[Deck] Aggro Loam

[Antonius]

Believe me, I've tried to get him to try KotR, but he doesn't respect the Knight.

My beef with knight has always been that you can only play it in Naya colors and that it's a nonbo with Lavamancer. Bob and Lavamancer are major CA generators in the deck.

However, I've never tried naya with punishing grove. Recurring fires could re-create some of that CA. With merfolk out of the metagame, punishing fires might not be so big a liability. Naya would be nice, if only for the serious improvement to the reanimator match.

[Hanni]

I'm not trying to offend the guys that sware by Jund, but I really think Naya is the way to go in the current metagame right now. GSZ and Knight of the Reliquary are a huge improvement to your aggro plan.

GSZ/Arbor, along with Mox Diamond, increase the consistency of accelerated starts.

Knight of the Reliquary, along with Countryside Crusher, increase the consistency of dropping fatties (along with GSZ too, I suppose).

The fact that Knight can toolbox a few useful lands between maindeck and sideboard is awesome. Wasteland in particular is nasty against alot of decks, but now you get access to Karakas, Bojuka Bog, Maze of Ith, so on and so forth.

Plus, you get access to Swords to Plowshares in addition to Lightning Bolt.

Access to Gaddock Teeg and other hatebears seems like a solid plan vs combo, too. It's alot better than a mere 3 discard spells in the sideboard, at any rate.

[Antonius]

Access to Gaddock Teeg and other hatebears seems like a solid plan vs combo, too. It's alot better than a mere 3 discard spells in the sideboard, at any rate.

There is no solid plan against combo. The sooner you take your medicine and accept that the sooner you'll be happier for it and off to winning all your other matchups.

And yeah, running Swords to Plowshares would be sweet. Losing to sphinx of the steel wind is soooo fucking obnoxious.

all other gains seem negligible.

[Aggro_zombies]

A Knight toolbox is cute, but not very good. You're already running ~6 cycling lands and 3-4 Wastelands, which leaves 16-ish lands left in most builds. Factor in 8 or so fetches, and now you're down to 8 lands that do stuff, including making mana. You can't afford to get cute with a land toolbox unless you want to shave into spell slots, and this deck is already uncomfortably short on spells.

As for combo, yeah, what Antonius said. It's also worth mentioning that combo is not a monolithic, storm-based entity. Teeg is a blank versus Painter, Reanimator, and Elves, mostly bad versus SnT and High Tide decks, and only so-so against Tendrils storm and Dredge. The various other hatebears all have wildly varying usefulness depending on the matchups.

[Hanni]

The hatebear plan isn't any worse than sideboarding 3 discard spells, though.

[Aggro_zombies]

The hatebear plan isn't any worse than sideboarding 3 discard spells, though.

To be honest, I would either like more discard spells, or none at all. Discard is useful in a lot of matchups, as well, not just combo.

EDIT: There's a small local tournament tomorrow within 30 minutes walk of my apartment. I might go. I'd either play the last listed Naya build above, or this:

2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tarmogoyf
3 Countryside Crusher
1 Terravore

4 Life from the Loam
1 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Ghastly Demise
2 Maelstrom Pulse

2 Seismic Assault
2 Sylvan Library

4 Mox Diamond
3 Wasteland
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
1 Volrath's Stronghold
3 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Mountain
1 Forest

I'll have to sleep on it to decide which one I want to play. I've played both Naya and Jund Loam before and see merits in both, but it's been a long time since I've piloted either in paper.

[lavafrogg]

You could always play an offshoot of the lists that I play.....forgoing red completely in favor of white.... Just saying... Discard + GSZ for teeg or pridemage or ooze can shut down a large variety of decks in of itself.

[Antonius]

I don't think you can play GSZ, a flexible 8-piece removal suite and Seismic Assault in the same deck. So, whether you go Naya or Junk, the choice is there to be made.

and I think that you'd be better off going junk if you really want to play GSZ. If you've already got four knights, adding four crushers is just going to lead to you getting punished by Daze. With a solid 3cmc beater already in the deck, I'd rather play bobs.

oh, and I should amend that by 'combo,' i'm mainly referring to spell-based combo, like Sneak Show, Storm, Tide, etc. Permanent-based combo decks are extremely beatable because we run so much removal. That said, cutting red will make the elves and painter matchup much worse.

[Aggro_zombies]

I ended up deciding to play the Jund version at what was basically the last minute, although I had all the cards for both versions with me. I went 3-1 and would have played in the top 4 had it happened. I think there were 20 players or so. Here's what I played:

4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Countryside Crusher
1 Terravore

4 Lightning Bolt
3 Punishing Fire
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Seismic Assault
4 Life from the Loam
1 Sylvan Library

4 Mox Diamond
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Grove of the Burnwillows

3 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold

SB:
1 Devastating Dreams
2 Perish
2 REB
2 Pyroblast
2 Noxious Revival
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Krosan Grip
3 Surgical Extraction

My matchups:

Round 1 - Red Maverick against Matt
Game 1: He opens with land, GSZ for Arbor. I open with Grove, Mox Diamond, Punishing Fire the Arbor. His creatures get worked by Fire while I kill him with Tarmogoyf and Crusher.
Game 2: I side out Pulses and a P. Fire for 2 Perish and a Dreams. The game starts well, with a Crusher, Bob, and piles of removal. But, at some point, things begin to unravel: my Crusher gets hit with a (eventually game-winning) StP, and then he draws Elspeth, and then he draws Jitte, while Bob and my draw step show me an awkward combination of lands and Mox Diamonds. I kill his tokens for several turns while attacking Elspeth with Bob, but I run out of removal while still in mid-flood and Jitte becomes active. I scoop once it's clear that Terravore is my only out.
Game 3: I don't remember exactly what transpired here, but I do remember it involving active Fire/Grove and Scavenging Ooze. He eventually Surgicals my Fire when I put the return trigger on the stack, but it's irrelevant as my Ooze is 5/5 and I have an active Bob to go with it.
2-1
1-0

Round 2 - Zoo against Jake
Game 1: He opens with land, GSZ for Dryad Arbor, while I open with land, Mox, Fire the Arbor. That play turns out to have been game-breaking as he gets stuck on mana while I work him with a Goyf and Fire all of his creatures.
Game 2: I don't remember how I sideboarded. I have Wastelands for days, however, and he eventually scoops after I lock him out of red (his hand was basically all burn).
4-1
2-0

Round 3 - Sneak Attack against A Different Matt
Game 1: I do some stuff and then die to Emrakul.
Game 2: -2 Pulse, -3 Fires, +2 REB, +2 Pyroblast, +1 Krosan Grip. I do some stuff and then die to Emrakul.
4-3
2-1

Round 4 - Show And Tell against Corey
Game 1: I play an early Bob and draw into a lot of burn. He gets a turn three Show And Tell into Progenitus, while I have nothing; he hits me with it and casts Magus of the Moon, while I am about 5 points of burn shy of killing him.
Game 2: I'm fairly certain he doesn't have Sneak Attack (he doesn't) and is mostly focused on the SnT plan. I side -2 Pulse, -3 Fire, +2 REB, +2 Pyroblast, +1 Surgical. He mulligans and then opens on a Leyline of Sanctity. I play a land and pass. He plays a land and Ponders, but I REB it under the assumption that it will buy me time to aggro him out. I get a Bob, who draws me into a Crusher, while he spins his wheels a bit. Infinite cycling lands and a Wasteland later, Crusher is smashing him for tons and he still doesn't have his combo.
Game 3: This game was interesting. The openings are similar, minus a Leyline from him, but this time he has Misdirection to protect the Ponder from my Pyroblast. However, his Ponder evidently doesn't show him enough, and I manage to accumulate a board of Bob, Ooze, and an 8/8 Terravore to his lands. I attack for what is basically lethal, only to walk into a Through the Breach (buh?), making an Emrakul that blocks my Terravore. I cast a post-combat Crusher, then Ooze away the Emrakul when it dies EOT. He scoops.
6-4
3-1

So, I got lucky in my last round (and my opponent was playing a suboptimal version of SnT), but overall the deck felt fine. I feel like I would have been able to put up more of a fight in the two combo matchups if I'd had discard to bring in instead of largely dead Blasts, but I don't know what I would re-arrange in the board to fit in 6-8 discard spells, and I don't know that the Sneak Attack matchup would have gotten that much better. Punishing Fire was great in the two aggro matchups, and I love how much removal I had there. I didn't ever see my sideboard cards against them, though, so I still have no idea if Dreams is enough of a sweeper on its own to support a Naya build.

EDIT: Forgot the 1 Sylvan Library.

[sdematt]

I think in the matchups you played the Blasts were dead, but I don't think that could be said about them in general.

-Matt

[lavafrogg]

So realistically you should have lost to both combo decks you played? Oh and the deck is now a DTB and now some obscure rouge deck.... I guess ignore combo and shore up your other match-ups is a really good plan.

[Aggro_zombies]

So realistically you should have lost to both combo decks you played? Oh and the deck is now a DTB and now some obscure rouge deck.... I guess ignore combo and shore up your other match-ups is a really good plan.

It is, considering I played both of the tournament's combo decks back-to-back. Unless you count Dredge, in which case there were three combo decks out of twenty people.

So yeah, dropping some of the best cards in the deck to fill up on discard seems like a great plan on average. I'd love to have a bunch of random discard spells versus Maverick or RUG.

Speaking seriously, though, Aggro Loam is a metagame deck. There is no deck that has perfect matchups versus everything; even the most broken decks in the history of the game have been soft to something. Sacrificing points against the top three decks (RUG, Maverick, Stoneblade) to make matchups that you won't hit often marginally less unwinnable (because seriously, you have 24-26 lands and 4 Mox Diamond, you are so scary to a combo deck) seems not very good to me. I don't think the Junk formula is that good right now - even Nic Fit, which is like Junk but does some sweet stuff, is squishy to Maverick.

So yeah, I got unlucky but lucked out anyway. I think it's fine.

[lavafrogg]

That is a bad break, 2 of the three combo decks, sounds like my luck:p. At a certain point don't you have to account for the dredge/burn/storm/show and tell decks in the format? They are getting more and more popular...

Loam has great "fair" deck match ups but in what you lose from punishing fires you gain in deed. Wiping the board at will is always beneficial, especially when the loam engine can kick on and outdraw the shit out of maverick. The part that I have been unable to respond to for the junk vs jund lists is seismic assault. Assault online is just gg in so many cases.

Have lists ever just pushed to maximize the effectiveness of Assault?

edit: can liliana take the place of assault in any way, it seems like the best replacement at the moment?

[razvan]

I think that REBs are losing a lot of value nowadays. I still think that 4 Inquisitions of Kozilek are better in the SB.

Looking at the top 3 decks:

Maverick: Obviously nothing blue to hit. IoKs are not "fantastic" but at least they can remove bad stuff (like Knights and Mothers and Oozes and Equipment).

Stoneblade: They are moving away from blue. Grudges and IoK are a good way to combat this new Esper deck.

RUG Delver decks: Honestly, since they are skimping on Chain Lightnings, they are becoming less of a problem. It's better to be proactive against them than hope to have mana to REB their stuff. Although Snapcasters sort of become better with no REB.

Now, I know we all (especially me) try to make a better game against combo, and like it was said, it's impossible. You will never have positive number.

However, it's a happy coincidence that REBs might not be the best, and replacing them with discard might be ok. 6 discard (4 IoK, 2 TS) is not enough to make up ground against combo, but it does help.

Anyway, I tried removing Assault. Bad idea. Liliana doesn't take the place of it, I use her alongside it. I think that 7 3cc cards are about as many as we can afford, and I have 2 Assault, 2 Liliana, 3 Terravore/Crusher.

Also, IoK's are randomly good against Surgical Extraction too, although usually I remove other stuff anyway. People overloading on GY hate... hey, here's creatures to bury them!

[Aggro_zombies]

That is a bad break, 2 of the three combo decks, sounds like my luck:p. At a certain point don't you have to account for the dredge/burn/storm/show and tell decks in the format? They are getting more and more popular...

Dredge and Burn are different beasts from Storm and Show and Tell.

The latter effectively kill you in one turn, require immediate answers and the ability to apply a lot of pressure quickly, and tend to be metagame drivers - that is, a rise in their presence tends to result in a delayed rise in the presence of blue decks.

The former, however, are easier to deal with because they kill you over multiple turns and present more openings for interaction. They also tend to have more permanents than spell-based combo, which plays into your strengths. These are the kind of combo decks where you can actually put up a fight.

As I wrote in the opening primer, spell-based combo matchups are basically unwinnable because your deck just doesn't do anything the combo deck cares about. You're close to half mana (if you aren't actually 26 land, 4 Mox Diamond), which greatly dilutes both your interactive cards and your clock. You are built around Life from the Loam, a late-game card in a matchup where you are not favored going late at all (the combo deck draws into a god hand and kills you anyway). You run big, clunky threats and clunky board control cards in a matchup where you either want cheap, fast threats or powerful threats backed up by a suite of answers. All of these lead to what is basically a systemic weakness to spell-based combo.

You can apply discard as a band-aid, but that only fixes some of the problems. You still have too much do-nothing mana, you are still trying to get there with Trained Armadons that may get bigger if you don't have spells on top of your library, you are still not favored going long. If spell-based combo becomes prevalent in the meta, you should switch to something blue to beat it; normal metagame cycling dictates that a rise in the abundance of fair decks on which Aggro Loam preys should also create favorable conditions for Storm and Sneak Attack/SnT decks...which suppress the fair decks that prey on blue decks, thereby creating an opening for those blue decks to return and rout combo, which creates an opening for the fair anti-blue decks, and so on. I think it's fine that Aggro Loam is not playable at all points in this cycle. Few decks are.

Have lists ever just pushed to maximize the effectiveness of Assault?

Yes and no. Assault tends to be mana-intensive because you will usually want to Loam for land, land, cycling land, then Shock twice, cycle to dredge Loam, then cast Loam and Shock three more times. Limiting yourself to a single Loam's worth of lands per turn is kind of hit-or-miss on the power scale.

Assault is a finisher that doesn't require the combat step. It's basically a Fireball: it grows in power over the course of the game as your ability to feed resources into it grows. There is probably a deck like 43lands out there that uses Assault and maybe Punishing Fire, but I do not know that it would be very good; relying solely on Assault opens you up to a bunch of other problems, mostly because it's difficult to kill someone with Assault in one turn.

That said, Assault is still a great finisher and a core piece of any Aggro Loam list.

edit: can liliana take the place of assault in any way, it seems like the best replacement at the moment?

No. Lilianna is not even close to being the same thing Assault is. Lilianna picks off a random creature once every other turn while marginally reducing your opponent's card quality, while Assault just straight-up kills them. If Lilianna's ultimate actually did something to win the game (which it doesn't), she'd be more worthwhile, but as it is she's a utility card.

[lavafrogg]

Im coming to that same conclusion. She is good but just not game crushingly good like assault. 8 discard spells plus 3 liliana are a beating against anything that wants a hand, combo and control, but you lose alot in aggro matchups.

[Aggro_zombies]

So if SCG Phoenix was tomorrow (and I had a ride there and a place to stay while in town), I would probably play the same maindeck, but I would overhaul the sideboard.

razvan's arguments regarding Blasts are convincing to me. Against blue non-combo, I feel like discard gives me a better shot of stopping my opponents from getting value out of cards like Snapcaster, Stoneforge, Jace, and so on. As much as I hate to admit it, Hanni may be right about Raven's Crime against slower blue decks - I will need to test it more, but it seems fine if you use other spells to hit their relevant cards early and then slowly run them out of a hand. As long as TMS doesn't stick, they're probably not going to be pressuring you that much.

So, I'm thinking:

3 Surgical Extraction
2 Perish
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Krosan Grip
3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Noxious Revival

I still have no idea how to optimally use Revival. I think I am less attached to it for that reason, so I may just cut it for another Grip or something, I don't know. I'm also not sure about the Thoughtseize/IoK split, but I do know I only own one IoK and four Thoughtseize, so any split that favors me buying less makes me happy.

Also, I really, really hate Maelstrom Pulse. There has got to be a better card that can hit planeswalkers and equipment in game one without being overly narrow. Sadly, that card may just be Vindicate. Oh well.

EDIT: Actually, it just needs to be equipment. I have enough burn to handle most planeswalkers.

[lavafrogg]

Zombies, if you can get to Phoenix, I have a couch/floor for anyone to stay on.

I also fully disagree with your separation of "combo" decks. I feel the decks can be lumped into a non-interactive deck category instead of a "combo" category. Unless you have specific interactive ways to deal with the non interactive decks then you pretty much auto lose or hope for terrible draws/misplays.

Burn is a combo deck that combos over the first few turns of the game and dredge can just as easily kill you in one turn with a nasty dread return. I am also upping the list to include reanimator seeing how a protected anything spells gg.

If I was looking for a gauntlet at this point, due to the broad spectrum of legacy, I would say you need to have options against blade control, gsz aggro, tempo, and non-interactive. The last category is so large that you have to chose broad answers maindeck and specific answers post board i.e. crypt vs blast.

Loam decks in general, imho, have good vs tempo and vs control match ups and vs midrange aggro match ups but non interactive has never been favorable and is a growing category. We no longer just have to fear just storm or high tide.

How long can we blindly follow Antonius and not explore other options and colors? As dominating a card as life from the loam is, we have to be able to warp a format that seems to be ready to be taken over.

p.s. If you are going to like raven's crime than doesn't Liliana gain merit?

[Aggro_zombies]

Zombies, if you can get to Phoenix, I have a couch/floor for anyone to stay on.

Cool, thanks. I'm still trying to figure out who's going from here, though.

I also fully disagree with your separation of "combo" decks. I feel the decks can be lumped into a non-interactive deck category instead of a "combo" category. Unless you have specific interactive ways to deal with the non interactive decks then you pretty much auto lose or hope for terrible draws/misplays.

Burn is a combo deck that combos over the first few turns of the game and dredge can just as easily kill you in one turn with a nasty dread return. I am also upping the list to include reanimator seeing how a protected anything spells gg.

Combo isn't really a monolithic entity. Dredge is generally considered a combo deck but you can run maindeck Ooze to exile their good cards (and Surgicals post-board to do the same), large creatures like Tarmogoyf and Terravore to block, burn to keep their Zombies and power creatures in check, and Assault to go over the top if things head south. You can put up much more of a fight here than, say, Ad Nauseum storm, wherein you have Jack, Diddly, and Squat to stop them from going off.

Burn, for example, can be improved by running more cheap blockers and boarding into Zuran Orbs and discard spells. Burn is basically a very slow stack-based combo deck with a very bad topdeck mode; whether you have large blockers early and the ability to gain some life will dramatically change how much they have to draw to actually kill you. Discard spells are basically the equivalent of Healing Salves or better here. Again, you can put up much more of a fight than against a deck like, say, High Tide, wherein you can't stunt their mana and basically have to Mind Twist them to buy yourself enough time for your clocks to get there.

If I was looking for a gauntlet at this point, due to the broad spectrum of legacy, I would say you need to have options against blade control, gsz aggro, tempo, and non-interactive. The last category is so large that you have to chose broad answers maindeck and specific answers post board i.e. crypt vs blast.

Loam decks in general, imho, have good vs tempo and vs control match ups and vs midrange aggro match ups but non interactive has never been favorable and is a growing category. We no longer just have to fear just storm or high tide.

This is an issue of trade-offs. In your average tournament, how many of these non-interactive decks will you face, relative to the number of interactive decks? Keep in mind that interactive decks will be bringing in cards against you; presumably, their decks will be better against you in games two and three, so cutting out sideboard slots for them to handle combo means you will not gain a power boost, and may be losing edge. With that in mind, you need to answer the following questions:

(1) How often will I face non-interactive decks in X rounds, on average?
(2) How often will I face interactive decks in X rounds, on average?
(3) What do the interactive decks do in game one that causes me trouble?
(4) What will the interactive decks be boarding in games two and three that will cause me trouble?

The last two questions should be used to calculate approximate sideboard space needed to maintain an edge in your good matchups. The first two questions answer whether or not it's worth it to pursue anti-combo strategies; when the density of combo is low, you are better off shoring up your interactive matchups because you will lose more points on average by focusing on something you don't see very often while neglecting things you will.

However, it's also worth remembering that, if the answer to #1 is "a lot," this is not the deck you want to play. Tempo RUG has a very strong anti-combo match and would be better suited to a combo-heavy metagame. Again, remember that you're playing a deck that's 50% mana with a heavy focus on the late game. Adding discard doesn't change the fact that you're just not that scary to a combo deck.

How long can we blindly follow Antonius and not explore other options and colors? As dominating a card as life from the loam is, we have to be able to warp a format that seems to be ready to be taken over.

p.s. If you are going to like raven's crime than doesn't Liliana gain merit?

I tested a bit with Crime and it's way too win-more. It also doesn't stack up well against Jace TMS or Sylvan Library.

I would also argue that LftL is not really that good anymore. Jace TMS gives you far more card advantage and can kill the opponent all on his own, while the increase in immediately powerful effects - Stoneforge, GSZ, planeswalkers - weakens Loam's incremental card advantage plan. I love Aggro Loam, and it's a pet deck of mine, but any deck built around Life from the Loam is going to have serious inherent flaws stemming from the fact that it uses Life from the Loam as a central engine.

[Vacrix]

Punishing Fire was great in the two aggro matchups, and I love how much removal I had there. I didn't ever see my sideboard cards against them, though, so I still have no idea if Dreams is enough of a sweeper on its own to support a Naya build.

I like your list but I was curious as to why Devastating Dreams is only a 1'of in the board. I'm assuming this is because Punishing Fire destroys most shit in the format right now as Delver and Goblin Guide are heavily played and both have only 2 toughness. I was going to start playing Aggro Loam on Cockatrice and I wanted some advice on sweepers.

Or maybe as you were saying here a Naya build doesn't function as effectively with Dreams. Maybe another build runs Dreams more effectively? I've always thought it to be a staple in Aggro Loam.