[Deck] Aggro Loam

I'll go ahead and post the list I brewed:

Naya Loam:

4x Tarmogoyf
4x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Thalia / Crusher / Terravore(Up in the air, willing to discuss the merits of this slot)
2x Gaddock Teeg

4x Life from the Loam
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Swords to Plowshares

2x Koth of the Hammer
2x Goblin Trenches
3x Seismic Assault

4x Mox Diamond
24x Lands
(3x Wastelands, Karakas, Maze of Ith, 6x Cycle, 7x mountain duals, 6x Fetch)

// Sideboard: Still up in the air but, some obvious staples imo:
3x Red Blast
2x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Thorn of Amethyst
3x Krosan Grip
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Scavenging Ooze
3x Tormod's Crypt

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Originally Posted by Koby

The same matchup where KotR eats their entire deck for breakfast.

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The same matchup where he gets countered or Submerged? Or they kill you with Delver before he even matters? You really threw me off here, I thought someone would say that Moxes and Dr. Death could help mitigate the damage done to your manabase. Which is true for the 3c versions as well, less risk less reward I guess. All I know is I would gladly play RUG over 4c Loam if I got to choose which one I'd pilot in the matchup.

between abrupt decay and punishing fires, ill take the loam side.

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Originally Posted by Kich867

I'll go ahead and post the list I brewed:

Naya Loam:

4x Tarmogoyf
4x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Thalia / Crusher / Terravore(Up in the air, willing to discuss the merits of this slot)
2x Gaddock Teeg

4x Life from the Loam
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Swords to Plowshares

2x Koth of the Hammer
2x Goblin Trenches
3x Seismic Assault

4x Mox Diamond
24x Lands
(3x Wastelands, Karakas, Maze of Ith, 6x Cycle, 7x mountain duals, 6x Fetch)

// Sideboard: Still up in the air but, some obvious staples imo:
3x Red Blast
2x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Thorn of Amethyst
3x Krosan Grip
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Scavenging Ooze
3x Tormod's Crypt

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I, uh, really don't like Thalia in a deck with Loam, Bolt, StP, and a bunch of 3+ cc noncreature win conditions. The whole point of Loam is being able to cast it over and over again; what the card actually does is just barely powerful enough in the context of the format to be worth it at two mana, but it certainly isn't worth it at three mana.

I also don't like the nonbo of Teeg and Koth in the maindeck. I guess Koth is more expendable than Teeg since I'm not really sure what he does for you - ultimate, I guess? But I would not want to play a planeswalker solely for his ultimate.

Why no DRS? You could use the ramp. You should probably also run Sylvan Library over Trenches - Trenches is pretty bad even when you can Loam lands back because at that point you're basically paying the same amount of mana for an Empty the Warrens, except the storm triggers resolve once per turn. Yay! You really need a counterpart to Bob to make the Naya version better than Jund or 4cc.

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Originally Posted by Kich867

I'm still thoroughly of the opinion that 4 color loam is just bad. It tries to do too much and isn't focused enough of a deck. One guy did well with it. Once. I'll be shortly experimenting with a build I designed with a good friend of mine and be posting the results here over the next few weeks.

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I built Hoogland's list and have played it in 4 local tournaments, each time going 3-1, for a combined record of 12-4. It's working pretty well for me so far, and I don't really even know what I'm doing yet.

How about incorporating Green Sun's Zenith here? Having more virtual access to Teeg, KotR, Qasali sounds like something I would gladly take over Goyfs in general. A single Sylvan Safekeeper can be devastating against certain decks when you have Loam available and, say, a Crusher or a KotR to kill your opponent.

How does a 2/2 split of Sylvan Library and Oracle of Mul Daya sounds as a replacement for Bob, therefore, black altogether?

...why Oracle? What does it do for you that Crusher doesn't? The extra land every turn? Doesn't strike me as being particularly useful when it comes attached to a four-drop.

This isn't really a GSZ deck. Generally, if you start down the GSZ path you'll reach a point where you realize that you're basically just building Maverick with red, except instead of good cards you're running a ton of lands and Life from the Loam. That path doesn't really end well in the sense that it ends in netdecking a Maverick-with-red list.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

...why Oracle? What does it do for you that Crusher doesn't? The extra land every turn? Doesn't strike me as being particularly useful when it comes attached to a four-drop.

This isn't really a GSZ deck. Generally, if you start down the GSZ path you'll reach a point where you realize that you're basically just building Maverick with red, except instead of good cards you're running a ton of lands and Life from the Loam. That path doesn't really end well in the sense that it ends in netdecking a Maverick-with-red list.

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Agreed. This is a Control deck that we're building here, not really a toolbox deck. We're trying to build technically the grindiest deck in the format. I don't think GSZ is a long-term advantage engine on the scale of Loam/Assault or Fires/Grove. This deck was an excellent choice in the Mental Misstep era when Stoneblade ran rampant. If Deathblade becomes super popular, so do my Korean Seismic Assaults.

The only issue is: run white for Knight, or don't. I don't even feel like I'd want STP here: Bolt, Decay, and Fires should clean up what you need to, and your bigger creatures outclass ones you do not remove. Plus, if we play Jund colours, or JUND+w, I get to Dreadbore/Pyroblast Jaces, which is one of my favourite moves.

-Matt

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Originally Posted by sdematt

Agreed. This is a Control deck that we're building here, not really a toolbox deck. We're trying to build technically the grindiest deck in the format. I don't think GSZ is a long-term advantage engine on the scale of Loam/Assault or Fires/Grove. This deck was an excellent choice in the Mental Misstep era when Stoneblade ran rampant. If Deathblade becomes super popular, so do my Korean Seismic Assaults.

The only issue is: run white for Knight, or don't. I don't even feel like I'd want STP here: Bolt, Decay, and Fires should clean up what you need to, and your bigger creatures outclass ones you do not remove. Plus, if we play Jund colours, or JUND+w, I get to Dreadbore/Pyroblast Jaces, which is one of my favourite moves.

-Matt

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Knight is not so hot against DRS. Granted, you can kill DRS pretty easily, but I'm wondering if you really want to reach into white for what is going to usually be Just Another Big Guy. Is the added option to chain Wastelands into each other valuable enough to wreck your mana or abandon Bob/Decay/all abilities on DRS? I don't really think so. Terravore is a fine JABG if you're in Jund and feel you need more of that sort of thing.

Knight also acts as a tutor for your one of things like Karakas which helps you alot vs SnT decks, it finds Maze of Ith, and it finds a Bojuka Bog out of the Sideboard.

And it isnt only a dumb beater like Terravore. Along with the fect that White gives you much better cards vs stuff like the new mono U SnT deck like Thalia or Ethersworn canonist. And like Terravore a resolved devastating dreams with a KOTR on the board is usually GG.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

Knight also acts as a tutor for your one of things like Karakas which helps you alot vs SnT decks, it finds Maze of Ith, and it finds a Bojuka Bog out of the Sideboard.

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Knight into Karakas is at best a turn three play, but probably a turn four play. SnT can win by then. Karakas is also not so great against Griselbrand if they decide to draw a bunch and try again, or they go for Omniscience and combo out on you that way.

I'm not sure what Maze is supposed to do here. Fog Griselbrand? Give one of your big creatures pseudo-vigilance? For a land that taps for nothing (thereby occasionally screwing up your mulligan decisions), I'm not really buying it.

Bog out of the sideboard is fine, but is hardly a huge push to run Knight when stacked up against the loss of Bob, all of DRS's abilities, and Decay, or against having a really rocky four-color manabase.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

And it isnt only a dumb beater like Terravore. Along with the fect that White gives you much better cards vs stuff like the new mono U SnT deck like Thalia or Ethersworn canonist. And like Terravore a resolved devastating dreams with a KOTR on the board is usually GG.

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I would love to be playing SnT and have an Aggro Loam player try to DD me. Nice random self-Mind Twist bro, here's a Force of Will and a cantrip for your troubles.

Anyway, even if you're bringing in a ton of hatebears, many of which are anti-synergistic with the Life from the Loam engine, the fact still remains that you're a deck that's somewhere between 40% and 50% mana sources/lands and your clock is not very good. SnT has days to set up against you unless you have a nuts hand. You can't count on seeing your hatebears because you're not running Brainstorm or Ponder to dig them up, nor are you running a critical mass of hatebears and cheap threats like Maverick does; probably about 30% of your deck post-board actually does something to your SnT opponent and the rest of your deck is whatever pieces of the Loam engine you couldn't side out plus piles and piles of cards that apply no pressure.

So, um, yeah, I'm not really buying "Knight is better against combo" because going from a terrible matchup to a slightly less terrible matchup is not really a huge improvement when you set it besides what you're losing in the matchups you can actually win. That's sort of why no one plays this deck anymore: no matter how cute you get with it, there's just no reason to be a grindy inevitability deck when you can be a combo deck and have inevitability on, like, turn four.

A single Mox Diamond makes KOTR a Turn 2 play. Also If your SNeak and show opponent cast a SnT and puts in something you can put in KOTR and search up Karakas. And I am pushing 4 color loam which gives you Bob and Abrupt Decay. Also Chalice of the Void is a very solid card vs All of the hand massagers that SnT runs to sculpt with. Sure you have a not so great MU against SnT, but just because a deck has a poor MU has that ever stopped anyone? Goblins cant beat fast combo, yet we have seen Goblins win SCGs lately. Everyone is going to have a poor MU and citing one of the poor MUs is not a very good way to discredit a deck, especially one that seems to have so many good MUs against all of the other fair decks.

The idea of using KotR as a toolbox enabler sounds more along the lines of Eternal Garden, not Aggro Loam. My thoughts about the deck with KotR are not to necessarily use it as a tutor (for which it's good in SB games, say finding Tabernable or Maze of Ith, or Bojuka Bog, or Karakas); but rather to increase the density of Big Fat Beaters from 8 to 10. In the last build I used, it took place of some sweepers (EE, Pulse) and 1-2 Seismic. The core of the deck does not change significantly, nor do I recommend switching to StP when we now have Abrupt Decay (to replace the Terminate of old).

Aggro Loam is still about buying incremental tempo while turning sideways with large beaters.

I mean the white splash gives you great options to fight combo like Teeg and Thalia, along with basically a better Terravore.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

A single Mox Diamond makes KOTR a Turn 2 play. Also If your SNeak and show opponent cast a SnT and puts in something you can put in KOTR and search up Karakas. And I am pushing 4 color loam which gives you Bob and Abrupt Decay. Also Chalice of the Void is a very solid card vs All of the hand massagers that SnT runs to sculpt with. Sure you have a not so great MU against SnT, but just because a deck has a poor MU has that ever stopped anyone? Goblins cant beat fast combo, yet we have seen Goblins win SCGs lately. Everyone is going to have a poor MU and citing one of the poor MUs is not a very good way to discredit a deck, especially one that seems to have so many good MUs against all of the other fair decks.

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How are you tapping a summoning-sick Knight to go find Karakas? Or are you assuming they SnT in a Griselbrand/Emrakul, have no Sneak Attack, and can't draw enough cards off Griselbrand to try to give him haste somehow?

And also assuming there's no Omniscience. SnT isn't a monolithic entity.

I understand that you can get Knight itself on turn two if you have the two-card combo of Knight and Mox. You can't get Karakas with Knight until turn three, and then only by sacrificing a land. In my experience, Mox is more of a land drop you get a turn or two early; you are probably going to miss a land drop on turn three or four unless you have Loam or topdeck poorly. Trading a multicolor land for a Karakas fucks up your mana, although I guess you have a Knight still.

Chalice is significantly better in a deck with Sol lands because then you can reliably get it out on your first turn. The longer the game goes, the less Chalice matters: they've already cast their cantrips, they've had longer to find an answer to it, or they've had longer to draw a hand where they can just win. Chalice isn't awful on turn two, especially if you're on the play, but against combo you'll often be on the draw in subsequent games and then they've had two full turns to make your Chalice irrelevant. Of course, that would all be fine if there was no cost to running Chalice, but there is: you get no one-drops of your own. DRS, Bolt, and to a lesser extent stuff like StP, are all important to keeping you in the game early.

Four-color Loam is just greed. You can accomplish basically everything you need to accomplish within Jund colors - white just gives you Knight, some hatebears (a trap, since you aren't beating combo anyway), and StP (Abrupt Decay is close enough and uncounterable). Your mana gets worse unless you decide to ditch Seismic Assault, but then there really isn't a reason to run Life from the Loam at all, so you're just playing a bad deck at that point. I don't think it's a good trade-off, but whatever.

I think it is just a preference thing. I like having Teeg and Thalia as outs to combo. And I dont think that the deck needs to have seismic assault to make Loam good. Hoogland has proven that the deck works and is consistent. It just requires intricate knowledge and tight play. It is simply a preference. I like being greedy. Some of my favorite cards are in his deck. I love loam strategies, I love chalice of the void as my main disruption, I love Mox Diamond to gain Tempo, and I love Wish boards. Hoogland has made a deck that combines some of my favorite things. Is it greedy? Probably. Is it fun? Hell yes. All Im saying is that for the people who call it bad, I just don't think that you have even tested it. Every deck has its poor MUs.

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Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies

Four-color Loam is just greed. You can accomplish basically everything you need to accomplish within Jund colors - white just gives you Knight, some hatebears (a trap, since you aren't beating combo anyway), and StP (Abrupt Decay is close enough and uncounterable). Your mana gets worse unless you decide to ditch Seismic Assault, but then there really isn't a reason to run Life from the Loam at all, so you're just playing a bad deck at that point. I don't think it's a good trade-off, but whatever.

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Maindeck Chalice and Teeg, as well as sideboard Thalia and more Teegs are pretty good against storm-based combo; Hoogland beat both Prosak's ANT and Mitchell's TES deck. 4C mana is admittedly bad, but 7 copies of Life from the Loam and Mox Diamonds go a long way towards alleviating those mana troubles. In the end I think you're trading a few percentage points against RUG Delver and Omni-variants for locking up virtually all your other match ups. Resolved Devastating Dreams destroy pretty much every other fair deck in the format, and like I said earlier Chalice, Teeg and Thalia improve your Storm match up considerably.

Is it possible to run a wish engine in 3 color?

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Originally Posted by FuzzyLumpkins

Is it possible to run a wish engine in 3 color?

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It's possible, just not very good at all. Hoogland's list is a lot more geared around loam itself, it's probably the reason he runs wish. Jund loam is quite different in comparison in terms of card choices. Most lists don't run chalice anymore, most still run 4 goyf while Hoogland does not. Chalice of the void is a very bad topdeck and limits our choices. It also means we're a turn behind when we don't open with mox diamond, which is one of the problems with chalice lists/lists without 1 drops outside of cycling a land, which does actual nothing in terms of advancing out board state. Did I mention how bad wish is in terms of limiting our sideboard slots? I love that we only get half of our sideboard while the rest are basically spells that cost 1R more.

While knight is quite powerful, the splash into 4 colors is quite greedy. It makes us even more reliant on mox diamond in that without mox diamond we might have to make awkward choices fetching or naturally drawing dual lands might affect consistency.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

I think it is just a preference thing. I like having Teeg and Thalia as outs to combo. And I dont think that the deck needs to have seismic assault to make Loam good. Hoogland has proven that the deck works and is consistent. It just requires intricate knowledge and tight play. It is simply a preference. I like being greedy. Some of my favorite cards are in his deck. I love loam strategies, I love chalice of the void as my main disruption, I love Mox Diamond to gain Tempo, and I love Wish boards. Hoogland has made a deck that combines some of my favorite things. Is it greedy? Probably. Is it fun? Hell yes. All Im saying is that for the people who call it bad, I just don't think that you have even tested it. Every deck has its poor MUs.

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Yes! Yes!

Okay for the argument. Hooglands list is actually really good unless your a bad aggro loam player. For everyone arguing against it, why don't you just learn to play the deck first. Yes it does lose sesmic assault (my personal preference I don't like). What you have to understand about his version is that you have to slow the f*** down. The deck basically says yes counter this, counter that, keep on killing my stuff while i set up then when the "timing is right" then you play knight and cast devastating dreams for the win, sometimes it can be early or late it all depends on the position your in. I will admit it's a tough ass deck to play, has anyone here ever seen Hoogland play his games??? I have. He's actually a really good good magic player and he knows when to slow down and to speed up. Trust me, im saying this to the haters, if you don't play this deck at that level you don't understand the power of this deck. Everyone has good points about the 3 color version and the 4 color version. But it's like Megadeus says, it's all PREFERENCE. Me personally i'm still playing the 3 color version because I like a more tempo play and occasionally versions like that tend to run out of juice but it's the way I like the deck. One thing I'd like to note about Hooglands list, is that I rather player Countryside Crusher over Teeg and GSZ. I rather just board in combo hate. But thats my PREFERENCE.


The argument for Knight is annoying me. Knight's purpose is to just simply close the game out. DD or dredge enough, giant knight, smash for the win (if it still lives). What everyone isn't saying on here is why do we decide to stop running Countryside Crusher? The creature basically shines in this deck. If 1/3 + of my deck is lands, I'd probably want to be running a crusher. Why? Filter. He simply filters out the lands so you can basically gain card advantage. Not only does he do that, most of the time opponents tend to just let him grow lol idk why but he becomes very good if he stays alive. Chalice was only there in the first place to protect your creatures, simple as that. It just happened that it straight ruined main other cards lol.

I did talk to Hoogland. He was very clear on all his choices for the deck and even said it's not a deck people can just pick up and play. I was bare witness to that when he let one of his group memebers who was an 2 time open winner play the deck in a side event. His guy did not pilot it as well. The one thing we both admit was that devastating dreams is a very powerful card.


As for right now, imho i believe anyone playing this deck should at least be playing punishing fire in it. It helps the MU against esper and literally gets rid of the worst thing for this deck DRS.

^^ A wish sideboard in the 3 color version is terrible bc the deck was originally played like that, one thing I found was that; in the 3 color version you rather just be kind of fast if your playing abrupt decay. And if your not playing white you can always play Thorn of Amythest as your hatebear. There's a lot of thing this deck can do. I love love this deck. Still play it (replying to the one post asking if anyone still plays it). It was just a tough deck to play when RUG first started coming around but now that decay is printed the deck is still relevant. Also this deck has a tough time against it's old enemy lol counterbalance.