[Deck] Aggro Loam

[Antonius]

There's actually tremendous upside to this new card. The fact that it costs 1 instead of 3 is huge. Normally, you'd max out at two seismics whereas there's no real drawback to running four of these. You can play it early through pierce/other soft counters and having spares nets you more redundancy against abrupt decay or force of will--usually the only hard answers most decks have to these enchantments. it pairs way better with bob, especially against tempo decks. On the flipside, it is much worse at killing people than seismic but its still a much faster clock than punishing fire.

[Vicar in a tutu]

I mean I get criticism like my proposed deck is bad against combo - which sucks when omnitell is big man on campus, and i know my "land tax" list is rough and I probably don't need to run these cards as a 4 of, but I see potential in running this card as early inevitable engine by turn 2, much the same as Punishing fire. I think using both engines would give us a strong game against miracles (even though they could counter it, but that's why you get it out early)

I think Molten Vortex is interesting as well. Seismic costs RRR, which makes it difficult to cast in three coloured deck. My only problem is that I can't (as of now) picture a shell that would be good for Molten Vortex and at the same time have game against combo.

[Pilhas]

Any fellow loamers going to Lille besides Niklas?

[Cire]

I think Molten Vortex is interesting as well. Seismic costs RRR, which makes it difficult to cast in three coloured deck. My only problem is that I can't (as of now) picture a shell that would be good for Molten Vortex and at the same time have game against combo.

Just a question - has any version of Aggroloam ever had a good game against combo? Blue Splash? Black Splash? I had generally thought that combo and loam never got along in the first place.

[iamajellydonut]

Any fellow loamers going to Lille besides Niklas?

I'll trade you my exceptional company for your $3500 round flight ticket.

[Pilhas]

I'll trade you my exceptional company for your $3500 round flight ticket.

Seems reasonable but maybe next time :) I am trying to go to SCG: NJ so maybe there.

[iamajellydonut]

Just a question - has any version of Aggroloam ever had a good game against combo? Blue Splash? Black Splash? I had generally thought that combo and loam never got along in the first place.

Depending on what you mean by "combo" (ANT&Omni), it's not a "bad" game. It's just the same reliability issues that every other non-blue deck has with combo. Game one, Loam can steal silly victories with Chalice of the Void or a Gaddock Teeg if you can identify your opponent's deck early enough. Game two, the only cards the sideboard that aren't effective against at least one of the Big Bads, unless we're also discussing Elves, are any Toxic Deluges.

Seems reasonable but maybe next time :) I am trying to go to SCG: NJ so maybe there.

If you're talking about the one in November, I'll see you then.

[Cire]

Depending on what you mean by "combo" (ANT&Omni), it's not a "bad" game. It's just the same reliability issues that every other non-blue deck has with combo. Game one, Loam can steal silly victories with Chalice of the Void or a Gaddock Teeg if you can identify your opponent's deck early enough. Game two, the only cards in my sideboard that aren't effective against at least one of the Big Bads, unless we're also discussing Elves, are my 1-2 Toxic Deluges.

So the knock against molten vortex is that it is 1CMC and prevents running COTV main deck, and that Aggroloam needs COTV main deck to be viable against combo?

[iamajellydonut]

So the knock against molten vortex is that it is 1CMC and prevents running COTV main deck, and that Aggroloam needs COTV main deck to be viable against combo?

Oh, I'm sorry. I was an idiot and didn't even look at what you were responding to. I just replied to your post in general.

Anyway, I can't really get behind Vicar's statement. Sure, if you go full force behind Molten Vortex, you might need to think twice about using Chalice of the Void, but that doesn't necessarily preclude you from having "game" against combo. Take out Chalice. Put in Thalia. Continue to pack your sideboard full of various hate. Problem relatively solved.

My own reservations with regards to Molten Vortex, again, have to do with its redundancy alongside Punishing Fire. "You can never have too many repeatable Shocks" or whatever, but we don't even run a full set of Punishing Fires. What the hell are we going to do with two to four more copies of a related effect? Make no mistake, that activation cost is an extremely limiting factor in terms of doing anything but pinging the hell out of their creatures. An attempt at their life is going to take a while.

[Cire]

Thanks for the comments. I think the problem of my conception is that - I'm totally okay with playing multiple ping like effects to control the board. But that's exactly the problem. I am thinking of Loam control instead of Aggro Loam. Whether the concept of Land Tax/ Molten Vortex holds up is besides the point apparently, this is the wrong thread for that very concept.

[iamajellydonut]

Thanks for the comments. I think the problem of my conception is that - I'm totally okay with playing multiple ping like effects to control the board. But that's exactly the problem. I am thinking of Loam control instead of Aggro Loam. Whether the concept of Land Tax/ Molten Vortex holds up is besides the point apparently, this is the wrong thread for that very concept.

Eh, I don't think it's necessarily the wrong thread, but you're definitely going to have to ignore all of the current deck cores in order to get it to work.

[Antonius]

Jelly, after playing around with it a bit I get the impression that 4x molten vortex could be a lot better than any number of punishing fire. If your loam goes according to plan, you always get to the mid and late game with 5-6 lands. With that much mana and loam, vortex is a 3-4 turn clock. Granted, with that same mana, seismic would be a two-turn clock but despite the activation cost, going to the dome happens much faster than you think. Especially when you consider that you could drop a vortex and mox diamond and start shocking them on turn 1.

As far as combo goes, this deck has been and likely always will be a meta game predator, feasting on creatures and blue control decks. Combo will always, at best, be between slightly unfavorable and nigh-unwinnable. That's just how the rock/paper/scissors of the format plays out. I would say since we're already good at beating creatures and cause graveyard hate is so tremendously effective against graveyard decks, stack the sideboard for elves, reanimator and turning off passed in flames. Against show and tell and other combo, imo, you're just not going to get the hate cards consistently enough for it to be worth the slots.

[apocolyps6]

So what you guys are saying is that compared to the current generation of loam decks, molten vortex gives us a better creature matchup at the expense of making combo worse. Sounds like we are fixing a problem we do not have. Besides D&T I'm not sure I'd even want to improve any creature matchups. You are also suggesting increasing our reliance on the graveyard which this deck has been moving away from.

[iamajellydonut]

So what you guys are saying is that compared to the current generation of loam decks, molten vortex gives us a better creature matchup at the expense of making combo worse. Sounds like we are fixing a problem we do not have. Besides D&T I'm not sure I'd even want to improve any creature matchups. You are also suggesting increasing our reliance on the graveyard which this deck has been moving away from.

Only Vicar stated that our combo match-up would inherently become worse.

As to the graveyard bit, that's actually something that I was going to bring up in response to Antonius. Loam is great. But relying on it to power something else will cost you dearly. If you want this to work, Land Tax or some comparable effect, as suggested by Cire, would need to be utilized.

[Cire]

Only Vicar stated that our combo match-up would inherently become worse.

As to the graveyard bit, that's actually something that I was going to bring up in response to Antonius. Loam is great. But relying on it to power something else will cost you dearly. If you want this to work, Land Tax or some comparable effect, as suggested by Cire, would need to be utilized.

Hmm, if I am going to keep the Land Tax/Molten Vortex discussion on this thread then here are my current thoughts. . . in order to give it some game against combo we need to run either COTV, black for discard or blue for fow/meddling mage? COTV can't happen, because of Land Tax and Molten Vortex, so we are stuck dealing with a 4 color deck. Luckily molten vortex allows us to play 4 color. But all other problems with 4 color decks aside, the problem with this 4 color deck is that it needs to run X basic lands for Land Tax. That's already a heavy restriction in terms of deck building, but to continue, we need to figure out how many basic lands X is. . . . honestly I have no clue. I believe the number is much lower that 12, for example, maybe even 8, but only testing would show that.

Now between blue and black: probably black, not only is it traditional, we simply don't have room to play 18 blue spells needed for fow to function. Since we're playing black, the best anti combo cards are thought seize and other discard spells. . . Let's say we need to run around 8 main deck black anti-combo cards.

Additionally, since we are playing black we might as well run the best black cards: Dark Confidant, Abrupt decay, and Deathrite Shaman. DRS may be a little weak because we have to run more basics, but it might be necessary to provide Red mana for Vortex. Confidant is actually pretty good as Vortex costs 1 instead of Assualt's 3.

So as a skeleton we have:

- Definite
4 Mox Diamond
4 Sword's to plowshares
4 Thought Seize
4 Wasteland

-Undefined Card
4 "Black Anti-Combo"

-Undefined Number
X Molten Vortex
X Land Tax
X Green Sun's Zenith
X Life from the Loam
X Sylvan Library
X Punishing Fire
X Abrupt Decay

X Tarmogoyf
X DRS
X Dark Confidant
X "Utility Creatures"

X Grove of the Burnwillows
X Basic Lands
X Fetch
X Duals
X Other

Before we go any further in trying to define those numbers, we (or I) have to consider if any pile of those above cards could go head to head with omnitell in any significant way? I am not sure, but I think the answer might be no - the anti-combo cards (the discard) don't apply that much pressure. Maybe the "Black Anti-Combo" should go for 4 Scullers? But even then I am unsure that's enough "anti-Combo" and pressure to fix that matchup.

Edit - I guess you could also run Engineered explosives (for elves and other problematic stuff), Thalia, Ethersworn Cannoist, and Caverns (for humans) and take out Goyf, Utility and GSZ. . .

[Antonius]

So what you guys are saying is that compared to the current generation of loam decks, molten vortex gives us a better creature matchup at the expense of making combo worse. Sounds like we are fixing a problem we do not have. Besides D&T I'm not sure I'd even want to improve any creature matchups. You are also suggesting increasing our reliance on the graveyard which this deck has been moving away from.

No, I was talking about aggro loam as an archetype in general. Playing the deck for 4+ years at hundreds of tournaments you really get a feel for where it sits in the meta. It's the ultimate midrange deck, crushing aggro with big creatures and outlasting blue with loam. This gameplan has always had an inherent blind spot in against combo. even though I haven't played in more than a year, I highly doubt this dynamic has changed.

And yeah, to run vortex you'd have to wind back the clock to jund, getting the red you need just isn't tenable with four color manabase in knight toolbox and all that. But Crusher has always been more resilient to hate than knight so the graveyard argument becomes a bit of a wash. Moreover, the way you frame things also dismisses the fact that this deck -usually- draws more lands than any other and you also draw extra lands off of bob. Vortex--and assault for that matter--are far from dead cards without loam.

[apocolyps6]

Antonius - Things were very different in that one year you were playing this deck that I wasn't, but these days I'd be 100% comfortable playing a whole event worth of non-Omni combo decks. The kind of things you are suggesting are exactly the reason the combo matchup was bad. It is fine to decide to have a bad matchup somewhere, but you should know that it actually is a choice.


Cire - I don't see why you want to play black for what you admit are sub-par anti-combo cards. Playing some combination of Canonist, Thalia, and possibly revokers and spheres is gonna do a lot more for you than fighting their brainstorms with your thoughtseizes. Altho decay is a compelling reason to play black all by itself. You may or may not want to also play some enlightened tutors to search for hate or engines.

[lyracian]

Hmm, if I am going to keep the Land Tax/Molten Vortex discussion on this thread then here are my current thoughts. . . in order to give it some game against combo

That's already a heavy restriction in terms of deck building, but to continue, we need to figure out how many basic lands X is. . . . honestly I have no clue. I believe the number is much lower that 12, for example, maybe even 8, but only testing would show that.

The problem with the Land Tax route is you are discarding those lands to activate Vortex and they are not there the next turn Tax triggers. With 9 basics you get at most 3 full Taxes. Probably less as you have drawn at least one. NicFit runs 7-8 basics to support Explorer on a 3 colour mana base; I really do not see this working well with 4 colours and that many basic lands. Ideally you want a primarily two colour deck with a light splash of a third (say 1 Basic, 2-3 Dual lands and Diamond). The question becomes is it worth replacing Chalice with cards like Thalia, Sphere of Resistance just to play these one mana enchantments?

It is possible to cheat a Deathrite into play past chalice with GSZ but it is not really easy to cheat Vortex into play. The new card "Starfield of Nix" might allow a Boros control deck to do so. There might be a Vor-Tax deck that can be built but I think it needs more thought as to what its actual goals are.

[Cire]

The question becomes is it worth replacing Chalice with cards like Thalia, Sphere of Resistance just to play these one mana enchantments?

Fair enough - I am currently fooling around with a weird hybrid of Death and Taxes and my above list, that I affectionately called Loam and Taxes

-13 Creatures
4 Thalia
3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Gaddog Teeg
3 Ethersworn Cannoist

-21 Spells
4 STP
4 Mox Diamond
3 Molten Vortex
3 Life From the Loam
3 Punishing Fire
2 Sylvan Library
2 Land Tax

-26 Lands
4 Wasteland
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Mountain
2 Plains
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Taiga
2 Plateau
1 Savannah
1 Forest
6 Assorted Fetch (So Far Even Split)

So far in just running the deck - it either works amazingly well. . . . or doesn't - far more often. Honestly - after all my tinkering, if Molten Vortex has a home - I doubt this is it.

[Aggro_zombies]

So far in just running the deck - it either works amazingly well. . . . or doesn't - far more often. Honestly - after all my tinkering, if Molten Vortex has a home - I doubt this is it.

Vortex is just a vastly worse Seismic Assault. Most of the appeal of running the latter card is the ability to cast Loam twice in a turn and dumpster the opponent with all the lands you just got back. If the argument against Assault is that RRR is too hard in a four-color manabase, then Vortex isn't going to be any good either because how many times are you going to be able to activate it? At that point you could just run Grim Lavamancer.

As for cutting Chalice, that's probably fine. I've long maintained that this deck has more to gain from having its own one-drops than it does by occasionally shutting off the opponent's Brainstorms.