[Deck] Aggro Loam

[Koby]

Doh - you're right. I didn't read until the end of Punishment. Pulse is still the preferred maindeck catchall. I like EE to suppliment it as well, with all the weenies running around.

[Antonius]

crime/punishment also flips for 7 off bob. Not the goods.

As for turning off misstep:

The only matchup where I wish i didn't have to play through misstep was SFM Bant, and that's generally because of their equipment.

[Anarky87]

Artifacts
4 Mox Diamond

Creatures
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Tarmogoyf

Enchantments
1 Sylvan Library

Instants
2 Punishing Fire
2 Swords to Plowshares

Sorceries
3 Burning Wish
2 Devastating Dreams
3 Life from the Loam
2 Vindicate
1 Worm Harvest

Basic Lands
1 Forest

Lands
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Dust Bowl
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Maze of Ith
1 Plateau
1 Riftstone Portal
1 Savannah
1 Taiga
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills

Legendary Lands
1 Karakas

Sideboard:
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Choke
3 Leyline of the Void
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Life from the Loam
1 Perish
1 Pulverize
1 Retribution of the Meek
1 Nomad Stadium

Micah Greenbaum just took first at SCG Baltimore with that 4c Aggro Loam list.

[kusumoto]

I love seeing Devastating Dreams used again. That card is a house against so much.

I'm pleasantly surprised it's been good with all of this blue running around.

[honz]

before this weekend's legacy tournament, i lent my enchantress deck to my friend in exchange for his aggro loam deck. i played around with it some, and ended up with this list going into the tournament:

1 maze of ith
1 bojuka bog
1 volrath's stronghold
1 dryad arbor

4 wasteland
2 taiga
1 badlands
1 bayou
1 plateau
4 wooded foothills
1 bloodstained mire
3 grove of burnwillows
4 forgotten cave
2 tranquil thicket
4 mox diamond

4 dark confidant
4 countryside crusher
3 tarmogoyf
3 knight of reliquary
2 grim lavamancer
1 birds of paradise

4 life from the loam
3 green sun's zenith
3 punishing fire
2 maelstrom pulse

sideboard:
4 leyline of the void
4 chalice of the void
3 cabal therapy
2 ancient grudge
2 gaddock teeg

Match 1 - rbg something (stoneforge mystic, lavamancer, confidant, discard)
g1: keep hand of mox, confidant, fatty, and some land. He burns my confidant, and topdecks 3 wastelands to keep me on 2 lands. Eventually i hit loam, start recurring wastelands until hes has no lands. Kotr beats for the win.
g2: -1 bog, -1 lavamancer +2 ancient grudge
keep hand of confidant, goyf, cycler, and lands. He opens with lavamancer, which i feed my confidant to, making my next turn goyf bigger. He swords a pair of my goyfs, and drops stoneforge mystic. I rip punishing fire off the top, and combined with my grove already in play, i burn every creature he tries to play. A 3rd goyf goes the distance
(1-0)

Match 2 - Dredge (no LED)
keep hand of: birds of paradise, zenith, mox, lavamancer, and lands. He opens with putrid imp, and i realize my only hope is to zenith for KotR and tap it for bog. Turn 2 i get my KotR, but he goes off before i can tap him.
game 2: -2 lavamancer, -3 punishing fire, -1 maze, -2 loam, -2 goyf +4 chalice +4 leyline +2 teeg
Opening hand has 2 leylines and confidant. He cant find an answer to leyline before bob and a goyf tap for the win.
game3: mull into hand of: leyline, goyf, lands. Again he fails to answer leyline before goyf and a crusher go to town.
(2-0)

Match 3 - Dragon Stompy
opening hand of birds, zenith, zenith, kotr, lands. Turn 2 kotr, turn 3 zenith -> kotr, turn 4 zenith -> kotr is more than he can handle.
game 2: -2 punishing fire, -2 lavamancer, +2 ancient grudge, +2 gaddock teeg
keep hand of: mox, confidant, crusher, crusher, lands. We exchange fatties and beats for a while, and both end up really low on life. I get lucky on a confidant trigger and hit a land. A top decked bird of paradise chumps his rakdos pit dragon and lets me swing for the win.
(3-0)

Match 4 - UBG Landstill
win dice roll, and keep hand of mox, confidant, crusher, lands. Turn 1 confidant gets countered, but turn 2 crusher lands. I lucksack with the crusher trigger, and he gets huge fast. Wasteland stall long enough for him to turn sideways twice, and win.
Game 2: -2 lavamancer -1 maze -1 bog, -2 pulse, +2 teeg, +4 chalice
Keep hand of bob, goyf, crusher, loam, and lands. His deck works like its supposed to, and i quickly realize he has more answers than i have creatures. I go into loam mode, and eventually find punishing fires and grove. I slowly burn him to 0 while keeping his factories and jace in check. After the game he admits that he didn't know what i was playing since all he saw game 1 was crusher, so he didn't board in any graveyard hate. Lucky on my part, but i will take what i can get.
(4-0)

Match 5 - burn/sleigh (elementals, figure of destiny, misstep, scroll)
I drop confidant and some other beats while he plays mountains and passes the turn for a while. Then he plays 2 price of progress which is more than enough to kill me.
game 2: -2 lavamancer, -2 punishing fire, -1 bog, -2 pulse, +4 chalice, +3 therapy
(in hindsight, i should of taken out loam and kept in some of the burn)
my first 7 is nothing short of the best possible hand against a burn deck: chalice, chalice, mox, kotr, lands. Turn 1 chalice at 1, turn 2 KotR, turn 3 chalice at 2. He scoops.
game 3: I mull to 5 looking for chalice, but am forced to keep: crusher, zenith, birds, fetches. For the first time i realize hes playing more of a sleigh deck than a burn one, and my fatties outsize his. He wastes alot of his burn killing my crushers and goyfs, but eventually i land a KotR at 10/10 or so, and he cant answer it. i win while at 2 life.
(5-0)

Match 6 - Enchantress
now in the top 8, i manage to get matched up against my friend playing my enchantress deck. Since i play enchantress alot, i realize that there is no chance in hell i am going to win game 1. I get some good confidant / goyf beating in, but he finds solitary confinement, and we go to game 2
-3 punishing fire, -2 lavamancer, -1 maze, -1 loam +3 cabal therapy, +4 chalice
Keep a hand of therapy, bob, loam, crusher, lands. I blindly therapy away his argothian, and sac bob to get his grove. Alas, he top decks another enchantress and its downhill from there.
(5-1)

Conclusions:
zenith was amazing all day. One of its most important uses is as a pseudo-mox turn 1 for dryad arbor, allowing you to cast crusher or KotR turn 2. It also avoids KotR's pesky mana cost, which is his biggest problem. I was running BoP as a color fixer and zenith target, but i never actually cast zenith for it. Most the time when i had 2 mana i would rather be casting bob/loam/fire/goyf. However, the BoP did come in handy several times; noble heirarch may be useful in this slot as well.
Lavamancer did not impress me at all. Using his ability early on hurts your goyf/loam/knights/pfire way too much. Using his ability later in the game is subpar, because you have pfire, and the ability to recur your fatties

[honz]

double post

[Richard Cheese]

On RGb vs. RGw:

One of the primary draws to running black seems to be Bob, but is Bob's extra draw really necessary when you have cycle lands and Loam for card advantage? Don't get me wrong, I love me some Bobs, but it seems like this is one list where you could live without him.

For white lists, has anyone considered running Jotun Grunt to make up for the lack of Stronghold? It's definitely clumsier, but you always have access to fetches, he provides an extra body, and is less mana intensive. Unlike Stronghold though, there's no guarantee he'll see play. He can recycle more than creatures though.

Seismic vs. P.Fire - Is it criminal to try and run both? PFire+Grove is pretty inevitable as the game goes on (barring grave hate), so it seems to me that you could run 1/2 of each, mostly as a backup to Seismic against heavy control decks or the unfortunate event of dredging all your Assaults away.

[ESG]

@ Richard Cheese: The extra draw is good. You don't always start with Loam, and post-board you're Loam can be Extirpated, which is bad times. I don't have Dark Confidant in my list, but if I was running black, I would find a way to run him. He usually sets up a win if he survives even a few turns unanswered. Jotun Grunt doesn't tend to play well with Loam. You'd be better off running Zeniths and Goyfs. I run both Seismic Assault and Punishing Fire in my build.

@ honz: It's funny: I remember Stephen Menendian saying (or it might have been Doug Linn recalling something Menendian said) that they liked Enchantress's chances in the Open series but that they didn't run it because it couldn't beat Aggro Loam. But that version had Devastating Dreams, EE and Firespout, all of which make a huge difference in the matchup. Outside of Wasteland, Maelstrom Pulse, Chalice of the Void and Gaddock Teeg (and beaters), there aren't a lot of great cards you have in that matchup.

[ESG]

@ Richard Cheese: The extra draw is good. You don't always start with Loam, and post-board your Loam can be Extirpated, which is bad times. I don't have Dark Confidant in my list, but if I was running black, I would find a way to run him. He usually sets up a win if he survives even a few turns unanswered. Grunt doesn't tend to play well with Loam. You'd be better off running Zeniths and Goyfs. I run both Seismic Assault and Punishing Fire in my build. Punishing Fire helps make up for the lack of Bobs.

@ honz: It's funny: I remember Stephen Menendian saying (or it might have been Doug Linn recalling something Menendian said) that they liked Enchantress's chances in the Open series but that they didn't run it because it couldn't beat Aggro Loam. But that version had Devastating Dreams, EE and Firespout, all of which make a huge difference in the matchup. Outside of Wasteland, Maelstrom Pulse, Chalice of the Void and Gaddock Teeg (and beaters), there aren't a lot of great cards you have in that matchup.

[Antonius]

Turn 1 bob is probably the most powerful play in the format, after turn 1 brainstorm and bob and turn 1 dark rit dark rit ad nauseam.

[sdematt]

Remember boys and girls: Dark Confidant is the best creature in the format. You're really going to give that up?

-Matt

[GGoober]

Bob dies to Mogg Fanatic, Goyf doesn't, also, you might not draw the Mox Diamond to play turn 1 Bob so don't run Bob please.

[Richard Cheese]

Remember boys and girls: Dark Confidant is the best creature in the format. You're really going to give that up?

-Matt

Right but that's not exactly a reason to include him in a deck is it? Brainstorm is one of the best cards ever printed in any format...should we play blue so we don't have to give that up either? I'm not asking if it's worth running him if you're already going RGb. I'm just asking if Bob alone makes black a more appealing choice over white when you already have Crusher, cycle lands, and Loam for filter/draw/card advantage, or if all the targeted removal black gives you access to is the real reason, and Bob is more of a bonus. I'm just trying to learn my way around the deck and figure out if I want to start with a RGw or RGb list. Right now I'm leaning towards white for KotR, Grunt, StP, and access to Armageddon as a Wish target.

Also, what say ye about the new M12 land:

Buried Ruin
Land
T: Add to your mana pool.
,T, Sacrifice Buried Ruin: Return target artifact card from your graveyard to your hand.

Good enough with EE to include as a 1-of?

[Antonius]

Bob is the reason to run black. Bob is better than all of those white cards you listed put together.

[sdematt]

You don't have a draw engine otherwise. That's the problem. Drawing extra cards at almost no disadvantage is hot, which is very similar to running him in the board of 43 lands. It's just really good.

-Matt

[Aggro_zombies]

You don't have a draw engine otherwise. That's the problem. Drawing extra cards at almost no disadvantage is hot, which is very similar to running him in the board of 43 lands. It's just really good.

-Matt

This is true. The Loam draw engine is gravy but also glacially slow and extremely mana intensive; it's strictly late-game. You need something to fuel you early in the game and as a backup in case you can't Loam (for any of a variety of reasons). If you lose Bob by cutting black, you basically have to run Sylvan Library, which is not nearly as strong except in cases where you have multiple Loams and Assault going.

This deck is a classic midrange deck. It needs a draw engine to stay together, and it needs redundancy to make up for the lower overall power level of its cards.

[Richard Cheese]

I will definitely be giving the black version a try. I finally got around to throwing a list together in Cockatrice and I completely see what you mean now. Just feels kinda dead in the water without an active Loam.

[Richard Cheese]

Sorry for the double post, but what do you guys recommend for the Painted Stone matchup? Sneak/Show?

[Admiral_Arzar]

Sorry for the double post, but what do you guys recommend for the Painted Stone matchup? Sneak/Show?

Sneak/Show: We lose.

Painted Stone: Krosan Grip, Ancient Grudge, burn out the wazoo.

[CorpT]

There are answers to Show if you run a Wishboard. Either Retribution of the Meek or Persish. Or Chainer's Edict if they don't have any other creatures. Sneak is much harder if they play correctly with enough mana to activate.

Is anyone actually playing Sneak though?