yeah that's probably true, we'll see. But thanks :)
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yeah that's probably true, we'll see. But thanks :)
I agree with the common issues you guys are bringing up with this deck. I did have moderate success against combo, but it required some severe maindeck alterations. If you go back a few pages, I did pretty well at a major tournament by adding 3 maindeck Extirpate and 2 Lilliana to help against storm, reanimator, and dredge. But that is probably not the ideal place to take the deck. Running maindeck discard is an option, but it seems very risky to mess with the balance of the deck too much with cards that suck to get dredged away.
I've been slowly putting together a RUG version of this, though it is still in infancy. It seems like there are several potential ways to go with it, but I'm having a hard time deciding which works best.
First off, by cutting black, the biggest loss is Dark Confidant. There are plenty of other quality black cards, but Confidant is the #1 reason for Jund lists instead of just R/G. So we'll (probably) need some other form of card advantage to make up for this loss.
Additionally, white and black are the best colors for creature removal. By not running either, we are asking for trouble against fatties like Goyf and KotR. Red helps keep smaller dudes down quite well, but right now it looks like the best answer for big guys is to just "go bigger" with Crusher or a matching Goyf.
Some of the ideas I've been tossing around are a very minor inclusion for Daze (Mental Misstep would have been great probably), Brainstorm, and maybe Spell Pierce or Spell Snare?? I don't think that we'd be able to build this deck properly with enough blue cards for FoW so I don't even really want to try it.
We can also go with Snapcaster Mage (cutting Daze since you can't pay alternate cost), Brainstorm, Spell Pierce, Spell Snare? Snapcaster can be amazing, but then you have to consider the possible cards you'd be getting back with him. I imagine you can see Brainstorm, a counter, and your choice of burn spell. Sure he can get Loam back, but I feel like that's a pretty poor choice.
I'll keep working on this (instead of finals like I should be) and maybe we can come up with something that works. I feel it's important to keep the deck aggressive, as it is currently capable of just winning the game over a turn and a half out of nowhere which I love. However, it seems that the bigger the blue splash becomes, the less aggressive the deck becomes. I don't know if it's actually going to be able to work, do any of you have experience with trying to build it?
I agree. Punishing Fires have been awesome when I played with them. Plus being able to dredge back a life from the loam and get back a punishing fire in the same turn was crucial during some games.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies
In my opinion of the colors, black (and white) contribute the least and should be the first cut.
Assume black is gone. The manabase becomes more consistent and resilient. Space becomes available to add more redundancy in our cards' effects. First, we get more mana accelerates by adding Birds, always good for a deck as mana intensive as this. Second, we get more fat creatures in Terravore. Third, we maintain a diverse answer in Beast Within, offering the same value as Maelstrom Pulse, with a negligible drawback thanks to more fat creatures, and the already present Seismic Assualt and Devastating Dreams. We also don't lose our card advantage by replacing Dark Confidant with Sylvan Library, which has the benefit of never hurting us if we don't want it to. It's also harder to kill and can offer more cards if needed that turn.
Here's what I'm thinking as a starting point;
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
3 Mountain
2 Forest
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Wasteland
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Terravore
4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
4 Beast Within
3 Devastating Dreams
2 Sylvan Library
So what's missing from original Aggro Loam?
Dark Confidant
Maelstrom Pulse
Engineered Explosives
Volrath's Stronghold
That's it. I don't think any of those card's effects are irreplaceable, do you?
There are still cards to be considered too. Grim Lavamancer, Lightning Bolt, Burning Wish, etc. I think RG is a viable option that will run more smoothly than RGb or RGbw.
Basically, if Beast Within turns out to be terrible, then this deck may have trouble. Has a version like this been tried before?
I think there have been people who floated the idea of RG in the past, but I don't know if that ever went anywhere.
Looking at your list specifically:
- The complete lack of Punishing Fires seems suspect to me. Presumably, it would be easier to support in a two-color deck because you can build your manabase such that it would be easy to produce lots of red mana every turn, and Fires is very good at controlling the early game against creature decks.
- Maindeck Dreams seems very sketchy in blue.format, especially when you don't have Stronghold to recover creatures you discard or kill with it.
- Birds seems bad. You have no way to make use of them after the first couple of turns and they will be dead topdecks later in the game.
- Your curve seems too high. I know this is why you added Birds, but I would rather cut Birds and lower the curve by adding Bolts and Punishing Fires than run Birds and risk getting stuck with two lands and a hand of threes because my opponent saw my turn one BoP and hit it with Punishing Fires/Bolt/whatever.
- Beast Within seems suspect. I would not want to give my opponent a 3/3 unless I was already winning; the 3/3 is a fine chump against most of your guys, and you're kind of creature-light as it is, potentially allowing aggro opponents to race you. And no, Dreams doesn't cut it here.
I think the only reason to go RG instead of three colors is to make the deck cheaper to build. Sylvan Library is not a substitute for Dark Confidant, and you lose a bunch of good sideboard options when you limit yourself to two colors. I mean, it's certainly possible to go this route, but...
Bob: Card Advantage
Library: Card Selection
If you're running Bob+Library, just run Mirri's Guile instead.
Honestly people, what's so hard to understand? Bob =/= Library =/= Guile. Bob is one of the best cards in the deck. He flips 0's over 50% of the time. That's pretty fucking good. Library lets you Dredge up to THREE times for free, per turn.
More cards is not a bad thing. Sure, cutting Black limits your Sideboard and gives you Swords, but you LOSE Bob. I'd rather stretch to 4 colours and run black just for Bob and sideboard rather than cut Black.
-Matt
All excellent points, but what does Bob do against a turn 2 or 3 kill? I don't think that anybody is arguing against the usefulness and amazing power of Bob, we're just trying to find answers to the major problems of the deck. I do think that 4 colors is a realistic option, but it needs to really be worth it. I don't think that StP alone is worth the hassle of 4 colors, but KotR probably is. However, neither of those cards help against the worst thing this deck can get paired up against: combo!Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
I don't know what to do honestly. This is probably in my top 3 favorite decks of all time to play, but it frustrates me to have such a large near-auto-loss matchup. All I'm doing is trying to figure out some way for Aggro-Loam to shore up it's weak points without giving up too much from it's strong points.
Turn 1 or 2 Bob with 31-ish 0cmc cards is amazing and will win you the game alone if uncontested for 3 turns or so. But not if he gets Bolted/Pathed/Swords'ed/Punishing Fired/etc, or if your opponent says "nice creature, I win" and casts a Tendrils for 24. I love the card too, but I don't think that it's a "must-keep", and I am willing to at least explore the possibility of playing this deck without him if needed.
Like I said before, you want to have game against combo, you have two choices: run Blue or more Black in the form of discard. Maybe drop some stuff like EE or Pulse. Every build seems to include some "catch-all" answers, either Pulse or something like it and I'm not totally sure why. It's nice to have something like that around, but plenty of decks don't. I feel like there's got to be a decent combination of Duress/IoK/Thoughtsieze, Liliana, and Hymn that could actually fit in the deck without completely changing the way it plays.
You would have to change how it plays.Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Cheese
In order to have a high enough density of discard spells to guarantee hitting one in the first two to three turns, you'd need 8-12 slots. Fewer than that and you'll draw your discard so infrequently you might as well run Chalice, because a Chalice at one (or zero) hurts combo more than a single random discard spell. More than that and, of course, you'll have trouble winning because of all the discard. Let's go with the middle-of-the-road option and choose ten discard spells - 4 Thoughtseize, 2 Duress, 2 Inquisition, 2 Liliana. Now look at your typical Aggro Loam deck: 27 land, 33 spells, but really 29 spells because of 4 Mox Diamond. Let's assume that 4 Crusher, 4 Bob, 3 Life from the Loam are absolutely essential and cannot be cut. That's ten discard spells plus eleven essential spells, leaving eight slots left for Seismic Assault; Tarmogoyf; additional removal like Punishing Fires, Terminate, and Pulse; Terravore or other additional large guys like Knight; and so on. Now, granted, we don't have to have all of these discard spells in the main: we could have Duress and Inquisition in the board, and maybe even Thoughtseize as well. But if we lose game one to combo, we absolutely have to win games two and three, and I don't think that will happen at a rate most people who want to "fix" the combo matchup are hoping for.
See, discard is generally less effective against most forms of storm combo than counters. Granted, this is usually a player- and practice-dependent thing, but let's just say that it's *generally* true for the sake of argument. Given this deck's slow clock, it is entirely possible for a combo deck to use cantrips to draw itself into a second copy of its missing piece. Furthermore, if you Duress your opponent and see a hand of Hive Mind, Show and Tell, and Emrakul, you will need a second discard spell to be safe from dying unless you're willing to gamble that the Hive Mind deck can't ramp into Hive Mind before you get your Crushers large enough to kill them - and if they draw a second SnT and drop Emrakul after you Duressed, you're in a pretty tight spot.
In short, not every deck can have a positive matchup across the archetype spectrum. This deck has an unfixable combo matchup. It just can't be done unless you want to fundamentally change the deck or give up massive percentage points elsewhere. If you're that worried about combo, play blue. If you want a decent combo matchup but don't want to play blue, play Junk. But don't play this deck.
Eh, Rock lists run 8-12 pieces, and while it's still not favorable against combo, it's at least not an auto-loss. You could start with something like this:
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Taiga
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Mox Diamond
3 Seismic Assault
4 Life from the Loam
2 Badlands
4 Dark Confidant
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Arid Mesa
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Bayou
3 Hymn to Tourach
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 4 Duress
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 Extirpate
SB: 2 Perish
You'd lose ground in aggro matchups, but you can bring in Terminate/Dreams/GftT/Pulse out of the board, and the core of the deck is largely the same.
I made a rough start for a RGU Aggro-Loam list, though I'm not sure how it would fare. I don't think it's possible to raise the blue count enough to run FoW, but Daze and Spell Pierce are reasonable. Brainstorm could be nice too, getting rid of extra Seismics or letting you protect a Loam if you don't have a cycling land in hand. Here's the start, but please don't hate since I know it's nowhere near optimal yet. I did what I could to keep it aggressive, but it's not easy without black.
4 Life from the Loam
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Countryside Crusher
3 Seismic Assault
3 Punishing Fire
4 Mox Diamond
1 Sylvan Library
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
2 Spell Pierce
2 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil Thicket
2 Lonely Sandbar
3 Wasteland
8 Fetches (don't feel like figuring out exactly which right now)
Spell Pierce could be Spell Snare, could have more in the board, could even try something silly like Mana Leak potentially. I don't think Snapcaster would make sense at all. Thoughts?
How about we don't cut our secondary engine (Bob) from the deck. Every iteration of aggro loam I play pretty much starts with Duals, fetches, loam, and bob. I will never run less than 4 bob. Getting a turn 1 bob is also the nut draw for this deck if the opponent lacks an answer that bob will win it for you over 90% of the time easy. Unless you're facing off against combo.
If you want to try to beat combo decks, either play a combo deck of your own or play blue. Aggro loam isn't supposed to be able to get a positive MU percentage against combo unless you dedicate a large portion of your SB to it (I'm talking 10+ slots). And if you do that you lower your percentage against other archetypes. I see zero reason to try to beat combo with aggro loam; if you really really really want to beat combo go play counterbalance/a blue deck.
I see no reason to go straight RG other than budget reasons. RGB is, simply put, superior to RG in every way except when it comes to the manabase. Bob is an integral part. Pulse kills anything. Black has some good SB options depending on meta.
Daze seems awful in a RUG loam list with that high curve. Bouncing a land hurts more than it helps except the rare case where you counter ad nauseam or something ridiculously powerful with it. The only blue card I like in your list is brainstorm for obvious reasons (brainstorm is great with loam and on its own. Also shuffles away excess seismic assaults (I hate drawing multiple seismic's with a passion)).
Hey all, I've written a small piece in the Format/Article discussion, and I talked about Loam a bit. Maybe worth a read :)
-Matt
The goal isn't to get a positive matchup against combo, it's just to make it not be an auto loss. I could see going 4 colors to include Bob still, as there really isn't any card in other colors that can provide the advantage he does. Regarding Daze, I don't really see the curve being all that high. There are 4 3cmc cards, everything else is 2 or less. And it would only be used for something that would win them the game right then, you couldn't use it like you do in most blue decks. It could very well become 4 Spell Pierce instead though, but that would seem to slow the deck down a bit more by not allowing you to tap out turns 1/2/3 for aggro. Again, the only reason blue is in this deck is to slow down combo a turn or two.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Ritual
I don't understand the comments I keep hearing of "if you want to beat combo, play blue". When I play any deck, I want to win the whole tournament. I understand that no deck will have a positive matchup against everything, if that were the case everyone would be playing that deck instead. The point in my deck decisions are to give myself the best matchup against the majority of what I expect to face. I think that this deck gives me a great matchup against everything except combo, and I'm willing to CONSIDER altering the deck somewhat to improve that combo pairing. Not to make it an amazing matchup, or even 50/50, but winnable. Yes, the loss of other cards will weaken the non-combo matchup. However, at least being able to consider a change allows the possibility of winning when you wouldn't otherwise.
in my RGW list I play Gaddock Teeg and Leyline of Sanctity. As I also board Pyroblast I can either protect them from their blue bounce, either counter their cantrips, so white gives quite a lot. While he searches some answers to that you just attack them, so they can't Ad Nauseam and they 2 options go through PiF or IGG but here is when the gravehate comes out (Crypt) or storm in goblins and you have an answers to that - EE or Pulse. While this happens you just attack with your KotR or Tarmo
If your goal is to win the tournament, and you chose this deck, you made an incorrect deck choice. You should have played blue.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheShaun
I'm not kidding. Adding a couple counters that are at their best in fast decks because their value is so transient to a deck with a slow clock, a ton of lands, and a bunch of durdle cards like Mox Diamond seems...just bad. You won't fix the combo matchup because you don't have enough counters, and Daze and Spell Pierce aren't that hot elsewhere and certainly not worth slots in your main. If you're in blue, why aren't you running Jace TMS, or Intuition, or Trade Routes? These are all cards that make the blue splash worth it.
Look, the problems with combo stem from two sources:
- You have no way to disrupt them.
- It takes you way too long to kill them even when you do disrupt them because you have so many dead draws.
Even if you fix the former, you will still have problems with the latter. Running 25+ lands does not give you a fast clock. Running Mox Diamond and Life from the Loam does not give you a fast clock. Seismic Assault and Punishing Fire are not fast enough clocks. In order to beat combo on anything approaching a consistent basis, you need to reach a certain threshold of disruption backed by a large number of undercosted, efficient creatures. The game is going to be over by turn three or so; either the combo player is too far behind and you just need to keep up the pressure, or you didn't apply enough pressure and you lose to the combo. Yes, the relationship there isn't perfect, and it's possible for one or the other party to luck out, but it's a good rule of thumb.
Now look at your RUG Loam deck. How much pressure are you going to realistically have applied by turn three? Let's be charitable and say you got a turn one Mox Diamond. What will the combo player's life total be at on turn three, if you were on the play with a Mox Diamond, for an average draw? My guess is, "Too high."
All of this aside, I'm not sure what the obsession is with "fixing the combo matchup." What percentage of the field is combo in any given tournament? If the amount of combo is high, you should just play blue. If it's low, what are your chances of running into a combo deck before the end of the tournament? Is it worth sacrificing points across the board to try to improve a hopeless matchup against a deck you might not even see? That doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I would rather consolidate my strengths to ensure I wasn't losing my non-combo matchups so that, on the rare occasion I did run into combo, I could afford the loss.
The only way you can really try to beat combo is packing 3-4 REB in the board and 3-4 Extirpate. You need to basically land a turn 2 Assault with lands in hand, as well.
-Matt
I submit. I will use the same decklist, will not try to innovate, will not try to improve weak areas, or even consider anything different.