[Deck] Aggro Loam

On way home from Columbus. Was never mentally there all weekend after some personal things, so my play was definitely sloppy, but results are all disappointing.

Every one of my losses between gpts Friday, main event Saturday, and Sunday series was to dnt or shardless. Shardless wasn't surprising, it was just many games where they had t1 drs or suspend, and the tempo or card advantage set them up to a point where I was always on the back foot.

Dnt is more surprising, given that I definitely felt favored before this weekend, but I just was never hitting hands with more than two mana sources, and going 0-4 means there definitely is work I could have done play wise. Really not sure how I feel boarding out Chalices in this match up, still very likely swords are better, but again, I was just always on the back foot, even if they were wasteland locked. It seemed like every match needed to have a loam, and the p fire combo.

The most lack luster card all weekend was liliana, sure it's nice to make them sac, but in the above match ups when I'm already struggling to get an advantage, ticking up and discarding even better cards made her pretty much solely an edict + a single use maze of ith.

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If you are not liking lili, feel free to try out my list. Link in the sig. Not having to support her gives you a lot of cool stuff.

I think the recent STP addition has finally made my matchup against D&T favorable.

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Originally Posted by Nocley

Dnt is more surprising, given that I definitely felt favored before this weekend, but I just was never hitting hands with more than two mana sources, and going 0-4 means there definitely is work I could have done play wise. Really not sure how I feel boarding out Chalices in this match up, still very likely swords are better, but again, I was just always on the back foot, even if they were wasteland locked. It seemed like every match needed to have a loam, and the p fire combo.

The most lack luster card all weekend was liliana, sure it's nice to make them sac, but in the above match ups when I'm already struggling to get an advantage, ticking up and discarding even better cards made her pretty much solely an edict + a single use maze of ith.

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For D&T, I take out 4 Chalices and minimum 2 Mox Diamonds because of Flickerwisp alone. Also, even if you do set a Chalice on 1, it just doesn't hit that many relevant spells in their deck. The majority of their threats are all 2cc or above to begin with. I would also board out as many Lilianas as well because Phyrexian Revoker and the fact that forcing them to sac 1 creature doesn't really mean a lot when they're running like 20+ creatures. I usually just have 0-1 loam left in the deck as well since I am expecting Rest in Piece and waste locking them doesn't really mean much since you can't color screw them with Wastelands. This is also a matchup where you want a Pyroclasm type card in the sideboard since trading 1 for 1 with D&T is difficult if they have an active Mother of Runes. I also board out the Maze of Ith in this matchup since they can just Port it as well as Waste it which makes it a miserable card.

I think Liliana is still very good against them. On a blind T2 Revoker, they'll name Liliana because of how much havoc she can cause for them. She can also force their hand with Vial activations. She's not perfect because they do go so wide, but she can cause a lot of headaches for sure.

Likewise, Maze is just an additional tool against them that they have to answer. Often times I have to crawl back and stabilize in the mid/late game, and Maze is crucial for that to defend against their fliers. They may have Port, but we have Wasteland as well, and Loam to dig it back from their wastelands. Rest in Peace is the big problem card they bring in.

I board in:

1 Golgari Charm
3 Swords
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Tabernacle (sweeper of your choice)

Board out:

4 Chalice
1 Teeg
1 Scooze/Liliana

Hey everyone,
Congrats to everyone here who did well with the deck this past weekend. No top 8's unfortunately, but solid enough performances to keep the dream of 4c Loam alive. I've had excellent local results with the deck up to this point- 5 top 8s of a monthly open series in Seattle, a GPT win, etc. I'm not a pro by any means, but I'd like to think I'm an above average pilot of the deck by now.

Anywho, I competed in GP Columbus this weekend and went 9-6 after all was said and done. My first day two of a legacy GP was super exciting, and I was only one W away from a pro point. Had some real bummer losses to D&T and Shardless, but the former was due to a loose keep and the latter was due to him having the nuts. It's important to understand that even a good hand in this deck can't match up with the raw card advantage and big dumb vanilla beaters that Shardless employs. I ravaged the deck two times earlier in the tournament, so I felt ok with it. I didn't get paired against Burn or Belcher all weekend, which was great- both are really terrible matchups that give me the feeldbads like no other. I played really tight for the most part, and only punted away two matches- one against Storm and one against D&T (the aforementioned greedy keep on the draw with 1 land, 1 mox and 5 removal spells, only one of which was an STP)

Rather than dole out a report, I'll share a few thoughts on the card selection and matchups. My list was based on the 61 Nikolas shared a few pages back when folks were discussing Sneak and Show, with a couple minor swaps: I ran 1 Plateau in lieu of the 2nd Scrubland to have more access to red mana for Volcanic Fallout from the SB (in place of Pyroclasm; more on this later), and my fetch setup was 4 Windswept Heaths and 2 Verdant Catacombs. Here we go:

-The shift away from Leyline into an SB with 3 STP, 1 Crop rotation, etc. is everything we've needed to get the edge in creature matchups. Having that turn one removal spell to answer a Mom, Delver (which I never actually saw, but it's Delver- you can't ignore it) or opposing Deathrite Shaman was crucial to many of my wins. It's also the only way to deal with Goyf before you're getting whapped on by too many other guys for Liliana to dig you out. I would not have beaten Shardless twice and D&T once- both matches being sad, one-sided blowouts- without access to STP. Chalice isn't totally dead vs Shardless, but their plan is to run out as many threats as they can before you waste their manabase into oblivion and deploy Liliana or P Fire + Grove.

-Stealing wins with having the combo main got me out of many sticky situations- far more than the amount of times I mulliganed away hands that had Depths as one of the only "lands" in hand. It's best to not keep those even if you have a diamond and think it'll get you there, because you still have a chance of getting blown out and you've given away info about the combo. The mystery of whether or not you're running it is a valuable asset. The one Shardless player I lost to brought in a Submerge, but this is not common from what I know. They have NO answer to Marit Lage. They're trying to grind, but you don't have time for that so kill them in one turn and move on.

-For the above reason, Crop Rotation is an auto-include vs any combo deck for the obvious reason of closing out the game faster than them while they durdle with cantrips to find the kill, but also because Blood Moon is an obvious problem. It's a good card to hang on to when you're unsure of whether or not it's about to come down. I lost a match vs Painter in a grinder on Friday, but I did steal game two by Crop Rotating away a Grove for a basic Forest to fix my mana in response to a Blood Moon hitting the table.

-Volcanic Fallout won me three games that a Pyroclasm would not have. Vs D&T I was staring down a board state that was 1 Thalia, 2 Moms, a Crusader carrying a Jitte with 0 counters, and a Revoker on Knight. My manabase was fully developed and I had a handful of removal, but the instant speed of Fallout was backbreaking when a bunch of Mom activations were on the stack. I would've died the next turn. I also stole a game against Dredge with Fallout in a similar situation. I never had trouble getting to the double red it required.

-I only drew Slaughter Games once vs combo, and it sat in my hand while I swung away with a Teeg and a Thalia. Not entirely sold on this card. It seems too slow to interact with really fast combo decks. I get that it might be good vs miracles because you can name Entreat (their scariest threat) or StP or Terminus, but I'd rather have access to a cheaper form of interaction with a broader range of uses. What that is, I don't know. Considering either Maelstrom Pulse or Revoker here. Revoker can be swords, but it keeps them from finding it with Top, and I'm ok with it eating a removal spell and landing Teeg shortly after. I didn't play a single match vs Miracles all weekend, but I feel like we have enough tools to grind that one out without hoping to luck in to getting the Entreats out of their deck before they get one off. I play in the Pacific Northwest, which is home to A LOT of Miracles players, a handful of them being very proficient with the deck. I've learned a lot from them and have fared well in this matchup. Any good Miracles player knows an early Entreat for 2 or 3 can be all the pressure they need to close out the game before we can stabilize. Would Virtue's Ruin be too much of a reach here? It's a 3-drop which is a relatively weak spot for Counterbalance. It kills our Teeg and Knights, but there's a good chance you're winning if Teeg has stuck. It's also a complete blowout vs D&T, which we've all unanimously concluded is a matchup that looks good on paper but is actually very loseable if you're one removal spell short at that crucial moment.

-I played one of my last rounds on day 2 vs the mirror. The fellow I was paired against made Top 8 of the Legacy event at the SCG Invitational in Columbus a month ago, so he's no slouch. Turns out StP is very good here. I won game one by getting Loam online before him, but game two was closer at the onset. He deployed a Bob on his second turn that would've been a huge problem is I didn't Swords it right away. He had P Fire + Grove going on, but I had a Knight and a Crop Rotation that closed out the match very abruptly. I felt shitty about the lopsided nature of the game- it sucks watching your brethren be on the receiving end of a Loam lock and a Marit Lage token, respectively- but it gave me an even better feeling about the new sideboard. Seriously folks, put Swords in your board. It's one of the top 5 most-played Legacy cards for a reason.

-In regards to the argument of what amount of Thalia and Canonists should be in your board, I've been converted to 2 Thalia/0 Canonist camp, mainly because the addition of Swords shores up the Elves match-up well enough that Canonist doesn't seem necessary here. All it's doing is buying time until you burn through all their creatures and combo kill them. Canonist gets hit with rec sage, which they always seem to draw naturally after adding one more post-board. Her performance vs Storm and Infect is close enough to that of Canonist, plus she's better vs a lot more decks. I sided her in on the play vs Shardless and Stoneblade, and it was brutal for them. They're usually not aggressive enough to go all in on landing a threat and wastelanding you to put you on the back foot, so the upside of slowing down their cantrips and removal is usually greater than the downside of making your own removal a little slower. A lot of the times her and one well-timed Wasteland is GG. I wouldn't bring it in vs RUG or BUG Delver because it slows down those key removal spells, but it may be good vs Grixis, which is highly susceptible to getting their manabase screwed with. I need to test this. Thoughts?

-People are playing Sneak and Show again. This bothers me. I beat it once in a very close match that would not have gone my way without the combo, and lost to it once when he sided in Omniscience and got me with Cunning Wish into whatever card it is that costs 5UR, has a dragon on it, and searches for some shit. It was Japanese and I had no answers on board so I scooped. I also mulled to five on the play that game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-For whatever reason, some folks are keeping the Stoneblade dream alive. TNN is worrisome, but the "newer" (circa 2013) lists rely on Deathrite to compensate for running 0 basics. I get that these folks are hanging on to a deck they paid a lot of money for that's theoretically OK vs everything, but Loam is still bonkers vs them. I'd be worried if people reverted to the older, slower lists with basics, another Jace, and maybe the Intuition/Snap/Souls package, but that doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon. That being said, don't keep Chalice in vs them. Swords their Deathrites, Thoughtseize their bigger threats, waste their Tundras and go over the top with Marit Lage.

-Went 1-1 vs Dredge. On the same token that sideboarding unsearchable answers for Burn like Warmth and CoP: Red is a bad idea, I don't think bringing Leyline back for this matchup is really worth it. You have enough stuff to make this matchup winnable. It's a combo deck- sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't.

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All in all, a very fun weekend. I enjoy the intricacy and interaction of the deck, and know we have far more good matchups than bad if you know what you're doing and have the correct sideboard plan. But we all know this.

Any epic stories from this weekend? Did anyone successfully cast a Chandra, Flamecaller vs Miracles this weekend? What's your opinion on a substitution for Slaughter Games?

Good luck out there, Loamers!

-Pete Cottell

Went 12-3 at gp columbus, 39th place. Lost a Heartbreakers in Rd 15. I couldn't top 8 but I would have gotten 9th.

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Originally Posted by PetesMcskeets

Went 12-3 at gp columbus, 39th place. Lost a Heartbreakers in Rd 15. I couldn't top 8 but I would have gotten 9th.

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Well done! What were you running in the sideboard?

Went 10-5 at Columbus. The deck felt great. Having the DD + Thespian's Stage combo maindeck was very useful, although I did board it out a few times.

I ran 3 Leyline's and was happy with them, although they do take up lots of slots. They seem key to me in the mirror and against lands, dredge, reanimator, and storm (so much stuff to come out and it can really limit their optuons). I'll need to test more with crop + bog to see how the mirror and lands matchup feels without leyline.

Of my 5 losses, 3 were to Shardless. I also only played against shardless three times, so I had a 0% win percentage against them this weekend.

In my testing, it seemed that Shardless was a 50-50 matchup.

Generally, I sided like this:

+3 STP
+1 Toxic Deluge
+1 Arlinn Kord (she was good in testing and over the weekend I tried to resolve her four times, each time she ate a force of will)
+1 Garruk

-4 Chalice
-1 Teeg
-1 Karakas

In addition the above, on the play I often brought in two thoughtseize and took out two mox diamonds.

The SB plan seemed solid, but every time I just got buried in card advantage, even if I got the loam engine going. Should I be trying to keep 2 or 3 chalice to drop on zero to stop visions? It seems no as they have ways to remove it but I don't know.

Any tips or pointers to coverage of the matchup would be most appreciated.

Unfortunately I never played Miracles all weekend, which is a bit of a bummer. There was lots of grixis delver to feed ok though, so that was great.

The good news is the deck still seems excellently positioned and very powerful. The inclusion of STP in the board is a nice innovation and only makes the deck better.

Congrats on the finishes.

About the Slaughter games question:

Phyrexian revoker is live against Miracles. Usually in a bigger way than Slaughter games. The deck often relies on spinning top to make lands drops in the early game, and to find answers to other cards. You can name LED against Storm, and Petal/Belcher/Undercity Informer/etc against fast combo.
It also importantly shuts off S&S strongest card against us by naming Sneak Attack.

I am also interested in finding good sideboard cards for Shardless.

Edit: Preferably one we are not all already playing

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Originally Posted by apocolyps6

I am also interested in finding good sideboard cards for Shardless.

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Swords to plowshares.

I top 8'd this event yesterday:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post954456

My 2 losses were to Stoneforge decks - the deck that placed 1/2 during round 4 of Swiss, and the D&T deck that placed 3rd during the Top 8. It was my first time piloting the list, so I wasn't sure what typical matchups were like, but the Stoneforge-based decks seemed rough. Batterskull in particular was a pain. I understand we have Abrupt Decay for Jitte and random Sword of X&Ys, but it's possible I just couldn't find the right answers in time. Is it just me, or are these types of matchups unfavorable? I definitely want to find room for a Maelstrom Pulse in the board, as it's also a good answer to a resolved Jace.

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Originally Posted by PCottell

Well done! What were you running in the sideboard?

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2 Thalia
3 stp
1 toxic deluge
1 golgari charm
3 leyline of the void
1 phyrexian revoker
1 containment priest
2 thoughtseize
1 reclamation sage

Got 10-5 at GP Prague after starting 8-1 :(
I'll do a report of the event with the sb that I made since I have all written down.

I dropped after losing my first three rounds of Day 2 in Prague. Round 10 I cast three spells in the match due to mulligans/unfortunate draws. Round 11 at X-3 I lose to Ivan Floch playing Miracles - I hear he's a good control player. :tongue: Round 12 I face burn. Game one I mulligan and don't know what my opponent is on so keep an OK looking value hand, and quicky lose to his grip full of 3 damage spells. Game two I mulligan to six and find Chalice and Thalia, and my opponent draws all of his Price of Progress and Fireblast.

I am really torn about the Dark Depths combo in the main. It does give us outs to otherwise unwinnable games, but at the expense of consistent mana. Liliana often felt impossible to cast and I often drew a second copy with one festering in my hand.

I played a Maelstrom Pulse MB in one of the flex slots (some play 2x Sylvan Library, I only had one). It was pretty good. I definitely expected to face more Eldrazi decks than I did though. I also didn't play against anything oddball or unknown all weekend. My opponents were on:-

3x Miracles (Larsson, Strasky, Floch)
2x Storm
1x Shardless
1x Burn
1x 4c Delver
1x Eldrazi
1x Punishing Jund

Just dropping in my results / thoughts from the GPCOL weekend.
- I ran a list w/ 1x Deathrite, 2x Library, DD/Stage, 3 Lili
- Board was standard core and: 3x Leyline, 1 Thalia, 1 Priest, 1 Pyroclasm, 1 Chandra (never drew her, really wanted her against Jund / Miracles)
- Pyroclasm should have been Volcanic Fallout, and would have gotten me two additional G3 wins (BURG and D&T).

1. Was great to accidentally meet PCottell on Friday. Grind on!

2. I played abysmally over the weekend. Unclear if it was the awful travel / sleep schedule, or if I've really just fallen off in ability due to lack of reps since GPSEA last year.
Overall weekend record: 7-10

Grinder #1:
Lost to Storm (guessed wrong on G1 Chalice, then again on G2 Chalice)

Grinder #2:
Beat: Junk Pox, Mask-Naught
Lost to Elves (roommate, first loss to him in a LONG time)

Main Event:
Beat: Stoneblade, UR Delver
Lost to: Punishing Jund x2, BURG Delver

SSS:
Beat: UR Delver, Punishing Jund (!!!), Bye
Lost to: Lands, D&T, BURG Delver, Miracles, Infect

Evidence of sloppy play was in full effect on my part, and I don't believe that any of the losses are actually bad match-ups.
Elves: For some reason, I put the second chalice on 2 instead of dropping a second on 1. His Cavern let him slowly play through while I bricked.
Lands: I generally feel favored in this match-up, and felt that I was playing decently in this one, but Tireless Tracker got me low and a Molten Vortex finished me off. Made the mistake of dropping a Chalice on 2 before a Chalice on 1 in order to hold up StP against Lage. That got him to 35, but I then couldn't land a Chalice on 1 to prevent the Vortex from coming in. Maybe not a misplay, but it felt like it.
BURG Delver: Not clear where I went wrong as we had OUTSTANDING games.
Miracles: I didn't PFire down Jace. Just straight up forgot to.

Thoughts:
1. The only match in which I was able to beat Punishing Jund was the final match, which was the only match which didn't feature Bloodbraid Elf getting value against me.
- Do other folks struggle in this one? All of their removal lines up very well against us. I struggled to stick a Knight through Hymn / Thoughtseize / Abrupt Decay, and the rest of my dudes kept dying to bolts.
2. I need more reps. I went into this without getting nearly the amount of practice I needed to, and I could see situations which could easily have been managed with better preparation.
- Looks like I'll be "scheduling" time on MODO since getting to paper events doesn't work with my work schedule.

Overall? Had a blast, and am more excited than I was before to finish pimping this and playing it more.

For anyone who want to read how it went http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...836#post954836

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Originally Posted by pocari79

For D&T, I take out 4 Chalices and minimum 2 Mox Diamonds because of Flickerwisp alone. Also, even if you do set a Chalice on 1, it just doesn't hit that many relevant spells in their deck. The majority of their threats are all 2cc or above to begin with. I would also board out as many Lilianas as well because Phyrexian Revoker and the fact that forcing them to sac 1 creature doesn't really mean a lot when they're running like 20+ creatures. I usually just have 0-1 loam left in the deck as well since I am expecting Rest in Piece and waste locking them doesn't really mean much since you can't color screw them with Wastelands. This is also a matchup where you want a Pyroclasm type card in the sideboard since trading 1 for 1 with D&T is difficult if they have an active Mother of Runes. I also board out the Maze of Ith in this matchup since they can just Port it as well as Waste it which makes it a miserable card.

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After speaking with a very, very good DnT player, he said that on the play keeping in Chalice is strong as it offers the possibility of locking out their Vial, Mom, and STP. On the draw, though, taking out some number of them (he said 2) along with some number of Mox Diamonds is correct.

My point is, I don't think taking out all Chalices against DnT is correct.

I was on the 0 chalice plan for a while. I'm still mostly there.

Your friend is probably more used to playing Eldrazi, MUD, and stompy decks where T1 challice is a much more frequent occurrence They have enough ways to get 2 mana on turn 1 that they only need to mull to chalice. We need to have exactly chalice + mox to play one on turn 1, so having a 6+ card hand with a chalice in it is not that likely.

Chalice is always good against STP, but if we give the opponent a turn and they play mom/vial, then they don't need redundant copies of that card. We get value by making all of those potential draws blanks, but the second mom/vial is waay worse than the first anyway. That is why I think a turn 2 chalice is not good enough against the deck.

Then there is the argument that once they get to 3+ mana, they are able to flicker the chalice, and dump their 1drops, making any follow-up chalice basically useless.

Then there is the matter of the 1drops we bring in, 3 STP is auto include. So if we don't see mox+chalice in the opener and they lead with vial, we can play this 2drop that turns off 4 of their good cards and 3 of ours. Redundant and late chalices are also often dead draws because it is really hard to take time off to cast a 2 mana non-creature spell that does not interact with the board against D&T.

Maybe before STP there was an argument to keep 1-2 in, but in recent testing I've been beating D&T pretty easily. So much so that I'm strongly considering cutting Dread of Night (a while back I would have said that they are one of our worst matchups)


Edit: By the way, I've had some free time recently and I've started recording myself playing the deck. My goal is to play all the matchups people say are bad

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Originally Posted by CutthroatCasual

After speaking with a very, very good DnT player, he said that on the play keeping in Chalice is strong as it offers the possibility of locking out their Vial, Mom, and STP. On the draw, though, taking out some number of them (he said 2) along with some number of Mox Diamonds is correct.

My point is, I don't think taking out all Chalices against DnT is correct.

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In this matchup post board, your sideboard cards should be taking care of Vial and Mom already so you don't need the Chalice on 1 to get rid of those cards. There has been too many games where I play a turn 1 or 2 Chalice on 1 and then proceed to lose because they just keep on playing 2cc and 3cc threats and I couldn't deal with it because I was drawing useless Chalices.

This is just my preference though. For example, I feel like I'm the only person on this thread who dislikes to have the Dark Depths combo in the 75 and I've actually had better results when I'm not running the Dark Depths combo so I'm going to stick with what works for me. If you are having positive results with Chalices postboard in this match, then that's great. I'm only giving advice on what has worked best for me.

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Originally Posted by pocari79

In this matchup post board, your sideboard cards should be taking care of Vial and Mom already so you don't need the Chalice on 1 to get rid of those cards. There has been too many games where I play a turn 1 or 2 Chalice on 1 and then proceed to lose because they just keep on playing 2cc and 3cc threats and I couldn't deal with it because I was drawing useless Chalices.

This is just my preference though. For example, I feel like I'm the only person on this thread who dislikes to have the Dark Depths combo in the 75 and I've actually had better results when I'm not running the Dark Depths combo so I'm going to stick with what works for me. If you are having positive results with Chalices postboard in this match, then that's great. I'm only giving advice on what has worked best for me.

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I tend to agree with this. I lost to D&T in the top 8 of an event last weekend, and Chalice didn't do much if you couldn't land it turn 1. Even if/when you do land it for 1, they just start dropping Thalia/Stoneforge/Avenger/Crusader/Flicker/etc, as pocari stated.

I'm not sold on the Depths package in the main or board. It won me a single game in the tournament, but other than that, I was torn on siding it in vs siding out Chalice.