it comes up.

4 Tarmogoyf
3 Terravore
1 Progenitus
1 Etched Oracle
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Genesis

4 Mox Diamond
4 Thoughtseize
4 Life From the Loam
3 Intuition
3 Natural Order
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Smother
1 Raven's Crime

4 Bayou
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Wasteland
3 Tranquil Thicket
2 Barren Moor
2 Polluted Delta
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Academy Ruins
1 Volrath's Stronghold

Some of the numbers could probably be worked around a bit differently, I was just trying to make an outline.

Illissius

03-01-2009, 03:13 PM

b) destroying Arbor to prevent you from casting Order is not a good strategy against a deck running four Life from the Loam.

This would be solid logic in a format where Swords to Plowshares isn't the most popular removal.

Legacy

03-01-2009, 09:33 PM

nodahero

03-01-2009, 10:41 PM

I hate to be the bearer of bad new Legacy but sometimes you just can't win. Canadian Thresh as a whole is a rough match if you don't get an early Chalice or a Raven's Crime running.

I took 4th today in a 17 man tourney (no cut to top 8) with my only loss being to Eva Green.

Round 1 --Stupid Life
I played against Stupid Life. Stupid Life is an Ext. deck resolving primarily around Proclemation of Rebirth and Martyr of sands. The deck essentially plays the control role running a few non-white cards for utility such as Phyrexian Arena and Extirpate. I won game 1 on the back of Waste/Loam recursion. Essentially I decided to just attempt to grind his land base into nada after resolving a DD for 5 to leave him with an Arena and me with 2 Mox Diamonds. Eventually I got down a Terravore who went the distance.
The next game went rather different. I open with a Turn 1 Confidant who I allow to chillax for a bit netting a few cards until I drop a Goyf which is then promptly Wrath'd away on my opponents next turn along with my Confidant. My following turn I Loam for 2 wastes and a Stronghold in an attempt to just go aggro and grind out his removal that game. My opponent dosn't like that plan and extirpates my Loams leaving me little options and then Wastes my Stronghold leaving me with a buch of land duals/fetchs and a ravens crime which I cast to place us both in topdeck mode after "infinite" retraces. Eventually I topdeck a burning wish and take back a Loam at which point my opponent concedes to in the face of a soft waste/crime lock.
2-0

Round 2 -- Counter Sliver/Meathooks
This match was very forgettable. Essentially what happened in both matches was I went for a turn 1 Confidant off Diamond which somehow stuck both games. After this point I somehow draw dead for 3 turns and get very low on life as I Loam through my deck looking for either a DD or an EE so I can attempt to race. My opponent (in both games) had turn 2 Crystalline Sliver which invalidated a large contingent of my options including my Wastes for his Vaults due to the Crystalline Sliver. Eventually I topdeck an EE and cast it both games to reset the board which I then follow up with Vore and can simply outrace my opponent.
2-0

Round 3 -- Eva Green
Game 1 is very cut and dry I stick turn 2 Confidant turn 3 Goyf and then lay in with Waste and Crime recursion. My opponent then drops his own goyf. I drop an assault with a land in hand and loam in the grave I swing in with Confi and Goyf he blocks my confi and I start to think how much damage there is about to be and then realize if I assault his Goyf before damage resolves I lose my Confi and he loses his Goyf so I do so. His turn he top decks a Seal of Primordium and I eventually just aggro in.
Games 2 and 3 were horrendous. Both games I keep solid hands but get decimated due to HORRENDOUS draws. I didn't see a single Loam or Wish until I was long past dead. It didn't help that he had Turn 0 Leyline and then another Leyline to CAST the turn after I Hullbreach his first.
1-2

Round 4-- Team America
I go for turn 1 Confi game one and walk it into a Force. I then get a Loam running on turn 3 and grind my opponent out again off of Ravens and Wastes. Game 2 I go for turn 1 Chalice and run it into a daze. Neither of us have any relevant moves for the next 3 or 4 turns due to Opponent->Underground for turn Pass Me->Waste your your Underground. That happenend for 3 turns now that I think about it. I was highly afraid of his Stalkers so I did my damndest to keep him off of double Black. Eventually again I get Loam Crime Waste running and grind him into a concession.
2-0

MUSINGS
It seems evident to me that the Ravens Crimes are a much more significant threat and tool game 1 then Chalice. The only times Chalice really would/did matter were against Cantrip.dec. What does everyone think about running 3 Ravens crime in the main as opposed to the 4 Chalice?
By cutting the 4 Chalice it seems to me that we hurt our Thresh matchup a fair deal in the sense that we cant just get a chalice at 1 and relax a little bit. Instead we put into the position where we need to resolve a Goyf/Vore/Crusher of our own to play D and then get a Crime running and win the late game like we should do.
I realize I am liking missing some important Chalice points and if anyone can tell me them PLEASE do and I will certainly listen.

Also what would a good last card or two before the Chalice cut? In my list I would need to add another 2 cards. Currently I run:

// Lands
1 [R] Badlands
1 [R] Bayou
3 [R] Taiga
4 [ON] Wooded Foothills
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
3 [ON] Forgotten Cave
3 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
4 [TE] Wasteland
1 [SH] Volrath's Stronghold
2 [TSP] Forest (1)

// Creatures
1 [MOR] Counryside Crusher
2 [OD] Terravore
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
4 [JU] Burning Wish
3 [TO] Devastating Dreams
1 [EVE] Raven's Crime
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [MRD] Chalice of the Void
2 [10E] Seismic Assault
2 [FD] Engineered Explosives

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [TO] Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 [EVE] Raven's Crime
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
SB: 1 [FNM] Chainer's Edict
SB: 2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 [SHM] Firespout
SB: 1 [IA] Pyroclasm
SB: 1 [PS] Hull Breach
SB: 1 [NE] Reverent Silence
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 4 [TD] Tormod's Crypt

P.S. What is everyones thoughts on Worm Harvest. Until the tourney I had been running it as a 1 of in the board but as a last minuit swap I ran Chainer's Edict in its place due to all the "rely on one threat to go the distance" game plans I saw.

dre4m

03-02-2009, 02:23 AM

Was at a Mox tounry. Undefeated 5 rounds of swiss. Lost in quater finals to CanadIan Thresh

How do we beat Canadian Thresh? I mean i boarded in 4x Chalice but they are always countered. They let my creatures resolve then the next time I fetch they submerge in response. Though in the 3 games ( I won 1 lost games 2 and 3) i did not see single wasteland. I am pretty sure if i had a waste land i would have won at least 1 of the latter two matches.

Well, you more or less answered your own question. Thresh in general runs a thin and vulnerable manabase that Aggro Loam simply loves. Unless they are balancing out your Loams and you don't run MD EE or Krosan Grip (I run both, personally), you can (usually) Wasteland them onto the 2 basic Islands they play. Also, Chalice at 1 is really, really good. As in, 1/3 of their deck is dead cards good. Finally, basically every card in your deck is a must-counter for them, because their creatures simply can't dance with ours.

If this still doesn't seem like enough, sideboard some extra EEs, Grips, and 3 Chokes.

@nodahero, taking out the Chalices would all but concede every single game to combo. Chalice for 1 and quick beats is essentially our only Game 1 hope outside of a deck registration error.
Regarding Worm Harvest, I cut it for Haunting Echoes.

Joon

03-02-2009, 03:52 AM

I think some of you guys are too positive about the Thresh Matchup. The thrash variants are designed to work on 1-2 Lands, so a single Wasteland won't screw them (besides that they have Stifles to protect their lands if necessary).

Of course, Aggro Loam plays several Mustcounters (Assault, Dreams, Chalice, sometimes Wish and with no Removal or Bounce aviable your critters, too), but the first two are dependant on Loam which you will not always have and grown Crushers get handled by Bounce and Burn when you play it new.

If you manage it to get in the later game you should be able to defeat Thrash decks, but Aggro Loam is one of the decks with the strongest Lategame. The crux lies in the earlygame where decks like Thrash disrupt you - especially in the first turns Aggro Loams Manabase is pretty shaky, particulary with no Moxen.

EDIT: And for Balanced White Threshold: Wastelock won't work either because of 3-4 Basics of all colors. Balanced Red Threshold plays 3 Basics; 2 Islands and 1 Forest. So Wastelock won't work unless they fetch unwarily or draw only Duals. In addition to that play both of them stuff that totally wrecks you: the white variant B2B and the Red Variant in the Side Price of Progress or Blood Moon (and Balance, of course).
The newer Balanced lists can also counter stuff with cc3 pretty often.

georgjorge

03-02-2009, 04:43 AM

True, Canadian Thresh is a harder matchup than Balanced Thresh because they make up for their low threat density with tempo, which Aggro Loam cannot always match. I usually don't try to go for Loam-Waste against Tempo Thresh builds because by the time I set it up they'll already have pressure on the table and have already gotten their use out of their lands.

The important thing to note in that matchup is that you're playing a control deck, and your goal is to get into the mid- to lategame with as much life as possible, meaning that dealing with their threats early is usually more important than getting card advantage.

I'm getting tired of preaching it myself :wink: but 1cc-discard (not Raven's Crime) is very good here, because you need to use your mana every turn to keep up, while Burning Wish is not (because it takes four mana to get rid of a Mongoose). I usually go

+1 Duress (3 + 3 Seize already in the main)
+1 Terminate
+1 Vexing Shusher
+4 Chalice of the Void

-3 Dark Confidant
-3 Devastating Dreams
-1 Krosan Grip

Boarding out Moxes seems counterproductive, since this matchup is all about tempo, and Moxes help against Daze, or against Stifle if you discard your fetchland to it.

Other than that, try to play around Stifle, don't cycle your lands if you think they have Wastes, try to "play around" Submerge by not activating fetches unless you need to, avoid putting out a 3/3 Crusher if you can (they'll burn it), and very importantly know when you have the time to play around Daze and when you don't.

This would be solid logic in a format where Swords to Plowshares isn't the most popular removal.

That's true, though there are still lots of decks not running Swords. To overcome Swords, you can just run two Arbor and Loam back a fetchland for the second one.

A general weakness of the Arbor-Order plan in other decks is also Wasteland, and Loam makes that point pretty moot.

Legacy

03-02-2009, 10:20 AM

Canadian Thrush is tough because they out card you every time. I mean, they run on 2 lands. Every other card they draw for the game is threats. They are just going to have better card qaulity. (ie we play our 3rd land or have 2 lands and a mox diamond they have 1 or 2 more threats/answers respectively) Thresh can always brainstorm fetch or ponder away extra lands and keep business cards. I found it came down to i had 3 lands and a mox diamond and a tarogoyf or country out,,they had mongoose and tarmogoyf out and 2 lands with 1 card in hand. It was a submerge and then i get owned. Submerge when i fetch or dredge. Dredging for answers is too slow when you are on such a fast clock. And top decking sucks.

So to go with what Georgjorge said, I believe the best way is to go 1st turn hand hate, then threat, then threat. Let them use counters, then last card played is chalice at 1. Ride that out till you get another threat. And hope to win from there. And draw a freak'n wasteland, which i can't believe i didn't even with one game dredging for a bit.

I won't give up on Loam yet, I just don't like losing to thresh haha. ( i would have prefered if they played with coutnerbalance, would have given me more time to set up and such.)

luma

03-02-2009, 10:47 AM

It was a submerge and then i get owned. Submerge when i fetch or dredge.

Well, just draw and don't dredge if they submerge ;) If you have mana open, keeping a cyclingland in hand helps against tricks with Submerge.

nodahero

03-02-2009, 10:13 PM

What is everyone's thoughts on an ideal list going into something as large as this upcoming gran prix? Are there any hot side board plans or any strategies we can share?

So far my biggest adjustments to my list involve the grave dependency. Lately I have felt like game 1 at least it is safe to be more grave dependent then we have been. Thus I have cut the one of crusher in my list for a third Terravore. I have also went down to two devastating dreams due to the shear lack of power and dependability. The best example I can use to explain this problem comes in the form of thresh. Imagine this scenario... We have 4 cards in hand (no help at all in the situation )plus a DD and 5 lands in play. Our opponent has 2 cards in hand and a 4/5 Goyf on the beatdown... with 3 lands in play. What do we do? We can DD to waist his mana base and mostly ours also... or we can wait a turn to dreams and pray we dont get some card in hand to pump the goyf and take another 4 from the goyf... This dosn't even account for the possibility of a counter to our DD wasting how many of our cards... IDK if my calls in that situation are wrong or what have you... but due to the probable heavy thresh existence and the threat of DD in the face of a goyf I like my decision... any other thoughts on the situation?

For those interested below follow my Ravens Crime list:

// Lands
1 [R] Badlands
2 [R] Bayou
3 [R] Taiga
4 [ON] Wooded Foothills
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
3 [ON] Forgotten Cave
3 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
4 [TE] Wasteland
1 [SH] Volrath's Stronghold
2 [TSP] Forest (1)

// Creatures
3 [OD] Terravore
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
4 [JU] Burning Wish
3 [EVE] Raven's Crime
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
2 [10E] Seismic Assault
2 [FD] Engineered Explosives

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [TO] Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 [EVE] Raven's Crime
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
SB: 1 [FNM] Chainer's Edict
SB: 2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 2 [SHM] Firespout
SB: 1 [NE] Reverent Silence
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 5 OPEN SLOTS ANY IDEAS

This variant I created is a more grave dependent version which in place of Chalice attempts force my opponent to stumble on tempo and card quality by running discard to throw our opposition into topdeck mode while we maintain a significantly more powerful engine in the form of Confidant, Loam, and Ravens Crime. Not to mention we can also punish there manabase fairly effectively due to waste recursion which prevents them from effectively playing out lands to avoid losing them to Crime. So far the deck is 17 and 5 against decks such as Thresh, Combo, W-Stax, the mirror, Goblins, and Merfolk.

georgjorge

03-03-2009, 08:18 AM

Most points have already been discussed, but since you're asking last-minute for Chicago...

1. Without Crusher and Chalice/Duress, I could imagine the deck having problems against non-Tribal Aggro, like Tempo Thresh, Team America, Goyf Sligh or Burn, which will be played at Chicago. It looks like Seismic Assault and Explosives would be your best bet there, but they can often be too slow. So I would recommend to test against those decks. If you encounter problems, I'd go for Crushers, Chalice/Duress, Terminates, or even Wretched Banquet in the side (since you'll be siding out Confidants anyway).

2. It seems the only way for you to beat combo is to go first turn Raven's Crime, second turn Diamond and start Loam and Crime recursion right away. Storm combo has very consistent builds right now, so the non-targetted discard from Crime will only keep them from going off after the third copy or so (after all, they only need two pieces of acceleration and an Ad Nauseam, or acceleration, Doomsday and a card draw), by which time - third or fourth turn - you will often be dead. I can't recommend much here other than playing Chalice or Thorn in the main or side.

3. The wishboard seems too large. You can cut either the Hull Breach or the Reverent Silecen, and either the Pyroclasm or the Firespout. Also, I'm not sure 4 Crypt are really needed, I'd board them in only for Ichorid, the mirror or Intuition control. Exirpate might be better in the mirror, but maybe you don't need any graveyard hate at all, since those three decks might not make up a large enough portion to use four sideboard slots.

I agree that Dreams are not that good anymore with so many Goyfs and blue-based decks around. They're still a house against a lot of decks, but maybe you could cut the maindeck copies and rely on the Wishes to get them.

Finally, Blood Moon. Beats Landstill, Team America, and 4c Thresh, plus random decks. Your Landstill matchup might already be good with the Crime-Loam engine, but the others could need the help.

In any cast, good luck representing Aggro Loam, and let us know how it goes !

nodahero

03-03-2009, 10:42 AM

In my above post you will find an updated variant on my loam list. Lately I have been calling it C.L.W. Oh MY!! (Crime Loam Waste Oh My)

My biggest concern with the below version is that it feels like there may be a hair to much discard in the main but maybe I am being overly paranoid. My theory after browsing the thread is to go down to 2 Crimes main with the third in the board and add an additional Explosives, Witness, or Assault in the main. My biggest concern with the deck essentially boils down to having to much discard and insufficent solutions to those pesky Lorded Merfolk which I am guessing will be all over chicago due to the low budget to create it. Any suggestions?

jazzykat

03-03-2009, 11:51 AM

Being from a chalice school of thought myself, if you are going to go discard I feel like you have to bring it hard. A raven's crime and a handful of land can decimate the hand of a combo player by your turn 2 (discard 3 cards). As stated before, AdN is so powerful you only need 4 cards (black source, 2 x dark ritual, AdN) to go off so it's still a crap shoot (although, probably in your favor).

Combo is a bad matchup for loam decks in general so you are just going to have to suck that up. Realistically, you have an equal or better matchup to just about everything outside of combo so you should take a lot of comfort in that and be careful not to weaken your MD to the point where you lose to your good matchups.

As to your board a CB with a 2cmc floating takes you out of the game, so I think you need 3 grips.

I agree with: georgjorge as to the fact that your wishboard is too large. I think reverent silence is sooo much better than hull breach. I think that crime in the board is fine and you may want to use some of your extra slots for duress.

I think that 27 land is higher than I have seen in a while but you have raven's crime so I can't comment directly to that synergy.

So theoretically you still have ~3 slots to play with. Crypts are great catch alls as are pithing needle because it stops aether vial, relic, crypt, manlands etc.

Assuming you generate enough red I would use the following board:
Mandatory wish part
---------------------
1 LftL
1 DD
1 Reverent Silence
1 Shattering Spree
1 Chainer's Edict (Optional, but progenitus makes me uneasy and tombstalker will kill you.)

I hate CB part (some say you have 2 md EE but with the amount of CB/Top in this format I feel it's mandatory)
------------------------
3 Krosan Grip

Combo is teh suxors part (or just leave out the duress and shore up another more prevalent matchup)
------------------------
1 Raven's crime
3 (?) Duress

Flexible hate/anti-hate
-----------------------
Crypt or Needle or Jund Charm(graveyard and little guy mower)

Since you do not have crusher in the deck I strongly lean towards needle as relic owns your vores and neuters tarmogoyf.

nodahero

03-03-2009, 01:13 PM

The first comment I would like to make is apparently I am an idiot... I didn't realize how many lands were being run. That would explain why it felt like so many were constantly being draw... Wow I feel really stupid. The land base was supposed to have 25. Thanks for that catch Jazzykat. Not to mention I feel alot more comfortable with the discard count because I can know up the threat to discard ration a hair...

In game two against any deck packing CB what is the correct call for play style? I have had some experience against CB but I do not feel remotely top notch and wanted some other players thoughts... Is the better call to play the deck in a go for Loam engine and just dredge and draw as much as possible risking dredging our K-Grips or is the more correct call just slow rolling into the grips?

My other issue is the value of EE... I realize that it is our game one god send against CB due to our ability to pay like GGGR to get 2 counters on it and dodge CB but other than that trick it feels pretty weak and I wondered if possibly running Chainer's Edict in that slot would be better. The two biggest boons I see from this swap is the ability to kill otherwise EE proff critters such as Stalker and Progenitus not to mention we can run the loam engine at top speed and still not lose options due to flashback.

The next and hopefully last tweak to consider from my variant is now with the additonal two slots from my extra land (which proves why I sux at calculus) what do i run there? Most builds run (According to deckcheck) 13 to 15 critter as opposed to my 11. If I upped it I would likely add in 1 more Witness and then have one more slot. Another option is adding two more EE main to run the full 4. The last option would be to add 2-4 chainers adjusting the EE count as needed. This change also could free up one more Board slot. Any ideas?

jazzykat

03-03-2009, 02:12 PM

That would explain why it felt like so many were constantly being draw... Wow I feel really stupid. The land base was supposed to have 25. Thanks for that catch Jazzykat.

You should see me forget what I wished for and often have 2 loams in game 2 by accident. I usually play a foil loam, and foil dreams as my MD SB cards in more casual tournaments so I have an easy sanity check between games/rounds.

In game two against any deck packing CB what is the correct call for play style? I have had some experience against CB but I do not feel remotely top notch and wanted some other players thoughts... Is the better call to play the deck in a go for Loam engine and just dredge and draw as much as possible risking dredging our K-Grips or is the more correct call just slow rolling into the grips?

There is an article explaining probabiliy and how dredging doesn't actually hurt your probability of drawing X card, but trust me when I say go for a fast loam if you can and start cycling into tons of business cards. Basically...for the cost of 4 mana you get a land drop and 2 fresh cards in your grip. That buries cb control type decks and let's you find grip/EE awfully quick. The issue is that they will eventually assemble a lock on you so you have to find an answer/and or threats while you still have your engine running.

Also, your Terravores and Seismic Assaults (I play crusher too but my MD only has 4 chalices vs. combo....) have a cmc of 3 and you should be able to get them down in the fact of counterbalance.

There is also a chance for a fast Goyf or DC to stick and those can also put pressure.

The key is to put pressure on them, they are probably trying to get together CB/Top to lock you out of the game but not die in the process. Do as much as you can as fast as you can.

My other issue is the value of EE... I realize that it is our game one god send against CB due to our ability to pay like GGGR to get 2 counters on it and dodge CB but other than that trick it feels pretty weak and I wondered if possibly running Chainer's Edict in that slot would be better. The two biggest boons I see from this swap is the ability to kill otherwise EE proff critters such as Stalker and Progenitus not to mention we can run the loam engine at top speed and still not lose options due to flashback.

I think CB and opposing goyfs are going to be a lot more prevalent than Stalker and Progenitus. It also helps a titch vs. combo because you can blow up a random chrome mox, and occaisionally stop them from floating diamond mana into their draw step for an AdN off the top. IMO 2-3 is the correct number.

The next and hopefully last tweak to consider from my variant is now with the additonal two slots from my extra land (which proves why I sux at calculus) what do i run there? Most builds run (According to deckcheck) 13 to 15 critter as opposed to my 11. If I upped it I would likely add in 1 more Witness and then have one more slot. Another option is adding two more EE main to run the full 4. The last option would be to add 2-4 chainers adjusting the EE count as needed. This change also could free up one more Board slot. Any ideas?

IMO you should be running crushers. I never felt the need for Witness but others like her as the Loam/Dredge: Volrath-->Witness -->FTW Card. I just prefer to play more threats.

Agaisnt control, my plan is to keep turning dudes sideways and if my opponent didn't feel like he got hit in the face with a crowbar after the match I probably wasn't maxing out this decks potential.

Blitzbold

03-04-2009, 07:59 AM

IMO you should be running crushers. I never felt the need for Witness but others like her as the Loam/Dredge: Volrath-->Witness -->FTW Card. I just prefer to play more threats.

I agree with you about the Crushers. Though I am not a big fan of them, I learned that they are a kind of necessary evil... But contrary to you I've been advocating Witness from my very beginning of running this deck until today and convinced several players in my area of her because of the additional inevitability she comes with. Though not a threat per se, I often baited countermagic from control decks which wanted to stop the CA, for example.

Agaisnt control, my plan is to keep turning dudes sideways and if my opponent didn't feel like he got hit in the face with a crowbar after the match I probably wasn't maxing out this decks potential.

I love you for this one. :-)

nodahero

03-04-2009, 02:19 PM

Can you guys please explain the value of Crusher to me? He seems very poor to me in comparison to the like of Vore... He starts off smaller (usually) and is dependent on strictly getting lands to your yard. This seems to take our already semi grave dependent problem and make them even worse game to in the face of something such as Extirpate ripping out Loam or having a LotV in play. I realize we can slow roll the grow or eventually wish for Loam back but that seems very slow.

This is the current list I am working with. Any suggestions?
// Lands
1 [TSP] Forest (1)
4 [TE] Wasteland
3 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
3 [ON] Forgotten Cave
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
3 [ON] Wooded Foothills
3 [R] Taiga
2 [R] Bayou
1 [R] Badlands
1 [SH] Volrath's Stronghold

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
3 [OD] Terravore
1 [FD] Eternal Witness

// Spells
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
2 [10E] Seismic Assault
3 [EVE] Raven's Crime
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [JU] Burning Wish

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [EVE] Raven's Crime
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
SB: 3 [SOK] Pithing Needle
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 1 [NE] Reverent Silence
SB: 1 [FNM] Chainer's Edict
SB: 1 [TO] Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 1 [9E] Pyroclasm

25 Lands/12 Critters/23 non-critter spells/13 S-Board slots (2 open any ideas?))

So far my worst matches have actually come from tribal aggro as opposed to Team America and Thresh. The tribal aggro lists have so much synergy that without a more broad range sweeper I tend to just be over run. The most clear example I can think of comes from a RBw Goblins deck I faced last night which was essentially your typical goblins list running Vial but also backed with Goblin King and Burn to finish it. Game two he brought in Pyroclastic pillar and raped me off it by removing the weaker goblins such as fanatic. Sadly I have not gotten to face Merfolk yet but I assume it would be fairly similar because they can just lay threats and turn sideways to beat me.

myselves

03-04-2009, 02:47 PM

kkoie

03-04-2009, 03:39 PM

my $0.02 regarding Crusher vs Vore.

I've found that I've dealt more devastating blows w/ crusher durring testing and tournaments than I ever did with vore. Not that Terravore is a bad card... I will never completely cut him from my deck. But I did go down to 2 'vore vs 4 crusher's because I hated hated hated getting a terravore in my opening hand. I'd much rather draw him mid to late game. He's almost useless in the first 2 or 3 turns of a match, and won't be of a decent size until turn 4 at the latest, from my own experience.

Where as dropping Crusher turn 2 and getting him to stick has been backbreaking for my opponent if they don't deal with him quickly. A crusher online means you will be hitting a business spell every turn.

kroelai

03-04-2009, 05:40 PM

dre4m

03-04-2009, 05:57 PM

@ nodahero: You are having trouble with the tribal decks because you maindeck four Thoughtseize and zero Devastating Dreams. You can vastly improve your matchup with MD DD in addition to one in the wishboard.

Regarding Crusher, he is a must-answer threat when dropped on turn 2 or 3, else he alone puts the opponent on (usually) a 3 to 4 turn clock. Crusher laughs at all the hate aside form Leyline, and even then he grows off your opponent's fetchlands/wastelands. Alongside Tarmogoyf, Crusher establishes an early pressure game that is just too synergistic with the engine of this deck not to play.

nitewolf9

03-04-2009, 06:06 PM

Crusher laughs at all the hate aside form Leyline, and even then he grows off your opponent's fetchlands/wastelands.

No, he still stays a shitty 3/3 with Leyline in play. But I agree that he's a pretty amazing threat in aggro loam, I'm not sure why anyone would want to cut him. He's a must answer for most decks.

sauce

03-04-2009, 06:09 PM

how does this deck fare against Canadian Threshold pre/post board?

dre4m

03-04-2009, 07:29 PM

No, he still stays a shitty 3/3 with Leyline in play. But I agree that he's a pretty amazing threat in aggro loam, I'm not sure why anyone would want to cut him. He's a must answer for most decks.

Yeah, my bad, I forgot about the "your" in that clause.
But he's still at least a 3/3, whereas Terravore will be worse 85% of the time.

nodahero

03-04-2009, 09:01 PM

After listening to all of the suggestions and taking alot of time to study my list and contemplate a few switches I think I have arrived at a fairly solid list. I present to you Crushing Crime Loam:

// Lands
1 [TSP] Forest (1)
4 [TE] Wasteland
3 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
3 [ON] Forgotten Cave
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
3 [ON] Wooded Foothills
3 [R] Taiga
2 [R] Bayou
1 [R] Badlands
1 [SH] Volrath's Stronghold

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
3 [MOR] Countryside Crusher

// Spells
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
2 [10E] Seismic Assault
3 [EVE] Raven's Crime
3 [LRW] Thoughtseize
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [JU] Burning Wish
2 [TO] Devastating Dreams

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [EVE] Raven's Crime
SB: 1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
SB: 3 [SOK] Pithing Needle
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 1 [NE] Reverent Silence
SB: 1 [FNM] Chainer's Edict
SB: 1 [TO] Devastating Dreams
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 1 [9E] Pyroclasm
SB: 2 [SHM] Kitchen Finks

This version attempts to shell up the poor tribal aggro matches by adding in the D-Dreams . To add in the Dreams I cut the misers Witness and a Thoughtseize. I cut these two cards due to the dis-synergistic qualitys they create in my attempt to combat aggro. The Witness is very slow and and had only two quality targets in this list (EE an Goyf). Thoughtseize while not horrendous hardly qualifys to be overly useful do to the tempo the aggro deck can gain espeically if I am forced to take something such as lightning bolt in the early game... Sure I saved a life but spent a mana to do so which could be better used for other purposes.

Another adjustment was to add Kitchen Finks into the Side. I realize they have not gotten very much attention outside of Standard, however I feel they may actually be a very good critter for this deck. I plan to bring them in against faster decks such as Goblin and Merfolk. The finks will usually gain you 4 life, stop 2 attackers, and kill 2 creatures all for a measely 2 mana.

The questions I think that should be addressed after testing are as follows:
1) Should I instead cut an EE and replace the 4th thoughtseize? Often I find myself placing the explosives at the 2 mark in order to wipe out cards such as opposing Goyfs and Confidants and also CB. The problem with this is the EEs often take out at least one 2 drop of mine thus breaking even at best and providing me no card advantage. If thoughtseize were to be brought back in it is a proactive solution to all the above named and can also help to disrupt combo more then EE can although EE does actiely hamper combo from laying its LEDs and Petals to avoid losing them to discard.

2) While I realize the Needles are almost a swiss army knife, after testing I realized how little they really do in any one match. I often found myself only ever wanting one needle per match because there were ever only 1 Needle worthy card. Any needles after the first were automatically dead. Did I just have poor testing experience since I brought them in or would they be better off as Kitchen Fink 3 & 4 or possibly something else entirely?

CorpT

03-05-2009, 01:54 AM

This is what I'm currently running. I've 4-0ed the last two tournaments with some pretty decent players at each.

4 Counrtyside Crusher
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
2 Terravore

4 Burning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
2 Devastating Dreams

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
2 Engineered Explosives

2 Seismic Assault

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

SB:
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
1 Reverent Silence
1 Pyroclasm
1 Hull Breach
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Life from the Loam
1 Shattering Spree
1 Open Slot

I think this is about perfect. 4 Crusher/2 Vore is definitely the way to go. Crusher provides gas, Vore relies on it.

Between Chalice and Crime/Discard, I vastly prefer Chalice. I can't count the number of games I would drop a T1/T2 Chalice and my opponent would show me a hand full of one drops after I beat him. Raven's Crime is good, but creates a much larger reliance on Loam to be truly effective.

The Open Slot in the board is either a Perish or Bitter Ordeal. I still haven't decided on that yet. For the local store with little ANT and lots of Goyfs, Perish for sure.

It's taken quite a bit of practice to get decent with the deck, but it really feels amazing right now. At the last two tournaments, I've played against a wide variety of decks from Boros Burn, Stax, Mirror, multiple Thresh variants, etc... and it always feels like the deck has an answer or threat for them.

Aggro_zombies

03-05-2009, 02:29 AM

First, welcome to actively posting on the Source, and congratulations on your finishes.

Second, Aggro Loam is very strong right now, so I'm not sure why it doesn't get played more than it does. Playing around/through a CB is mostly a matter of skill and experience, and the combo matchup doesn't show up enough to be worried about.

Third, your list: how are you liking Dark Confidant? I have not been happy with his performance since I started playing this deck, and I much prefer to use Loam or Intuition (in my case) as card draw/selection. Bob in Threshold makes sense because he'll do the same amount of damage to you on average as Phyrexian Arena over a number of turns, or even less if you can use Top shenanigans to get lands on top. Bob in this deck, where you don't have any real card selection engines and where roughly half your cards cost 2+ mana, isn't quite as hot. I tested the mirror today using my list from a few pages back, and I can say that in a number of games I was happy to leave Bob alive and kicking on the other side of the table as he took two and three point chunks out of my opponent's life total for me. It's almost like playing Sleeper Agent.

Looking at your color requirements, I'm pretty sure the optimal basic land split is 2 Mountain, 1 Forest, not the other way around. Your most impressive green cards all cost one colored mana to play, whereas Crusher and Assault cost more.

Also, Ordeal has generally been pretty bad in my experience.

kroelai

03-05-2009, 03:42 AM

myselves

03-05-2009, 08:41 AM

Third, your list: how are you liking Dark Confidant? I have not been happy with his performance since I started playing this deck, and I much prefer to use Loam or Intuition (in my case) as card draw/selection. Bob in Threshold makes sense because he'll do the same amount of damage to you on average as Phyrexian Arena over a number of turns, or even less if you can use Top shenanigans to get lands on top. Bob in this deck, where you don't have any real card selection engines and where roughly half your cards cost 2+ mana, isn't quite as hot. I tested the mirror today using my list from a few pages back, and I can say that in a number of games I was happy to leave Bob alive and kicking on the other side of the table as he took two and three point chunks out of my opponent's life total for me. It's almost like playing Sleeper Agent.

25-26 lands+4 mox diamond+0-2 EE+0-4 Chalice of the Void =29-36 cards for free, even if the rest of your cards just begin at 2 then you also got an average nearly around 1 LP each card.

For me there are just 8 cards that push Aggro Loam and are good against almost everything, these cards are 4 Dark Confidant& 4 Chalice of the Void.
Intuition is good, working as your virtual LftL 7-9 or is often used to get your Stronghold+creatures in Control matches, but also Confis still shines in any match against Control.

Charlatan

03-05-2009, 09:19 AM

Is there any chance to run a RG moxless Aggro Loam?

Ty!

kkoie

03-05-2009, 09:36 AM

Is there any chance to run a RG moxless Aggro Loam?

Ty!

You can try it, but why would you want too? Mox Diamonds are worth the investment. They will never go below $20 (no idea what they cost at the moment).

Regarding Bob, I think he is an auto include, specially vs control matchups. The card advantage he provides in making sure you draw more threats outweights however much damage you will take from his ability. More often than not, your opponent ought to be dead before you take lethal from a bob.

I do tend to side him out a lot, though that could be a misplay on my part. There seem to be some matchups were he is not worth the risk (goblins, merfolk, etc). But I am unsure on that part, anyone have an opinion on whether or not one should side 0, 2 or 4 bobs out when facing heavy aggro decks? I tend to side out all 4 in my deck.

Also, I tested out a new change to my sideboard last night and I think this is pretty close to what I'll take this weekend.

1 Dreams, 1 Loam, 1 Rev. Silence, 1 S. Spree, 1 C. Edict, 1 Pyroclasm
3 K. Grip, 3 Jund Charm (I really like this card, I think the utility makes up for loss of speed compared to T. Crypts) and 3 Pithing Needles (I've found that I've had a number of matches where the Chalice of the Voids are better served out (at least 2) and 3 pithing needles in to answer random annoyances.

CorpT

03-05-2009, 10:26 AM

First, welcome to actively posting on the Source, and congratulations on your finishes.

Thanks!

Second, Aggro Loam is very strong right now, so I'm not sure why it doesn't get played more than it does. Playing around/through a CB is mostly a matter of skill and experience, and the combo matchup doesn't show up enough to be worried about.

This is definitely one of the toughest parts of playing it. Fortunately, I play with a very good Thresh player, so I've gotten quite a bit of experience with it.

Third, your list: how are you liking Dark Confidant? I have not been happy with his performance since I started playing this deck, and I much prefer to use Loam or Intuition (in my case) as card draw/selection. Bob in Threshold makes sense because he'll do the same amount of damage to you on average as Phyrexian Arena over a number of turns, or even less if you can use Top shenanigans to get lands on top. Bob in this deck, where you don't have any real card selection engines and where roughly half your cards cost 2+ mana, isn't quite as hot. I tested the mirror today using my list from a few pages back, and I can say that in a number of games I was happy to leave Bob alive and kicking on the other side of the table as he took two and three point chunks out of my opponent's life total for me. It's almost like playing Sleeper Agent.

I love Bob in this. I started out playing the W version without Bob and vastly prefer the version with Bob. Yes, I take some damage, but there are very many 0 damage draws too. I usually side him out against Burn decks, but otherwise usually leave him in. He especially shines in the Thresh matchups where they aren't drawing a lot of cards and I am. If I get a Crusher and Bob out with a Loam in the yard... I feel like I can hardly lose.

Looking at your color requirements, I'm pretty sure the optimal basic land split is 2 Mountain, 1 Forest, not the other way around. Your most impressive green cards all cost one colored mana to play, whereas Crusher and Assault cost more.

I got back and forth on that. My thoughts on it where this:

I almost always go for Taiga first because it powers up so many things. But, if I'm trying to operate under a Back to Basics, Wasteland lock, or Blood Moon, Forests are better because they will allow me to cast more Loams. The Loams are usually what get me to my answer to the problem.

That's my thought process on it anyway.

Also, Ordeal has generally been pretty bad in my experience.

Good to know. I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Don't you think your landcount is a bit less, i play 6 cycle lands, and 3 bob.
So that is 2 'real' lands more than your list. Land flooded > Mana Screwded. (espescialy in this deck)

I haven't had many problems with mana screw lately. I'm pretty happy with 7 cycle lands though. They seem pretty good. I had a hand with Forest, Thicket, Thicket, Crusher, Crusher the other day I kept. I dropped a Crusher turn 3 and 4 without problems. The cycle lands really open you up to turning not good draws into great draws.

nodahero

03-05-2009, 11:22 AM

Also, I tested out a new change to my sideboard last night and I think this is pretty close to what I'll take this weekend.

1 Dreams, 1 Loam, 1 Rev. Silence, 1 S. Spree, 1 C. Edict, 1 Pyroclasm
3 K. Grip, 3 Jund Charm (I really like this card, I think the utility makes up for loss of speed compared to T. Crypts) and 3 Pithing Needles (I've found that I've had a number of matches where the Chalice of the Voids are better served out (at least 2) and 3 pithing needles in to answer random annoyances.

Can you please explain what you use the Junds and Needles for? I have contemplated both of these but have failed to find any realy value in them. I think Jund has the most applicable uses but when do they really shine?

Jund can be a pyroclasm game 2 and 3 against decks such as Goblins and Merfolk but what do you board out? (NOTE: Confidant isn't the answer) Jund also functions as a slower T-Cypt against the mirror, dredge, and Thresh. I can see the value of it against the mirror but not dredge and not really Thresh. The pump effect seems almost pointless except in Goyf standoffs when you make it seem like you just want to get in there.

You mention you board in Needle for "random annoyances" but what kind? There is the obvious Top/CB but you already bring in K-Grip and I don't see how you can board out 6 cards in that match up. What other matchups do you feel warrant Needle and that you have sufficent cards to cut for them.

CorpT

03-05-2009, 11:27 AM

Can you please explain what you use the Junds and Needles for? I have contemplated both of these but have failed to find any realy value in them. I think Jund has the most applicable uses but when do they really shine?

Jund can be a pyroclasm game 2 and 3 against decks such as Goblins and Merfolk but what do you board out? (NOTE: Confidant isn't the answer) Jund also functions as a slower T-Cypt against the mirror, dredge, and Thresh. I can see the value of it against the mirror but not dredge and not really Thresh. The pump effect seems almost pointless except in Goyf standoffs when you make it seem like you just want to get in there.

I was playing Leylines against the mirror and he had Jund Charms. Charms were not nearly as good as Leyline. I was able to prevent his engine from ever getting online. He removed a few lands from my GY. It wasn't even close. As for the other applications... they are definitely good, but IMO, that's what the Wish board is for.

kkoie

03-05-2009, 12:51 PM

leander?

03-05-2009, 12:59 PM

The finks will usually .. [do stuff] .. all for a measely 2 mana.
3 :wink:

Third, your list: how are you liking Dark Confidant? I have not been happy with his performance since I started playing this deck, and I much prefer to use Loam or Intuition (in my case) as card draw/selection. Bob in Threshold makes sense because he'll do the same amount of damage to you on average as Phyrexian Arena over a number of turns, or even less if you can use Top shenanigans to get lands on top. Bob in this deck, where you don't have any real card selection engines and where roughly half your cards cost 2+ mana, isn't quite as hot. I tested the mirror today using my list from a few pages back, and I can say that in a number of games I was happy to leave Bob alive and kicking on the other side of the table as he took two and three point chunks out of my opponent's life total for me. It's almost like playing Sleeper Agent.
Well, if you just count the manacosts in his list you'll see that the total manacost is 58. Wich means that on average you will get 1 or less damage. Not such a bad deal imo. Ofcourse, quite often it will be 2 or 3 damage, but the chance of getting no damage at all is even bigger. So in the end, you will get about the same amount of damage as when you have a P.Arena online. (With some bad luck it can be more, with some luck less)
Oh, btw. You do actually have some library manipulation: Crusher. Combined with cyclelands and fetchlands you can do a lot of different tricks in order to reveal/draw/dredge what you want to reveal/draw/dredge.

Looking at your color requirements, I'm pretty sure the optimal basic land split is 2 Mountain, 1 Forest, not the other way around. Your most impressive green cards all cost one colored mana to play, whereas Crusher and Assault cost more.
I prefer 2 forests/1 mountain as well, just becouse the fact that if you've got green mana and a Loam you won't have any troubles getting the right mana. So having enough green mana will make sure you can get any colour you want.
You know what it is with this deck. Usually you won'y have any troubles with having enough mana of the right type. Only when your manabase is heavily disrupted by wastelands, stifles, sinkholes, smokestacks, blood moons or back to basics you will have issues getting the right mana. And the best way to get that mana easily is playing Life from the Loam. And Life from the Loam only requires one thing: Green mana. So as long as you have green mana in such hard times, you will be able to solve those problems (íf you've got enough time, ofcourse) And a mountain is not gonna help you at that point.

CorpT

03-05-2009, 02:21 PM

I believe that was me you were playing in the mirror. If I recall correctly, you threw down 2 leylines game 2, and I only drew an answer for one (game 1 was terrible, I kept a hand that was great against anything except the mirror). I don't have my notes w/ me, but I had a choice of either killing your creatures w/ the jcharm or hitting your gy. It was probably a play-mistake on my part for targeting the gy rather than sweeping the board.

As for applications of pithing needle, granted most can be answered with grips or wasteland, but I liked the idea of having additional answers against fast decks.

I like the jund charms because they can also be used as board sweepers against decks like goblins and merfolk. Both of home can establish very quickly. Sometimes too fast for a burning wish to be effective.

Yes, I think that was me. Two leylines are pretty bad to fight through. And yeah, Game 1 was pretty bad.

Killing the creatures would probably have been much worse than hitting my GY. I still think having the Leylines prevents the decks that it comes in against from ever getting online. I see Jund Charms as more reactive than proactive like the Leylines.

Against Goblins or Merfolk, what would you side out for the Charms though. Maybe Bob? That does sound pretty decent. I think for the mirror the Leylines might be better though.

Pithing Needle sounds good, but I just can't find the room for it. I rely on Grips for so many matchups and the wish board is already very full.

I prefer 2 forests/1 mountain as well, just becouse the fact that if you've got green mana and a Loam you won't have any troubles getting the right mana. So having enough green mana will make sure you can get any colour you want.
You know what it is with this deck. Usually you won'y have any troubles with having enough mana of the right type. Only when your manabase is heavily disrupted by wastelands, stifles, sinkholes, smokestacks, blood moons or back to basics you will have issues getting the right mana. And the best way to get that mana easily is playing Life from the Loam. And Life from the Loam only requires one thing: Green mana. So as long as you have green mana in such hard times, you will be able to solve those problems (íf you've got enough time, ofcourse) And a mountain is not gonna help you at that point.

This is a better way of saying what I was thinking. It looks a little weird to have 4 Caves/3 Thicket and 1 Mountain/2 Forest, but it's always felt ok to me.

nodahero

03-06-2009, 11:53 PM

quick warning to all who are going to the GP... Be on the look out for a fair amount of thresh, Ichorid, and 42land.dec. I spent the day there watching the grinders due to already having Byes based on rating and saw alot the above. Ichorid made a large splash at the grinders and as a result I would wager the grave hate is going up a hair. I hope this helps you guys. I sadly will be audibling out of Loam and playing the tech from an awesome friend.

Solaran_X

03-09-2009, 03:18 AM

I ended 6-3 with this list. I went into Round 9 as a 6-2 and got rather well trounced by Sea Stompy to an 0-2 loss. Probably my best match (not best match up, but best played match) was my 2-1 victory over Logan Mize in Round 8 against Landstill.

ROUND 1: Bye (1-0)
ROUND 2: Bye (2-0)
ROUND 3: Bye (3-0)
ROUND 4: Lost to R Goblins (3-1). All my fault. Game 1, I dropped a turn 1 Chalice for 1 to lock him out of Lackey and (surprisingly) main deck Relic of Progenitus. Game 2, he gets out Relic and beats me. Game 3, I drop Explosives for 1 on turn 1 and he drops Lackey on turn 2. I drop Needle naming Relic on my turn 2. He swings with Lackey on turn 3 and I don't blow my Explosives in response...like an idiot. This is what I consider to be the mistake that cost me Day 2.
ROUND 5: Lost to Affinity (3-2). I just wasn't prepared for Affinity.
ROUND 6: Won against Survival Advantage (4-2). Two rather quick games. Nothing spectacular. My opponent is on the Source, but I forget his name off hand.
ROUND 7: Won against CounterSlivers (5-2). I felt bad about this one. First game, my opponent mulls to 4 and then concedes. Game two, he sees two lands - a Plains and a Mutavault. I Wasteland the Mutavault, and hit the Plains with Devastating Dreams, which also clears his only sliver. I rode either Terravore or Crusher to the win.
ROUND 8: Won against Landstill (6-2). Best game of the night. Game one, he drops Landstill. I drop Vexing Shusher to break it. I then Chalice for 1 to protect it on the next turn. Game two, he beat me with man lands. Game three, I resolve an Assault and a Shusher and we proceed to fight over Life from the Loam (I cast it, he reveals 2 off of Counterbalance, I activate Shusher, he Spell Snares Life, I activate Shusher, it resolves).
ROUND 9: Lost to Sea Stompy (6-3). I'm surprised Sea Stompy made it this far. He dropped two Sea Drakes in one turn, and then a swing took me from 16 to 8. I Dreams for 3 to clear them. He drops Pestermites to keep me off of mana to recover, and rides them to win. Game two, he beats me down with Pestermites and a Drake. I get a Crusher to 6/6, and he Sowers it.

Creatures (14)
3 Terravore
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Vexing Shusher
3 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
Spells (21)
4 Burning Wish
2 Devastating Dreams
3 Life from the Loam
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Seismic Assault
Lands (25)
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
3 Forgotten Cave
1 Mountain
3 Taiga
3 Tranquil Thicket
1 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
Sideboard (15)
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Life from the Loam
1 Reverent Silence
1 Shattering Spree
1 Worm Harvest
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Pithing Needle
3 Blood Moon

georgjorge

03-09-2009, 05:02 AM

Congratulations on the good finish ! Strange that you didn't get any CounterTop to play against...

Would you change anything in the above list ?

Benie Bederios

03-09-2009, 05:38 AM

Congratulations on the good finish ! Strange that you didn't get any CounterTop to play against...

Game three, I resolve an Assault and a Shusher and we proceed to fight over Life from the Loam (I cast it, he reveals 2 off of Counterbalance, I activate Shusher, he Spell Snares Life, I activate Shusher, it resolves).

How did you feel about four Vexing Susher if it only mattered against 1 matchup? Do you think it lost you matches, wich for example a Tarmogoyf might have won?

Benie

dre4m

03-09-2009, 10:19 AM

Hello everyone, my name is Phil, and I'm an Aggro-Loam player.

I will probably flesh out this report a little more when I get home today, but I have a few minutes before class, so I will get it out there. I played Loam to an unimpressive 5-3 finish, but I still think that Loam is the way to go, and will probably be running it at all tournaments in the near future.

First, my list:

4 Tarmogoyf
3 Terravore
3 Countryside Crusher
1 Eternal Witness

4 Burning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
2 Devastating Dreams

2 Krosan Grip

2 Seismic Assault

4 Chalice of the Void
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Mox Diamond

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

Sideboard:
3 Choke
2 Pithing Needle
2 Krosan Grip
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Living Wish
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Life from the Loam
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Shattering Spree
1 Reverent Silence
1 Haunting Echoes

Some choice explanations:
Zero Dark Confidant: I truly hate Bob in this deck, because the advantage he **may** provide usually ends up with little to no impact in your bad matchups [read: combo], and he is totally unnecessary in our good matchups. Never once during the tournament did I ever think to myself, "I wish this card was a Dark Confidant." (Except for Round 5, but I'll get to that later).

Two MD and two SB Grips: I predicted a massive amount of CB/Top and Landstill to be at this Grand Prix, and sideboarded in kind. The two MD Grips were immensely helpful and I will be sticking with them as long as this metagame persists.

Two MD and one SB Explosives: These were not as helpful as the Grips. They tended to be unnecessary in my CB matchups, and were usually just bait for various removal spells when used against other decks. I would probably cut to one in the MD in the future.

Creature configuration: I was pretty happy with the threat numbers, because it really only takes one resolved threat to win with this deck, if played correctly. If, however, I cut an Explosives, it would probably become a Crusher. The lone Witness, however, was a mistake. I thought she would be awesome in the lategame, but it just never happened that way. Though my luck could have been responsible for this, I will likely cut her in the future for another...

Seismic Assault: Without a doubt the GP MVP. I never lost a game in which I resolved Assault. I think we need to play more of this card, if only because of how devastating it is with an active loam engine.

Chalice: Never, ever, cut this card. Chalice at 1 is the best turn 1 play you could ever want in the current meta, and there was no way I could have won my first 3 rounds without four of this card in my maindeck.

Sideboard: I definably overboarded for the CB matchups. Chokes generally did not help at all, and should have been Thorns or Leylines. Grips were excellent, and Pithing Needles were also good. I played the Living Wish to retrieve Crushers that were removed via graveyard hate.

Now, the short version of the report.
Round 1 and 2 I played against combo, round 1 ANT and round 2 Epic Painter. Go figure, right? Fortunately, Chalice for 1 combined with some Wastelands were all it took to defeat those decks, which only had bounce in the form of Wipe Away. Chalice at zero held off ANT's mana, and Terravore recursion after DD via Stronghold killed EP.

Round 3 was against a Rock-esque deck, which I did not realize had the Natural Order/Progenitus combo until too late. I lost game 3 after stabilizing to a topdecked Natural Order when his board was 2 forest, 1 Kitchen Finks, 2 Noble Heirarch.

Round 4 was against Merfolk, which is completely owned by Devastating Dreams, incidentally. Seismic Assault and Crusher took this one home.

Round 5 paired me against a talented CB player with one massive advantage on his side: Price of Progress. Games 2 and 3 against him I lost after stabilizing to a massive PoP. Never have I ever wished I had more Seismic Assaults.

Round 6 was a typical match against CB with no Price of Progress involved. Recurring gigantic threats and 4 Grips between the main and board are way too much for CB decks.

Round 7 pitted me against another opponent whom I defeated, but I do not remember anything about the match, I will look at my notes when I get home.

Round 8 was by far the most disappointing. By this point, I was 9/10 asleep, and I played against a horrible Landstill player with an even worse deck. He did have an amazing talent for ripping Swords and Relics, though, and also for finding Seal of Cleansings [!!!] to blow up my Chalices for 1. I still to this moment cannot believe that I lost this match, but my Crushers just kept getting sent farming, and he found Crucible both games, which kept the Mishra's Factories coming at me. Pithing Needle, of course, was nowhere to be found, and he had plenty of Plains, so Choke was useless. I knew I was in for trouble when he told me he was X-0-3.

Final Thoughts: I have way too many Black sources and far too few basics. I really want at least 1 more Mountain and preferably 2 Forest/3 Mountain. Is there any way we could possibly ditch Black? Aggro-Loam is a very strong deck with a great deal of resilience.

Highlights:
-Meeting Bigbear, Jander, and Herbig, who are all extremely cool people. Inadvertently getting into an asshole contest with Jander might have been the funniest thing that happened during the tournament. For the record, I am a bigger asshole than Jander. Not Possible.... -J
-Beating combo 2 rounds in a row with no Thorns.
-The top 8 matches.
-Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

Lowlights:
-Being charged a 45% gratuity at BWW, which we were too drunk to realize at the time.
-Losing to a bad Landstill deck.
-Price of Progress.
-Electrical storms interfering with the GPS.
-My bald tires causing infinite hydroplaning.

Solaran_X

03-09-2009, 11:56 AM

How did you feel about four Vexing Susher if it only mattered against 1 matchup? Do you think it lost you matches, wich for example a Tarmogoyf might have won?

Benie
I don't regret swapping the Goyfs for the Shushers overall. Tarmogoyf is, in my opinion since I've run both types of builds now, rather unimpressive in Loam. It's my smallest big guy and honestly...he does nothing important.

My loss against Goblins was no fault of Goyf or Shusher. It was my own stupidity for not blowing Explosives.

My loss against Affinity was no fault of Goyf or Shusher. It was just something completely out of left field I was entirely unprepared for (no Shatterstorm in the board as a Wish target).

And honestly, I don't think Goyf would have mattered against Sea Stompy. Goyf can't compete against two 4/3 Flyers in one turn, or against a Sower of Temptation sided in for game 2.

Solaran_X

03-09-2009, 02:29 PM

dre4m

03-09-2009, 02:45 PM

I just found our solution for the Natural Order/Progenitus problem. And it's perfect.

1) It's on-color for most Aggro-Loam builds.
2) It's CMC 3, so it's hard for Counterbalance to hit.
3) It only kills white creatures, so it doesn't kill our Terravores or Tarmogoyfs (or Vexing Shushers).

May I present to you...

Virtue's Ruin (http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?&id=4245).

I was looking at Perish (as I'm sure a lot of you were also), but didn't like losing my Terravores and Tarmogoyfs. So a bit of research produced a black card that destroys all white creatures without targeting.

This DOES answer Progenitus, but unfortunately White creatures are not very hot in Legacy right now, so its narrowness makes it fundamentally worse than Chainer's Edict, Innocent Blood, or even Damnation. Plus, we can make creatures bigger than Progenitus pretty regularly and win the game faster.
As an added bonus, seeing Progenitus on the defensive is pretty funny.

Aggro_zombies

03-09-2009, 03:15 PM

This DOES answer Progenitus, but unfortunately White creatures are not very hot in Legacy right now, so its narrowness makes it fundamentally worse than Chainer's Edict, Innocent Blood, or even Damnation. Plus, we can make creatures bigger than Progenitus pretty regularly and win the game faster.
As an added bonus, seeing Progenitus on the defensive is pretty funny.
You also forgot to mention that the Progenitus combo is bad and was proven to be so at the Grand Prix.

The question is, can you come up with a reliable solution to Counterbalance locks backed up by creature theft (Sower and Shackles)?

dre4m

03-09-2009, 04:09 PM

You also forgot to mention that the Progenitus combo is bad and was proven to be so at the Grand Prix.

The question is, can you come up with a reliable solution to Counterbalance locks backed up by creature theft (Sower and Shackles)?

Absolutely: Krosan Grip and Engineered Explosives are both awesome against CB itself, Shackles, Threads, and everything except Sower. Sower is a fragile creature, though, and once you Grip the CB, you can hopefully resolve DD, Pyroclasm, Firespout, or whatever else your favourite weenie removal includes.

Aggro_zombies

03-09-2009, 05:53 PM

Absolutely: Krosan Grip and Engineered Explosives are both awesome against CB itself, Shackles, Threads, and everything except Sower. Sower is a fragile creature, though, and once you Grip the CB, you can hopefully resolve DD, Pyroclasm, Firespout, or whatever else your favourite weenie removal includes.
I think you're oversimplifying things.

If you run four Grips and four Explosives main, you're up against 4 Counterbalance (and 4 Top), 2-3 Shackles, 2 Sower, 4 Force, and 3-4 Daze. Furthermore, the opponent is packing Shackles at least, and possibly Trygon as well, to counter a Grip blind. The chances of an early Counterbalance lock for the opponent are quite high, which means you can't count on a Loam-cycling land engine to dig from Grip to Grip, and you can't count on Burning Wish to get artifact destruction or creature removal to deal with theft cards.

Granted, you can Burning Wish or DD to bait the Top activation so you can safely Grip the Counterbalance, but you're looking at two-for-one situations at best in those cases, putting you at a disadvantage (remember that the opponent will still have Top to find another Counterbalance quickly). Because of the creature theft, the Counterbalance opponent doesn't even need to counter your guys anymore, since they're much better as juicy Control Magic targets. Grip into Wish into Firespout is much harder to execute when your own Crusher is raping you in the ass every turn.

After its success at the GP, and given the deck's obvious strength, Counterbalance.deck is probably going to become extremely popular in the foreseeable future. Therefore, this deck needs more ways in the main to answer that deck, but they can't be answers so narrow that they're mostly dead outside of that matchup. Seismic Assault is a very strong answer to the Counterbalance deck because it can't be stolen and it easily kills every creature out of the CB deck, except for Goyf. However, you can bet that you'll have a hell of a time getting one to stick when the opponent doesn't need to Force your guys and can just CB your Wishes, Dreams, and Loams.

Counterbalance was never a pleasant ride, but this deck is probably going to be very bad for us because it brings together a lot of problematic elements. While it can seem manageable in theory, in reality I don't think the match will be better than 55-45 for us pre-board, and possibly worse post-board depending on what the opponent brings in. It may be best to "assume the worst" and over-prepare for the Counterbalance match, depending on the meta.

dre4m

03-09-2009, 08:40 PM

If you are that worried about counterbalance, and willing to sacrifice the sideboard slots, you can do it easily with a combination of:

Krosan Grip
Engineered Explosives
Choke
Pithing Needle
Vexing Shusher

Or, if proactivity is your bag, you can go for discard and/or Pernicious Deed in your maindeck.

Trust me, Aggro-Loam is absolutely capable of dealing with counterbalance-top. In all of my experience with testing against it, it was always very even pre-board, and advantageous after the sideboard I posted above. CB/Top is a great combo, but when we have Chalice and answers aplenty, and our biggest threats have a CMC of 3, I am really not all that worried about it.

As far as "becoming popular," the deck already is popular. The fact of the matter is that virtually every card in our deck is a must-counter for Thresh, and we have Stronghold to recur them even. Also, if you are having your Countryside Crushers and Terravores Shackled, something has gone very very wrong.

Really though, if the combination of green, red, and black cannot combine to answer CB, the entire format should be ridiculously unbalanced.

risethehandsofreason

03-11-2009, 03:44 PM

As a Threshold player who runs up against Aggro Loam quite a bit, I can say that locking out the Aggro Loam opponent with Counter-Top is not easy and that the pieces don't often stick for too long -even game 1, many times, because of Wish options. I think that dre4m is right on. The Aggro Loam player has so many outs and so many must-answer threats that the Counter-Top player has to work hard to keep up.

The one change that is obviously coming is the inclusion of Sower of Temptation in Thresh builds. We saw how successful it was at the GP (I lost to it in the mirror), and people will certainly latch onto it. With Aggro Loam's lack of spot removal, the deck may have to find some answers, because the card is so powerful against it. In the little bit of testing that I have done since the weekend, Sower has been an absolute beating, if for no other reason than it forces the Aggro Loam player into desparation mode.

I am a firm believer that Krosan Grip in the Aggro Loam sideboard is virtually a must-have, because it helps in many matchups, including the Thresh matchup, and that D-Dreams is the proper choice to board out for it against Thresh.

georgjorge

03-11-2009, 04:06 PM

dre4m

03-11-2009, 04:22 PM

I always board out Dreams against Thresh, but those Next Level Blue decks running both Sower and Shackles might want another strategy, since both those cards are very good against us (though Shackles needs to land BEFORE Crusher) and are taken care of with Dreams. I'll test it out...

The thing about Sower is that it costs four mana, which is generally a lot for Thresh to commit in one turn. If, however, they become predominant in top-tier decks and/or NLU becomes popular, Aggro-Loam may have to adapt by playing spot removal, most likely Black spot removal. Even if it is infeasible, Eradicate is a card I would love to resolve against Sower. If we want to stick R/G, any burn spell is enough to take down a Sower, though they may be tricky to resolve. Shackles is a horrible card against aggro-loam though, and I hold the opinion that if you are unable to play around Shackles with our huge creatures, Wastelands, Loam recursion, and Devastating Dreams, then you were already far too behind to contemplate winning with anything this side of a Decree of Annihilation.

georgjorge

03-11-2009, 05:06 PM

You're right about Shackles. I've only encountered Shackles while playing against MUC before, where it was quite useful for him, but it's a lot easier to handle if played by Next Level Blue.

But I thought the black splash was a standard inclusion for Aggro Loam anyway...? 2-3 Terminates should go a long way, and there's Assault as well.

leander?

03-11-2009, 05:24 PM

If, however, they become predominant in top-tier decks and/or NLU becomes popular, Aggro-Loam may have to adapt by playing spot removal, most likely Black spot removal.
I´ve been playing 2/3 terminates instead of the ee's for a long time now. I replaced ee becouse he was very slow and quite often only used to kill one permanent (wich costs about 4 or 5 mana and one or two turns, even more when you want to dodge daze or counterbalance). If sower would become more popular this might indeed be a necessary change.

@risethehandsofreason, thank you very much for your post. It's very useful to know how your opponent thinks about it.

dre4m

03-11-2009, 06:15 PM

I´ve been playing 2/3 terminates instead of the ee's for a long time now. I replaced ee becouse he was very slow and quite often only used to kill one permanent (wich costs about 4 or 5 mana and one or two turns, even more when you want to dodge daze or counterbalance).

Terminate is as good of a removal spell as we could want in a vacuum.
However, the CMC of 2 is a huge issue when we are talking about dealing with CB decks. Snuff Out seems like a much better option. If things get truly desperate, we can try Infest.

leander?

03-11-2009, 06:35 PM

Terminate is as good of a removal spell as we could want in a vacuum.
However, the CMC of 2 is a huge issue when we are talking about dealing with CB decks. Snuff Out seems like a much better option. If things get truly desperate, we can try Infest.
Snuff out might dodge CB, it sucks against the creatures you're really scared of: Dreadnought, Tombstalker and Confidant (and sometimes Painter). Not being able to get rid of those seems enough reason for not playing it to me.

nitewolf9

03-11-2009, 06:39 PM

Snuff out might dodge CB, it sucks against the creatures you're really scared of: Dreadnought, Tombstalker and Confidant (and sometimes Painter). Not being able to get rid of those seems enough reason for not playing it to me.

Just as an FYI, Snuff Out does in fact kill Dreadnought. Not being able to target Tombstalker seems to be a reasonable argument against it I guess, as that guy is really bad for this deck (at least he usually wins me the game against Aggro Loam decks). I think a combination of Terminate and Chalice would be kinda neat, but it's hard to fit all that into the deck.

leander?

03-11-2009, 06:47 PM

Just as an FYI, Snuff Out does in fact kill Dreadnought.
Right. I was thinking Snuff had the nonblack and nonartifact restriction. My bad.

I think a combination of Terminate and Chalice would be kinda neat, but it's hard to fit all that into the deck.
I run 2 Terminates and 4 Chalices in my list. Not that impossible.

dre4m

03-11-2009, 07:00 PM

Snuff out might dodge CB, it sucks against the creatures you're really scared of: Dreadnought, Tombstalker and Confidant (and sometimes Painter). Not being able to get rid of those seems enough reason for not playing it to me.

I'm not scared of any of those creatures: Dreadnought and Painter die to Grip (which I play MD), explosives, or any number of sideboard options. Tombstalker and Confidant are both absolute wimps compared to any of our guys, and I just try to race Stalker, or Wish for Chainer's Edict. I personally have never really been frightened by Bob. In fact, since Thresh versions with Bob generally run a low number of or zero Sower, I usually just let him stay out and kill them. Usually they use it to block a Goyf, though.
All of the creatures that you listed already have answers integrated into current builds of Aggro-Loam, with the possible exception of Painter, but he dies from our artifact hate anyways.
Plus, Snuff Out kills opposing Tarmogoyfs, Werebears, and every creature in the mirror.

Legacy

03-14-2009, 12:10 AM

Aggro_zombies

03-14-2009, 02:27 AM

Hey, did anyone else notice that all the day 2 chicago deck lists of aggro loam had burning wish and chalice main board?

Have the ones (including myself) who have been putting hand hate main with no burning wish and chalice of the void in the side been going at it all the wrong way?

I personally found that with the 1cc hand hate spells gave a smoother curve and tempo.
Where are you getting that information from?

Also, I tend to think that one-shot discard effects are much less devastating than persistent "discard" effects. The opponent can draw his way out of a bad discard spell, or can even dodge them with Brainstorm, but it's much harder to wiggle out of a Chalice at one.

Also, Burning Wish gives the deck flexibility, which is always good.

Legacy

03-14-2009, 10:28 AM

Where are you getting that information from?

I see you have already found it since you have posted in the thread. For anyone else it is found in the Tournament Announcements and Results section.

I will give chalice main board another shot, it is just that I found it slow. If you run chalice then you defiantly need burning wish. No discard = needing answers to resolved problems.

risethehandsofreason

03-14-2009, 11:45 AM

I believe that Chalice at 1 is the right call and that builds that opt for 1cc black discard spells instead are not nearly as powerful. Again, as a Threshold player, I have played against both quite a bit and I would much rather see a resolved Thoughtseize or Duress than a Chalice at 1. An early Chalice at 1 just ends me. I have to dig for a Predator or Grip to hit the Chalice so that I can play the Swords that has been sitting in my hand for several turns to hit the guy that is about to kill me. It is a terrible position to be in on my side of the table.

dre4m

03-14-2009, 12:29 PM

I see you have already found it since you have posted in the thread. For anyone else it is found in the Tournament Announcements and Results section.

I will give chalice main board another shot, it is just that I found it slow. If you run chalice then you defiantly need burning wish. No discard = needing answers to resolved problems.

Discard is simply not the way to go for Aggro-Loam.
Especially in an environment with Top, we need Chalice@1, every game, on turn 1 if possible. If you think that Chalice is slow, you are either not playing it for 1, or not playing Mox Diamond in your deck, both of which are egregiously bad decisions.
I know that some players have been singing the praises of Raven's Crime and Thoughtsieze, but wasting a card to make your opponent discard is really contrary to Aggro-Loam's strategy, which is dropping giant bombs that your opponent must answer, and doing so often. An early Thoughtsieze is useful in the combo matchups, but Chalice for one is infinitely more so. An early Thoughtsieze against Threshold is laughable to them, and they will recover from it very easily unless it is followed up by more aggressive discard, such as that found in decks like Eva Green, which is worthless in Aggro-Loam.
Chalice for 1 turns off something like 15 spells in the average Threshold decks, and is a game winner in many combo matchups. Burning Wish is indispensable in its utility, and should never be cut.
If the format stays the way it is, and we want to have a good game against the best deck (Thresh) then we need to keep Chalice.

georgjorge

03-14-2009, 08:51 PM

Apart from one guy, the Day 2 Aggro Loam decklists are almost exactly the same...:

2 Devastating Dreams
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Seismic Assault
0-2 Terminate

4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher
0-1 Terravore (!)

I assume Terravore was cut down to one or zero in anticipation of Relic or Crypt (which was played a lot to combat Dredge)...still, I wouldn't go down to less than six heavy hitters.

I'll take an even closer look at Chalice vs discard in my testing now that at least those decklists have all taken the other route than myself.

Also, one guy is playing three Putrefy maindeck, while another one has three Jund Charm in the side.

EDIT: I've already stated my arguments for spot discard a few times some pages back, but just to clear some things up...

If you think that Chalice is slow, you are either not playing it for 1, or not playing Mox Diamond in your deck, both of which are egregiously bad decisions.

...or you might just not draw Diamond every game (~55 percent chance), and then have no turn one play at all?

I know that some players have been singing the praises of Raven's Crime and Thoughtsieze, but wasting a card to make your opponent discard is really contrary to Aggro-Loam's strategy, which is dropping giant bombs that your opponent must answer, and doing so often.

Using that kind of logic, why should anyone play Explosives or Terminate in this deck? Bombs are one thing, but they need support cards as well, and that's the role of spot discard here.

Aggro_zombies

03-14-2009, 10:12 PM

Also, one guy is playing three Putrefy maindeck, while another one has three Jund Charm in the side.
IIRC two of the lists were sporting three Charms in the side.

Putrefy is an interesting option, I think, because it has an easier time dodging Counterbalance and can also take out random Crucibles or Chalices at two.

dre4m

03-14-2009, 10:40 PM

Putrefy is an interesting option, I think, because it has an easier time dodging Counterbalance and can also take out random Crucibles or Chalices at two.

Putrefy is much better against CB than Terminate, it's true... Maybe these would be worth trying over Grips in the main (in my build, at least). Apparently there must be something to Dark Confidant that I'm not seeing, because he was omnipresent in all of the Day 2 lists... Maybe someone could provide some personal experience regarding Bob versus another creature like Terravore.

herbig

03-15-2009, 02:48 PM

Highlights:
-Meeting Bigbear, Jander, and Herbig, who are all extremely cool people...

I knew this would happen. Bradley, why are you riding my fame?

Jujuhawk

03-15-2009, 07:43 PM

Apart from one guy, the Day 2 Aggro Loam decklists are almost exactly the same...:

2 Devastating Dreams
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Seismic Assault
0-2 Terminate

4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher
0-1 Terravore (!)

I assume Terravore was cut down to one or zero in anticipation of Relic or Crypt (which was played a lot to combat Dredge)...still, I wouldn't go down to less than six heavy hitters.

I'll take an even closer look at Chalice vs discard in my testing now that at least those decklists have all taken the other route than myself.

Also, one guy is playing three Putrefy maindeck, while another one has three Jund Charm in the side.

EDIT: I've already stated my arguments for spot discard a few times some pages back, but just to clear some things up...

...or you might just not draw Diamond every game (~55 percent chance), and then have no turn one play at all?

Using that kind of logic, why should anyone play Explosives or Terminate in this deck? Bombs are one thing, but they need support cards as well, and that's the role of spot discard here.

Terravore is bad because it's generally only insane when your engine is going, whereas crusher and goyf are good all the time pretty much.

Chalice is INSANE, and can just lock decks out. It blows out thresh (even without mox), combo, etc. One of your worst matchups is combo, and that makes it winnable.

Discard is awful in this deck (like, AWFUL). Your creatures are generally bigger than theirs, and your chalices help protect your dudes, and wasteland keeps their colored spells in check. I used to play 1 raven's crime in the board as the only discard spell, and now it's cut as I never fetched it in a lot of testing and playing. I cut DDreams maindeck also, as it's not needed in my meta (not alot of aggro, alot of counterspells).

CorpT

03-16-2009, 12:48 PM

Does anyone have any good life gain options? I've been having some trouble with Burn in my area. Maybe something I can wish for? Any help would be appreciated.

dre4m

03-16-2009, 01:17 PM

Does anyone have any good life gain options? I've been having some trouble with Burn in my area. Maybe something I can wish for? Any help would be appreciated.

The best option in a Burn-heavy meta is probably just to destroy all of their lands before they kill you, unfortunately... If you really want to go with life gain, it depends on whether you play white or not. White has a ton of good options for lifegain, but if you want to play green, you could play Spike Feeder, or sideboard Rejuvenate...
Seriously though, you will not win the attrition war against Burn, so just lay down a Chalice at 1 to turn off many of their spells and try to keep them off mana and win quickly.

adrieng

03-16-2009, 01:44 PM

I used to play 4 enlightend tutor and 1 warmth and graveyard/storm hate in sb. Actually if you resolve warmth turn2 or three and you take care of PoP game is over for them.
Against burn warmth says 1W whenever a player plays a red spell gain2 life.
But I have found it not to be good enough against tarmo-sligh.

jazzykat

03-16-2009, 02:09 PM

Does anyone have any good life gain options? I've been having some trouble with Burn in my area. Maybe something I can wish for? Any help would be appreciated.

Chalice =1 is really bad for burn.
Spike Feeder or Kitchen Finks are not good for them.

What I normally do is board in all 4 of my thorns and then resolve a DD for all of their land (preferably with a dude on the board). They normally have you down really low but you make them top deck all of their lands. The best part is that if you have chalice=1 and a Thorn out they can't cast creatures until they hit at least 2 lands (Keldon Marauders?) and their PoP and such cost 3.

Also, warmth is hillarious vs. burn and vs. Goyf Sligh your DD's should kill all of their dudes but Goyfs.

CorpT

03-16-2009, 02:30 PM

The best option in a Burn-heavy meta is probably just to destroy all of their lands before they kill you, unfortunately... If you really want to go with life gain, it depends on whether you play white or not. White has a ton of good options for lifegain, but if you want to play green, you could play Spike Feeder, or sideboard Rejuvenate...
Seriously though, you will not win the attrition war against Burn, so just lay down a Chalice at 1 to turn off many of their spells and try to keep them off mana and win quickly.

That's been my basic plan for awhile. Unfortunately, I've been getting run over too often trying that. I'm at about 40% with that strategy. Unfortunately, that isn't that great.

Cards I'm considering:
Fruition
Gerrard's Wisdom
Primal Command
Syphon Life

I'm not currently running white, but could look to splash it if it helped with burn. I have been seeing more and more of it lately and it's been rough to deal with in my meta.

dre4m

03-16-2009, 02:35 PM

That's been my basic plan for awhile. Unfortunately, I've been getting run over too often trying that. I'm at about 40% with that strategy. Unfortunately, that isn't that great.

Cards I'm considering:
Fruition
Gerrard's Wisdom
Primal Command
Syphon Life

I'm not currently running white, but could look to splash it if it helped with burn. I have been seeing more and more of it lately and it's been rough to deal with in my meta.

Unfortunately, all of those options are extremely slow and probably won't help you all that much. If your meta is burn-heavy and you're getting rolled, you probably will want to play a different deck: something with CounterTop in it. The only thing I could think of to combat burn would be to splash white and play some Ivory Mask-type effect and Loxodon Heirarch.
Otherwise, just maindeck some Ravenous Baloth and cross your fingers.

CorpT

03-16-2009, 02:37 PM

Unfortunately, all of those options are extremely slow and probably won't help you all that much. If your meta is burn-heavy and you're getting rolled, you probably will want to play a different deck: something with CounterTop in it. The only thing I could think of to combat burn would be to splash white and play some Ivory Mask-type effect and Loxodon Heirarch.
Otherwise, just maindeck some Ravenous Baloth and cross your fingers.

Kind of what I was afraid of. I might try something out tonight and see how it goes. The Thorns idea isn't bad, but I'm not sure if I have room for it in my board.

jazzykat

03-16-2009, 02:50 PM

Thorn is my combo hate, what is yours? You may be able to swap it.

voska

03-16-2009, 03:00 PM

You could probably use a Zuran Orb. Land a Devastating Dreams and sack whatever land you have to the orb. This could also prevent them from bolting your Crushers or even pump them up for a knockout punch. Perhaps a Jitte could help as well?

georgjorge

03-16-2009, 03:00 PM

Another guy who had a meta full of Burn played Zuran Orb, which seems like a really good card against that deck, and not slow at all. I'm not sure which other matchups it would come in against though.

CorpT

03-16-2009, 03:01 PM

Thorn is my combo hate, what is yours? You may be able to swap it.

Right now:
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
8 Wish targets

I might be moving some of the Grips main, so that might free up some slots.

jazzykat

03-16-2009, 04:26 PM

My first suggestion is tightening up your wish board and then see if you can't squeeze in a few thorns or something.

Jujuhawk

03-16-2009, 04:36 PM

Does anyone have any good life gain options? I've been having some trouble with Burn in my area. Maybe something I can wish for? Any help would be appreciated.

MD Chalice, zuran orb, a deck with counterbalance, DDreams, etc. Pretty sure chalice @ 1, then dreamsing away all their lands is pretty good :\.

HdH_Cthulhu

03-18-2009, 08:15 PM

Aggro_zombies

03-18-2009, 08:56 PM

With all list that run Dark Confidant and Countryside Crasher why isnt Senseis divining Top a autoinclude?
While top is a good card on its own in this decks it has so much synergies with all your creatures that like lands on the top of your library. Its also good with loam to know what you dredge away.
Being able to see what you're going to dredge away is totally irrelevant in this case because you can't save any of the cards you're going to dredge with Top. Basically, the most useful interaction Top has with LftL is allowing you to dredge it for free.

Top eats up mana in a deck that wants to spend as much mana as possible dredging and replaying LftL. Losing life to Bob is irrelevant when you can take much bigger chunks out of your opponent's life total by using your guys.

It just seems like a weak slot. Top isn't tremendously impressive this deck because you don't have Counterbalance but you do have cycling lands and Loam.

dre4m

03-18-2009, 09:11 PM

leander?

03-19-2009, 03:38 PM

Good evening,
just wanted to say that I had a pretty nice result with the deck last Sunday at a 37 people tournament in Maastricht (The Netherlands). In the swiss I went 4-1-1. Having one bye, one loss (Burn.deck), one draw (Domain Zoo) and three wins (Elves!, Elf Combo and Angel Stompy). In the top 8 I won the quarter finals (Eva Green), won the semi finals (MUC with white splash) and, in the end, won the finals against Rg Sligh.

I made a pretty long report, but it's in Dutch and i'm not really going to translate it all. Still, if anyone is interested in how a particualr match went, I will post that part for sure.

The list I ran was the following:

Mainboard (61)

1 Barbarian Ring
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Mountain
2 Forest
1 Bayou
1 Badlands
3 Taiga

4 Mox Diamond
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Terminate
2 Devastating Dreams
3 Life from the Loam
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Burning Wish
4 Dark Confidant
2 Seismic Assault
3 Countryside Crusher
3 Terravore

Sideboard (15)

1 Life from the Loam
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Shattering Spree
1 Reverent Silence
1 Unearth
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 Nostalgic Dreams (The only card I'm going to cut)
1 Worm Harvest
1 Terminate
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Krosan Grip

Even though I do play 61 cards, I am really satisfied with the list. The mainboard feels really settled.

Al-ucard

03-19-2009, 04:15 PM

I'm interested in the MUC matchup (I don't know how to play against counterspell decks). And you say that you will quit the nostalgic dreams, but I see that you have Worm harvest, it's so useful this card? I change it for nostalgic dreams in my last list, seems a nice card to search for against control decks...

Another question I have is that why are non-confidant, non-terravore and non-tarmogoyf lists? seems that the only common creature is crusher...

About the non-confidant lists, in my opinion seems too risky have only loam and cycle lands as a draw engine because there is so many graveyard hate.

Another point is, need this deck a creature removal like terminate or swords to plowshares? I tested last weekend a list with 3 terminates and I love them. I will like to have eternal witness MD for recurr them XD

Thoughts?

lavafrogg

03-19-2009, 10:48 PM

Solaran_X

03-19-2009, 10:55 PM

Ive read through the most of this forum and have to ask what is the advantage of red. I have long since cut burning wish from my builds and the dd/countryside crushers are the only red cards.

I have been experimenting with a white splash and a heavier black investment for vindicate and hymm. Where was it that we decided that heavy black was to be abandoned?

We can use deed to clear creature rushes, doran as our fat guy that isn't grave yard dependent and still have loam to do everything loam does. We do lose dreams, which is probably the hardest hit, but we do gain a somewhat decent combo matchup (i cant believe I just said that)... I dont know, I feel that something could be changed, a turn one hymm is very good against any deck and follow that with a doran or any other fat guy could spell gg to many decks.
You lose too much by cutting red. Let's face it...for the most part, Aggro-Loam is a pile of ridiculously bad cards that define synergy and work together like a well oiled machine.

Without red, you lose Countryside Crusher which thins your deck so you only draw business, makes Terravore bigger, and lets you use your Life from the Loam more effectively by getting your utility lands (Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, etc., etc.) into the graveyard faster.

Without red, you lose Devastating Dreams which is your main board sweeper of annoying blockers, makes Countryside Crusher and Terravore bigger, and eliminates basic lands on your opponent's side (since your Wastelands should be screwing up their nonbasics).

Without red, you lose Burning Wish (why you cut this, I can't understand) which gives you ridiculous versatility with sideboard targets like Worm Harvest, Shattering Spree, Reverent Silence, and additional Life from the Loam and Devastating Dreams.

Without red, you lose Shattering Spree. Which, let's face it...it wrecks Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Phyrexian Dreadnought in a way control cannot handle.

Aggro_zombies

03-20-2009, 01:21 AM

You lose too much by cutting red. Let's face it...for the most part, Aggro-Loam is a pile of ridiculously bad cards that define synergy and work together like a well oiled machine.

Without red, you lose Countryside Crusher which thins your deck so you only draw business, makes Terravore bigger, and lets you use your Life from the Loam more effectively by getting your utility lands (Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, etc., etc.) into the graveyard faster.

Without red, you lose Devastating Dreams which is your main board sweeper of annoying blockers, makes Countryside Crusher and Terravore bigger, and eliminates basic lands on your opponent's side (since your Wastelands should be screwing up their nonbasics).

Without red, you lose Burning Wish (why you cut this, I can't understand) which gives you ridiculous versatility with sideboard targets like Worm Harvest, Shattering Spree, Reverent Silence, and additional Life from the Loam and Devastating Dreams.

Without red, you lose Shattering Spree. Which, let's face it...it wrecks Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Phyrexian Dreadnought in a way control cannot handle.
Dreams is only good in some situations. I've never been fond of Mind Twisting myself for two mana only to bait a Force. Dreams is also a ridiculously bad topdeck if the opponent gets Counterbalance.

Dreams should be cut in CounterTop-heavy metagames, possibly for Eternal Witness or more threats.

Solaran_X

03-20-2009, 06:49 AM

Dreams is only good in some situations. I've never been fond of Mind Twisting myself for two mana only to bait a Force. Dreams is also a ridiculously bad topdeck if the opponent gets Counterbalance.

Dreams should be cut in CounterTop-heavy metagames, possibly for Eternal Witness or more threats.
That's part of the reason I run Vexing Shusher main deck over Tarmogoyf. Yes, I lose the Shusher to the Dreams when it resolves...but the Dreams resolves, and often is enough to swing the game in my experience.

Jujuhawk

03-20-2009, 08:30 AM

Dreams is only good in some situations. I've never been fond of Mind Twisting myself for two mana only to bait a Force. Dreams is also a ridiculously bad topdeck if the opponent gets Counterbalance.

Dreams should be cut in CounterTop-heavy metagames, possibly for Eternal Witness or more threats.

We cut them here for terminates. It's good against the mirror, and pretty much against anything (aggro loam is pretty big here).

greywolf0312

03-22-2009, 09:48 PM

That's been my basic plan for awhile. Unfortunately, I've been getting run over too often trying that. I'm at about 40% with that strategy. Unfortunately, that isn't that great.

Cards I'm considering:
Fruition
Gerrard's Wisdom
Primal Command
Syphon Life

I'm not currently running white, but could look to splash it if it helped with burn. I have been seeing more and more of it lately and it's been rough to deal with in my meta.

If your thinking of adding white, i am not to familiar with the match-ups but Wall of Reverence with the lifegain on turn 4 you should have a big goyf/crusher out and that should seal the game. It also has a big rear end so that should allow it to help with any creatures that your burn match ups are running. Only problems i see with it is that it is turn 4, does no swinging, and doesn't provide much synergy other than the life gain = power of a creature we control.

As a long shot...dark heart of the wood???

Elf_Ascetic

03-23-2009, 05:54 AM

Zuran Orb just seems better.

greywolf0312

03-23-2009, 10:29 AM

Yeah Zuran Orb does seem better then my idea of Dark Heart, it slipped my mind last night as to what other land sac--life gain cards there were.

zulander

03-25-2009, 08:19 PM

Other than hand disruption, how do you deal with NOThresh?

Aggro_zombies

03-26-2009, 03:06 AM

Other than hand disruption, how do you deal with NOThresh?
With what? I'm not familiar with that name.

from Cairo

03-26-2009, 04:18 AM

N(atural) O(rder) Thresh

Legacy

03-26-2009, 09:13 AM

Other than hand disruption, how do you deal with NOThresh?

Recurring wasteland would help keep them off there land they need to cast NO. Chalice @ 1 will slow them down. Otherwise I just race them. And when they tap their Progenitus sideways the first time I make sure they dont' get a second chance. (ie huge country side cursher or terravore for the win).

Other possibility would be fleshbag mauler. Dredge, dredge, dredge untill you get him in your grave then volraths stronghold him back. (assuming you only run 1 in your side board)

Jujuhawk

03-26-2009, 10:38 AM

Recurring wasteland would help keep them off there land they need to cast NO. Chalice @ 1 will slow them down. Otherwise I just race them. And when they tap their Progenitus sideways the first time I make sure they dont' get a second chance. (ie huge country side cursher or terravore for the win).

Other possibility would be fleshbag mauler. Dredge, dredge, dredge untill you get him in your grave then volraths stronghold him back. (assuming you only run 1 in your side board)

*Fleshbag Marauder

And that's an awful strategy. They'll usually have 2 dudes out, and digging for 2 one-ofs is an awkward strategy.

I run a CEdict in the board for wishing, but serving with big dudes is a good strat.

Al-ucard

03-26-2009, 02:30 PM

1 Perish in side.

Solaran_X

03-26-2009, 02:44 PM

Don't use Perish. It hurts your tempo as well. I'm looking into Virtue's Ruin. Same thing as Perish, but only hits white creatures.

CorpT

03-27-2009, 09:45 AM

Don't use Perish. It hurts your tempo as well. I'm looking into Virtue's Ruin. Same thing as Perish, but only hits white creatures.

And when they shuffle Progenitus back in, they can just NO it again with all of their green creatures?

I'd much rather kill my own Goyfs than let them recover quickly. Hurts our tempo? Huh? One goyf is not "tempo". It doesn't kill our Crusher or Bob. If you cast Terravore before playing Perish... I don't think tempo is what you need to be concerned with.

Perish is far superior to Virtue's Ruin because it is useful in other matchups. VR doesn't kill Thresh's Goyfs or Predators and I've used that on several occasions to pull out a win.

jazzykat

03-27-2009, 10:54 AM

Burning Wish --> Chainer's Edict is a decent solution to NO there is also a portal card that kills all white creatures, if you don't want to nuke your Tgoyf

leander?

03-27-2009, 11:22 AM

there is also a portal card that kills all white creatures, if you don't want to nuke your Tgoyf
That's Virtue's Ruin:wink:

Aggro_zombies

03-27-2009, 04:18 PM

Burning Wish --> Chainer's Edict is a decent solution to NO there is also a portal card that kills all white creatures, if you don't want to nuke your Tgoyf
They run a large number of green guys, more than most Threshold builds. How do you make sure you hit Progenitus and not the Tarmogoyf that's keeping him company? Or do you magically have :6::b::b::b: open in one turn?

Perish is probably the way to go. Terravore is overrated anyway and Crusher will almost always be superior to Goyf after a turn or two.

jazzykat

03-27-2009, 05:30 PM

They run a large number of green guys, more than most Threshold builds. How do you make sure you hit Progenitus and not the Tarmogoyf that's keeping him company? Or do you magically have :6::b::b::b: open in one turn?

Perish is probably the way to go. Terravore is overrated anyway and Crusher will almost always be superior to Goyf after a turn or two.

Well,it is an option not a terribly great option. This I will say though, if they wait too long, you will win by eating all of their lands and running them over with a huge dude.

BTW, I agree that Perish is a fantastic option vs. NoThresh and BG Survival/Natural Order. What do we do about Tombstalker? Play Wingsnare? The issue is that I don't want to stuff my wishboard with too many selective answers.

dre4m

03-27-2009, 10:57 PM

Well,it is an option not a terribly great option. This I will say though, if they wait too long, you will win by eating all of their lands and running them over with a huge dude.

BTW, I agree that Perish is a fantastic option vs. NoThresh and BG Survival/Natural Order. What do we do about Tombstalker? Play Wingsnare? The issue is that I don't want to stuff my wishboard with too many selective answers.

I suppose you could just board a Damnation and do one of the following:
1) Win with Seismic Assault.
2) Have Volrath's Stronghold in play.
3) Cross your fingers and rip like a pro.

nodahero

03-27-2009, 11:46 PM

I love dre4ms plans.... especially part 3... That plan is so good... I can do it almost at will...

In all honesty though Perish should be able to get the job done. You have to look at the odds as such... The odds they have another critter in play or that they can play quickly WHICH WE CANT ANSWER... then you have to figure the odds of them drawing the other to NO since most lists run 3 (I think)... and also consider the odds of them not drawing Progenitus... If you do the math... The odds are in our favor we can beat them with a Perish...

scrumdogg

03-28-2009, 10:17 AM

I ran 1x Perish, 2x Nature's Ruin & 1x Virtue's Ruin in the SB of Grb Aggro-Loam at the Gp...and didn't face a green creature until Round 9...but I was prepared for them... While I went 5-4, I had two matches won if I could have seen it at the time & the deck was extremely resilient. It has also been doing well locally & in testing. Having the ability to side in three hate cards while still being able to Burning Wish for one against powerful & popular decks and the ability to hate on two colors of creatures has been quite nice (won Game 2, Round 9 of the GP vs RGW Zoo by being able to whack FoD and Thoctar with Virtue's Ruin, for ex.). Probably an overload, but a nice overload when merited by conditions.

georgjorge

03-28-2009, 12:19 PM

from Cairo

03-28-2009, 10:49 PM

This is getting absurd. 3 Perish effects in a deck where two thirds of our beaters are green (or maybe you're not playing Terravore)...? I could seem them being useful against exactly one deck, Elves, but nothing else, because even if you can kill two or three of theirs along with your own 'Vore or Goyf, Terminate probably would have been just as good. And don't tell me that we can always Stronghold our creatures back (we run 0-1 Stronghold, and it still eats up our draw step, so if you win by Stronghold recursion while our opponent does nothing, something other than Perish would have won as well).

Alot of lists have cut Goyf or Terravore, running 4 Countryside Crusher, 4 Dark Confidant, 3-4 of one of the green creatures. Which reduces the number of your creatures that are hit by Perish. Also most lists are only running 11-12 creatures so it's not uncommon that your opponent will have more guys in play than you do, especially if trying to race you, so it can randomly catch people over extending.

I don't think Edict effects are the best replacement for Perish, because they are equally situational, its not uncommon that people have 2 or more threats out. It's better against Goblins or Dreadstill or something than Perish, but even still you're only going to get there worst guy, like midgame Lackeys or a Mishra's Factory or something. In the NO match ups, if someone is going for Progenitus they're likely going to leave a back up guy around, if they know your playing RGb. And Edict is still limited in what match ups its helpful in, maybe less so than Perish, I'm not really sure.

Damnation seems like the strongest choice for a number of reasons. 1) it's less situational, it's going to be good against Tribal, it fills the Perish roll of punishing overextending against much wider amount of decks. 2) It's going to hit the hard to answer permanents Dreadnought or Progenitus, in addition it gives you an answer to Flyers which I've also had issues with in the past when they are able to keep blockers up for CSC or w/e and race you with Enforcer or Tombstalker. 3) And at 4cc it's less susceptible to Counterbalance than the 2-3cc choices.

Its major downside is of coarse that it wipes your board, but I think this is something that if you're playing with the knowledge that this is your strategy, then it becomes alot easier to minimize the damage.

Also I think that Volrath's Stronghold is being undervalued a bit, there are definitely times in the late game where forcing your opponent to answer CSC or Terravore every turn is going to deplete their answers. And obviously with an active Loam the sacrificed draw becomes minimal when its one of 3 cards you're drawing a turn.

Brad Herbig

04-01-2009, 10:35 PM

I knew this would happen. Bradley, why are you riding my fame?
Haha score!

Oh and against NO Thresh, I would definitely stick with Damnation due to the parallel goodness against Gobs and Merfolk.

jazzykat

04-02-2009, 12:35 AM

Being a LONG TIME aggro-loam and winning my share of tournaments with it, I strongly approve of Damnation.

[QUOTE=from Cairo;332268]
Its major downside is of coarse that it wipes your board, but I think this is something that if you're playing with the knowledge that this is your strategy, then it becomes alot easier to minimize the damage.
/QUOTE]

While it is fair to point out the downside of Damnation the downside of not resolving Damanation is probably losing thus making the Damnation plan painfully acceptable.

Honestly, against the little swarm decks get a Terravore down stat and roll over them. If all else fails there is Damnation. I think the 2 biggest problem creatures as identified many times in this thread are Progenitus and Tombstalker. Damnation answers both. The cool part is that except against NO Thresh and TA you will not have to play around daze. My only issue is that you may be a titch too slow to answer a really fast Tombstalker but you can't win them all...

kroelai

04-02-2009, 06:48 AM

Chainer's Edict works really great against those MU.
Damnation seams to have three major downsides:
- you can't always produce the BB, Black is a little splash for confidant and stronghold so this can sometimes be hard.
- You lose your beaters
- It is an 6 mana investment if you want to deal with the creature in one turn.

It is true the chainer's edict wouldn't be strong if there is a small creature next to the Prog or stalker, but you could waste the Manland or Terminate / EE / DD that creature.

So i believe the Damnation is lategame stronger, but in the lategame your beaters will probably be a lot bigger.

Against Swarm aggro decks you play Devastating Dreams.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 11:12 AM

As far as an argument for Damnation, saying you can just EE, Terminate, Dreams away the other creature isn't good enough because now you need that card + Wish and mana to play removal, wish and edict which will end up being just as much as Wish->Damnation and relys on less cards. Also, Dreams isn't always viable against Tribal if you don't have the cards in hand or if they have Force to stop you (Merfolk, Meathooks etc.)

Also, having played a few games against it, how do we play vs. Tempo Thresh? I know that every other thresh incarnation is pretty simple for us and in testing this has proven true. However, against tempo, they fact that they can burn us out as well as dropping goose and then keeping use from resolving shit seems that make the matchup 50/50 at best. Is the some trick to this match that I am missing?

zulander

04-02-2009, 11:14 AM

I have started to run shusher's in my build due to the amount of blue running around. I also have 3 thoughtsieze 3 Ravens Crime to help disrupt an opponent. That's usually good enough to beat canadian thresh with.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 11:20 AM

Jujuhawk

04-02-2009, 11:25 AM

Chalice is pretty good against them, as is CEdict.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 12:33 PM

http://www.jpeg.cz/images/925_spellbreaker_behemoth_1_.jpg

Oh Hai Thar.

Seems really good here. Gives us resistance to Relic/Crypt as well as being good vs blue. I'll Take 4.

zulander

04-02-2009, 01:15 PM

I think shusher is better as it can:
Come down turn 1
Protects ALL of your spells

leander?

04-02-2009, 01:15 PM

Also, having played a few games against it, how do we play vs. Tempo Thresh? I know that every other thresh incarnation is pretty simple for us and in testing this has proven true. However, against tempo, they fact that they can burn us out as well as dropping goose and then keeping use from resolving shit seems that make the matchup 50/50 at best. Is the some trick to this match that I am missing?
Make. Chalice. Resolve. At any cost. Really. Just play some must counters like Crusher, Terravore, Assault and Wish and then try to resolve the Chalice. Best with one daze mana open and ofcourse preferably when your opponent is outtaped so he cant Spell Snare it. But this won't happen enough to just wait for it.
With Chalice, you'll probably win. Without, it's going to be very hard. Especially when you have sacrificed so much to have a chance to resolve it. But, in my opinion, you have no choice. You have to try it.

Seems really good here. Gives us resistance to Relic/Crypt as well as being good vs blue. I'll Take 4.
Do I smell some sarcasm there?

BTW, love Behemoth's flavor text, even though it sucks pretty much as a card.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 04:23 PM

Do I smell some sarcasm there?

Somewhat. I think it deserves testing as at worst it makes 'Vore and possibly Goyf uncounterable. At least i think so.Maybe I'm crazy. At worst, it'll suck up removal just like Shusher.

from Cairo

04-02-2009, 04:40 PM

Spellbreaker Behemoth.jpg

They should make one that gives creatures with power 5 or greater Shroud!~

Uncounterability seems pretty blah, since it doesn't effect Crusher and Terravore's 3cc anyway so they often evade the most played counter magic anyway, cept FoW. Not to mention Shusher fills a similar role often doesn't make the cut.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 04:52 PM

However, shusher doesn't beat face for 5 a turn

Aggro_zombies

04-02-2009, 05:13 PM

However, shusher doesn't beat face for 5 a turn
Paying four mana for a five power guy with an ability that is sometimes kinda relevant is probably worse than paying four mana for a five power guy that has an ability that's always relevant (http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=97199).

And we all know how playable that five power guy is.

PROTIP: if you're going to play a guy who usually has five power, paying two mana (http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=136142) for it is probably better than paying four.

zulander

04-02-2009, 05:55 PM

Is Shusher in the main/side really worth it? Against blue he's an All-Star but vs other things its a bit lackluster. Also, discard helps but vs Tempo Shusher just eats a bit lightning bolt.

Do you run Chalice in your build because 6 1cc and Chalice seems counterproductive.

No I don't run chalice. I thought that Shusher was only good in the thresh matchup but that's not true. The amount of decks that play blue or chalice are growing and shusher is great against both. Worse case scenario he's a bear, no big deal.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 06:28 PM

Paying four mana for a five power guy with an ability that is sometimes kinda relevant is probably worse than paying four mana for a five power guy that has an ability that's always relevant (http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=97199).

And we all know how playable that five power guy is.

PROTIP: if you're going to play a guy who usually has five power, paying two mana (http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=136142) for it is probably better than paying four.

However, Spellbreaker, when relevant, wins games. Slum might have a "always relevant" ability, but its ability is garbage.

And yeah, chalice seems less good when you can just make shit uncounterable with shusher.

Aggro_zombies

04-02-2009, 07:07 PM

However, Spellbreaker, when relevant, wins games. Slum might have a "always relevant" ability, but its ability is garbage.

And yeah, chalice seems less good when you can just make shit uncounterable with shusher.
For the last fucking time, CHALICE ISN'T IN HERE TO STOP COUNTERS. It stops Top from coming down to complete Counter-Top, but that's it as far as counters go. Chalice IS in this deck because it's a general kick in the nuts for any deck with a low curve, like...oh, I don't know, maybe Threshold (where it shuts off all of their draw and library manipulation, slowing them down enormously). It shuts off discard spells like Thoughtseize and Duress, stops mana rituals and mana artifacts out of combo, and prevents unpleasant things like Aether Vial from coming into play.

Shusher does not do any of that, and it dies to an awful lot of removal - including your own! - in the process.

Also, the Behemoth is a bad card, and you should feel bad for suggesting it. It might make your Tarmogoyfs and Terravores uncounterable in the late game, but it will always be your worse piece of fat relative to the amount of mana you have to pay to play it. Vexing Shusher is a narrow and poor answer. Giving it +3/+3 in exchange for not being able to protect Burning Wish, Life from the Loam, or removal just makes it worse.

EDIT: I'd also be willing to bet that a fast Tarmogoyf or Crusher will win you more games than the Behemoth in the face of counters. This deck has such a high density of must-counter crap in it that Behemoth is practically win-more against everything but some janky MUC build with 50% counterspells.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 08:43 PM

For the last fucking time, CHALICE ISN'T IN HERE TO STOP COUNTERS. It stops Top from coming down to complete Counter-Top, but that's it as far as counters go. Chalice IS in this deck because it's a general kick in the nuts for any deck with a low curve, like...oh, I don't know, maybe Threshold (where it shuts off all of their draw and library manipulation, slowing them down enormously). It shuts off discard spells like Thoughtseize and Duress, stops mana rituals and mana artifacts out of combo, and prevents unpleasant things like Aether Vial from coming into play.

Shusher does not do any of that, and it dies to an awful lot of removal - including your own! - in the process.

Also, the Behemoth is a bad card, and you should feel bad for suggesting it. It might make your Tarmogoyfs and Terravores uncounterable in the late game, but it will always be your worse piece of fat relative to the amount of mana you have to pay to play it. Vexing Shusher is a narrow and poor answer. Giving it +3/+3 in exchange for not being able to protect Burning Wish, Life from the Loam, or removal just makes it worse.

EDIT: I'd also be willing to bet that a fast Tarmogoyf or Crusher will win you more games than the Behemoth in the face of counters. This deck has such a high density of must-counter crap in it that Behemoth is practically win-more against everything but some janky MUC build with 50% counterspells.

I never implied that chalice was used to stop counters. What i was saying is that chalice and shusher both address problems with the matchup. Chalice stops cantrips and such while shusher allows you to actually land your big threats. I never claimed that they do the same thing, merely that shusher and chalice both help that matchup but shusher seems better as resolving threats>stopping manipulation

Further, the deck does have a shit ton of must counters, however, if they have the counters or can keep you off balance long enough to win, you still get wrecked and uncounterable helps that. And honestly, with how big relic and such is right now, im more than open to a decent threat that isnt grave dependant.

Aggro_zombies

04-02-2009, 09:05 PM

Further, the deck does have a shit ton of must counters, however, if they have the counters or can keep you off balance long enough to win, you still get wrecked and uncounterable helps that. And honestly, with how big relic and such is right now, im more than open to a decent threat that isnt grave dependant.
Countryside Crusher? Dark Confidant into more spells? Relic only kills Terravore, it isn't a permanent effect, and it can be easily played around if you know they have it.

Honestly, you're being too paranoid about Counterbalance and Threshold. What happens when they don't have the counters? What happens if you bait all their counters and land a bomb? You're assuming they get a god hand each and every time, which would obviously wreck you - but the reverse is also true. Besides, if you've practiced that matchup sufficiently, you'll know how to play around counters, so you shouldn't be walking into game-wrecking situations like that.

Brad Herbig

04-02-2009, 10:25 PM

Countryside Crusher? Dark Confidant into more spells? Relic only kills Terravore, it isn't a permanent effect, and it can be easily played around if you know they have it.

Honestly, you're being too paranoid about Counterbalance and Threshold. What happens when they don't have the counters? What happens if you bait all their counters and land a bomb? You're assuming they get a god hand each and every time, which would obviously wreck you - but the reverse is also true. Besides, if you've practiced that matchup sufficiently, you'll know how to play around counters, so you shouldn't be walking into game-wrecking situations like that.
Sorry, I've been wrecking him with Canadian Thresh lately, making him paranoid about such things.

Jeff Kruchkow

04-02-2009, 10:41 PM

Sorry, I've been wrecking him with Canadian Thresh lately, making him paranoid about such things.

While I have been losing to Temp Thresh, it may just be because Brad is a Sac and always does have the counter.

However, Confidant will land against temp thresh like 1/50 times at best.

While I will say that spellbreaker isnt great, it at least deserves testing.

And I'm less paraniod about counterbalance, its much easier to play around than burn/stifle/force/spell snare/etc. which do present big issues for the deck.

Seriously

04-03-2009, 12:27 AM

whats the latest deck list for this, I dont really want to sort through 50+ pages of bickering opinions on things. mws results dont count. thanks.

Aggro_zombies

04-03-2009, 12:31 AM

whats the latest deck list for this, I dont really want to sort through 50+ pages of bickering opinions on things. mws results dont count. thanks.
Look them up yourself on deckcheck.net. There's fairly high levels of similarity in the lists there.

Seriously

04-04-2009, 01:50 AM

so whats the gist of it then ? just big beefy creatures and burning off seismic ?

BullBar

04-04-2009, 09:22 AM

so whats the gist of it then ? just big beefy creatures and burning off seismic ?

No, that's just how you remove ther other guys lifepoints. I'm of the opinion that resolving a Devestating Dreams is how you usually win. Wrath of Geddon.

P.S. Shusher has been letting me resolve this when often it wouldn't. This has equaled win every time. Sure they sometimes have the removal for it, but I'm certain it ups our percentages.

P.S.S. Perish is the answer, but local resurgence in Death and Taxes and Sol. Confinement prison styles had me wishing for Anarchy. Progenitus copped splash damage. Just sayin...

zulander

04-04-2009, 11:47 AM

What is your removal of choice? Currently I'm running spitebellows/shriekmaw because of recursion. Other than terminate is there anything worth it out there?

Jujuhawk

04-04-2009, 02:19 PM

Explosives...

georgjorge

04-04-2009, 03:02 PM

Explosives are painfully slow and sometimes disadvantegous, but they hit every heavily played creature in the format except Tombstalker, plus Counterbalances, Vials, or if you're lucky a Relic. They're in my maindeck, and two Terminates in the side.

jazzykat

04-04-2009, 03:33 PM

Explosives...

+1

georgjorge

04-04-2009, 06:08 PM

I'm of the opinion that resolving a Devestating Dreams is how you usually win. Wrath of Geddon.

P.S. Shusher has been letting me resolve this when often it wouldn't. This has equaled win every time. Sure they sometimes have the removal for it, but I'm certain it ups our percentages.

Hmm, interesting. I board out Dreams against anything blue that is not Merfolk, because even if it resolves, the effect isn't strong enough to justify its problems. You need to successfully cast Loam at least once before you play it (if you want to gain an advantage off it), and take care of their counters (Shusher or discard or some bait like Chalice), and that's too slow for me (against Tempo Thresh in any case, but Balanced Thresh also can use that time to dig for answers or set up CBalance). I'd rather have threats that don't rely on other cards in those matchups...for reference, I sideboard something like

+1 Chalice (the fourth one)
+3 Krosan Grip
+2 Choke

-2 Tarmogoyf
-2 Dreams
-2 Life from the Loam (unless they appear to run on nonbasics only)

against Balanced Thresh, probably +1 Tarmogoyf -1 Confidant when on the draw, and

+2 Terminate
+1 Duress (the third one)
+1 Chalice

-2 Dreams
-2 Confidant

against Tempo Thresh, probably -2 Terminate +2 Choke when on the play (or maybe -4 Confidant and board in Choke and Terminate ? I'm not sure).

(You can criticise that strategy, but please avoid offhand comments like "lol Duress gets countered by Chalice" or "you are stupid if you board out Loam in Aggro Loam").

myselves

04-05-2009, 03:00 PM

(You can criticise that strategy, but please avoid offhand comments like "lol Duress gets countered by Chalice" or "you are stupid if you board out Loam in Aggro Loam").

It's kinda difficult without your latest list. Actually I would assume that you (still) play without Burning Wish, when you have the space to fit in Choke and Terminate (?).

Why should I ran Duress, when I could have proaktive Disruption or Removal instead? Do you run Thoughtseize, 2 Duress and 3 Chalice MD, which would provoke an offhand comment?
Why Terminate>Edict? You win against Swarmaggro anyway in most cases, and it's better against Thrash or Progenitus stuff.

I found DD still quite good against Thrash (either they have few[er] possibilities to disrupt your manabase, or they have few lands). And I would never play Terminate in my Board if I would have access to Thoughtseize instead of Duress.

zulander

04-05-2009, 07:00 PM

Here is the list that I've tested recently to the most success. I've made top 4 in the last two tournaments (although they're pretty small, like 12-14 people) but the tournaments are pretty competitive.

Mana: 27
4 Mox Diamond
3 Forgotten Cave
4 Wasteland
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Taiga
3 Badlands
1 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold

Creatures: 19
4 Goyf
3 Terravore
3 Shusher
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Dark Confidant
2 Magus of the Moon

Disruption/Engines: 14
4 Burning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
3 Thoughtseize
2 Ravens Crime
2 Seismic Assault

Sideboard: 15
4 Krosan Grip
1 Thoughtseize
1 Shattering Spree
2 Ravens Crime
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Reverant Silence
1 Chainers Edict
1 Virtue's Ruin
1 Spitebellows
1 Shriekmaw
1 Life from the Loam

Choices that you probably don't like:
No Chalice main
No Devastating Dreams main
Shusher Main?? Wtf?
Magus main?? WTF?

Here's the reason I've included and excluded those cards:
Chalice of the Void - I like chalice, just not here. I know it's good against combo and can shut off blue draw spells like brainstorm and ponder, but it doesn't help against the important cards in those decks like counters. The most important thing against landstill/thresh/dreadstill is to resolve your cards. Instead of shutting off their enablers that help them get those cards I'd rather shut off those cards. Sure shusher isn't great against combo, but the amount of combo in the current meta compared to decks with counters and chalice is worth playing susher over chalice.

Devastating Dreams- I'm sorry but this card sucks and it's too slow for me to try and play. Sure I miss out on the cute tricks with terravore and crusher, but I'm not really worried about that since crusher and terravore don't need to much help getting big on their own.

Having it in the board is nice though, and it helped me win a game a turn earlier than I would have. I like it in the board, not in the main

Inclusion of Shusher and Magus - Since I was unimpressed with chalice and D. Dreams I had to brainstorm what to put in their place. Shusher has great synergy with every card in this deck, and unless your opponent can remove him you don't have to worry about pesky counters. And if your opponent decides to kill him then chances are that's 1/4th of their creature kill gone on a 2/2 and not an 11/11 trampling vorre.

Magus was a bit different because it doesn't just do the same thing that D. Dreams does, but it's a great mana denier just like dreams is, the fact that both he and shusher can turn sideways is a major bonus over chalice and ddreams as well. Magus is so good that I've thought about adding a third in the main. Cutting chalice and dreams has also opened up about another 2 slots letting play some discard.

Now you might think that my combo matchup is bad, well frankly it is. But having 3 thoughtseize 2 ravens crime main has helped. Getting ravens crime against combo is so good because once you get it going they only have 1 card a turn, and that's the card that they draw. Bringing in the 4th thoughtseize and the 3rd ravens crime from the board brings the hand disruption to 7, and with the ability to burning wish --> ravens crime it's almost as if you're running 11 pieces of discard.

georgjorge

04-06-2009, 09:12 AM

Why should I ran Duress, when I could have proaktive Disruption or Removal instead?

If you're referring to Wish, then the answer is because it's cheaper by 2-3 mana. I've thought some about Wish vs Duress/Thoughtseize, but I find that with the speed of the format, I really need to start doing something relevant on turn one every game.

Do you run Thoughtseize, 2 Duress and 3 Chalice MD, which would provoke an offhand comment?

Yes, 3 Thoughtseize 2 Duress (or 4 Thoughtseize 1 Duress) and 3 Chalice main. I'm testing whether the spot discard and Chalice can be played alongside each other. It's problematic against slow control where Chalice doesn't have a big effect and they hold cards in hand long enough for your discard to matter. In most other matchups, either a resolved Chalice will give you such a huge advantage that you don't need your discard, or they won't have cards in hand after turn four anyway. If you draw both in your opening hand, discard gets played first anyway (and the chance of having Mox + Chalice + discard is <10%). But as I said, I'm still testing it.

I found DD still quite good against Thrash (either they have few[er] possibilities to disrupt your manabase, or they have few lands). And I would never play Terminate in my Board if I would have access to Thoughtseize instead of Duress.

Interesting. I'd like to hear what other experienced players have to say on DDreams vs Tempo Thresh, or blue-based Aggro in general.

@zulander: I've felt a bit the same about Dreams. There are no matchups except Tribal where Dreams is really good...yet time and time again there seems to come up a situation where either the Armageddon or the Wrath effect of Dreams seals the game for me, sometimes from a losing position. I'm reluctant to replace it with Wish, since the two mana to fetch it effectively is one less Loam or one less Goyf you can play before Dreams, but I can see why you would want to do that.

Is Magus really that good anymore ? I find that against lots of nonbasics, Wasteland supported by Loam is already enough. It's against basics that the mana denial doesn't work, and it seems that more and more decks can run off basics nowadays.