exactly. this is a deck where the last thing that you care about is winning the game. you need to focus on getting one of your engines going. it is a very slow and extremely grindy deck.
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exactly. this is a deck where the last thing that you care about is winning the game. you need to focus on getting one of your engines going. it is a very slow and extremely grindy deck.
I'd likely run something like:
3 Seismic Assault
4 Life from the Loam
3 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fires
3 Lightning Bolt
4 Abrupt Decay
20
3 Countryside Crusher
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Terravore
3 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Dark Confidant
16
3 Tranquil Thicket
2 Forgotten Cave
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Badlands
1 Taiga
1 Bayou
+1 Land (Stronghold, Wolf Run, Etc.)
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Slaughter Games
+4 cards
Bolts could be Chalice of the Voids, or just Bolts since infinite removal is nice for outgunning Deathblade/Jund and the like. Essentially, you run Knight to have a huge beater and maybe Teeg and stuff in the board.
-Matt
Played Hooglands list tonight except -2 Bobs -1 Maze of Ith, +1 Grove of the Burnwillows +1 Countryside Crusher +1 Tibalt, The Fiend Blooded (because why not?!). Went 2-1-1 in the swiss. Won my top 8 MU.
Round 1: UR Delver
Game 1: Wasnt too difficult of a game. On the draw I go double Mox Diamond, Fetch. Decay his delver after he Mainphases a BS to flip it. Get KOTR down, resolve Dreams, win the game.
Game2: He forces a chalice on 1, but he mulled to a very underwhelming 5 and couldnt keep up.
1-0
Round 2: Jund Vengevine Zombies
Game 1: I chalice for one and black a lot of his stuff. Wasteland him a bit while I get the loam engine going. Countryside Crusher comes down and quickly becomes a 12/12.
Game 2: A VERY long and grindy game and a nice beginning to my master punts. He gets a couple of Lol Trolls down and Gets Vengevines out a lot. I punt by not abrupt decaying his Lol Troll when he is tapped out, but finally get 3 Punishing Fires back to kill off the troll when he is tapped down. Then Resolve a very very late game devastating dreams with 2 KOTRs on the board. Man So many punts by me here.
2-0
Round 3: Goblins
Game 1 I keep a hand with double grove of the burnwillows, and a punishing fire. I keep firing all of his dudes. At some point I cast tibalt. Then pass because Tibalt sucks. He feels it is a threat and attacks it. I save tibalt with Fires and eventually devastating dreams and he just scoops.
Game 2 I keep a sketchy hand and he has a T1 lackey that connects and I cant keep up and just die.
Game 3 He keeps a one wasteland Aether Vial Hand. I punt by discarding my dryad arbor to my Mox Diamond and only have colorless sources other wise so I cant decay his T1 Vial. He never draws another land, but vial plus infinite lackeys gets him there as I draw no Devastating Dreams :(
2-1
Round 4: Deadguy (roommate)
We ID.
2-1-1
Top 8: Tin FIns (Phazonmuant on the Source)
Game 1 I keep a hand with no disruption and hope my Turn 2 KOTR for Karakas is good enough. He silence walks me T2 and I proceed to die
Game 2 I get a Thalia Down on T2. Between that and a Chalice which I top deck at some point, His serenity doesnt quite get him there. He Reanimates Griselbrand putting him to 3 life. I cast KOTR. He attacks me down to 13 and goes to 10 but doesnt pay life to try and win. He does Play a Pithing Needle naming Karakas however. I draw a burning wish. I tank for an eternity (because Im bad) and wish for Chainers Edict and take out Griselbeez and attack him to 6 (only had 2 lands in the yard). He is drawing pretty dead. I attack him to 2 next turn and forget I have PFire. Luckily he said something about a PFire and I remember to kill him!
Game 3 I keep a double Mox Diamond, Chalice hand with Dryad Arbor for the beats. On the draw I chalice for 1. He doesnt have any way to beat it for a couple of turns and I draw a Thalia. I have 2 chalice on board when he plays serenity to get them out. I Belive I cast another chalice and he plays serenity again but I wish for pulse to take it out. Then I draw a couple of KOTRs off of my infinite cycle lands and they get there.
I know the top 8 games seem confusing. They all kind of blur together. But I punted my way to victory which shows that the deck is quite powerful. Overall the deck felt great and I am very very confident once I actually get Bobs to play the deck with! I cut the Maze of Ith because I play so many awkward lands and I wanted another colored source. I wish I played one mismatched Grove just so I could see how often it would have been my Maze of Ith. I may make a change or two here and there, but overall I think the deck is excellent. Devastating Dreams is very appropriately named.
@ Matt
The only problem with running infinite removal is that they all might just go in the graveyard. I don't know what its like to play pnishing fire and assault but doesnt sound bad. I think though you have to adjust your creatures bc if you get a bob online dude flipping 3 crushers 3 terravore 3 knights 3 assaults is gonna kill you pretty fast. Aggro loam tends to damage you a lot in its own way.
^^^ Megadeus
For all you haters out there on Devastating Dreams, this dude just proved it's worth lol.... it has to be all timed corrctly though. but holy crap did you smoke a lot of dudes out w aggro loam. Once you get bobs bro the deck just becomes more efficient and faster lol.... Oh and another thing.... Crusher is seriously a monster haha 12/12!!! smh.... no joke lol
Your manabase is set up such that you can only cast Knight off Mox Diamond, unless the one open land slot is Riftstone Portal or a white dual. I agree that you run too many three-drops - I don't think you need all of the big 3 cmc beaters. Knights could easily be some combination of Libraries, Dreams, or Tarmogoyfs.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
You'd still be able to run Teeg out of the board, but I'm not digging the nonbo of Teeg and Chalice if that's your anti-combo plan. Honestly, I'm not sure why everyone's so fixated on combo to begin with - just take your free "crushing the fair decks" and be happy.
I mean it is one of the best cards vs all of the fair decks in the format. Wrathaggedon is no joke. And for those who say it eats a force or something, it isnt like you are just running it out there on T4 or something... It is a game sealing card. If they arent using their forces on your KOTR's and Librarys and such then you are probably winning anyway. Also Phazonmuant just posted a much better version of our Top 8 game that is probably much more accurate than mine in the tin fins thread. The deck is super duper greedy and can lose games due to just not drawing the right colored sources, but overall I think it is fine. Mox Diamond goes a long way to fixing our mana very nicely and Im not sure if cutting the maze of ith is right, but I can only be so greedy...
Crusher is run in 3c Loam variants, and Hoogland doesn't play them as far as I know..so I'm not sure how that goes towards justifying the 'goodness' of the list. How exactly did he prove the worth of Devastating Dreams? By beating UR Delver, which is pretty much a bye since none of their creatures have more than 2 toughness and they aren't going to clock you out with burn given the deck's blue density. By beating a jank-brew. Or by losing to Goblins, which is so wildly in Aggro Loam's favor it's silly, a matchup that should be approaching un-lose-able barring serious mulligans / unbelievably bad draws? Or by beating Tin Fins, inarguably the worst combo deck. I don't think I've ever seen a deck scoop so often to things like a discard spell or a deathrite shaman, or a vendillion clique, or a force of will, or a surgical..Quote:
Originally Posted by Petree
Goblins has no way to stop Seismic Assault and has absolutely no interaction with your graveyard, you can literally just Seismic Assault + Loam their board over and over until they run out of cards and kill them.
I don't actually think Devistating Dreams is a bad card, it's not awful, it's just that Hoogland's deck requires you to not run 1 drops, of which there are incredibly powerful one-drops, the mana base is too greedy, and Knight of the Reliquary isn't a good enough card to make splashing white worth it.
My comments in BoldQuote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Hoogland took 12th this weekend. I think it is time that his deck were taken more seriously. The only thing is not very many people play his list. Does any one other than me play it? I also noticed he played a slaughter games out of the board. I like that allot. Game one against allot of combo decks you may be able to steal the game by naming the right cards
I've been playing his list with the only change being a Slaughter Games in the board and it's won me a few games.
Jupiter Report: Top 16 with Aggro Loam,
List:
//Creatures: 12
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Dark Confidant
2x Countryside Crusher
2x Terravore
// Instants/Sorceries: 12
4x Devastating Dreams
4x Life from the Loam
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Maelstrom Pulse
// Stuff: 11
3x Seismic Assault
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Mox Diamond
// Lands: 25
4x Taiga
2x Badlands
1x Bayou
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Bloodstained Mire
3x Wasteland
4x Forgotten Cave
2x Tranquil Thicket
1x Forest
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
// Sideboard: 15
2x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Surgical Extraction
3x Hymn to Tourach
3x Thoughtseize
2x Liliana of the Veil
2x Golgari Charm
1x Engineered Explosives
Round 1: Hollywood playing Sneak and Show: 2-1
Game 1: He emrakuls me on turn 2, ok, that's fine.
Game 2: He keeps an ultra sketchy hand I guess, and I have an awkward hand with no pressure, but I get there. Each turn we tank hard, I'm actually convinced he's on Omnitell as I've seen nothing but blue, and it wasn't until the end of game 2 that I realized he was on Sneak and Show. I get there while trying to keep mana up for golgari charming omniscience or something.
Game 3: I realize he's on Sneak and Show and I keep a turn 1 Bob with Liliana and Golgari Charm hand. We get into an awkward board state where he gets pretty low from Bob beat downs and Liliana ticking away at his hand. He has to find a Sneak Attack to Show and Tell > Sneak Attack > Griselbrand, however he's too low to draw, so it'd literally just be there to kill Liliana and I would Golgari Charm it at the end of his turn then beat him to death with Bob. He draws Sneak attack a turn too late.
Round 2: Timur with BUG Delver: 0-2
This isn't even a real game, he has a god hand against me two games in a row (game 2 keeping double waste and then draws 1 and 2 are both wasteland). I die permanentless on a mull to 5.
Round 3: Paul Lake with Punishing Jund: 2-1
Game 1: I waste lock him to death and kill his deathrites.
Game 2: This is just absurd. I drop a turn 1 goyf, then I drop a turn 2 goyf, he wastes me, I waste him, he has 1 land, a deathrite, and a nihil spellbomb out. I swing with 1/2 goyfs, he blocks with deathrite, second main phase I Devastating Dreams for 1. He proceeds to royally punt the game by using nihil spellbomb wrong, losing his creature and land, and burning a bolt in an attempt to kill a 4/5 Goyf post combat on the one that didn't have damage on it. So I now have 8 power on the board and he's at 18. He plays a land for his turn, I hit him for 8, he plays a land for his turn, goyf, I hit him for 4, he plays a land for his turn and plays Bob and Deathrite and proceeds to climb out of it and win the game. I couldn't swing in with goyfs, I never draw another land but proceed to draw literally every single 3 drop in a row in my entire deck. If I swung with goyfs he'd just double block one, kill it, double block the other, kill it, and/or block and punishing fires it. No bueno.
Game 3: I play land mox go, he deathrites, I kill it, next turn I drop a crusher. Crusher goes apeshit for a few turns and puts him low. He top decks some Deathrites to try and stay in the game. I have him for lethal, but he abrupt decays. Time is called, I double cycle EOT and hit Goyf land. I proceed to topdeck goyf. I slam two goyfs and pass, he draws his card, slumps, and scoops. Earlier in this game I played Devastating Dreams for like 2 just for a double wasteland
Round 4: D-HAAAAAAASSS with Deathblade: 2-0
Game 1: He therapies me and sees a turn 1 chalice hand, but takes Bob. I slam turn 1 chalice. The game drags on, I drop a Terravore, he drops a Jace and bounces. I draw, find another land, and decide Bob + Abrupt Decay open is better than terravore right now. So I do that, he casts something, then brainstorms with jace, leaving 2 mana open. I feel like Snapcaster is going to chump Bob, but I swing at jace anyways, he tanks for a few moments. He cracks his fetch and casts brainstorm, I point to Chalice and tell him it's countered. I think that put him on tilt a little for forgetting the Chalice was there, Jace dies and he scoops the next turn.
Game 2: Things start off super weird and I'm very far behind, but it seems like he has no real action as just a Deathrite is beating me. I think I'm super fucked after getting wastelanded twice, but I eventually find land and a life from the loam and get back into it, as I've got no pressure on me. I land a chalice, he lets it resolve and abrupt decays it, two turns later I find another, it resolves. I maelstrom pulse his deathrite shaman a turn or two later, put a beater into play and pass, he draws his card and scoops. Apparently after the second chalice resolved it shut his whole hand off.
Round 5: Janene with Maverick: 2-1
Game 1: The dream game for Aggroloam. Turn 1 chalice, turn 2 Crusher, on her turn 3 she played garruk and made a dude (I had a fetch open). I fetch, untap, draw, cast dreams for 3, and kill garruk, she draws a wasteland, Crusher gets enormous and kills her.
Game 2: I keep a mana-sketchy hand I should have shipped and proceed to not see any more land or loams and just get rocked.
Game 3: I keep another mana-sketchy hand I should have shipped and proceed to get tempo'd the fuck out. She had double wasteland for my first two lands, + lands enough to play the rest of her hand, I was left with nothing and died to an infinity / infinity mirran crusader. =(
She rode in with me, and our driver (Mr. Rich Cali) pointed out that I didn't board out chalice, and that was wrong. I think Maverick is very favorable, but sketchy keeps won't get there. However, this was cool, since it gave someone in our car a guaranteed shot at top 8!
Round 6: Kevin (Arianrhod) with Scapeshift Nic Fit: 2-1
Game 1: Things happen, and we get to a board state where he has double veteran explorer out and I have a goyf. I think I dreams for most of his land, but then he Wishes for Innocent Blood and kills my goyf. I topdeck like a champ into a fetch, cast loam, and get back into the game. He manages to get 6 basics in play, things happen, I drop another Dreams for 5. I drop a 25/25 Terravore the next turn and we go to game 2. (This game is hazey, a lot of shit happened in this round and it was hard to remember all the details).
Game 2: I'm retarded and don't bring out Chalices which end up costing me the game. It gets to a point where I have terravore, he has Chameleon, but Chameleon is bigger, and then he scapeshifts me. Had I boarded out chalices, I think I could have Pulsed his Wood Elves, made him sac Chameleon to Liliana, and then ... actually I still would have died to scapeshift nevermind.
Game 3: I board out chalices. I bring in discard. I keep an aggressive hand I think, I don't really remember. The crucial turn though I play a 2/2 Terravore with a Goyf out and pass. He has double Veteran Explorer out and passes back, my eyes light up as I was hoping nothing would really happen this turn, I draw my card, loam up to the requisite number of cards, and Dream his land and board. He's left with 4 lands, Terravore and Goyf bash in for an absurd amount of damage. He draws, lays a land, and concedes. He had the Deed to blow me out, but correctly played around Abrupt Decay as he couldn't play it and kill the entire board until next turn. He can only kill the Goyf, and Terravore is wildly lethal at this point.
I end up making Top 16, and get enough store credit to buy a really nice quality foil Life from the Loam. I'm quite settled on the deck, and I think it's time to start thinking about pimping it out a little bit at a time =D.
Shout outs:
-Devastating Dreams and Chalice rock.
-Splashing white is totally unnecessary, and Chalice + a faster clock + having a real sideboard for combo decks and not a janky wishboard is substantially better.
-Foil Life from the Loam!
-Not getting tilted today, spent a lot of time mulling over the two matches I lost and how to improve them in the future though.
-Round 6 a friend from my local game store was also in top 8 contention and told me that it was unlikely that he'd top 8 if I didn't lose to Kevin. But I wanted to run Aggro Loam as hard as I could because I love the shit out of this deck, so I did, because I was confident I could win. I did win, Janene and I both made top 16, and Steve made top 8 anyways like a boss (going on to top-4 the event).
Not Shouting Out:
-Bug Delver god hands, to the left and right of me was a sea of favorable matchups.
-Having to play a friend for top 8 win and in =( .
-Not enough aggro loam pimp at Jupiter =( .
^^Congrats on the top 16. 4 DD seems like a lot, though..
I'm starting to get back into it again after taking virtually the whole year off from magic. Maybe I haven't been back long enough to play enough games and I'm just putting out a knee-jerk reaction but I just don't feel good about 3cc creatures atm. It seems to me that the flagship big creatures we've always been winning with aren't as good as they were a year ago because of an overall metagame shift. Crusher and Ooze were amazing back in the day because the only decks well equipped to dealing with them were blade decks that were fundamentally weak to the rest our tools, engine and removal. Now, the most popular decks are other BGx, and even though they have glaring, fundamental weaknesses to loam they also have unparalleled ability to pull bullshit out of their ass and beat us with incredible tempo plays. BUG delver and Jund can be such a night and day matchups, depending on the hand. Either we dominate them with loam and acceleration or they spend the entire game one or two turns ahead of us with cheap removal, cheaper threats and bullshit like daze and cascade. The UW miracles nightmare match-up is still a significant part of the metagame and our creatures have always been bad against them.
My response to all this is to get slower and grindier. I've got something totally different that I'm gonna start testing:
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
3 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Twilight Mire
2 Raging Ravine
4 Wasteland
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil Thicket
4 Mox Diamond
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Dark Confidant
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Life from the Loam
2 Dreadbore
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Punishing Fire
3 Seismic Assault
1 Sylvan Library
I -really- don't think going grindier is the way to go nor do you need Punishing Fire / Seismic. I do however, think that Seismic Assault is antiquated after the tournament. I never actually killed anyone with it, I just killed creatures, and Punishing / Grove is far more easily setup and functions separately from Seismic Assault. However, being able to Dredge the shit out of loam in order to find the entire combo is wonderful and profitable, so that's cool. I'll have to fix my mana base accordingly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Antonius
Also, why is UW Miracles a nightmare matchup? I just recently crushed this at FNM (sidenote: also placed second this friday at my LGS's FNM, beating UW Miracles and ANT, losing only to Omnitell) and what they did didn't seem inherently good against me. I landed a chalice for one, landed a creature, kept him off double white, got him low enough to drop a Seismic Assault and top deck lands until he died. The other game I won he got beat to death after I EE'd RIP and Counterbalance then dropped a chalice on 1 and 4 and proceeded to kill him with dudes / seismic assault land top decks.
Counterbalance sucks. Sure, you have Decay, but if you don't have it, have fun getting locked out of Loam. Also, tutoring for Rest in Peace is also quite balls.
-Matt
Ah that's true I suppose, every time he got a counterbalance up I had the decay for it / sideboard I had the EE to blow out his enchantments.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
Have you played against UW a lot? What were they running? Were they on UWr? Punishing Miracles? Or were they running factories or other non-basics? Because you make it sound like cutting them off WW was easy... out here, everyone plays joe lossett's list with 10+ basic lands. I've played against joe a lot and I can assure you, it's not a pretty matchup. Their mana is very difficult to disrupt, one of the reasons why they're pretty robust against our strategy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
Secondly, they can cut us off from loam with counterbalance or they can take loam away with Clique. Granted, we have an answer to CB in the form of abrupt decay but if you do not get rid of CB immediately they can just take over the game. If you spend a lot of time cut off from loam, you WILL fall behind, as the rest of our the deck is complete dogshit against them. They have nigh-infinite removal (4 swords, 2-4 snapcaster, 2+ detention sphere, 4 terminus...on top of Jace bounce) so getting there with the beatdown plan just isn't going to happen unless you're really lucky. If they cut you off from loam and then drop a jace and start fatesealing you, it's over. Active CB + pocket removal + Jace is very difficult to beat.
Lastly and perhaps most crucially, they can just win games out of no where with entreat the angels. Because they have so much removal, you have to grind them out with loam and that gives them more than enough time to get to the 4-6 mana necessary to just crush us with angel tokens. I've lost quite a few games UW where I had turned the corner, taken over the game and started drawing multiple cards a turn. Their ability to just flip top and make guys like that is fucking frustrating--matter of fact, it's probably the scariest thing they have in their deck. Active CB into Jace with removal is difficult to beat, but if you have abrupt and punishing burnwillows you can answer it. There is no answer for Entreat. But, I think that if you can take away entreat (via slaughter games, maybe? Wishing for that seems a VERY interesting aspect to the Hoogland list and tempts me to test burning wish again) their deck becomes very beatable. As long as you're not completely flatfooted when they play Jace.
Now, your list is very different from mine and Chalice is a certified silver bullet against them. Because top and brainstorm are so essential to their strategy you're going to win games off the back of chalice for one. But everything I said still stands and I feel that how you fare in that matchup will generally revolve around how often you're able to stick chalice for one. Also worth noting that they have their own answer to chalice in the form of Detention Sphere.
I mean, Joe Lossett is also like, a straight up fucking god sent from another realm so I can't fault you for losing to him ever haha. Those are all valid points though, I don't have much experience playing against it, -very- few players play Miracles in my area.
I think the combination of punishing burnwillows and Liliana is what we want to be playing right now. They lock up the game against virtually everything the fair decks can throw against us and are very robust and difficult to disrupt. Liliana is almost always a 2 for 1, one of the advantages I think she has over dudes. Whether seismic is better than dudes or not is something I'll have to see in testing. As of now, though, I think being able to win outside of combat damage is very important.
So we should just play punishing jund?Quote:
Originally Posted by Antonius
@Antonius: Slaughter Games is very strong vs. Miracles. It's also generally decent against combo decks. You have enough acceleration for it to be threatening to them when they're on a hand that's relying on cantrips. At its best, it's your fastest way to get a concession. I would also play Chalice if I cared about improving the combo matchups, but I typically pick this deck up only when I expect fields of decks I can prey on, so it's usually geared to ignoring combo.
I also like EE and Krosan Grip vs. Miracles. I haven't run Dreadbore in a tournament yet, but it tested OK. It kind of competes with the REB slot.
I don't like the Hoogland list at all (manabase is the WORST), but he's certainly put up results with it.