[Deck] Aggro Loam

[cendrane]

Hi!

I also want to (and will) play 4C Loam at GP Lille but I don't understand why the deck is still "unknown"... Ok it's a no combo legacy deck without brainstorm but Maverick was too ! Is it because the deck is difficult to play ?

I don't play a lot against OmniShow, Sneak & Show and Painter so I'm wondering if those decks aren't are our worst match-ups ? It was around 10% of the field of the BOM (http://www.bazaar-of-moxen.com/fr/ba...e-bom9,24.html).
I specially thought about Blood moon, eventualy back to basics and how it could be difficult to deal with an early show n tell.
Agreed with you about Reclamation Sage but why do you cut a Tarmogoyf for a Deathrite ? I would feel a little bit naked with only 4 knights (by the way, I've read on french forum that some players add Thespian-Dark Depths combo because they think that the bom list has not enough win conditions).

Thanks a lot for the deck, it's just how I love to play magic.

ps : sorry for my english

[schniggaz]

Oblivion Ring has kind of the same effect. You are correct. It just has to be something with an etb trigger that deals with Omniscience. Oblivion Ring has the advantage of dealing with Emrakul if you just go for Show and Tell - Emrakul. But Reclamation Sage is better in other matchups as a tutorable artifact/enchantment removal.
Oblivion is a tutorable effect via E-Tutor, but with Chalice of the Void we are not likely to play E-Tutor. That leaves us with GSZ as our tutor engine --> Reclamation Sage.
Dealing with just Emrakul is a bit easier, either by playing Knight of the Reliquary early, drawing Karakas naturally or with Liliana.
Also nice to have is Tidehollw Sculler, he just takes Emrakul out of their hand before they can cast it. But this answer is not enough, since they can still cantrip or dig through time into an answer for Sculler or another Emrakul.

Yeah, i guess thats me.

Edit: I never had the issue of not having enough win-conditions. Once you do have control over the game, dealing 2 damage with Confidant, 1 with Punishing Fire is enough. It simply does not matter how fast you kill them when you can just control everything.
Dealing with Blood Moon is trickier. Mox Diamond helps a lot. And I would also play one Forest, in addition with GSZ for Deathrite and the Reclamation Sage you should be able to beat it. If there are a lot of Blood Moons you can also play a Ray of Revelation, also helps vs Omniscience.

[Seraphix]

Oblivion Ring has kind of the same effect. You are correct. It just has to be something with an etb trigger that deals with Omniscience. Oblivion Ring has the advantage of dealing with Emrakul if you just go for Show and Tell - Emrakul. But Reclamation Sage is better in other matchups as a tutorable artifact/enchantment removal.
Oblivion is a tutorable effect via E-Tutor, but with Chalice of the Void we are not likely to play E-Tutor. That leaves us with GSZ as our tutor engine --> Reclamation Sage.
Dealing with just Emrakul is a bit easier, either by playing Knight of the Reliquary early, drawing Karakas naturally or with Liliana.
Also nice to have is Tidehollw Sculler, he just takes Emrakul out of their hand before they can cast it. But this answer is not enough, since they can still cantrip or dig through time into an answer for Sculler or another Emrakul.

Yeah, i guess thats me.

Edit: I never had the issue of not having enough win-conditions. Once you do have control over the game, dealing 2 damage with Confidant, 1 with Punishing Fire is enough. It simply does not matter how fast you kill them when you can just control everything.
Dealing with Blood Moon is trickier. Mox Diamond helps a lot. And I would also play one Forest, in addition with GSZ for Deathrite and the Reclamation Sage you should be able to beat it. If there are a lot of Blood Moons you can also play a Ray of Revelation, also helps vs Omniscience.

Have you ever considered Idyllic Tutor? Granted it only gets enchantments and is 3 mana but I've thought about it before.

As far as extra win cons go, I'm not sure DD/Stage is effective anymore with Stifle and Wasteland back in the format, although it has the advantage of working through GY hate unlike PFire/Knight beats.

[Pilhas]

I feel that Wasteland + Stifle is not a major problem against the DD+Stage combo. You usually want to rush it against combo but against tempo you can grind them out and only go for it after the game is somewhat controlled.

@schniggaz I guess I will give Lilianas another try over the Dreams,vindicate and huntmaster. Have you felt the lack of DD+Stage on your list?

[schniggaz]

I never thought about Idyllic Tutor, to be honest. A tutor board is there to have specific answers for specific decks, like dredge or storm. When you can turn one E-tutor for a turn two Canonist or Rest in Peace you are in a great spot to win the game. But spending three mana to tutor and a few mana to play the hate next turn is way to slow, unfortunatelly.

Marit Lage is super powerful. I played it a lot in the last few months, but only in three color decks. It is correct that it can close out the game very fast. You only need to be fast against combo, not against the fair decks (btw: fair decks do also play Karakas sometimes, which makes it even worse). And in a perfect world that means playing turn two Knight, creating the token turn three (having drawn one piece of the combo) and winning on turn four. What does that mean? Spending all your mana turn two and three without disrupting your opponent. And lets face it, every other combo deck will undoubtly kill until turn four, if its not disrupted. You could have also spent the mana wastelanding, playing teeg, eating their grave (ooze), playing chalice... anything else. Disruption is so important!
And there is still the issue that the combo are two lands that do not produce colored mana and are on its own not at its best.

[cendrane]

And there is still the issue that the combo are two lands that do not produce colored mana and are on its own not at its best.

Yeah. That's why I don't like DD-Thespian combo in a 4C loam shell. With it, you want to rush the game but it's not our job. Plus, as we are vulnerable at the beginning of the game (being wasted, having loam countered), we can't be too greedy with the mana base.

Speaking about mana base (cf. BOM 9 list), I remove a Canopy for a Forest to be able to deal with Blood Moon and Back to Basics. I'm not sure if it's will be relevant for a big event but I'm still in a good shape against Surgical Extraction with Chalice and 4 cycle land.

@ schniggaz : Nevermore sounds good as OmniShow pack mostly 4 FoW and 3 Pact of Negation. We can try to slow down our opponent with recurring Wasteland. We can gain time but is it enough ? Is it just a good start before we can cast a Slaughter Game or do you think is enough by its own ?
Edit : Canonist could be side in too but Chalice at 1 is probably enough.

[Pilhas]

I am thinking in incorporating 2-4 Tidehollow scullers to the sideboard to test the combo matchups. It's light disruption+small clock but I feel that the fair matchups are mostly covered with the main deck. I will post my findings :)

[apocolyps6]

This conversation about Stage-depths is really weird. It requires you to play 1 land that does not produce mana and 1 more colorless land. That should not be a big deal unless you are playing something crazy like Seismic Assault + Lili. The cycle lands are also very subpar mana sources but they see play in the deck. At the cost of taking up a land slot and 1 "blank" you get to have an "I win" button and do not have to out-grind the opponent every match. Wasteland and Karakas should not be a big deal because most of the time these pieces are being tutored out by a knight at instant speed. The same knight that can tutor up answers to those lands. It has very small costs and pretty huge benefits. The ability to quickly stop playing the fair game and go in for the kill almost from nowhere is not to be underestimated. If you want you can think of Marit Lage as our Entreat the Angels :p

I played a bit with 1 sculler in the main and 2 in the board. If we were a more aggressive deck this temporary disruption would be fine but if the opponent is playing brainstorm or removal sculler gets much worse. I still have 1 in the board because of Omnitell, but I'm currently very unhappy with it. I've started playing Slaughter Games again for that matchup and others.

I've also been pretty unhappy with ETB triggers like O-Ring to beat Omni because once Omni lands, the deck should be able to Cunning wish for a Trickbind or DTT/etc for the combo pieces again.

As for Rec Sage, I've been tempted to play it in the past, but Pridemage is just so much more proactive. In matchups where the opponent will not play an artifact, Pridemage is a watchwolf. Pridemage is a worse answer but a better creature in general. In the main I think you want the better creature, and in the board I'd prefer a more general answer like Judgement (my mana supports this well).

As for blood moon, I've almost never had problems. I basically search for my 1-of forest asap, and then eventually play a mox diamond and proceed to ignore the moon. Both Rec Sage and Pridemage cost 3G total off of a zenith, which will be the most common way to blow up the moon after it lands.

Back to basics is more of a problem because if they catch you with your pants down you can just lose on the spot, but it is seeing no play (at least that I've noticed)

Sorry if some parts of this are unclear, this was written quickly. Also some of this may not apply depending on your list/mana base

[schniggaz]

I would never blame anyone for playing the dark depths combo. It is really powerful and if the manabase works for you, go for it. I just think that it is not necessary and therefore prefer playing a maze and something else.

Pridemage is the better magic card, for sure. If you want to play one of those card maindeck it should probably be Pridemage, for sure, but as a sideboard card i prefer reclamation sage. Judgement does not deal with blood moon or omniscience. Since I am only playing one copy in the sideboard I prefer a tutorable answer for moon and the possibilty of randomly destroying omniscience when i draw the card.

Basic Forest seems fix. I do think that you can beat blood moon with it. But ignoring it seems tough.

[FoolofaTook]

Sage or a oblivion ring?
I tend to like small Etutor packages in sideboards of decks with white. Are you the winner of BOM that everyone bases the list from?

Oblivion Ring doesn't work against Omnitell reliably. They usually don't S&T unless they have Cunning Wish or another way to dig (DTT lately) and once they've cast one of those they're going to find Echoing Truth with your Oblivion Ring EtB on the stack and bounce it and then go off. It could buy you a turn basically if they don't have the mana to let ORing fully resolve and also bounce Omniscience in the same turn.

[Seraphix]

This conversation about Stage-depths is really weird. It requires you to play 1 land that does not produce mana and 1 more colorless land. That should not be a big deal unless you are playing something crazy like Seismic Assault + Lili. The cycle lands are also very subpar mana sources but they see play in the deck. At the cost of taking up a land slot and 1 "blank" you get to have an "I win" button and do not have to out-grind the opponent every match. Wasteland and Karakas should not be a big deal because most of the time these pieces are being tutored out by a knight at instant speed. The same knight that can tutor up answers to those lands. It has very small costs and pretty huge benefits. The ability to quickly stop playing the fair game and go in for the kill almost from nowhere is not to be underestimated. If you want you can think of Marit Lage as our Entreat the Angels :p

What does your current manabase look like?

There is a real opportunity cost to playing DD/Stage. Cycle lands may be subpar mana sources but I see them as essential to the basic functioning of the deck, along with lands like Grove, Dryad Arbor, etc. I was willing to sacrifice Wastelands to play DD/Stage in the Cruise meta but I wonder if that's the place to be right now. Although I haven't tested it, I'm wary about running 4 Wasteland, DD, and Stage, because that seems like a lot of colorless mana.

[apocolyps6]

This is what my manabase looks like

Land (28)
Mana Sources:

1x Bayou
1x Forest
1x Plateau
2x Savannah
2x Scrubland
1x Taiga

Fetch lands:

4x Windswept Heath
1x Verdant Catacombs

'Cycle' lands:

2x Tranquil Thicket
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Secluded Steppe

Manlands:

1x Dryad Arbor
1x Stirring Wildwood

Utility:

1x Dark Depths
2x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Karakas
1x Thespian's Stage
4x Wasteland

3 important missing pieces of info:
1) 4x Mox diamond - fixing and acceleration, don't hesitate to 'throw away' colorless lands
2) The whole deck can be played off Scrubland + Plateau and all but 3 cards can be played off of any two of Savannah, Scrubland, & Bayou or a Forest+Scrubland. 2 colored mana sources is almost always enough. Over half my deck can be cast off just Savannah as a colored source.
3) I feel comfortable aggressively mulliganing to good hands because Loam, Chalice, and Depths are all ways to make the initial resource advantage not matter.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/naya-loam-29-04-14-1/

[Pilhas]

Hey guys, I tested today against shadless bug and I found extremely difficult to win. Any tips on the matchup or key cards?
I sideboarded out 4 chalice and the qasali and teeg for 2 leyline void 2 choke 1 ee and 1 cataclysm
The chalices felt subpar but also did the leylines. Maybe i should kept the teeg for jace?

[Seraphix]

This is what my manabase looks like

Land (28)

Ah, I'm only playing 26 lands, not for any particular reason other than that it seems to be the most popular number and I haven't played the deck a lot. Hadn't occurred to me that I could cut spells for DD rather than lands, maybe I'll try that out.

Hey guys, I tested today against shadless bug and I found extremely difficult to win. Any tips on the matchup or key cards?
I sideboarded out 4 chalice and the qasali and teeg for 2 leyline void 2 choke 1 ee and 1 cataclysm
The chalices felt subpar but also did the leylines. Maybe i should kept the teeg for jace?

I agree that Leyline is subpar in this matchup, but I think Chalice is pretty good since it shuts off Visions. If you can keep them off of card draw you should be able to answer everything they are doing and grind them out. I've always felt G. Teeg is a bit low impact too, but if they are playing Dig it might be worth having 1 copy post board.

[apocolyps6]

Oh right, I bumped up the land count twice a while ago and completely forgot about it. I don't remember what the first bump was for I think I was just felt I wasn't drawing enough lands and that the deck dealt with mana flood pretty well. The second bump was -1 maze +1 stage +1 depths.

About shardless, I haven played the matchup recently but that is also my sense of it. Chalice isn't too bad especially if you can stop a visions. Teeg isn't great but at least stops Jace. Their manabase tends to be pretty weak and sensitive so I'd try to go on the wasteland + kill DRS plan.

[Seraphix]

Anyone play Slaughter Games? What have you found it to be good against? I'm specifically wondering about its value against different combo decks. It looks really good on paper but its slow and I think most decks in Legacy are pretty resilient to his kind of effect.

I've played with it a little. Was fine against Miracles as a hedge against not randomly dying to angels. It was actually pretty good against Imperial Painter, once you extract Painters their deck becomes a pile of things that die to Punishing Fire and do-nothing Blasts.

[Arksz]

Just curious as to what people's opinions would be on a one of deathrite shaman. It's tutorable with GSZ and a kill condition all on its own. Also happens to act like another mox diamond that helps get around moon style effects.

[Pilhas]

Just curious as to what people's opinions would be on a one of deathrite shaman. It's tutorable with GSZ and a kill condition all on its own. Also happens to act like another mox diamond that helps get around moon style effects.

I've been playing 1 for quite a while and I find it great. It is a little planeswalker and another play in t1 or to have with mox+land+zenith t1.

Does anyone have thoughts on Courser? I kinda have mix feelings and I think I need to hear other people opinions

[Arksz]

I've been playing 1 for quite a while and I find it great. It is a little planeswalker and another play in t1 or to have with mox+land+zenith t1.

Does anyone have thoughts on Courser? I kinda have mix feelings and I think I need to hear other people opinions

It seems to be in tarmogoyfs spot so it is a decent chump blocker while getting some small card advantage and gaining life.

Has anyone ever thought of a one of rishadan port? Can be tutored with night to help slow down the opponent if they run basics.

[Dutch253]

Is the core of this deck still what I'm seeing on page 1? It appears the deck has gone through some extensive changes and I'm looking for a more updated primer on this deck as I find it fairly interesting.