[Deck] Aggro Loam

[Megadeus]

I love ravens crime. That is sick tech. Entomb is great as well. Can't get a threat, but it can get basically anything else in this deck

[Kyle]

This is true. I have only played vs Shardless once and I lost, though Im pretty sure I Mis played and should have won. I dont think it is a bad MU. Just kind of an awkward one.

Awkward is probably the right way to describe it, mostly because there are several lines of play. Going the DD plan is always good against them because their critters are pretty small, but it becomes a different route when you have a Burning Wish in hand and they have critters + Jace on the board.

What I found to be the most challenging is the decision tree - it's ridiculous. Their Card Advantage Engine is drastically better than yours and you want to stop it at any cost with a Chalice on 0. Not to mention they are using 4x Abrupt Decay that eliminates all of your permanent threats - Knight, Bob and must-answers - Sylvan Library, and of course Chalice.

I think that Public Enemy #1 in their deck is Tarmogoyf. We have many answers for him, but Goyf's presence can alter your gameplan so drastically it's sick.

[zulander]

I love ravens crime. That is sick tech. Entomb is great as well. Can't get a threat, but it can get basically anything else in this deck

If you have volrath out it can grab a threat too. I'm thinking of playing a 1of crop rotation as well, sick in getting wastes, groves, urborg, etc..

[Aggro_zombies]

If you have volrath out it can grab a threat too. I'm thinking of playing a 1of crop rotation as well, sick in getting wastes, groves, urborg, etc..

Rotation seems too narrow. I'm not sure what it's better than in your list.

Honestly, I think you could use another Burning Wish or two. Wish seems really powerful in a YP version of the deck.

Have you considered a maindeck Worm Harvest? Harvest and YP should be GG within a couple of turns. Is it that the card is too expensive and slow for the 60, or do you find yourself applying enough pressure with your current main?

How is your early game? Would Lightning Bolt be worth running?

[zulander]

Rotation seems too narrow. I'm not sure what it's better than in your list.

Honestly, I think you could use another Burning Wish or two. Wish seems really powerful in a YP version of the deck.

Have you considered a maindeck Worm Harvest? Harvest and YP should be GG within a couple of turns. Is it that the card is too expensive and slow for the 60, or do you find yourself applying enough pressure with your current main?

How is your early game? Would Lightning Bolt be worth running?

Bolt would be a tight squeeze, the beauty of playing 4 mox and 4 drs is that you don't normally stick around the early game too long. It's not uncommon to hit 5 mana turn 3 or land a hay-maker by landing sylvan/loam/wish or crime/liliana/pyromancer etc.. there's a ton of 2 card engines in the deck that are problematic for midrange decks. Having said that when you play against other tempo decks it's okay to board out mox diamonds/loams and bring in goyfs, kinda fun doing so. It's still in developmental phase so I need much more testing.

I like wishing for Worm Harvest, don't like drawing it. I think I'd want 3 max B. Wish, gets too clunky otherwise.

[Aggro_zombies]

Three feels like the right number of Burning Wish to me as well. I just bring it up because two seemed like it was not enough given that "YP into Wish into some sort of card advantage/threat spell" would end games, but that you also wanted to have the potential for a "Wish into answer" line of play.

One of your sideboard slots should probably be Perish, since you're running virtually no green creatures in the main. Is there a worthwhile sorcery in these colors that makes bigger tokens than 1/1s? That might be worth a last slot for times when a couple little guys won't cut it and you're not in a position to patiently build a swarm.

[AngryTroll]

Is there a worthwhile sorcery in these colors that makes bigger tokens than 1/1s? That might be worth a last slot for times when a couple little guys won't cut it and you're not in a position to patiently build a swarm.

Did someone say Grizzly Fate? If you can cast Wurm Harvest, the flashback cost on Grizzly Fate is probably doable.

[Aggro_zombies]

Did someone say Grizzly Fate? If you can cast Wurm Harvest, the flashback cost on Grizzly Fate is probably doable.

I know you love you some Grizzly Fate, but I was thinking bigger than that. Basically, Worm Harvest is very efficient at creating a large number of individually low-quality creatures, but I would want access to a Wishable way to win when having a lot of crappy dorks is not going to be good enough. Something sort of like Haunting Echoes used to be back in the day.

Right now, if your opponent is keeping you off building a strong board presence, the only real way to win is Punishing Fire, which hits an opponent for one damage at a time because of the life gain from Grove. Ideally, there would be a strong non-creature workaround for that sort of situation, but if there's a token-producing option that would likely end up being more efficient. If the deck weren't trying to rock Lili and Raven's Crime, I would just run Seismic Assault and call it a day, but the mana might be too rickety for RRRBB. On the other hand, the deck does have both DRS and Mox Diamond to fix mana...hmm.

EDIT: A quick Gatherer search suggests that Call of the Herd offers the best ratio of token size to mana cost. Disappointing.

[zulander]

I know you love you some Grizzly Fate, but I was thinking bigger than that. Basically, Worm Harvest is very efficient at creating a large number of individually low-quality creatures, but I would want access to a Wishable way to win when having a lot of crappy dorks is not going to be good enough. Something sort of like Haunting Echoes used to be back in the day.

Right now, if your opponent is keeping you off building a strong board presence, the only real way to win is Punishing Fire, which hits an opponent for one damage at a time because of the life gain from Grove. Ideally, there would be a strong non-creature workaround for that sort of situation, but if there's a token-producing option that would likely end up being more efficient. If the deck weren't trying to rock Lili and Raven's Crime, I would just run Seismic Assault and call it a day, but the mana might be too rickety for RRRBB. On the other hand, the deck does have both DRS and Mox Diamond to fix mana...hmm.

EDIT: A quick Gatherer search suggests that Call of the Herd offers the best ratio of token size to mana cost. Disappointing.

I love me some Call of the Herd ;) (I also love taking any chance I can to site GAGOMY, the most fun deck I've ever built :D)


devastating summons

Gelatinous Genesis
wurmcalling
giantbaiting <-- so cool with pyro tokens lolol
call the skybreaker


alternatively, I don't mind just wishing for a fireball and finishing them off lol.

[Aggro_zombies]

Oh man, Jund before it was Jund. Good times, good times.

Honestly, it might just be best to side in some Seismic Assaults against control decks that can make the dude plan unattractive. You can probably replace 1 Entomb and 1 Whatever in the sideboard with 2 Assault, then run a Perish/Virtue's Ruin in the last spot. I would want some enchantment destruction too, possibly over the REBs, but that's just me. I don't think you can cut too many Tarmogoyfs because of their value against tempo and combo.

[zulander]

I like nature's claim in the board since it also triggers PFires. I'll test more over the weekend and post some results.

[Megadeus]

Actually speaking of Grizzly fate... Heres a Facebook post on my magic group of friends from a few days ago... "Been looking for a good sorcery to play as an alternate win condition in the wish board... Yay or nay?" *Link to Grizzly Fate* "

I played it tonight instead of Gaddock Teeg in the board because I dont have any combo in my meta atm.

Round 1: BUG Delver

I dont rmemeber the match all that well. He kills me with a 5/6 Goyf after I draw basically nothing. I did get goyf out but he had infinite Abrupt Decays for blockers

Game 2 he mulls to 5 and I win.

Game 3, it goes kinda long but I take control and with him at 6, I wish for Grizzly Fate and make bears and he concedes ;)

I Drew a notch on it. Tracking how many kills I get with it.

Round 2: Grixis Pyromancer

I keep a loose G1 hand with 1 land, Mox Diamond, and GSZ for Dryad. He Repeals my T1 mox after seeing I dont make a land drop. I dont get there and Bob and Snapcaster (flashback repeal for mox diamond again) kills me

Game 2 I waste him and he has basic Island and Tundra out with black cards in hand.

Game 3 I grind out for a bit and just begin attacking with Nantuko Monastery since he isnt doing anything. Eventually I knock him to 6 and I wish for Grizzly Fate. He asks how hellbent I am on casting it and I say it doesnt truly matter and he casts Bob, then flashes back therapy just to spite me lol

Top 8 (after drawing in with a guy I rode with)

Im top seed, because 12 whole people showed up tonight. I played BUG Delver again. Meh. I ended up losing to him because in game 3 I mis played by Decaying a Goyf, then running my Chalice into a Spell Pierce. Doh. I feel like I was in good control but he had 2 flipped Delvers, I never saw PFire and my burning wish ended up having to go for a Dreadbore to kill off a Tombstalker. Yuck.

Oh well. I got to make bears and win once! Funny you guys bring it up the night that I decided to play it!


Edit: FWIW against the BUG deck I dont think I saw a KOTR or Maze of Ith either game unfortunately. A Maze would have been great to help me stabilize against Goyf/Tombstalker in that last game.

[Kyle]

As many mana resources you can possibly have in play playing Aggro Loam, I think Grizzly Fate's just too expensive as a wishboard card, as in my experience you want to wish and cast that spell in the same turn more than 95% of the time or you're probably gonna lose the spell you just wished for or give an opponent an extra turn to find an answer, therefore trainwrecking your gameplan. As I've said before, I just prefer to load up on sweepers in the board and stall for time until I land relevant threats like Knight or Goyf.

[KntrellCL]

best threat on wish board is worm harvest.... once I tapped all my lands (7 mana)... devastating dreams for 5 (6 lands 1 worm harvest) and then retrace the worm harvest hahaha

[Kyle]

The more I play this the more I'm certain I'm going to take this pile to SCG LA in November (yes, it's a month away, so things are likely to change).

Here's my open meta SB:

3 Thalia
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Thoughtseize
1 Massacre
1 Perish
1 Virtue's Ruin
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Shattering Spree
1 Dreadbore
1 Life from the Loam
1 Chainer's Edict

I have also considered the following, but am certain it will hurt my combo matchups a bunch (though I've been playing a lot of combo lately and seem to be doing okay with this):

-3 Thalia
-2 Ethersworn Canonist
+3 Thoughtseize
+1 Massacre
+1 Slaughter Games

If you were to take this to a big tourney, what would you put in the board? The weakest card seems to be Slaughter Games, as it requires 6 mana up, which is often too slow for Combo. Suggestions?

[KntrellCL]

The more I play this the more I'm certain I'm going to take this pile to SCG LA in November (yes, it's a month away, so things are likely to change).

Here's my open meta SB:

3 Thalia
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Thoughtseize
1 Massacre
1 Perish
1 Virtue's Ruin
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Devastating Dreams
1 Shattering Spree
1 Dreadbore
1 Life from the Loam
1 Chainer's Edict

I have also considered the following, but am certain it will hurt my combo matchups a bunch (though I've been playing a lot of combo lately and seem to be doing okay with this):

-3 Thalia
-2 Ethersworn Canonist
+3 Thoughtseize
+1 Massacre
+1 Slaughter Games

If you were to take this to a big tourney, what would you put in the board? The weakest card seems to be Slaughter Games, as it requires 6 mana up, which is often too slow for Combo. Suggestions?

Slaughter games is very slow against storm... but is your best wish target against show n tell... you can cast b wish turn 2 and s. Games turn 3 for sneak attack (if they show n tell for grisebrand or emrakul you will have 1 turn to find karakas with kotr).

The sb im playing is:

3 thalia
1 canonist
1 teeg (or 2nd canonist)
3 thoughtseize
1 loam
1 d dreams
1 hull breach
1 reverence silence
1 dreadbore
1 chainers edict
1 worm harvest/slaughter games

[Megadeus]

Thalia is an all star imo. Slaughter games is also decent. My meta was not very combo heavy, so I didnt play Canonist in my board and I got somewhat lucky only playing vs SnT and Tin fins. And yes I agree that Grizzly Fate is bad. I just like making bear tokens. If anything it should either be a Wurm Harvest or a GSZ in the board. And I think this is a fine deck for an Open Meta. Especially since you are almost certain to play vs Tempo once or twice, and that is almost a bye. And you are solid vs Blade variants with SFM, and you are decent vs Jace decks as well. Just dodge the good combo players and you should be fine. Hell this can beat combo. I'm probably about 50% vs combo with this deck. Mono U SnT I have never beaten, but my friend has with my deck before. That is one thing that I love about this deck is that I feel like I have decent game vs everything.

[sdematt]

Should've gone 4-0, but went 3-1 with one close loss against Shardless and placed second last night:

Round 1: Win against Jund
Round 2: Loss against Shardless
Round 3: Win against Painter
Round 4: Win against Pox

4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Badlands
2 Taiga
1 Bayou
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Mountain
1 Forest
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forgotten Cave
1 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold

3 Coutnryside Crusher
2 Terravore
3 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant

4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fires
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Entomb
2 Sylvan Library

--BOARD--

2 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
2 Duress
2 Slaughter Games
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Pyroblast

[Megadeus]

You beat painter? Nice. I have heard it is an awkward MU. Do you bring in Red Blasts vs them for when they name red for Servants?

[sdematt]

I didn't have enough slots, and I figured they'd be loose slots since I'm running Chalice.

I brought out:

-3 Crusher
-3 Goyf
-2 Terravore
-1 Entomb
-9

+4 chalice of the Void
+2 Slaughter Games
+2 Ancient Grudge (SO good)
+2 Krosan Grip (also great)
+10

I just become the super control deck. Seismic went all the way, btw.

-Matt