Agreed on Seismic Assault. 4 Ooze seems too many. Why not play some Goyfs instead?Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies
Was the reason you picked Terravore over Crusher mainly because of trample? I've only ever played Crusher and he may be a bit clunky sometimes, but all in all I think he's very good in Aggro Loam.
EDIT: You have 7 Thoughtseizes in your list.
One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Trample is pretty good on Terravore. That said, the card filtering from Crusher is pretty nice.
There are a lot of matchups where Ooze does good work. That said, I think the upper limit is three of them - there are plenty of times where you'd have a 3/4 or 4/5 Goyf but only have a 3/3 or 2/2 Ooze because there's no fodder for him. They also have serious diminishing returns in multiples.
Yeah, Ooze undoubtedly has many, many uses but in various situations Goyf is still better, for example to stall in the early game. And as you pointed out, Ooze gets much worse in multiples, whereas Goyf doesn't.
EDIT: Aggro Loam should be seeing more play at the moment, since I reckon it has good matchups against Thresh (Wasteland in conjuction with Loam wrecks their mana base and they can't get rid of a resolved Crusher provided you play around Bolt) and Maverick (with additional hate in the board, such as Virtue's Ruin/Perish). Stoneblade doesn't seem too bad either. I'm wondering why, but as far as I know this deck was never really popular, right? The lack of tournament results has to do with the fact that not many people are playing it.
Lastly, I have a question for Antonius: Why are you not playing Virtue's Ruin over Perish? Seems equally useful against Maverick yet doesn't kill your own Goyfs and Oozes.
One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
The only reason I can think: In LA, seems to be a lot of combo Elves, or for killing Mongeese.
-Matt
Wow.
I have decided cheating is the best way moving forward.
Stupid headache :(. Maindeck should be 4x Inquisition of Kozilek.
Yes, Terravore is because of the Trample, and the fact that he arrives big. Either is a fine choice.
I wanted to move away from heavy red, especially RRR. I find myself never really needing Seismic Assault. When it resolves, it's awesome, when it doesn't, it's still ok. It's just too big, and arrives too late, and is too easily disrupted by most things.
4 Ooze is amazing. I want goyfs, but there is just no space. Maybe the Inquisitions should be goyfs, but I think Ooze is nothing but amazing. It is rarely a turn 1/2 play if they can bolt it, but otherwise, it goes out pretty quicky.
Maybe 3 Ooze, but I don't know, I have been nothing but happy with 4 Oozes.
I might try 4 Goyfs instead of IoK.
I was happy-ish with a 3-3 Ooze-Goyf split, and even then I felt like Ooze occasionally showed up too often. Your mileage does appear to vary, though.
I say "keep Assault" mostly because there's no reason to hobble yourself by being a Loam deck unless the payoff is pretty big, and Assault is one of those ways. I mean, the best uses of Life from the Loam are, in order:
1) Assault
2) Wastelock
3) Reusing fetchlands
4) Showing your opponent information about your deck
5) Drawing cards
Numbers two and three can be accomplished with 1-2 Loams and an infinitely better ratio of mana to spells. Number five is pretty terrible, since trading a mana and a card in hand for a random card on the top of your library is not hot in a deck with 50% lands/Mox Diamonds, and it's even less hot when you don't have Crushers to buff through doing so. I get that there's some synergy with Liliana, but I would ask at what cost: her +1 is not amazing, her -2 is so-so, and really, "You sacrifice a guy and send a couple of creatures Lili's way" is not what I want to be doing. You have plenty of ways to grind people out going long - too many, in fact. What you don't have is a medium-term game plan or early-game consistency. If not supported well enough, Loam can be an active hindrance to developing either of those.
Here's the RUG Aggro Loam deck I've been working on. Strongly considering bringing it to SCG Providence in 2 weeks assuming nothing huge in AVR shakes up the format before then.
Creatures:
1 Terravore
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
Enchantments:
2 Exploration
3 Seismic Assault
Artifacts:
4 Mox Diamond
2 Engineered Explosives
Sorceries:
4 Life from the Loam
1 Forked Bolt
Instants:
3 Lightning Bolt
4 Punishing Fire
3 Intuition
Lands:
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
2 Taiga
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Academy Ruins
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
4 Wasteland
Sideboard (Tentative):
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Flusterstorm
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Devastating Dreams
3 Noxious Revival
Looking for any feedback. Intuition has been awesome, it allows you to fill in the holes in your engine (Loam/Cycling lands, Grove/Fire, Ruins/EE) or just find a win condition.
Aggro Loam wrecks RUG; I almost feel sorry for them. I just played about 7 rounds consecutively against RUG and practically the only way they can win is with a fast start with multiple Delvers.
One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Were your opponents bad? I've found my opponents to always be on the "Daze you, Spell Pierce you, Spell Snare you, Force that, Tarmogoyf, kill you" plan. This is a plan I'm not a fan of, since post-board, they also Submerge.
I'm not saying I haven't won many games against RUG, but they has so many free things. Ugh.
-Matt
I played repeatedly against one person only. He appeared to be running a stock RUG list.
Their counterspells and especially Daze are a pain in the ass, but you have the inevitability if you can make it through the early game. Engineered Explosives (this card has been great for me in general) is useful for getting rid of Mongoose and Lightning Bolt kills Delver.
Post board, you have some number of REBs/Pyroblasts to help you. Also, if you have at least one Mox out you can, to a certain extent, play around Submerge.
For reference, I'm testing Antonius' list with Virtue's Ruin instead of Perish.
One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
^^
yeah, things usually play out that way. Thresh is definitely a lose-able matchup but for the most part it's favored on our end.
RUG was the one deck I lost a round to in our local tourney. Game 1 I had turn 1 Crusher, which got bolted, then turn 2 I ran out double Confidant, which got forked bolt and then I drew umpteen land and died. Game 2 I had to mull to 5 and he had the 'counter everything you play, ride my 1 mongoose to victory' hand. So sometimes the draws can kinda screw you hard. Though getting to burn out a burn player with 12 to the face was pretty satisfying.
I replaced the 4 IoK MD with 3 Goyfs and 1 Sylvan Library.
Tomorrow, we shall see how it goes!
Aggro Loam wins again...
4 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Terravore
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Sylvan Library
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Deathmark
2 Terminate
3 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
1 Bayou
2 Badlands
3 Taiga
2 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Barbarian Ring
My numbers are off since I'm not at home looking at the list, and it's been a while since I played it, but I'm going to try to squeeze in 2 Faithless Looting.
-Matt
So this is a mini-report from my tournament:
R1: 2-0 DJ with UR Delver
R2: 2-0 Mike with RUG Delver
R3: 2-0 Chris Szafran with RUG Delver
R4/5: ID
Top-8: 0-2 to Szafran again
Game 2, he had 4 3/3 Mongeese, and he kept topdecking Submerges for my Ooze, and I only had 2 land. Despite that, had I drawn a forest, bayou or taiga that last turn, or ANY land on before turns, I would have pulled it out.
I had a bit of bad luck this round, and he had bad luck in our round 3 match, so it kinda evens it out.
Also, Delvers and Goyfs are so much less important than Mongeese. God-damn!
I will paste my list later, but it had 4 Ooze, 3 Terravore, 3 Goyf, 3 Liliana. I like that combination.
So I won, the Starcitygames open, two weeks ago.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=45962
Congrats, Dave.
How long have you been playing Loam? did you get any idea from this thread?
-Matt
How are Faithless Lootings for you? In particular, how are they in the first 2-3 turns of the game? Did you ever test them in conjunction with Sylvan Libraries?
@David: Playing faithless looting in the lavamancer slot seems very interesting. I'm so attached to my lavamancers that I'd have a hard time making that subsitution but it seems to have worked out for you.
What's the darkblast and grudges for in the sideboard? Was firespout better than perish?
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