[Deck] Aggro Loam

[Svizcy]

Ok, so i played my variant of aggro loam on my local tourny yesterday. Without further delay here is the list:
Main deck:

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Countryside Crusher
Spells:
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Vindicate
3 Dismember
4 Life from the Loam
2 Seismic Assault
4 Mox Diamond
Lands:
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Maze of Ith
1 Karakas
1 Arid Mesa
4 Wooded Foothils
2 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
1 Forrest
1 Savannah
1 Bayou
4 Taiga
1 Plateau
1 Badlands
total 60

Sideboard 15
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Red elemental Blast
2 Shattering Spree
3 Devastating dreams
3 Gaddock Teeg

What did i notice thrue the games:
Challice main deck wasnt as good as i thought. I never got it in my oppening hand and dropping it on turn 5 had almost 0 effect eventhou played vs Stoneforge mystic deck.

Dismembers are awesome, the ability to play them when you have 1-3 mana oppened if necessery. Won a game where i was mana screwed, just because of Black confidant and 3 dismembers.

1 eternal witness is a must in aggro loam i belive, so many times you just dredge away to many usefull spells, and having 1 witness + volrath's stronghold gives you the ability to replay them.

I played vs 2 stoneforge controls, vs 1 maverick type deck GW with blue splash for daze and brainstorm and jace, vs 1 MUD, vs 1 Dragon stompy and vs 1 Enchantress.

I lost vs Enchantress due to bad sideboard vs that matchup (bassicly had no answer to enchantments except 3 vindicates main deck).
I preaty much steamrolled thrue Dragon stompy and MUD (sideboarding in DD both games) and winning with countryside crushers.
Draw a game with 1 stoneforge mystic control (border in 3 REB and 2 Shaterring sprees)
Lost vs the second Stoneforge mystic control. (was floaded in one game, and got no answer to his sword to plowshared in game 1)
And lost 2-0 to maveric, where bassicly he controled the board, because i failed at removing turn 1 Mother of runes + snapcater mage and replaying all his removals while i never saw challice or Assault in both games.

I dont want to give up on this deck cause i find it fun and entertaining to play and want to run in in GP amsterdam. I am open to your suggestions however. :)

good day, svizcy

[Aggro_zombies]

Dismember, Bob, and that curve looks like waaaaaay too much life loss. I also wouldn't recommend four color builds; the marginal increase in power you get is offset by the fact that your mana will shit all over you whenever you don't have Mox Diamond.

Chalice not being worth it was established a while ago, but I guess it's good to see that's still true.

Liliana seems like a worthwhile thing to investigate in a straight Jund build.

EDIT: I like TheShaun's build. I still feel like this deck is too slow for the current meta but maybe it's still fine with Zoo at low levels and most of the top decks being some sort of BUG tempo-midrange-aggro-control mashup thing.

[Svizcy]

Thanks for respond, i took your OP as a guidance when i was building this.

I will probably cut white out of it, but dont know what to put in instead of KotR yet.
I probably wont play burning wish.

So, i need to put something in for the 7 slots i get by removing Knights and chaliches.

good day, svizcy

[TheShaun]

If you're running white I see no reason to run Dismember over Swords to Plowshares, that just seems really odd to me. Knight is really really good though, and the only reason I really think there is to not run white is avoiding mana problems.

If you do decide to replace white, I'd also get rid of Dismember and run something like Terminate. This deck tends to play from behind initially against aggro, and that 4 point life loss isn't easy to deal with, plus it fails to kill several things that Terminate doesn't. I'd add 1 Sylvan Library. You never want to see 2 in a game, but having one in play early seems like it almost guarantees a win will come eventually. I honestly can't think of a game where I had a turn 1/2 Library and lost, it has that big of an effect. Also you're running Volrath's Stronghold, no reason to not throw in at least a single Eternal Witness as well. It doesn't always come up, but there will pretty much never be a situation where something in your graveyard isn't amazing to have back. I know one of my recent dredge matches I just kept on killing witness with Assault, Strongholding it back, and getting Tormod's Crypt to use every turn to lock him out. Can do the same thing with other hate cards too, or just getting back a milled Seismic Assault or Liliana. I also feel like 6 is the bare minimum number of cycling lands, and 7 might be the right number.

[Aggro_zombies]

The OP is kind of out of date, but I don't play this deck anymore (actually, I don't really play Legacy anymore) so I can't really update it that much. However, most of the stuff that's written there is still true. Aggro Loam hasn't evolved very much in the past year and a half or so.

The most obvious issues with Aggro Loam are actually two sides of the same coin: your deck is terrible without Mox Diamond, and you have a terrible early game regardless. There's another, slightly bigger issue that isn't actually solvable without making the deck into something that's not Aggro Loam, which is why I wouldn't pick this deck back up anytime soon. But that's neither here nor there.

Anyway: people really need to consider running one-drops in the deck like Bolt or discard spells. Even in the games where you do have a turn one land, Diamond play, your options aren't much more powerful than the options of, say, your "average" Zoo deck, which is probably the aggressive pillar of the format. It also doesn't really advance you that much towards your late game since your late game involves Loaming a bunch and durdling with big guys, plays that can be easily punished with well-timed counters plus Jace from blue decks. And, of course, when you don't have Mox Diamond, or open a hand with Mox, cycling land, colorless source, you are going to be pretty far behind against a large chunk of the top tier.

Liliana helps alleviate this problem somewhat by giving you more midgame power but being 3cc doesn't solve the issues with needing Mox to stay on track in the early game. If I were to play against this deck tomorrow with, say, Zoo, I would Pridemage the crap out of Diamonds as soon as I can because it's a huge tempo boost. Even in the midgame it forces the deck to change how it fetches and makes its plays awkward because it will usually be short a colored mana. It buys a lot more time than it seems like at first glance.

I'm actually also okay with using non-FoW counters on Diamonds in the first two turns or so for the same reason.

Also, people need backup options to Loam, and not just Bob. Bob + Library is good in Jund, Library + Scroll Rack does the trick in Naya. Loam just takes so long to get going and eats up a million mana and doesn't even draw cards that well: you're better off using Loam mostly for Wastelands and repeating fetches than drawing until you get to the last couple of turns of the game.

To be honest, I would not want to take this deck to an SCG Open tomorrow. Even with Liliana, I don't think you're doing anything really compelling anymore, which turns each matchup into a grind/attrition war that this deck isn't the best at winning. But if someone can solve that problem without building a worse version of [insert other, better deck here - probably Zoo], I'm all ears.

[nedleeds]

So lil would make it double red, double black and double green (witness). That sounds miserable over a long tournament.

[Aggro_zombies]

So lil would make it double red, double black and double green (witness). That sounds miserable over a long tournament.

I don't think you need Witness.

You can probably pull the mana off through the addition of Twilight Mire and/or Graven Cairns. Your mana is still shaky without a Diamond but Liliana is at least powerful.

[TheShaun]

So lil would make it double red, double black and double green (witness). That sounds miserable over a long tournament.

It is, and that's the reason I don't have any Terravore anymore. However, the times that you'll want Witness are late game when you need to recur something, which is a situation that you'll almost always have plenty of mana anyways. I've never had a problem casting it at the point that it is intended to be cast. Honestly the hardest mana issue is sometimes getting to the triple red fast enough. I wouldn't consider Witness a must play, but there are definitely situations where she is great.

Regarding one drops, the only ones that I think can be considered for a Jund list are Lightning Bolt and discard spells. I don't think that discard is where the deck wants to be. I suppose I could give it a try, but I just can't think of what I'd take out/replace. There is such a delicate balance to the deck that replacing something with a card that doesn't do the same function can really throw things off. I do like bolt, but I'm currently going with a Punishing Fire setup and don't want both. In the current metagame bolt might be better, as it isn't very often that you'll need to recur Fire and kill a bunch of Goblins or Merfolk, but I'll need to test that a bit. I suppose Lavamancer could be a legitimate 1-drop as well, but I don't really like removing anything from the yard.

If I had white in my build I would certainly run StP as a 1.

I do agree with the theory that this deck's major weakness is turn 1 and 2 without a Mox. Not every deck in the field is build to take advantage of these slow starts, but all of the combo decks except High Tide will win the game in your face if you aren't doing anything important by your third turn, High Tide by your fourth. I'm not giving up on this deck yet, but I agree that there will probably need to be some kind of fundamental change. I wish I had the time to playtest more but sadly most of my building comes from theory and thinking about situations, not so much from actually playing them out. So the evolution that I'm able to contribute will be pretty slow.

[TheShaun]

Why can't I stop double posting...

[Antonius]

Split for first against a metagame moldering with Reanimator. Seriously. Getting tired of Jin-Gitaxias, Abortion.
I'm thinking of adding white (fourth color) just for more hate options out of the board. It could work. I mean, bad mana isn't really bad mana if you only need it against decks that don't run wasteland...right ?

[sdematt]

Oh, how could anyone forget Cock_Mongler.deck? :P

what kind of horrible tournament was this? The Gate in 4th? Vampires in 5-8th?

Seems like Reanimator is definitely back, again. What am I in, May 2010? Ffs.

-Matt

[soltakar]

Split for first against a metagame moldering with Reanimator. Seriously. Getting tired of Jin-Gitaxias, Abortion.
I'm thinking of adding white (fourth color) just for more hate options out of the board. It could work. I mean, bad mana isn't really bad mana if you only need it against decks that don't run wasteland...right ?

Nice to see you get there again with a fair deck.

Too bad I punted Harduvel into the finals, or it would have been 2 fair decks taking down the army of reanimator.

[Aggro_zombies]

Split for first against a metagame moldering with Reanimator. Seriously. Getting tired of Jin-Gitaxias, Abortion.
I'm thinking of adding white (fourth color) just for more hate options out of the board. It could work. I mean, bad mana isn't really bad mana if you only need it against decks that don't run wasteland...right ?

"Sphinx of the Steel Wang"? Seriously?

Congrats on the finish.

[coraz86]

Mini-necro (or major necro, depending on your point of view); Dmitry Nitkin made money at Amsterdam. His maindeck hasn't really changed and probably never will, but his sideboard is brilliant IMHO.

Also, he's a cool-ass dude. If you're reading this; congrats, man, and keep the dream alive.

[sdematt]

Can't find his name in that link. What place did he come in, and where's the list?

-Matt

[Koby]

Can't find his name in that link. What place did he come in, and where's the list?

-Matt

I saw the link a few hours ago. It vanished again. Stupid WotC coverage team ineptness.

[Richard Cheese]

Must...see...successful...list...

Edit: Amazingly, I decided to stop being a lazy shite and go look for it:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...0&iddeck=51159

Also on the list, mind=blown. MD Pridemage? No Crushers? 3 MD Dreams? I would love see a report/writeup from this guy explaining some of those choices.

[Waikiki]

Nikitin plays that deck for ages he also went top 32/64 in madrid with I think almost the exact same maindeck.

[Aggro_zombies]

Must...see...successful...list...

Edit: Amazingly, I decided to stop being a lazy shite and go look for it:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...0&iddeck=51159

Also on the list, mind=blown. MD Pridemage? No Crushers? 3 MD Dreams? I would love see a report/writeup from this guy explaining some of those choices.

He's playing Big Zoo but with an Aggro Loam package. Dreams gives him ways to trump other aggro decks and Loam and Assault give him some late game against blue decks.

His build is one of the ways to fix Aggro Loam's speed issues.

[coraz86]

Can't find his name in that link. What place did he come in, and where's the list?

-Matt

Sorry about that, man, he came in 17th. Better link here, for those interested.

And yeah, I know he's been running it forever, but he keeps doing well with it. No reason to fix what ain't broke. I spoke to him for a while at PT-San Diego last year after he'd beaten me in a side event with the deck, and we talked at length about how incredibly flexible the maindeck is. It's really skill-intensive, but once you learn the match-ups you're never out of a game. (Except against combo, to judge by his sideboard from this past weekend.)