[Deck] Aggro Loam

Sorry, was typing in a rush. Meant to say we are favored to draw it in the opener rather than not. Tho 4 Leylines is 53% over 2 games(right?) and 3 Leylines is 38% which is probably significant.

IDK, I feel like 4 slots is too much to devote to any one strategy. Blue decks have access to brainstorm/ponder so they can play a smaller number of trump cards, and most non-blue decks are either linear or have clear strengths and weaknesses. Meanwhile we are kind of a jack-of-all-trades so we end up in this situation where you want cards for every way that you can lose the game (Leyline for GY combo, canonist for Storm combo, Deluge for decks that out-creature you, Plow for decks that out-efficiency you, walkers for decks that outgrind you). Decks like Dragon stompy only lose a couple of ways, so they only can play 4 Leyline, 4 Ensnaring Bridge, 4 Sudden Shock, 3Volcanic Fallout or something of the sort. We have to take all comers, and can't really advance a proactive gameplan through whatever the opponent is doing.

Does anyone else feel similarly?

Since a long time this deck plays 3 Leylines. I think 3 is the number if you do not want commit everything to gravehate but still want a reasonable chance to draw it.

SB slots are worth a lot and by playing 3 Leylines you have one more spot.

If people want to play 4 they should play 4. But honestly, 5-10% more or less, you probably won't really play enough SB games to really feel that difference.

In my mirror match at MKM Series my opponent boarded 4 Leylines against me, I boarded my 3 against him.

In both SB games I had T1 Leyline, he never saw one...

Statistics is real, so do not give too much about numbers...

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Originally Posted by Stuhl

Since a long time this deck plays 3 Leylines. I think 3 is the number if you do not want commit everything to gravehate but still want a reasonable chance to draw it.

SB slots are worth a lot and by playing 3 Leylines you have one more spot.

If people want to play 4 they should play 4. But honestly, 5-10% more or less, you probably won't really play enough SB games to really feel that difference.

In my mirror match at GP my opponent boarded 4 Leylines against me, I boarded my 3 against him.

In both SB games I had T1 Leyline, he never saw one...

Statistics is real, so do not give too much about numbers...

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Speaking of numbers what is up with the 2 hymn to tourach's in your latest 5-0 list? Did you find that brutality's psuedo duress mode is not good enough?

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Originally Posted by CptHaddock

Speaking of numbers what is up with the 2 hymn to tourach's in your latest 5-0 list? Did you find that brutality's psuedo duress mode is not good enough?

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Don't know. Just experimenting with that one slot. It feels like a lot of games are about value these days. I 2for1ed myself very often with Brutality. Like, opponent brainstorming in response and only having non-instant/sorcery cards in hand. Not hitting Planeswalker, artifacts, enchantments really sucks sometimes... :(

But I think I'll just go for the 2nd Library main again.

For the SB probably Planeswalkers are a good thing again. Lots of BUG piles and the new Miracles deck is real, too.

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Originally Posted by Stuhl

Don't know. Just experimenting with that one slot. It feels like a lot of games are about value these days. I 2for1ed myself very often with Brutality. Like, opponent brainstorming in response and only having non-instant/sorcery cards in hand. Not hitting Planeswalker, artifacts, enchantments really sucks sometimes... :(

But I think I'll just go for the 2nd Library main again.

For the SB probably Planeswalkers are a good thing again. Lots of BUG piles and the new Miracles deck is real, too.

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Agreed on all accounts. I've been looking for that value cards in the same spot. The 2 I ended up liking the most were Grim Flayer and Brutality, I kept running into UR delver online so I stuck with Brutality. I cut my walkers initially but i'm back to Garruk and possibly Chandra if I can find some room in my sideboard. :frown:

Collective Brutality exists as burn hate. You grab a burn spell, kill a weenie, and gain 2 by trading the two worst cards in your hand. The net result of this transaction is the burn deck being severely depleted of resources, which they can't easily rearm.

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Originally Posted by Richard Arschmann

Collective Brutality exists as burn hate. You grab a burn spell, kill a weenie, and gain 2 by trading the two worst cards in your hand. The net result of this transaction is the burn deck being severely depleted of resources, which they can't easily rearm.

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It's also a removal spell that isn't dead in the SnT, ANT, or Reanimator match ups. Escalation is always optional.

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Of course, Brutality is great. I played one main, one side a few weeks ago. However, I had a lot of situations recently in which I 2for1ed myself (kill Shaman but didn't get a card to discard, due to Brainstorm). Not sure if the card still has MD potential.

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If you've got a clean first mode and haven't got cards that you can pitch for value (loam/pfire/land), you probably shouldn't be escalating for the reasons you've stated.

If you're able to leverage the escalation cost regardless of a brainstorm messing with the second mode, you still benefit from some information and it isn't a clean 2for1. The card has some pretty neat potential, you just shouldn't be opening yourself to be blown out by it.

Hey there, I top 8'd the quest for power event which had 131 people. I wasn't playing a list out of the ordinary, somehow managed to avoid delver the entire day. You can watch me get slaughtered by my opponent who was on mono answers in the top 8 on the snapcasters stream. I did keep a significant number of 7s which is extremely rare based on my my MTGO experience. :wink:

4 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Collective Brutality
2 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Tranquil Thicket
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Punishing Fire
1 Karakas
4 Mox Diamond
1 Forest
1 Badlands
1 Barren Moor
2 Bayou
1 Cabal Pit
1 Sylvan Library
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Maze of Ith
1 Savannah
1 Scrubland
1 Taiga
2 Life from the Loam
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Windswept Heath
4 Dark Confidant
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Toxic Deluge

3 Leyline of the Void
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Golgari Charm
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Containment Priest
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Collective Brutality

Matches:
2-0 TES
2-0 W/r Eldrazi
1-2 Deathblade
2-1 D&T
2-1 Maverick
2-0 Bant Stoneblade
2-1 Dredge
0-2 Waterfalls (4c Cascade)

Just watched your game and ouch waterfalls guy had everything. During game two do you remember why you didnt wastland him when he was on 3 lands, tho that probably would not have made a difference.

Also was the deathblade deck you lost to the one with 4 TNN cause I have been having trouble with that lately.

Congrats on your top 8!!

Nice to see decent results with the deck, we had the stream on in the background while I was getting my butt kicked in by "miracles" in a testing session.

Though I was testing the Tireless Tracker + Tomb engine proposed a few pages back, but with some weird cuts to slot in Lilianas still. Wasn't too impressed by it - I'm going to do some testing with 1 Tomb and 1 Tracker as miser's whatever for the next few days, and then if not sold go back to stock for the GP. Tracker is insane, but the deck is too overloaded on 3 drops, and the trackers +tombs really hurt your consistency.

Few comments though:

Flex Slots - In 2 maindeck flex slots, right now I've been running 1 Hymn and 1 Blessed Alliance. Both have been great, as opposed to Collective Brutality or 3 drops like Deluge. At the very least, Blessed Alliance is something I prefer over Diabolic Edict in most cases to handle TNN-Depths, with some bonus fun against other matchups. Both of these may just end up being Hymns though, but that tempts me to end up running an Urborg again.

SB Against Blue Decks - Does anyone feel like we're having too much stuff that we want to board out against Delver decks (and the "Miracles" lists)? I'm on 1 choke right now but because my two flex slots are already kind of preboarded against them, I feel like I could be doing more against them? Is it that wrong to go back to say, Thalia in the SB hatebear spot over canonist?

Walker in the SB - Is anyone still actually excited for Garruk Relentless SB? I feel like the most common thing I want against blade/shardless/etc decks is something to kill a leovold, but still live after. Which has led me to Chandra, Torch of Defiance or Ajani Vengeant, but neither of these sound that great against the UW/Miracles lists where Garruk is indeed the nuts. Is there just not enough of those decks to warrant them over Chandra? I don't think there's room for 2 4-mana walkers in the SB.

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Originally Posted by Digitend89

Just watched your game and ouch waterfalls guy had everything. During game two do you remember why you didnt wastland him when he was on 3 lands, tho that probably would not have made a difference.

Also was the deathblade deck you lost to the one with 4 TNN cause I have been having trouble with that lately.

Congrats on your top 8!!

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Thanks!

Nope it was actual deathblade i.e. esper stoneblade splashing for drs. The games were super close, I mostly just kept him off mana but lost because I couldn't find a decay/rec sage for a Jitte with 10 counters on it. I was thinking about the wasteland play but the turn before he had brainstormed so I assumed that he would have been able to find another land. Maybe it was right since it forces him to wait to find a land before casting the shardless agent. I feel like the matchup isn't as bad as it looked in that match, game 1 we have fires + loam/wasteland which hit everything in their deck. Maybe I should have mulliganed more aggressively in game 2. I just played the game like he was a shardless deck that was splashing red.

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Originally Posted by Nocley

Nice to see decent results with the deck, we had the stream on in the background while I was getting my butt kicked in by "miracles" in a testing session.

Though I was testing the Tireless Tracker + Tomb engine proposed a few pages back, but with some weird cuts to slot in Lilianas still. Wasn't too impressed by it - I'm going to do some testing with 1 Tomb and 1 Tracker as miser's whatever for the next few days, and then if not sold go back to stock for the GP. Tracker is insane, but the deck is too overloaded on 3 drops, and the trackers +tombs really hurt your consistency.

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I'm not a big fan of the lists that were posted on the last couple of pages. I can see an argument for not playing Liliana and depending on Deluge for a cleaner manabase but playing sol lands just seems abymsal. Tezz can sometimes do it because of the number of mana rocks they play and even then it's still shaky. I think that the "stock" list is really well positioned right now and you have a bunch of flex slots to adjust it to your metagame. Imo deluge should 100% be played in the main currently.

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Originally Posted by Nocley

SB Against Blue Decks - Does anyone feel like we're having too much stuff that we want to board out against Delver decks (and the "Miracles" lists)? I'm on 1 choke right now but because my two flex slots are already kind of preboarded against them, I feel like I could be doing more against them? Is it that wrong to go back to say, Thalia in the SB hatebear spot over canonist?

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What's your list looking like? So if we're talking about the stock list I don't think so. In any non RUG/UR delver matchups I board out my chalices and teegs and basically bring in more board wipes/removal. I normally do the following:

Grixis:
-4 Chalice, -1 Teeg
+1 Charm, +2 Swords, +1 Deluge, +1 Ghost Quarter, +1 Brutality

BUG:
-4 Chalice, -1 Teeg, -1 Loam/GSZ
+2 Swords, +1 Deluge, +1 Ghost Quarter, +1 Brutality, +1 Garruk

Just based on the stock list it's a favorable matchup just on the back of running 6+ removal spells and kotr. Thalia is completely defensible as well, i'm not really sure if I would bring her in against delver though.

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Originally Posted by Nocley

Walker in the SB - Is anyone still actually excited for Garruk Relentless SB? I feel like the most common thing I want against blade/shardless/etc decks is something to kill a leovold, but still live after. Which has led me to Chandra, Torch of Defiance or Ajani Vengeant, but neither of these sound that great against the UW/Miracles lists where Garruk is indeed the nuts. Is there just not enough of those decks to warrant them over Chandra? I don't think there's room for 2 4-mana walkers in the SB.

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I think the reason to play Garruk over the other walkers is just the manacost. It's significantly easier to a single G walker than RR or RW, I think all the others are still playable.

I did some testing with tracker, but chickened out of the list I posted. I tested 1 tomb 1 tracker over a flex land slot and a bob.

Tomb always did a bunch of damage to me. Usually the advantage it gave also saved me dmg, but I didn't test against delver and the like, where it is probably even worse. Even in nut hands like tomb + chalice I was only really making use of tomb on turn 1.

Tracker.... Well the only time I ever zenithed for him was when opponent was representing decay and I had a land to play. And any tracker board means my mana is really taxed.

I played an EE platinum event with the flex slot as a 7th fetch and the bob slot as a bob and that felt quite good. The next thing to try might be maining the 2 deluges over pridemage and something else. But I'm just as likely to stick to this configuration for the GP

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Originally Posted by CptHaddock

Grixis:
-4 Chalice, -1 Teeg
+1 Charm, +2 Swords, +1 Deluge, +1 Ghost Quarter, +1 Brutality

Just based on the stock list it's a favorable matchup just on the back of running 6+ removal spells and kotr. Thalia is completely defensible as well, i'm not really sure if I would bring her in against delver though.

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Coming from the Grixis side of this, I'd say definitely keep Chalice in, and least on the play. No abrupt decays means the deck can get completely wrecked by it. The amount of artifact hate is pretty skimpy in the board these days, usually just 1 Ancient Grudge. Shutting off Deathrite/Delver/all the cantrips that find Grudge is huge. If you can T1 or T2 chalice against grixis and get it to stick, you're probably like 90% to win.

I'd also board in Thalia if you had one, she makes Young Pyromancer look embarrassing (more so than his stupid haircut and Chandra cosplay already do).

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Originally Posted by Ephemeron

Coming from the Grixis side of this, I'd say definitely keep Chalice in, and least on the play. No abrupt decays means the deck can get completely wrecked by it. The amount of artifact hate is pretty skimpy in the board these days, usually just 1 Ancient Grudge. Shutting off Deathrite/Delver/all the cantrips that find Grudge is huge. If you can T1 or T2 chalice against grixis and get it to stick, you're probably like 90% to win.

I'd also board in Thalia if you had one, she makes Young Pyromancer look embarrassing (more so than his stupid haircut and Chandra cosplay already do).

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While I don't know about Thalia (again, expensive removal on our end), I don't think I'd ever board out Chalice against Grixis Delver. I play fairly frequently against a local guy on Grixis Delver, and Chalice is a house against him pre and post board.

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Originally Posted by Ephemeron

Coming from the Grixis side of this, I'd say definitely keep Chalice in, and least on the play. No abrupt decays means the deck can get completely wrecked by it. The amount of artifact hate is pretty skimpy in the board these days, usually just 1 Ancient Grudge. Shutting off Deathrite/Delver/all the cantrips that find Grudge is huge. If you can T1 or T2 chalice against grixis and get it to stick, you're probably like 90% to win.

I'd also board in Thalia if you had one, she makes Young Pyromancer look embarrassing (more so than his stupid haircut and Chandra cosplay already do).

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I can see keeping maybe 2 in on the play but in general I don't really like them. Don't get me wrong i've had games where I chalice on 1 and my opponent just concedes but in general they have so many different angles of attacks it's just hard to shut the deck down. Postboard I would rather have cards that are good in most stages of the game and not just dead draws later on. I don't really like Thalia either since she taxes your removal spells and Grixis can frequently just negate the taxes with DRS. I can see bringing her in against RUG or UR though.

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Originally Posted by CptHaddock

I can see keeping maybe 2 in on the play but in general I don't really like them. Don't get me wrong i've had games where I chalice on 1 and my opponent just concedes but in general they have so many different angles of attacks it's just hard to shut the deck down. Postboard I would rather have cards that are good in most stages of the game and not just dead draws later on. I don't really like Thalia either since she taxes your removal spells and Grixis can frequently just negate the taxes with DRS. I can see bringing her in against RUG or UR though.

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If you have a spell powerful enough that it forces the opponent to concede on the spot, I don't think it's wise to board it out. I don't know why you think it's a dead draw later, either; it's not like a late game Daze or Spell Pierce. Slamming that late in the game during the topdeck war has won me several games. Shutting off their ability to toss Bolts at the dome is critical.

*Edit
Additionally, boarding out Chalices doesn't mean that the Delver player will board out Grudges; they'll just assume you haven't drawn one. In that case they might start pointing those Grudges at your Diamonds, and THAT is how I lose games against Delver: when my mana is unstable.

When are you guys typically bringing in ghost quarter?