[Primer] "Trisomy 21" / Bgw Loam Control

[Brot_Ohne_Kruste]

Hey guys,

actually I think you hardly know me. I'm a Magic-player from the west of Germany and, after playing about two years of Legacy, I switched to Vintage at the beginning of this year. Before switching the format I played a deck, which I developed: „Graboids!“. Here is the primer for reverence: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=11215 . It's a Brg Loam Control-deck, which tries to screw the opponent with many landdestruction-spells. The problem of this deck was that it was really chunky. Aggro-decks just smashed your face in most cases and Combo-decks did that even more. The other Matchups were pretty even, but not good enough. Because of its slowlyness the deck lost to itself pretty much. After realizing that I put away this deck and almost quit Legacy to play Vintage.

About a half year after quitting my best friend showed me a deck which abuses Spellweaver Helix with Raven's Crime and Time Warp to generate many turns (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=25376). After that I took up my old deck to play it with the Helix and I realized that I have to cut red because it wasn't that good. Sure, with red you got Burning Wish, but in almost all cases you want the card you wished for now and not after resolving one spell.
With the release of Alara Reborn Maelstrom Pulse was played for a while, but I also tested Vindicate in the slot and in the end Vindicate proved to be better because it strengthened the game plan of the deck: Mana denial. It flexibility really made it stronger and imprinted in a Spellweaver Helix with Raven's Crime / Life from the Loam it was even better than Time Warp.

This version made a few Top 8 in Iserlohn and Dülmen, two german tournaments with 50+ players, but the deck wasn't perfect at all. Two of my friends, who played the deck on the tournaments, said that Spellweaver Helix was okay or sometimes nice, but it was also win-more. I got the same results in my testings, so I cutted the Helix (because of form of a DNA-string it gave the deck its name: Trisomy 21 is the technical term for the Down-Syndrom; that's exactly what the deck does to the opponent ;)) and a few Raven's Crime.

After we tweaked the list a little bit, we got two different versions: one that played Swords to Plowshares and one that played Entomb. We piloted the deck at the Iserlohn Wintercup; the one with Entomb went just average, the one with Swords made the second place out of 83 people (Swiss: 5-1-1 and T8 to the finals with price split). At this point I was shure that the deck was competative.

So, here is the recent decklist:

// Lands
4 Barren Moor
1 Cabal Pit
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Polluted Delta
3 Bayou
2 Swamp
1 Forest
4 Wasteland
2 Scrubland
4 Verdant Catacombs

// Creatures
1 Gigapede

// Spells
2 Raven's Crime
2 Swords to Plowshares
4 Innocent Blood
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Mox Diamond
1 Worm Harvest
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Vindicate
4 Life from the Loam
4 Smallpox
4 Sinkhole

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Coffin Purge
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 [UL] Engineered Plague
SB: 2 Zuran Orb
SB: 4 Duress


Cardchoices

Starting with the lands you may see that this deck is playing just five Fetchlands which is quite a low number for a Loam-based-deck, but for this deck it's the perfect number. If you would add a few Fetchlands, the manabase would become fragile.
Cabal Pit is a great card against Aggrodecks because with Life from the Loam it is a recursive removal that could also handle creatures with toughtness up to 4.
The Cycling-lands are a recursive drawengine which sets you far ahead your opponent in drawing cards.
Against Wastelands from the opponent we are playing 2 Swamps and 1 Forest. The Plains isn't played because in this deck the Forest is more important to cast the Loam and to build up your game.

A mainpart of this deck is disruption and destruction. On almost every non-land-card is written “destroy” or “sacrifice”, or they help to find them.
The strategy of the deck is to screw the opponent. Sinkhole helps to follow the strategy, that’s why I think that this card doesn’t need any explanation.
Smallpox on the other hand needs to be explained. Sure, it destroys lands, but it also your own. What makes the card so great is that it trades 3:1 in most cases because you sacrifice and discard a land, which can be brought back on your hand with Life from the Loam. And you don’t have to sacrifice a creature because you don’t need one until you almost have won. Smallpox is also great on the draw when the opponent starts with land, creature and you with land, Mox Diamond, Smallpox. These starts are pretty hard for the opponent because it rips apart their basics to build up their game.
Vindicate is really flexible which makes it better than Maelstrom Pulse. Destroying a land is better than not finding a target for the Pulse because the only permanents on the opponents board in most cases are lands.
Wasteland is the last card in the deck which destroys lands. With Life from the Loam you can recure it and screw the opponent even more and after all it’s still a land which produces mana that is needed.
Innocent Blood stops creatures fast, so does Swords to Plowshares. The reason why the list just plays two of the Swords is that you need white to play it. You are just playing four green cards that you want to play early and six white, but fetching of green lands is essential for the deck. That’s why I think two Swords is the right number.
Engineered Explosives handles many creatures and more important, it destroys Aether Vial which is quite a problem for Trisomy 21.

To speed up our game a little bit we are playing Mox Diamonds which are also fixing the manabase. The Mox is good on the openinghand to e.g. play Smallpox at the first turn and rip apart the oppenents strategy, creatures and lands. It's also good against Wastelands to play Vindicates or Swords to Plowshares without a Scrubland.

Sensei’s Divining Top is a card that let end many games in a draw because many people don’t know how to use it. The Top is a strong card in this deck; it helps to keep the pressure on your opponent by finding cards to hate his board. It's also an proactive element against Tormod's Crypt or Relic of Progenitus of this deck. When the opponent actives them to remove the graveyard, you can tap the Top and dredge the Loam to protect it.
With Life in the grave you could also dig through your deck with the Top. If you don't like the first three cards, pay one mana, put the ability from the Top on the stack, in response tap it and dredge the Loam. Now you have got the Top as the first card and can dig two more cards. Furthermore you can stack the three cards in the order you would like to draw them.

Another card of the deck is Raven's Crime which defeats Control-decks alone in most cases, but it also helps in many other matchups e.g. to let the Goyf Sligh-player discard his burnspells when he hasn't got any land on his board.

The winconditions are Gigapede and Worm Harvest. The angry insect has got shroud, which makes it to an three-turn-clock in most cases. It also could kill Tarmogoyf and it is recurable.
Worm Harvest is the other killcondition, but it could also be a defensive part of the deck e.g. against Aggro-decks.
The best part of these to killconditions is that they aren't dead if the are in our graveyard.


Alternative cardchoices

I've playtested the deck often and tried a few cards in the maindeck. One of them was Entomb. Many of you may ask yourself why I don't play them. The answer is simple: It doesn't support the gameplan that much. In most cases you wish that Entombs where Swords to Plowshares because they are handling creatures which Entomb doesn't. Sure, Entomb puts you Life, Raven's Crime and even Wasteland and Cabal Pit in the graveyard, but it doesn't help much if your face is smashed by creatures in the first few turns.

Other cards I tested were Crime/Punishment and Pernicious Deed over Engineered Explosives. The problem of both is that they are too slow. You want to handle Aether Vials and nasty creatures as fast as possible and it isn't possible with C/P and Deed. Deed can handle many creatures and other things with one activation, but in most cases there aren't enough creatures that Deed would be better than EE.

Creatures like Tombstalker and Tarmogoyf are good cards, but they are bad in this deck. The good thing about our winconditions is that removal isn't useful against it and the opponent has got many dead cards in his deck. By playing non-shroud creatures the removal will become useful again and this is, in my eyes, bad. If you would ignore this negative aspect you have got also another one: deckspace. The space of the deck is pretty tight and you won't cut anything.


Sideboard and alternative Sidebaord choices

Coffin Purges are good against Survival and other Loam-decks. It isn't dead if you dredge it and can be played two times which is pretty good. In most situations it's better than Extirpate because Extirpate isn't useful when it got dredged in the graveyard.
Pithing Needle stops two problematic cards: Aether Vial and Sensei's Divining Top (when the deck also plays Counterbalance). Furthermore it stops Planeswalker, but the two artifacts above are the main reason to run it.
Engineered Plague helps in the Tribal-matchup.
The Zuran Orb in the Sideboard helps against Burn, Goyfsligh and burnspells in the Tempothresh-build.
Duress helps against combo, but I don't know if I just could ignore combo to help other matchups because Duress isn't affecting the combomatchup drastically.

Against Combo you could run Chalice of the Void in the board, but it is also affecting yourself. Extirpate is also an option for the board if Ichorid is becoming more popular (which is the case in Germany...).
I would advise against putting creatures in the Sideboard because it isn't good at all. The removal of the opponent isn't dead anymore and thats pretty bad.


How to play

The main goal of the deck is to hate the board of the opponent and build up your own pretty fast. After destroying all his lands, angry worms and insects beat the opponent to death. That's what the deck does and it does it pretty well.
And what is with graveyard-hate? Sure, it isn't nice at all, but it doesn't really affect the deck. In the first turns it just destroys the board and in most cases Life from the Loam isn't needed to keep the board clean. By keep the board clean graveyard-hate isn't that damaging. By removing the Loam the deck becomes a little bit slower, but it still can do many things the opponent hates. This doesn't mean that graveyard-hate isn't winning against this deck, but you need much more hate against it than against outher Loam-decks and if the opponent is lucky and has much hate and the mana to cast it, than it is okay that he is winning :).
Maybe you are asking yourself why we are just playing two cards out of 60 that let us win. The answer is: It's enough. It isn't unusual that the opponent is scooping and when he doesn't the two cards are enough, especially with Top and dredging.

I want to point out that, if you want to play Trisomy on tournaments, you should master it, which isn't easy. Especially to play it fast is pretty hard.


Matchups

Combo:
Bad. It's just bad. No comment ;).

Goblins:
The Vial, Lackey and hasty creatures are quite hard, especially the Vial. Preboard is the matchup in favor of Goblins, postboard in our favor.

Tempothresh / Canadianthresh:
Pre- and postboard really positive for us. We have got much more removal than they have got creatures. Just the burn sucks a little bit.

NQG with Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top:
Pre- and postboard positive. Just when the have got CB+Top AND enough mana it's getting hard. Here you have to play Explosives on 2 as fast as possible to prevent the lock.

Survival incl. Bant:
Positive, pre- and postboard. Survival needs mana... :).

Merfolk:
Preboard light bad to even for us. Postboard even to positive.

Goyfsligh:
The burn is pretty nasty, but the matchup is slightly positive for us, pre- and postboard.

Landstill:
Because in Germany Landstill isn't played anymore I couldn't test it enough. My results are a few month old and the deck was built differently.
Pre- and postboard positive.

Other Loamlists:
Who resolves the Loam first is probably winning. We have got landdestruction to prevent it. The matchup is even to slightly positive for us; pre- and postboard.

Controldecks like It's the Fear:
Post- and preboard. Slightly positive for us. If the could play Intuition on EE, Academy Ruins and Loam, it's not that good, but still winable.

Enchantress:
Almost all things that they are doing are fair. The only thing that shouldn't happen is that they resolve an Replenish. Pre- and postboard positive.


So, except for Goblins (or Elf-Survival) and Combo you would like to play against almost every deck. Especially the Aether Vial in the Goblin-decks is unfair... :).



Top 8s
- 5. out of 70 people: 09-13-2009, Iserlohn, Germany
- 5. out of 57 people: 10-11-2009, Dülmen, Germany (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29459)
- 7. out of 46 people: 11-07-2009, Italy (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30215)
- 2. out of 83 people: 11-14-2009, Iserlohn Legacy Cup, Germany (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30495)
- 6. out of 38 people: 11-15-2009, Iserlohn, Germany (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=31093)
- 1. out of 45 people: 12-20-2009, Dülmen, Germany (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30796)
- Top 8 out of 65 people: 01-10-2010 GPT Eindhofen, Netherlands [lost the first round in the Top 8 to ANT] (http://forum.benelegacy.nl/viewtopic.php?p=48930#p48930)
- Split in the finals out of 37 people: 01-16-2010 GPT Düsseldorf, Germany (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=31748 )



This is just a small primer on the deck (the german one was even double of that size). I hope you enjoyed it and looked over a few mistakes I made.
In the end I would like to thank my team that were testdummies. Thanks :).


PS.: All the Top 8's of the deck aren't on deckcheck, maybe I'll place them there in time. Furthermore I recognized that even in Italy (?) people are playing the deck: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30215
I'm honored, thanks :).


Brot_Ohne_Kruste