I've tested Levy's Pox Loam at an FNM and found it to be very difficult to pilot.
That's the reason i wanted to stay RG.
At teh moment i recognize that Black is much more powerful here because it offers much
more to cast from the grave.
This is a list I've been theorycrafting. Here are my assumptions:
Bob/Liliana are amazing in a Loam shell. Crazy value, all day long. In this list, Bob's 45% to flip for zero life, 66% for <= 1, 88% for <= 2. Avg cost of 0.6 life per card. Liliana discarding lands or Loam, Loam them back, obviously amazing.
The manabase is tough. The color requirements are fairly extreme - you need triple or more red, while having green and double black in early stages of the game. Fortunately, Loam gets to play a few extra lands to help ease the pain here.
Grave hate murders this deck. Surgical on Loam, RiP, even Relics can set you back far enough where it's very hard to win, since so many cards are blanked. A sideboard plan that doesn't insta-lose to this would be nice.
This deck is extremely good against blue decks. Countermagic is very bad, and enchantment removal is basically nonexistent for Grixis and UR decks. Snapcaster and derpy blue creature beats are just not going to get there against Vortex/Assault, and even Tasigur dies to a single Loam.
Good cards are still good. I think the right place to begin is a more or less standard Jund shell.
So, card choices.
4 Molten Vortex: The new hotness. I think this card is quite strong, and helps the early game where Loam decks are traditionally weakest.
2 Seismic Assault: More powerful than Vortex, but slower out of the gate. Having diversity here helps against Pithing Needle effects, as well.
4 Life from the Loam: One of the few genuinely broken cards left in Modern, in my opinion. The core of the assault loam deck.
4 Dark Confidant: As explained above. Card advantage is better in this deck than others, since our lands are more useful. However, going creatureless does have a lot of appeal - completely turning off your opponent's removal spells is very good. On the other hand, having him in the deck forces your opponent to leave crappy removal spells in after sideboard.
4 Liliana of the Veil: Excellent against everything. It's very easy to find something to discard in this deck, and lands get loamed back for value.
4 Faithless Looting: Finds combo pieces, fills the yard for Loam, finds Loam, discards extra Loams, triggers dredges if you want them. Lots of goodness here.
2 Commune With the Gods: Finds combo pieces, digs deep for Loam. Could see running more of these. Shockingly good with the Twin transformational sideboard.
2 Magmatic Insight: Loam value. Not sure if I like this card or not, time will tell.
Cards I specifically didn't choose:
Smallpox: Liliana is better in this role, and a full-on Pox shell is not what I'm going for here. Pox shells aren't very good in Modern anyway.
Raven's Crime: It's just not good enough. Opponent-choice discard does not win games, and it folds to the same hate as the rest of the deck.
Flame Jab: Molten Vortex is straight up better.
Tarmogoyf: He can get big, sure, but I just don't think you need him. The Loam engine is more powerful, and omitting Goyfs further blanks your opponent's removal.
Tasigur/Angler: Very bad with Bob, and bad after sideboard because of the incoming grave hate.
The sideboard plan:
So, I wanted a way to win the game that didn't rely on the graveyard, and didn't fold to linear decks. The best answer I could come up with was Twin. Unfortunately, we need blue mana, but the manabase can support a fourth color out of the board. This transformational plan is strong, I think. You can expect your opponent to be boarding out hard removal, which is good. You also have cards like Commune, Looting, and Insight to find the combo pieces. Board-outs are some combination of Loam/Bob/Bolt/Vortex/Assault, depending on the matchup.
There's little sideboard space for other matchups, however, but you don't really need much. Fair matchups and creature decks are easily outclassed by Loam/Vortex/Assault. Delver/Affinity/Elves/etc just have no way to win once you establish Loam. Control matchups are excellent, since it's very difficult to interact with a Loam engine, and drawing three Shocks every single turn is very hard to beat.
A traditional sideboard would include some kind of resilient alternate win conditions, removal, and ways to hate on artifacts/enchantments. Becoming the control deck rather than the combo deck. However, I've increasingly come to believe that sideboarding hate cards is fundamentally incorrect when it is possible to sideboard entire gameplans, and the primary gameplan folds hard to hate. So, the Twin plan is getting a shot. Let the next-leveling commence.
If you want to focus on the Jund idea of running aggro loam, would it not make sense to add huntmaster to the sideboard as a 2 of? He pads our life total, gives us creatures, possibly flips and when we needs more life we can easily help him flip back. There is also the added bonus that he doesn't rely on the yard which would help us post board.
If you want to focus on the Jund idea of running aggro loam, would it not make sense to add huntmaster to the sideboard as a 2 of? He pads our life total, gives us creatures, possibly flips and when we needs more life we can easily help him flip back. There is also the added bonus that he doesn't rely on the yard which would help us post board.
Unfortunately, Huntmaster does not satisfy condition B of my desired sideboard plan: Must be good against linear decks. Huntmaster grinds, and Loam already wins the grind.
The weak matchups are linear. Huntmaster might as well be blank cardboard against Burn/Tron/Boggles/Amulet/Grishoalbrand/Living End.
How does olivia help those match ups especially burn where huntmaster does indeed help by gaining you life and putting pressure on the board. Against boggles it can give you a swing back to help with the race, even though liliana sacrifice into huntmaster would help pad your life total a bit and put blockers on the board to help keep liliana around a few turns to gain counters to make them sacrifice, etc. Against tron you have mage and huntmaster doesn't really help there. I'm just confused on how you don't think he is fine for one of our worst match ups in burn or a match up like boggles where padding our life total and putting chumps/beats on board is a good thing to have.
How does olivia help those match ups especially burn where huntmaster does indeed help by gaining you life and putting pressure on the board. Against boggles it can give you a swing back to help with the race, even though liliana sacrifice into huntmaster would help pad your life total a bit and put blockers on the board to help keep liliana around a few turns to gain counters to make them sacrifice, etc. Against tron you have mage and huntmaster doesn't really help there. I'm just confused on how you don't think he is fine for one of our worst match ups in burn or a match up like boggles where padding our life total and putting chumps/beats on board is a good thing to have.
I think you're misunderstanding the sideboard plan. I'm just going to delete the typical Jund-ish sideboard, which was just for illustration. Clearly, it's confusing. Look at the actual sideboard, which is Twin.
On the subject of Huntmaster: 4 mana gain two life doesn't do anything against Burn - way too slow, you're already dead. Just gives them targets for Searing Blaze, if it's in their deck, and it can't even block a Swiftspear. Huntmaster is also awful against Bogles. A pair of 2/2's does not race a 10/10 lifelinking vigilant first strike Bogle, which is about what they'd have on turn four, and it may even have protection from creatures to boot. Generating chump blockers is not a gameplan against Bogles, it's just losing more slowly.
Well I suppose despite my experience with aggro loam that I will just have to agree to disagree with you on huntmaster in the burn and boggles match up.
But the twin sideboard does seems interesting. I like the idea of that. Not too mention whereas twin uses serum visions as a cantrip, you have access to commune, insight and looting. Which dig into combo much quicker. I like the idea of that.
Also to answer your mana concerns about fixing R and B, just run graven cairns as a 2 or 3 of. I personally ran 4 for a long time, but that was somewhat greedy for me, so I went down to 3 for a while.
For a bit I also ran EE to support liliana in some match ups like bogles, amulet, etc. If you can find the room it is a good card against much of the field. Perhaps too much of the field we are already very good against though.
Really curious as to how this list of yours would perform - though from my experience I have found Commune with the Gods a bit slow and clunky, buy indeed helps with the sideboard plan and sure helps dig for Life from the Loam. I'm all for testing, though. Do you have any prospects for testing in the near future?
Also to answer your mana concerns about fixing R and B, just run graven cairns as a 2 or 3 of. I personally ran 4 for a long time, but that was somewhat greedy for me, so I went down to 3 for a while.
I like the idea of a Cairns or two, that could ease the manabase quite a bit. Unsure what to cut, but the manabase likely needs work.
Really curious as to how this list of yours would perform - though from my experience I have found Commune with the Gods a bit slow and clunky, buy indeed helps with the sideboard plan and sure helps dig for Life from the Loam. I'm all for testing, though. Do you have any prospects for testing in the near future?
I've played a few matches so far, and it's performed well. The format can't really interact with Loam game 1, and game 2 they end up with dead grave hate cards, or continue to lose to endless Loaming. Enchantment hate is uncommon, but does generate splash hate against Twin itself. Fortunately, enchantment hate is much easier to play around as Twin than hard removal - an end step land tap is usually good enough, especially when they don't expect it.
The core of the Jund shell remains very powerful, regardless. Bob and Liliana are superstars.
Btw. Am i the only one who is excited about the new set? battle for Zendikar. I mean. it's a set that's "based" around lands
What do you guys hope to see in the set?
Personally I would cut a stomping ground and 2 Mire for 1 more Foothills and a 2 cairns. Yes fetches are great for mana fixing, and loam fuel but you could probably cut 1 easily since mana fixing on cairns will be worth it. You definitely want more forest fetches if you know moon is in your meta.
Also worth mentioning. That would be my main concern given your board. If they drop moon and you boarded into twin then you may be looking at several dead cards post board if you can't snag a moon early or hold up for decay expecting it off the top. That would be my main concern with your boarding strategy. Blood moon can be very effective against out greedy mana base.
Have anyone have problems with countryside crusher and magmatic insight? i've had that nonebo to many times today. So i'm actually thinking of cutting one of them.
Any thoughts?
It is very awkward when you have a Crusher in play, with no Loam and the first non-Land card revealed is Magmatic Insight, because if the Crusher has been in play for any length of time, it is very unlikely you have a land in hand.
I rationalized it by the Crusher making it much more likely to get to a Loam, but it can be an issue and I eventually did cut down the number of Insights while I was playing Crusher. My new plan has cut out the Crushers though and Insights might come back again.
Btw. Am i the only one who is excited about the new set? battle for Zendikar. I mean. it's a set that's "based" around lands
What do you guys hope to see in the set?
I'm hopeful for more utility lands on line with Bojuka Bog, but on RG, could be great.
Also, anything with Landfall is a winner for me. Really like the mechanic, and even if I can't get to fit in the Assault Loam deck, will end up brewing something.
EDIT: Also, there's always the possibility that a card similar to Life from the Loam is printed, which could add great consistency for the deck.
It is very awkward when you have a Crusher in play, with no Loam and the first non-Land card revealed is Magmatic Insight, because if the Crusher has been in play for any length of time, it is very unlikely you have a land in hand.
I rationalized it by the Crusher making it much more likely to get to a Loam, but it can be an issue and I eventually did cut down the number of Insights while I was playing Crusher. My new plan has cut out the Crushers though and Insights might come back again.
Yeah, Crusher does that. However, there's much more upside than downside to it.
What I have been doing is being more conservative when casting Crusher. Sometimes I make sure I have already a Life from the Loam before slamming him, or at least one or two Faithless Looting on the graveyard to get some advantage from. It doesn't make these situations less awkward, just helps playing around them.
Personally I would cut a stomping ground and 2 Mire for 1 more Foothills and a 2 cairns. Yes fetches are great for mana fixing, and loam fuel but you could probably cut 1 easily since mana fixing on cairns will be worth it. You definitely want more forest fetches if you know moon is in your meta.
Also worth mentioning. That would be my main concern given your board. If they drop moon and you boarded into twin then you may be looking at several dead cards post board if you can't snag a moon early or hold up for decay expecting it off the top. That would be my main concern with your boarding strategy. Blood moon can be very effective against out greedy mana base.
You're exactly right. Unfortunately, a four-color manabase is soft to Blood Moon no matter what you do. Fortunately, the game plan against Blood Moon decks is generally to stay on the Assault plan, leaving Twin in the board, since those decks are generally Delver/Twin/Affinity/creature based, and grave hate is weak or not played at all.
I like your idea about the additional green fetch and the Graven Cairns - probably cutting a Tomb and Stomping Ground for the Cairns, and a Mire for the Foothills. The deck is primarily RB, but basic forest is indeed very important against Blood Moon.
[...]
I like your idea about the additional green fetch and the Graven Cairns - probably cutting a Tomb and Stomping Ground for the Cairns, and a Mire for the Foothills. The deck is primarily RB, but basic forest is indeed very important against Blood Moon.
Completely agree - I have lost more than a few games to Blood Moon, due to only playing 1 basic Forest. Always try to increase the number, but manabase starts to get clunky (even at RG) because of Seismic Assault mana requirements (and even for Molten Vortex, activation mana requirements). Blood Moon has been strangely efficient against my deck because puts me on topdeck mode for Faithless Looting, Magmatic Insight or lands, shutting down the recursive portion of the deck. It's a big blowout. Might try doing it again, maybe 2 Forests, or 3. Add a second Fire-Lit Thicket for good measure.
Its a good argument for running as many Forest fetchlands as is plausible at least.
@Bitkun I love Countryside Crusher and agree there is a lot of upside in casting him. As my decks have evolved though, he's gone from a 3-4 of to a 0-2 of though depending on the specific build.
Welp, my girlfriend should be off jund this week which means for the first time in a long time I get to bring aggro loam out of the dusty card box and into an LGS tomorrow night. I am very excited for this. I will definitely post a brief report.
Its a good argument for running as many Forest fetchlands as is plausible at least.
@Blitkun I love Countryside Crusher and agree there is a lot of upside in casting him. As my decks have evolved though, he's gone from a 3-4 of to a 0-2 of though depending on the specific build.
I agree on 0-2 Crushers because often times you topdeck it and it does nothing. It's a very powerful card, but requires some setup or time to grow and dominate the board. I like to think of it much like Knight of the Reliquary - sometimes they're just not worth the tempo and mana.
Welp, my girlfriend should be off jund this week which means for the first time in a long time I get to bring aggro loam out of the dusty card box and into an LGS tomorrow night. I am very excited for this. I will definitely post a brief report.
Looking forward to it, I remember last year you helped me a lot with my first tests by providing very helpful feedback. You going Zoo-esque?
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That's the reason i wanted to stay RG.
At teh moment i recognize that Black is much more powerful here because it offers much
more to cast from the grave.
Green @ it's best
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Copperline Gorge
1 Forest
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Raging Ravine
2 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Dark Confidant
Assault Loam Package (16):
4 Molten Vortex
2 Seismic Assault
4 Life from the Loam
4 Faithless Looting
2 Magmatic Insight
2 Commune with the Gods
Other noncreatures (13):
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Darkblast
4 Deceiver Exarch
3 Pestermite
2 Spellskite
4 Splinter Twin
1 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
This is a list I've been theorycrafting. Here are my assumptions:
So, card choices.
4 Molten Vortex: The new hotness. I think this card is quite strong, and helps the early game where Loam decks are traditionally weakest.
2 Seismic Assault: More powerful than Vortex, but slower out of the gate. Having diversity here helps against Pithing Needle effects, as well.
4 Life from the Loam: One of the few genuinely broken cards left in Modern, in my opinion. The core of the assault loam deck.
4 Dark Confidant: As explained above. Card advantage is better in this deck than others, since our lands are more useful. However, going creatureless does have a lot of appeal - completely turning off your opponent's removal spells is very good. On the other hand, having him in the deck forces your opponent to leave crappy removal spells in after sideboard.
4 Liliana of the Veil: Excellent against everything. It's very easy to find something to discard in this deck, and lands get loamed back for value.
4 Faithless Looting: Finds combo pieces, fills the yard for Loam, finds Loam, discards extra Loams, triggers dredges if you want them. Lots of goodness here.
2 Commune With the Gods: Finds combo pieces, digs deep for Loam. Could see running more of these. Shockingly good with the Twin transformational sideboard.
2 Magmatic Insight: Loam value. Not sure if I like this card or not, time will tell.
Cards I specifically didn't choose:
Smallpox: Liliana is better in this role, and a full-on Pox shell is not what I'm going for here. Pox shells aren't very good in Modern anyway.
Raven's Crime: It's just not good enough. Opponent-choice discard does not win games, and it folds to the same hate as the rest of the deck.
Flame Jab: Molten Vortex is straight up better.
Tarmogoyf: He can get big, sure, but I just don't think you need him. The Loam engine is more powerful, and omitting Goyfs further blanks your opponent's removal.
Tasigur/Angler: Very bad with Bob, and bad after sideboard because of the incoming grave hate.
The sideboard plan:
So, I wanted a way to win the game that didn't rely on the graveyard, and didn't fold to linear decks. The best answer I could come up with was Twin. Unfortunately, we need blue mana, but the manabase can support a fourth color out of the board. This transformational plan is strong, I think. You can expect your opponent to be boarding out hard removal, which is good. You also have cards like Commune, Looting, and Insight to find the combo pieces. Board-outs are some combination of Loam/Bob/Bolt/Vortex/Assault, depending on the matchup.
There's little sideboard space for other matchups, however, but you don't really need much. Fair matchups and creature decks are easily outclassed by Loam/Vortex/Assault. Delver/Affinity/Elves/etc just have no way to win once you establish Loam. Control matchups are excellent, since it's very difficult to interact with a Loam engine, and drawing three Shocks every single turn is very hard to beat.
A traditional sideboard would include some kind of resilient alternate win conditions, removal, and ways to hate on artifacts/enchantments. Becoming the control deck rather than the combo deck. However, I've increasingly come to believe that sideboarding hate cards is fundamentally incorrect when it is possible to sideboard entire gameplans, and the primary gameplan folds hard to hate. So, the Twin plan is getting a shot. Let the next-leveling commence.
Unfortunately, Huntmaster does not satisfy condition B of my desired sideboard plan: Must be good against linear decks. Huntmaster grinds, and Loam already wins the grind.
The weak matchups are linear. Huntmaster might as well be blank cardboard against Burn/Tron/Boggles/Amulet/Grishoalbrand/Living End.
I think you're misunderstanding the sideboard plan. I'm just going to delete the typical Jund-ish sideboard, which was just for illustration. Clearly, it's confusing. Look at the actual sideboard, which is Twin.
On the subject of Huntmaster: 4 mana gain two life doesn't do anything against Burn - way too slow, you're already dead. Just gives them targets for Searing Blaze, if it's in their deck, and it can't even block a Swiftspear. Huntmaster is also awful against Bogles. A pair of 2/2's does not race a 10/10 lifelinking vigilant first strike Bogle, which is about what they'd have on turn four, and it may even have protection from creatures to boot. Generating chump blockers is not a gameplan against Bogles, it's just losing more slowly.
But the twin sideboard does seems interesting. I like the idea of that. Not too mention whereas twin uses serum visions as a cantrip, you have access to commune, insight and looting. Which dig into combo much quicker. I like the idea of that.
Also to answer your mana concerns about fixing R and B, just run graven cairns as a 2 or 3 of. I personally ran 4 for a long time, but that was somewhat greedy for me, so I went down to 3 for a while.
For a bit I also ran EE to support liliana in some match ups like bogles, amulet, etc. If you can find the room it is a good card against much of the field. Perhaps too much of the field we are already very good against though.
Really curious as to how this list of yours would perform - though from my experience I have found Commune with the Gods a bit slow and clunky, buy indeed helps with the sideboard plan and sure helps dig for Life from the Loam. I'm all for testing, though. Do you have any prospects for testing in the near future?
I like the idea of a Cairns or two, that could ease the manabase quite a bit. Unsure what to cut, but the manabase likely needs work.
I've played a few matches so far, and it's performed well. The format can't really interact with Loam game 1, and game 2 they end up with dead grave hate cards, or continue to lose to endless Loaming. Enchantment hate is uncommon, but does generate splash hate against Twin itself. Fortunately, enchantment hate is much easier to play around as Twin than hard removal - an end step land tap is usually good enough, especially when they don't expect it.
The core of the Jund shell remains very powerful, regardless. Bob and Liliana are superstars.
What do you guys hope to see in the set?
Also worth mentioning. That would be my main concern given your board. If they drop moon and you boarded into twin then you may be looking at several dead cards post board if you can't snag a moon early or hold up for decay expecting it off the top. That would be my main concern with your boarding strategy. Blood moon can be very effective against out greedy mana base.
Any thoughts?
I rationalized it by the Crusher making it much more likely to get to a Loam, but it can be an issue and I eventually did cut down the number of Insights while I was playing Crusher. My new plan has cut out the Crushers though and Insights might come back again.
I'm hopeful for more utility lands on line with Bojuka Bog, but on RG, could be great.
Also, anything with Landfall is a winner for me. Really like the mechanic, and even if I can't get to fit in the Assault Loam deck, will end up brewing something.
EDIT: Also, there's always the possibility that a card similar to Life from the Loam is printed, which could add great consistency for the deck.
Yeah, Crusher does that. However, there's much more upside than downside to it.
What I have been doing is being more conservative when casting Crusher. Sometimes I make sure I have already a Life from the Loam before slamming him, or at least one or two Faithless Looting on the graveyard to get some advantage from. It doesn't make these situations less awkward, just helps playing around them.
You're exactly right. Unfortunately, a four-color manabase is soft to Blood Moon no matter what you do. Fortunately, the game plan against Blood Moon decks is generally to stay on the Assault plan, leaving Twin in the board, since those decks are generally Delver/Twin/Affinity/creature based, and grave hate is weak or not played at all.
I like your idea about the additional green fetch and the Graven Cairns - probably cutting a Tomb and Stomping Ground for the Cairns, and a Mire for the Foothills. The deck is primarily RB, but basic forest is indeed very important against Blood Moon.
Completely agree - I have lost more than a few games to Blood Moon, due to only playing 1 basic Forest. Always try to increase the number, but manabase starts to get clunky (even at RG) because of Seismic Assault mana requirements (and even for Molten Vortex, activation mana requirements). Blood Moon has been strangely efficient against my deck because puts me on topdeck mode for Faithless Looting, Magmatic Insight or lands, shutting down the recursive portion of the deck. It's a big blowout. Might try doing it again, maybe 2 Forests, or 3. Add a second Fire-Lit Thicket for good measure.
@Bitkun I love Countryside Crusher and agree there is a lot of upside in casting him. As my decks have evolved though, he's gone from a 3-4 of to a 0-2 of though depending on the specific build.
I agree on 0-2 Crushers because often times you topdeck it and it does nothing. It's a very powerful card, but requires some setup or time to grow and dominate the board. I like to think of it much like Knight of the Reliquary - sometimes they're just not worth the tempo and mana.
Looking forward to it, I remember last year you helped me a lot with my first tests by providing very helpful feedback. You going Zoo-esque?