I was at GP Madrid and played BWR midrange in the main GP event. Since I didn't do well, I decided to take Junk Haakon Loam to the Modern Sunday Superseries tournament (450 people). Now I think I should have played Junk Haakon Loam too in the main event... I got a 6-3 result, position 54, and had a lot of fun. Just some quick thoughts about the matches:
- 1st round, Blue moon (lost). This was the guy who ended in 1st position after the 9 swiss rounds. First game he played Blood Moon in his third turn, when I had 2 lands in play and could't do anything. Second match I made an awful idiot misplay when I was about to win . To be honest with the deck, this round should count as a draw, not as a lose.
- 2nd round, Scapeshift (lost). First match mull to 6 and keep a hand with 3 Abrupt decays (obviously I didn't know he was playing scapeshift) and lost very quickly. Second hand I lost to an Obstinate Baloth played free due to Lili (another misplay on my side).
- 3rd round, Scapeshift again (lost). First match he won since I didn't see any tec edge/raven's crime although having the loam engine online. I won the second one due to my opponent keeping a bad hand and the third match lost having the ted edge/ghost quarter/loam engine online (he drew several STE and Search for tomorrow that eventually allowed him to play a Primeval Titan followed by Scapeshift).
- 4th round, UR Delver (win). The party is starting! First match he overwhelmed me with a swarm of tokens and Swiftspears. Second and third matches I completely destroyed his hand and lands. On the third match he literally said that "he was tired of this weird deck" and "didn't want to play against somebody who needed to explain every single card of the deck to the opponent"
- 5th round (win). I had no opponent so 2-0.
- 6th round, Merfolks (win). Very similar to round 4th: he won the first match with 4 lords in play by the 4-5 turn and was completely wrecked by my deck the following two. Choke was amazing, so both matches ended with him having no cards in hand, no permanents in play and all lands tapped. This was a very nice swedish guy who got very interested in the deck. Also, his friends named me "hero of the weekend" for completely owned him using such an amazing deck
- 7th round, Burn (win). Short story: he won game one, as it was supposed to do and game 2 and 3 didn't find an answer for Leyline of Sanctity in my starting hand.
- 8th round, Bogles (win). Game 1 was easy since I had one Smallpox in my starting hand who completely destroyed his gameplan. Game 2 I had the perfect starting hand against bogles: 2 lands, 2 Smallpox, Liliana, Loam and Damnation... There was nothing he could do to win.
- 9th round, Affinity (win). First match he kept a bit slow hand and, at some point, he overextended with me haven't played a single spell; that first spell was Damnation. Lili next turn and GG. Second match he was able to "dodge" my removal due to multiple Ravagers; I couldn't find my Damnations on time and lost to a big Vault Skirge. Third match was very fringe, since I took the "aggro" role very quickly: turn 2 Stony silence, turn 3 KOTR, turn 4 another KOTR, turn 5 both Knights searching for 2 Ghost Quarters to destroy his Nexus and Glimmervoid made him concede when I showed him the Loam in my hand.
In my next post I will give you the list I played.
Do you find Smallpoxs to be better in the current meta than courser?
I haven't tested Courser (actually, I'm not a fan of it). I think Smallpox has potentially a much higher impact on the board than Courser, although the centaur is definitely a better card in the Burn and UR Delver match ups. In addition, I feel the deck works better when you think about it as a pure attrition deck; adding Courser probably would lead to a more midrangey oriented strategy.
Hey guys, sorry I haven't been around for a while. Between moving, a new job, getting back into EDH, and prepping Legacy for GP NJ, I haven't devoted a lot of time to Modern. However, I think I'm finally in a place again where I can put more time into developing the deck for the new meta.
I think the first change I want is to add the third Darkblast to the main. I see kawalimit already made this change, and also added the fourth to the sideboard, which is probably correct as well. Especially with the recent success of Pod in addition to the obvious popularity of UR Delver, it seems like a good idea, as matches with access to that card play out much different than matches without it.
One change I am interested in that I would like some feedback on is adding the fourth Knight of the Reliquary. I feel like this is consistently my best card in game 1 against Burn and UR Delver, since having it and enough fetchlands to put it out of bolt range essentially gives your opponent until turn 5 to win (as then the consistent lifegain from Vault of the Archangel puts the game out of reach). This, backed by the rest of the deck slowing the opponent down, has actually led me to win quite a number of game ones against Burn. Also, looking through the most recent UR Aggro lists on MTG Top 8, I noticed that most Delver players only play between 2 and 3 pieces of countermagic TOTAL. This makes it much more likely for our Knights to resolve in the first place, which I think puts us in a pretty reasonable spot in that matchup. I think I probably would also be interested in the 9th fetch in this case, as this plan does rely quite a bit on getting Knight out of bolt range.
The sideboard definitely needs an overhaul. I like Knobobo's idea of trying to find the ideal postboard list for the important matchups, as it helps figure out the amount of cards you REALLY need for a given matchup, while also decreasing the chance of overboarding for a given matchup. This is how I try to build sideboards, but it takes a lot of work and I haven't done it in a while.
Anyways, I'm excited to get back into Modern, and I think with some work into adapting the deck for the meta, it can still be pretty well positioned.
Hey guys, sorry I haven't been around for a while. Between moving, a new job, getting back into EDH, and prepping Legacy for GP NJ, I haven't devoted a lot of time to Modern. However, I think I'm finally in a place again where I can put more time into developing the deck for the new meta.
I think the first change I want is to add the third Darkblast to the main. I see kawalimit already made this change, and also added the fourth to the sideboard, which is probably correct as well. Especially with the recent success of Pod in addition to the obvious popularity of UR Delver, it seems like a good idea, as matches with access to that card play out much different than matches without it.
One change I am interested in that I would like some feedback on is adding the fourth Knight of the Reliquary. I feel like this is consistently my best card in game 1 against Burn and UR Delver, since having it and enough fetchlands to put it out of bolt range essentially gives your opponent until turn 5 to win (as then the consistent lifegain from Vault of the Archangel puts the game out of reach). This, backed by the rest of the deck slowing the opponent down, has actually led me to win quite a number of game ones against Burn. Also, looking through the most recent UR Aggro lists on MTG Top 8, I noticed that most Delver players only play between 2 and 3 pieces of countermagic TOTAL. This makes it much more likely for our Knights to resolve in the first place, which I think puts us in a pretty reasonable spot in that matchup. I think I probably would also be interested in the 9th fetch in this case, as this plan does rely quite a bit on getting Knight out of bolt range.
The sideboard definitely needs an overhaul. I like Knobobo's idea of trying to find the ideal postboard list for the important matchups, as it helps figure out the amount of cards you REALLY need for a given matchup, while also decreasing the chance of overboarding for a given matchup. This is how I try to build sideboards, but it takes a lot of work and I haven't done it in a while.
Anyways, I'm excited to get back into Modern, and I think with some work into adapting the deck for the meta, it can still be pretty well positioned.
Glad to read you again!
Yes, sometimes I also feel we need the full Knights playset; but the problem is I don't know what to take out to make room for the fourth one. I`ve been thinking about this and decided the main candidate to leave the deck is the Stinkweed Imp, because of its low impact in many match ups (does almost nothing against UR Delver, Burn, Pod, Scapeshift...) but I'm not sure if lowering the number of dredge cards (considering this is the best "pure" dredge card available) is a good idea. I also went from two Imps to just one and felt the deck kept on performing well, but this was mainly because I replaced it with the third Darkblast...
On the other hand, I'm happy with my sideboard, although there is always room for improvement. What are your concerns about yours?
That's the list I've been using.. Its a little less heavy on the dredge interactions and closer to just a junk list with some value loam. I don't have lotv online, but I do in paper and would definitely run her if I had her.
I was testing edge of autumn for a bit as a psuedo cycle land style interaction, it was cute and sometimes useful but closer to a dead card than not. The one of golgari thug is a nod to the 4 rhino/4 goyf in my maindeck, in order to hedge against the dredges hitting threats. That said, rhino rebuys are ridiculous.I do definitely want one horizon canopy in there as a "draw engine" I just have to pick one up still. Really enjoying the list tho, so thank you guys for the work you all have put into it to give me a jumping off point.
This will definitely be my secondary list of choice for a while, and I think I'll run it through some dailies, maybe on stream(I usually stream UBFae PR RUG shackles control, for reference) but loam is prolly the one card I may love more than blossom
That's the list I've been using.. Its a little less heavy on the dredge interactions and closer to just a junk list with some value loam. I don't have lotv online, but I do in paper and would definitely run her if I had her.
I was testing edge of autumn for a bit as a psuedo cycle land style interaction, it was cute and sometimes useful but closer to a dead card than not. The one of golgari thug is a nod to the 4 rhino/4 goyf in my maindeck, in order to hedge against the dredges hitting threats. That said, rhino rebuys are ridiculous.I do definitely want one horizon canopy in there as a "draw engine" I just have to pick one up still. Really enjoying the list tho, so thank you guys for the work you all have put into it to give me a jumping off point.
This will definitely be my secondary list of choice for a while, and I think I'll run it through some dailies, maybe on stream(I usually stream UBFae PR RUG shackles control, for reference) but loam is prolly the one card I may love more than blossom
Seems like a pretty cool list, Golgari Thug is pretty awesome when you are running as many powerful creatures as you are. I think creature-heavy versions like this are pretty interesting, and seems to be the way most Loam decks in Modern are built (see the most recent successful Assault Loam and 4C Gifts decks). It's possible that with Modern speeding up as much as it has, this may be the best direction for the deck to go.
How often do you find yourself with Haakon stuck in your hand? You have a total of 4 ways to get rid of him (not counting discarding to hand size with Loam).
How often is Smallpox uncastable because your only creatures are too valuable? I can imagine Lingering Souls helps with this, but playing so many non-recursive expensive creatures seems to make Smallpox a little suspect.
If you had the Lilianas, how many would you add, and what would you cut? Just curious to see your thoughts on it.
Glad you're having so much fun with the list, and looking forward to see how successful you are with it.
i've had haakon stuck a few times, definately. it's noticeable, in fact, i've only had the haakon engine online maybe one game so far? the rest of the deck has pulled through for that very well tho. smallpox is down to a 2 of currently, for similar reasons as you stated. and gets cut post board alot, thing is, when pox is good, pox is sooo good. and getting souls out first if you need the midgame pox is usually the plan. saccing a golgari thug, to a smallpox, is also pretty busted, especially throwing old siege rhino back onto the top of your deck for next turn.
I have 2 liliana's in paper, and I think i'd be happy at 2-3. prolly replacing the maindeck thoughtsiezes.(my list has had some minor changes over the past few days, mostly just tweaking things here and there). the list really does play alot less like a dedicated loam style list you'd assume, and more like junk midrange. but loam gives some pretty solid lategame.(yeah, i've darkblasted my golgari thug to start the siegerhino loop. yes it's fun.)
i've had haakon stuck a few times, definately. it's noticeable, in fact, i've only had the haakon engine online maybe one game so far? the rest of the deck has pulled through for that very well tho. smallpox is down to a 2 of currently, for similar reasons as you stated. and gets cut post board alot, thing is, when pox is good, pox is sooo good. and getting souls out first if you need the midgame pox is usually the plan. saccing a golgari thug, to a smallpox, is also pretty busted, especially throwing old siege rhino back onto the top of your deck for next turn.
I have 2 liliana's in paper, and I think i'd be happy at 2-3. prolly replacing the maindeck thoughtsiezes.(my list has had some minor changes over the past few days, mostly just tweaking things here and there). the list really does play alot less like a dedicated loam style list you'd assume, and more like junk midrange. but loam gives some pretty solid lategame.(yeah, i've darkblasted my golgari thug to start the siegerhino loop. yes it's fun.)
I just noticed your manabase is kind of all over the place. I assume the choice of fetches is due to budget concerns, but why the second basic Plains? It seems like your primary color is green (followed closely by black), and all your fetches are green anyway. You also play a few more shocks than are probably necessary, which leaves a lot less room for utility lands such as the second Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth or Horizon Canopy. Even painless fixing such as filters, checklands, etc might be more valuable.
What matchups do you find yourself bringing in Abzan Charm? I think the card has a lot of useful applications, but I'm curious to know what you use it for the most.
I would find it difficult to cut Thoughtseize when running Tarmogoyf and not going all in on the dredge plan. I think you might be better cutting some of your top end for Lilianas so your curve doesn't end up too top heavy in a format this fast.
Ya the main base is rough, and due mostly to recently selling all my verdants online and not wanting to rebuy. The heavy shock mana base is to make up for that(its pretty black heavy with shocks due to no black fetches) I'd be cutting one plains for a horizon canopy when I get around to getting one tho, that's already in the plans.
Abzan charm is there as another out to things like wurmcoil(cause **** tron, mirite?) And other problems....and is instant speed dredge in a pinch. I did use to +1 counters tho to swing for surprise lethal with spirit tokens recently
This deck looks like a ton of fun to play. I love all the synergy it has, and it even generates card advantage without using Snapcaster!
I know these colors have some general "staples" (Thoughtseize, Scavenging Ooze, Path to Exile) and this deck doesnt seem to run any of them. First, I like that it varies from the norm, so Im not trying to push any of them, but have they been tested out at all? Im guessing they dont synergize as well as the current cards do?
Has the deck been tested at all in the current burn vs. lifegain vs. combo meta?
How does it stack up against the usual Assault + Loam finisher?
This deck looks like a ton of fun to play. I love all the synergy it has, and it even generates card advantage without using Snapcaster!
I know these colors have some general "staples" (Thoughtseize, Scavenging Ooze, Path to Exile) and this deck doesnt seem to run any of them. First, I like that it varies from the norm, so Im not trying to push any of them, but have they been tested out at all? Im guessing they dont synergize as well as the current cards do?
Has the deck been tested at all in the current burn vs. lifegain vs. combo meta?
How does it stack up against the usual Assault + Loam finisher?
The main goal of this deck is to survive early game just to start developing its unbeatable mid-late game. It's true that the deck is not well balanced at all: we suffer a lot in the first turns since many cards are suboptimal "per se" in the early game (Haakon, Nameless Inversion, Life from the loam, Raven's Crime) but absolute powerhouses later. We need to "sacrifice" these early turns in order to develop one of the strongest late games in the format ; e.g. Thoughtseize and Path to exile are better cards on their own than Raven's Crime or Nameless Inversion (specially before turns 4-5)... but interchanging these cards would cause the deck to lose its characteristic unstoppable late power (they do absolutely nothing in the graveyard).
I keep on playing FNM with the deck at my LGS and other small and mid-sized events, and feel (and it's a consensus) that Burn is by far our worst matchup. Usually you auto-lose the first game and need to mulligan aggresively in games 2 and 3 for Leyline of Sanctity; this normally buy us time enough to develop our game (althoug Leyline can be destroyed at any point of the match) and overwhelm the opponent.
Lifegain is not a problem at all, since 99% of the times you win attacking with 10+ power Knight of Reliquary on an empty field.
Combo is usually winnable (although obviously everything depends on the specific matchup): you have Abrupt Decay for Twin, a lot of maindeck hate against Bogles and Infect, many land and hand disruption (but watch out for Obstinate Baloth in game 2 ) against Scapeshift... being some variants of Pod the most problematic combo matchups, at least in my experience.
Regarding Assault + Loam finisher... I don't have any experience with that, but on paper seems easier to be disrupted than our winning conditions (giant KotRs that can be reanimated infinite times if needed after total annihilation ( ) of opponent's resources).
I tried a lot to make the deck work in the post-Khans meta, and the result I found was that the delve draw spells pushed out all of our best matchups (any kind of control), while making the few remaining okay matchups much harder because of how badly Raven's Crime interacts with those delve spells. Also the fact that burn went up in popularity quite a bit made the deck much worse overall.
HOWEVER. Now that BOTH delve draw spells are banned, I think this deck is very much playable again, and just as strong as it ever was. And with the Birthing Pod banning as well (an even-tough matchup, depending on the flavor), I think Junk Haakon Loam is back on the map, with a very strong chance to be a real contender.
Now, as far as changes to accommodate the new meta, here are my thoughts moving forward:
With UR Delver weakened and all Pod variants gone, Darkblast becomes worse.
The major contenders moving forward (off the top of my head) are as follows:
Abzan midrange: The only top tier deck to not lose anything, I definitely think we need to work on deciding how our removal suite matches up against Siege Rhino, and whether we need to start shifting some of it more towards things like Maelstrom Pulse. The fact that it tramples also makes our previous gameplan of stalling with Lingering Souls tokens much less reliable against that style of deck.
Scapeshift: Loses a little, but still a good deck. Without Dig Through Time, instantly goes back to being one of our best matchups.
UWR Geist: I feel like the thing holding this deck back was its abysmal Pod matchup, so I expect to see a lot of this moving forward.
Splinter Twin: Might be held back by all the Abzan moving forward, but I expect this is a tried and true option a lot of people will turn to.
Vengevine decks: I will be watching these closely, as I am not sure how good they will be moving forward. Will probably put Leyline of the Void back in my sideboard, at least while the hype about them lasts.
Infect: I think this deck gets a little better with less of UR Delver's Lightning Bolts and Pod's creatures gumming up the ground. Plus they still get to play a delve spell!
I'm sure there are some other decks that stand to gain quite a bit moving forward, but those are the few off the top of my head. I look forward to going back to working on the deck full time in a meta that isn't nearly as hostile!
I tried a lot to make the deck work in the post-Khans meta, and the result I found was that the delve draw spells pushed out all of our best matchups (any kind of control), while making the few remaining okay matchups much harder because of how badly Raven's Crime interacts with those delve spells. Also the fact that burn went up in popularity quite a bit made the deck much worse overall.
HOWEVER. Now that BOTH delve draw spells are banned, I think this deck is very much playable again, and just as strong as it ever was. And with the Birthing Pod banning as well (an even-tough matchup, depending on the flavor), I think Junk Haakon Loam is back on the map, with a very strong chance to be a real contender.
Now, as far as changes to accommodate the new meta, here are my thoughts moving forward:
With UR Delver weakened and all Pod variants gone, Darkblast becomes worse.
The major contenders moving forward (off the top of my head) are as follows:
Abzan midrange: The only top tier deck to not lose anything, I definitely think we need to work on deciding how our removal suite matches up against Siege Rhino, and whether we need to start shifting some of it more towards things like Maelstrom Pulse. The fact that it tramples also makes our previous gameplan of stalling with Lingering Souls tokens much less reliable against that style of deck.
Scapeshift: Loses a little, but still a good deck. Without Dig Through Time, instantly goes back to being one of our best matchups.
UWR Geist: I feel like the thing holding this deck back was its abysmal Pod matchup, so I expect to see a lot of this moving forward.
Splinter Twin: Might be held back by all the Abzan moving forward, but I expect this is a tried and true option a lot of people will turn to.
Vengevine decks: I will be watching these closely, as I am not sure how good they will be moving forward. Will probably put Leyline of the Void back in my sideboard, at least while the hype about them lasts.
Infect: I think this deck gets a little better with less of UR Delver's Lightning Bolts and Pod's creatures gumming up the ground. Plus they still get to play a delve spell!
I'm sure there are some other decks that stand to gain quite a bit moving forward, but those are the few off the top of my head. I look forward to going back to working on the deck full time in a meta that isn't nearly as hostile!
As soon as the announcement showed up, I immediately said to myself "Now I can finish building this deck and get rid of my proxies." Super excited that we get your baby back!
This deck looks like a ton of fun to play. I love all the synergy it has, and it even generates card advantage without using Snapcaster!
I know these colors have some general "staples" (Thoughtseize, Scavenging Ooze, Path to Exile) and this deck doesnt seem to run any of them. First, I like that it varies from the norm, so Im not trying to push any of them, but have they been tested out at all? Im guessing they dont synergize as well as the current cards do?
Has the deck been tested at all in the current burn vs. lifegain vs. combo meta?
How does it stack up against the usual Assault + Loam finisher?
It's been talked about previously in the thread, but there are good reasons for not playing the "staple" cards you listed, and it ties in quite a bit with how the deckbuilding philosophy behind this deck is quite different from that of the Assault Loam decks.
Many decisions are heavily influenced by the fact that in the end game, we want to replace EVERY DRAW WITH DREDGE. The point at which you can reasonably start doing this is about when you have "stabilized". The major difference between this deck and Assault Loam is that their win condition must be drawn, while ours can be found and deployed entirely from the graveyard. This means that while Assault Loam players have to rely on their draw step to find their Seismic Assault, we can continue our gameplan of dredging for value while incidentally stumbling upon our win condition. While the Seismic Assault/Life from the Loam combo is definitely more powerful than Haakon/Inversion, we can find our combo much more consistently and can reassemble it much faster if it gets broken up.
We want our "endgame" of cards and engines that can be cast from the graveyard to be as robust as possible, but the fact is that it can't answer everything, and there are quite a few things it can't answer in a reasonable timeframe. The deck plays a few reactive "goodstuff" cards to be able to fill the holes that the graveyard engine has trouble with, and tries to avoid playing non-graveyard cards that don't do exactly that, so as to increase the average value of our dredges. Things such as Abrupt Decay and Damnation are included for this purpose. Things like Scavenging Ooze and Tarmogoyf, while good cards, overlap too much with effects that can already be found in our graveyard, and therefore don't warrant the slots.
When you enter "dredge mode", you know all the non-graveyard cards you will reliably have access to for the rest of the game (the ones in your hand). This makes reactive non-graveyard cards MUCH better than proactive ones. When you know you will only have one Thoughtseize for the entire game, it becomes very difficult to know what turn to cast it to actually have it be very effective. When you only have one Damnation, it is much easier to make that card as effective as possible.
As soon as the announcement showed up, I immediately said to myself "Now I can finish building this deck and get rid of my proxies." Super excited that we get your baby back!
Yeah I'm super excited too! I was getting pretty frustrated with trying to make the deck work post-Khans, and I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I would have to start looking for a new deck if there weren't significant bannings in the update.
Also I would imagine Affinity stands to gain quite a bit from these bannings too.
So are there any changes you would make right on the spot if you take the List in the primer as last played list?
The list in the primer is definitely where I would start. The only immediate change I would make is to drop the Damping Matrix in the sideboard for something else (Leyline of Sanctity?) as that card was solely for the Pod matchup
I see everyone found their way back to this today. What a coincidence, haha. I've actually been still playing the deck the last few months, though just not playing as much in general as I was a few months back when this thread was at its height.
The last time I updated here I said I wanted to redo my sideboard 100% from scratch and that I would post the process/results. Ironically, I finally sat down and over the span of about 3 hours this last Saturday, went through it all...then I was reminded that the bans were happening today, and now I feel like some (but not all) of that time was wasted. I definitely enjoyed the mental exercise of doing the sideboard the way I did it, and now I have a method and something to go off of in the future.
I won't go into too much about the "current" sideboard now (I'll probably post my current list tonight), but my plan is to see how the metagame shapes up in the next couple of weeks, and then redo the sideboard again. Until then, I'll probably keep most of it as is.
My initial thoughts at the bannings, but on specific card choice for the deck, and also just in general:
1) Affinity is going to come back in a major way, and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the top deck with no contention
1b) This is annoying because no/less Delver and no Pod makes Darkblast probably less important, but Affinity almost certainly coming back into the forefront makes it more important -- so it becomes a question of how much. I had upped my maindeck count to 3 with the 4th in the side, and I think I will maintain that under the assumption that there will be tons of affinity, until proven otherwise. Not to mention if people start to play other creature decks (Zoo, Junk) in the absence of Pod, Darkblast may be good still, depending on the creature choices. ...Probably not great against those decks, though.
2) Junk is going to be a big deck. I definitely think the thing holding this deck back was Pod, and now it's going to be the deck to try to compete with Affinity. Before, the BGx decks were all over the place. Jund, Junk, straight BG with Tec Edge, etc. Now, with Rhino, I think we'll see this archetype converge into only Junk.
3) Side note about Rhino, when I was cutting down my sideboard cards, 2 of the 3 last cards to be cut were Siege Rhino. With the metagame obviously shifting, I would not be surprised be able to fit these into my sideboard, now. I saw them being useful against both Burn and Scapeshift, though I wanted to test the sideboarded burn matchup to see how much my sideboarding plan actually mattered to see if it was worth even bothering. I think it might be (especially with burn losing Cruise), but that's a conversation for another post when I go into more detail about sideboard discussion.
4) Grave troll: Already explained this to one of my playtesting friends. I feel like this card being unbanned does absolutely nothing for our deck. This is a card for a Vengevine deck full of creates and Golgari Thugs, etc. In our deck, this thing will come in 2, 3, maybe 5 counters, tops, and provides us basically no functionality that KotR/Stinkweed Imp don't already provide. Dredge 6 is insignificantly better than Dredge 5, and I would MUCH rather have an interactive card that I can cast on turn 3, over a non-interactive card I don't even want to cast, and can't until turn 5. And as far as "finishing power", infinitely recurring KotR does it way better than this guy does. I don't want another card in the deck beyond the 3 Haakons that I feel like I NEED to discard, which is what Grave Troll would be. I would much rather have Stinkweed Imp in the graveyard so I can dredge it, but I'm also not unhappy casting it when it's already in my hand.
Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll post my list later on and maybe a highlight of the sideboard choices and how I'm going to change that given what I expect to see in the next 2 weeks.
Any thoughts on making the deck more dredge-heavy? Golgari Grave-Troll is unbanned now, which gives the option for a 6-dredger. Not that he would have much of a role in this plan (not running too many creatures) but he can get thru the deck faster for setting up much of the effects in here. Then again, Stinkweed Imp makes a good case for owning that spot anyway. Might even have the option of visiting an Unburial Rites / huge creature combo.
Any thoughts on making the deck more dredge-heavy? Golgari Grave-Troll is unbanned now, which gives the option for a 6-dredger. Not that he would have much of a role in this plan (not running too many creatures) but he can get thru the deck faster for setting up much of the effects in here. Then again, Stinkweed Imp makes a good case for owning that spot anyway. Might even have the option of visiting an Unburial Rites / huge creature combo.
At a glance, I can't see a way that you get a benefit from running GGT. The Dredge 6 is nice, as is his regenerate. Stinkweed Imp is as good as he is in this deck because of the Deathtouch. There are definitely places in Modern for GGT aside from the obvious choice of Dredgevine, but I don't think Haak-Loam is where I'd start with him.
Any thoughts on making the deck more dredge-heavy? Golgari Grave-Troll is unbanned now, which gives the option for a 6-dredger. Not that he would have much of a role in this plan (not running too many creatures) but he can get thru the deck faster for setting up much of the effects in here. Then again, Stinkweed Imp makes a good case for owning that spot anyway. Might even have the option of visiting an Unburial Rites / huge creature combo.
At a glance, I can't see a way that you get a benefit from running GGT. The Dredge 6 is nice, as is his regenerate. Stinkweed Imp is as good as he is in this deck because of the Deathtouch. There are definitely places in Modern for GGT aside from the obvious choice of Dredgevine, but I don't think Haak-Loam is where I'd start with him.
This.
I've said multiple times in the past that if GGT was unbanned, I wouldn't play it. My opinion hasn't changed. Dredge 6 isn't enough more than Dredge 5 to give up being able to cast it, especially when Stinkweed Imp does such a good job at walling opposing Tarmogoyfs and similar.
Knobobo actually addressed this a few posts up, and I agree that we really can't afford to have any more uncastable cards without making the deck too clunky. Haakon can already be very awkward without a discard outlet, and having more of that is not at all the direction I want to go.
I've messed around with running a reanimator package in similar decks, and you can't run both Unburial Rites and Haakon in this style of deck. They fulfill the same purpose, and if you start putting in too many finishers, you never live to cast them. I much prefer the Haakon approach (obviously ) because it takes up much less slots in the deck for cards that aren't great on their own, while the rest of the package (Knight of the Reliquary and Nameless Inversion) are reasonable-good on their own.
That makes a lot of sense about GGT. Stinkweed just seems to make more sense.
kipe85 - Glad to hear someone tested out a reanimation package. I do think it makes a lot of sense, especially if you can get dredge going. A turn 4 reanimate is, at the very least, a distraction that gets us to our epic late game.
I'm sure there's no space in the maindeck, but ever thought of Dark Heart of the Wood in the sideboard? Maybe not as synergistic once it lands in the graveyard, but in play it would help fend off all the burn and little beaters in the format. Leyline of Sanctity certainly does a good job of fighting off direct damage, but Dark Heart can also help against straight aggro decks.
I think folks are going to go nuts on GGt for a short while before realizing it doesn't really enable much. there may be a bit of additional grave hate out there during this time.... maybe more if GGt actually ends up doing something worth noticing. aside from that I'm interested in this deck again for sure. my struggle is that I always just fold to fast aggro, and that irritates me because it's something I feel a late game deck needs to be able to stop effectively.
In GB Pox for example I have happily dropped an ensnaring bridge and ridden it to victory against all sorts of aggro strategies. I wish there were a similar element available for this deck
I think folks are going to go nuts on GGt for a short while before realizing it doesn't really enable much. there may be a bit of additional grave hate out there during this time.... maybe more if GGt actually ends up doing something worth noticing. aside from that I'm interested in this deck again for sure. my struggle is that I always just fold to fast aggro, and that irritates me because it's something I feel a late game deck needs to be able to stop effectively.
In GB Pox for example I have happily dropped an ensnaring bridge and ridden it to victory against all sorts of aggro strategies. I wish there were a similar element available for this deck
Could blind obedience fill this gap? It turns off haste while netting life until we can get to late game. There's also Runed Halo or Ratchet Bomb available to slow aggro decks. Ratchet bomb would help vs affinity as well.
Also, should we look at Dark Deal as a dredge style option.
I was at GP Madrid and played BWR midrange in the main GP event. Since I didn't do well, I decided to take Junk Haakon Loam to the Modern Sunday Superseries tournament (450 people). Now I think I should have played Junk Haakon Loam too in the main event... I got a 6-3 result, position 54, and had a lot of fun. Just some quick thoughts about the matches:
- 1st round, Blue moon (lost). This was the guy who ended in 1st position after the 9 swiss rounds. First game he played Blood Moon in his third turn, when I had 2 lands in play and could't do anything. Second match I made an awful idiot misplay when I was about to win . To be honest with the deck, this round should count as a draw, not as a lose.
- 2nd round, Scapeshift (lost). First match mull to 6 and keep a hand with 3 Abrupt decays (obviously I didn't know he was playing scapeshift) and lost very quickly. Second hand I lost to an Obstinate Baloth played free due to Lili (another misplay on my side).
- 3rd round, Scapeshift again (lost). First match he won since I didn't see any tec edge/raven's crime although having the loam engine online. I won the second one due to my opponent keeping a bad hand and the third match lost having the ted edge/ghost quarter/loam engine online (he drew several STE and Search for tomorrow that eventually allowed him to play a Primeval Titan followed by Scapeshift).
- 4th round, UR Delver (win). The party is starting! First match he overwhelmed me with a swarm of tokens and Swiftspears. Second and third matches I completely destroyed his hand and lands. On the third match he literally said that "he was tired of this weird deck" and "didn't want to play against somebody who needed to explain every single card of the deck to the opponent"
- 5th round (win). I had no opponent so 2-0.
- 6th round, Merfolks (win). Very similar to round 4th: he won the first match with 4 lords in play by the 4-5 turn and was completely wrecked by my deck the following two. Choke was amazing, so both matches ended with him having no cards in hand, no permanents in play and all lands tapped. This was a very nice swedish guy who got very interested in the deck. Also, his friends named me "hero of the weekend" for completely owned him using such an amazing deck
- 7th round, Burn (win). Short story: he won game one, as it was supposed to do and game 2 and 3 didn't find an answer for Leyline of Sanctity in my starting hand.
- 8th round, Bogles (win). Game 1 was easy since I had one Smallpox in my starting hand who completely destroyed his gameplan. Game 2 I had the perfect starting hand against bogles: 2 lands, 2 Smallpox, Liliana, Loam and Damnation... There was nothing he could do to win.
- 9th round, Affinity (win). First match he kept a bit slow hand and, at some point, he overextended with me haven't played a single spell; that first spell was Damnation. Lili next turn and GG. Second match he was able to "dodge" my removal due to multiple Ravagers; I couldn't find my Damnations on time and lost to a big Vault Skirge. Third match was very fringe, since I took the "aggro" role very quickly: turn 2 Stony silence, turn 3 KOTR, turn 4 another KOTR, turn 5 both Knights searching for 2 Ghost Quarters to destroy his Nexus and Glimmervoid made him concede when I showed him the Loam in my hand.
In my next post I will give you the list I played.
3 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
1 Stinkweed Imp
3 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Life from the Loam
3 Lingering Souls
3 Smallpox
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Nameless Inversion
3 Raven's Crime
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Darkblast
2 Damnation
//Lands
3 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Stirring Wildwood
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
1 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Windswept Heath
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Damnation
2 Stony Silence
1 Deglamer
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Choke
1 Darkblast
1 Maelstrom Pulse
I haven't tested Courser (actually, I'm not a fan of it). I think Smallpox has potentially a much higher impact on the board than Courser, although the centaur is definitely a better card in the Burn and UR Delver match ups. In addition, I feel the deck works better when you think about it as a pure attrition deck; adding Courser probably would lead to a more midrangey oriented strategy.
I think the first change I want is to add the third Darkblast to the main. I see kawalimit already made this change, and also added the fourth to the sideboard, which is probably correct as well. Especially with the recent success of Pod in addition to the obvious popularity of UR Delver, it seems like a good idea, as matches with access to that card play out much different than matches without it.
One change I am interested in that I would like some feedback on is adding the fourth Knight of the Reliquary. I feel like this is consistently my best card in game 1 against Burn and UR Delver, since having it and enough fetchlands to put it out of bolt range essentially gives your opponent until turn 5 to win (as then the consistent lifegain from Vault of the Archangel puts the game out of reach). This, backed by the rest of the deck slowing the opponent down, has actually led me to win quite a number of game ones against Burn. Also, looking through the most recent UR Aggro lists on MTG Top 8, I noticed that most Delver players only play between 2 and 3 pieces of countermagic TOTAL. This makes it much more likely for our Knights to resolve in the first place, which I think puts us in a pretty reasonable spot in that matchup. I think I probably would also be interested in the 9th fetch in this case, as this plan does rely quite a bit on getting Knight out of bolt range.
The sideboard definitely needs an overhaul. I like Knobobo's idea of trying to find the ideal postboard list for the important matchups, as it helps figure out the amount of cards you REALLY need for a given matchup, while also decreasing the chance of overboarding for a given matchup. This is how I try to build sideboards, but it takes a lot of work and I haven't done it in a while.
Anyways, I'm excited to get back into Modern, and I think with some work into adapting the deck for the meta, it can still be pretty well positioned.
Glad to read you again!
Yes, sometimes I also feel we need the full Knights playset; but the problem is I don't know what to take out to make room for the fourth one. I`ve been thinking about this and decided the main candidate to leave the deck is the Stinkweed Imp, because of its low impact in many match ups (does almost nothing against UR Delver, Burn, Pod, Scapeshift...) but I'm not sure if lowering the number of dredge cards (considering this is the best "pure" dredge card available) is a good idea. I also went from two Imps to just one and felt the deck kept on performing well, but this was mainly because I replaced it with the third Darkblast...
On the other hand, I'm happy with my sideboard, although there is always room for improvement. What are your concerns about yours?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qy37lbsbtipkkd/Screenshot 2014-12-04 18.34.18.png?dl=0
That's the list I've been using.. Its a little less heavy on the dredge interactions and closer to just a junk list with some value loam. I don't have lotv online, but I do in paper and would definitely run her if I had her.
I was testing edge of autumn for a bit as a psuedo cycle land style interaction, it was cute and sometimes useful but closer to a dead card than not. The one of golgari thug is a nod to the 4 rhino/4 goyf in my maindeck, in order to hedge against the dredges hitting threats. That said, rhino rebuys are ridiculous.I do definitely want one horizon canopy in there as a "draw engine" I just have to pick one up still. Really enjoying the list tho, so thank you guys for the work you all have put into it to give me a jumping off point.
This will definitely be my secondary list of choice for a while, and I think I'll run it through some dailies, maybe on stream(I usually stream UBFae PR RUG shackles control, for reference) but loam is prolly the one card I may love more than blossom
Seems like a pretty cool list, Golgari Thug is pretty awesome when you are running as many powerful creatures as you are. I think creature-heavy versions like this are pretty interesting, and seems to be the way most Loam decks in Modern are built (see the most recent successful Assault Loam and 4C Gifts decks). It's possible that with Modern speeding up as much as it has, this may be the best direction for the deck to go.
How often do you find yourself with Haakon stuck in your hand? You have a total of 4 ways to get rid of him (not counting discarding to hand size with Loam).
How often is Smallpox uncastable because your only creatures are too valuable? I can imagine Lingering Souls helps with this, but playing so many non-recursive expensive creatures seems to make Smallpox a little suspect.
If you had the Lilianas, how many would you add, and what would you cut? Just curious to see your thoughts on it.
Glad you're having so much fun with the list, and looking forward to see how successful you are with it.
I have 2 liliana's in paper, and I think i'd be happy at 2-3. prolly replacing the maindeck thoughtsiezes.(my list has had some minor changes over the past few days, mostly just tweaking things here and there). the list really does play alot less like a dedicated loam style list you'd assume, and more like junk midrange. but loam gives some pretty solid lategame.(yeah, i've darkblasted my golgari thug to start the siegerhino loop. yes it's fun.)
I just noticed your manabase is kind of all over the place. I assume the choice of fetches is due to budget concerns, but why the second basic Plains? It seems like your primary color is green (followed closely by black), and all your fetches are green anyway. You also play a few more shocks than are probably necessary, which leaves a lot less room for utility lands such as the second Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth or Horizon Canopy. Even painless fixing such as filters, checklands, etc might be more valuable.
What matchups do you find yourself bringing in Abzan Charm? I think the card has a lot of useful applications, but I'm curious to know what you use it for the most.
I would find it difficult to cut Thoughtseize when running Tarmogoyf and not going all in on the dredge plan. I think you might be better cutting some of your top end for Lilianas so your curve doesn't end up too top heavy in a format this fast.
Abzan charm is there as another out to things like wurmcoil(cause **** tron, mirite?) And other problems....and is instant speed dredge in a pinch. I did use to +1 counters tho to swing for surprise lethal with spirit tokens recently
I know these colors have some general "staples" (Thoughtseize, Scavenging Ooze, Path to Exile) and this deck doesnt seem to run any of them. First, I like that it varies from the norm, so Im not trying to push any of them, but have they been tested out at all? Im guessing they dont synergize as well as the current cards do?
Has the deck been tested at all in the current burn vs. lifegain vs. combo meta?
How does it stack up against the usual Assault + Loam finisher?
The main goal of this deck is to survive early game just to start developing its unbeatable mid-late game. It's true that the deck is not well balanced at all: we suffer a lot in the first turns since many cards are suboptimal "per se" in the early game (Haakon, Nameless Inversion, Life from the loam, Raven's Crime) but absolute powerhouses later. We need to "sacrifice" these early turns in order to develop one of the strongest late games in the format ; e.g. Thoughtseize and Path to exile are better cards on their own than Raven's Crime or Nameless Inversion (specially before turns 4-5)... but interchanging these cards would cause the deck to lose its characteristic unstoppable late power (they do absolutely nothing in the graveyard).
I keep on playing FNM with the deck at my LGS and other small and mid-sized events, and feel (and it's a consensus) that Burn is by far our worst matchup. Usually you auto-lose the first game and need to mulligan aggresively in games 2 and 3 for Leyline of Sanctity; this normally buy us time enough to develop our game (althoug Leyline can be destroyed at any point of the match) and overwhelm the opponent.
Lifegain is not a problem at all, since 99% of the times you win attacking with 10+ power Knight of Reliquary on an empty field.
Combo is usually winnable (although obviously everything depends on the specific matchup): you have Abrupt Decay for Twin, a lot of maindeck hate against Bogles and Infect, many land and hand disruption (but watch out for Obstinate Baloth in game 2 ) against Scapeshift... being some variants of Pod the most problematic combo matchups, at least in my experience.
Regarding Assault + Loam finisher... I don't have any experience with that, but on paper seems easier to be disrupted than our winning conditions (giant KotRs that can be reanimated infinite times if needed after total annihilation ( ) of opponent's resources).
I tried a lot to make the deck work in the post-Khans meta, and the result I found was that the delve draw spells pushed out all of our best matchups (any kind of control), while making the few remaining okay matchups much harder because of how badly Raven's Crime interacts with those delve spells. Also the fact that burn went up in popularity quite a bit made the deck much worse overall.
HOWEVER. Now that BOTH delve draw spells are banned, I think this deck is very much playable again, and just as strong as it ever was. And with the Birthing Pod banning as well (an even-tough matchup, depending on the flavor), I think Junk Haakon Loam is back on the map, with a very strong chance to be a real contender.
Now, as far as changes to accommodate the new meta, here are my thoughts moving forward:
With UR Delver weakened and all Pod variants gone, Darkblast becomes worse.
The major contenders moving forward (off the top of my head) are as follows:
As soon as the announcement showed up, I immediately said to myself "Now I can finish building this deck and get rid of my proxies." Super excited that we get your baby back!
It's been talked about previously in the thread, but there are good reasons for not playing the "staple" cards you listed, and it ties in quite a bit with how the deckbuilding philosophy behind this deck is quite different from that of the Assault Loam decks.
Many decisions are heavily influenced by the fact that in the end game, we want to replace EVERY DRAW WITH DREDGE. The point at which you can reasonably start doing this is about when you have "stabilized". The major difference between this deck and Assault Loam is that their win condition must be drawn, while ours can be found and deployed entirely from the graveyard. This means that while Assault Loam players have to rely on their draw step to find their Seismic Assault, we can continue our gameplan of dredging for value while incidentally stumbling upon our win condition. While the Seismic Assault/Life from the Loam combo is definitely more powerful than Haakon/Inversion, we can find our combo much more consistently and can reassemble it much faster if it gets broken up.
We want our "endgame" of cards and engines that can be cast from the graveyard to be as robust as possible, but the fact is that it can't answer everything, and there are quite a few things it can't answer in a reasonable timeframe. The deck plays a few reactive "goodstuff" cards to be able to fill the holes that the graveyard engine has trouble with, and tries to avoid playing non-graveyard cards that don't do exactly that, so as to increase the average value of our dredges. Things such as Abrupt Decay and Damnation are included for this purpose. Things like Scavenging Ooze and Tarmogoyf, while good cards, overlap too much with effects that can already be found in our graveyard, and therefore don't warrant the slots.
When you enter "dredge mode", you know all the non-graveyard cards you will reliably have access to for the rest of the game (the ones in your hand). This makes reactive non-graveyard cards MUCH better than proactive ones. When you know you will only have one Thoughtseize for the entire game, it becomes very difficult to know what turn to cast it to actually have it be very effective. When you only have one Damnation, it is much easier to make that card as effective as possible.
Path to Exile would be fine if we weren't actively trying to deny our opponents mana with Smallpox and Tectonic Edge.
Yeah I'm super excited too! I was getting pretty frustrated with trying to make the deck work post-Khans, and I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I would have to start looking for a new deck if there weren't significant bannings in the update.
Also I would imagine Affinity stands to gain quite a bit from these bannings too.
The list in the primer is definitely where I would start. The only immediate change I would make is to drop the Damping Matrix in the sideboard for something else (Leyline of Sanctity?) as that card was solely for the Pod matchup
The last time I updated here I said I wanted to redo my sideboard 100% from scratch and that I would post the process/results. Ironically, I finally sat down and over the span of about 3 hours this last Saturday, went through it all...then I was reminded that the bans were happening today, and now I feel like some (but not all) of that time was wasted. I definitely enjoyed the mental exercise of doing the sideboard the way I did it, and now I have a method and something to go off of in the future.
I won't go into too much about the "current" sideboard now (I'll probably post my current list tonight), but my plan is to see how the metagame shapes up in the next couple of weeks, and then redo the sideboard again. Until then, I'll probably keep most of it as is.
My initial thoughts at the bannings, but on specific card choice for the deck, and also just in general:
1) Affinity is going to come back in a major way, and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the top deck with no contention
1b) This is annoying because no/less Delver and no Pod makes Darkblast probably less important, but Affinity almost certainly coming back into the forefront makes it more important -- so it becomes a question of how much. I had upped my maindeck count to 3 with the 4th in the side, and I think I will maintain that under the assumption that there will be tons of affinity, until proven otherwise. Not to mention if people start to play other creature decks (Zoo, Junk) in the absence of Pod, Darkblast may be good still, depending on the creature choices. ...Probably not great against those decks, though.
2) Junk is going to be a big deck. I definitely think the thing holding this deck back was Pod, and now it's going to be the deck to try to compete with Affinity. Before, the BGx decks were all over the place. Jund, Junk, straight BG with Tec Edge, etc. Now, with Rhino, I think we'll see this archetype converge into only Junk.
3) Side note about Rhino, when I was cutting down my sideboard cards, 2 of the 3 last cards to be cut were Siege Rhino. With the metagame obviously shifting, I would not be surprised be able to fit these into my sideboard, now. I saw them being useful against both Burn and Scapeshift, though I wanted to test the sideboarded burn matchup to see how much my sideboarding plan actually mattered to see if it was worth even bothering. I think it might be (especially with burn losing Cruise), but that's a conversation for another post when I go into more detail about sideboard discussion.
4) Grave troll: Already explained this to one of my playtesting friends. I feel like this card being unbanned does absolutely nothing for our deck. This is a card for a Vengevine deck full of creates and Golgari Thugs, etc. In our deck, this thing will come in 2, 3, maybe 5 counters, tops, and provides us basically no functionality that KotR/Stinkweed Imp don't already provide. Dredge 6 is insignificantly better than Dredge 5, and I would MUCH rather have an interactive card that I can cast on turn 3, over a non-interactive card I don't even want to cast, and can't until turn 5. And as far as "finishing power", infinitely recurring KotR does it way better than this guy does. I don't want another card in the deck beyond the 3 Haakons that I feel like I NEED to discard, which is what Grave Troll would be. I would much rather have Stinkweed Imp in the graveyard so I can dredge it, but I'm also not unhappy casting it when it's already in my hand.
Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll post my list later on and maybe a highlight of the sideboard choices and how I'm going to change that given what I expect to see in the next 2 weeks.
At a glance, I can't see a way that you get a benefit from running GGT. The Dredge 6 is nice, as is his regenerate. Stinkweed Imp is as good as he is in this deck because of the Deathtouch. There are definitely places in Modern for GGT aside from the obvious choice of Dredgevine, but I don't think Haak-Loam is where I'd start with him.
This.
I've said multiple times in the past that if GGT was unbanned, I wouldn't play it. My opinion hasn't changed. Dredge 6 isn't enough more than Dredge 5 to give up being able to cast it, especially when Stinkweed Imp does such a good job at walling opposing Tarmogoyfs and similar.
Knobobo actually addressed this a few posts up, and I agree that we really can't afford to have any more uncastable cards without making the deck too clunky. Haakon can already be very awkward without a discard outlet, and having more of that is not at all the direction I want to go.
I've messed around with running a reanimator package in similar decks, and you can't run both Unburial Rites and Haakon in this style of deck. They fulfill the same purpose, and if you start putting in too many finishers, you never live to cast them. I much prefer the Haakon approach (obviously ) because it takes up much less slots in the deck for cards that aren't great on their own, while the rest of the package (Knight of the Reliquary and Nameless Inversion) are reasonable-good on their own.
kipe85 - Glad to hear someone tested out a reanimation package. I do think it makes a lot of sense, especially if you can get dredge going. A turn 4 reanimate is, at the very least, a distraction that gets us to our epic late game.
I'm sure there's no space in the maindeck, but ever thought of Dark Heart of the Wood in the sideboard? Maybe not as synergistic once it lands in the graveyard, but in play it would help fend off all the burn and little beaters in the format. Leyline of Sanctity certainly does a good job of fighting off direct damage, but Dark Heart can also help against straight aggro decks.
In GB Pox for example I have happily dropped an ensnaring bridge and ridden it to victory against all sorts of aggro strategies. I wish there were a similar element available for this deck
Could blind obedience fill this gap? It turns off haste while netting life until we can get to late game. There's also Runed Halo or Ratchet Bomb available to slow aggro decks. Ratchet bomb would help vs affinity as well.
Also, should we look at Dark Deal as a dredge style option.