That's why cards like Thoughtseize are necessary in the board. The more discard you can get against control the better chance you have of successfully disrupting them.
I like 2-2, assuming you're running a MD Darkblast. Incidentally putting two of either/or in the graveyard early feels like a huge waste and it opens up slots to run more IoK + Lootings.
Can't comment on Tibalt aside from saying that a free mill every turn via his +1 seems sweet. If you have 2 Loams in the yard, you're binning 6 a turn and still refilling your hand.. but that may be taking a few steps too far into the magical christmasland.
As for Bojuka Bog.. I really don't think we can sustain a cipt mono color land. My current list is running 1 Lavaclaw Reaches, 1 Horizon Canopy and 2 Ghost Quarters and I still sometimes feel like I'm being slowed down by a turn too often.
IoK > Confidant > Assault is the line we dream of and adding another land that dilutes that is a step in the wrong direction. With that said, I have squeezed in a 1-of Jund Charm to give me some play against Living End/GY Strategies/Goyfs and have not been disappointed. It double-dips as a sweeper against tokens and GoblinStorm, which is worth looking in to.
---
Right now this deck is in a fantastic position. But (perhaps I'm alone in this?) I'm not at all confident in our Tron matchup and we still have a lingering weakness to Geist of Saint Traft. 2x Pyroclasm 1x Jund Charm helps solve the latter problem but Tron is yet about hoping to draw several disruption spells -and- crossing your fingers that they don't naturally draw more than a single piece of their puzzle.
Perhaps the meta will do us a favor (for once) with the rise of 'new zoo', but for now it feels like Tron is the elephant in the room for this deck.
I'm trying Tibalt replacing Faithless Looting, and he's decent. He plays nice with Liliana because opponents tend to attack her instead. What he does not play nice with is Raven's Crime--I think I've activated his -4 once out of at least 6 games because Crime depletes opponents' hands. He also does not like being milled into the graveyard, unlike Looting.
Tibalt, however, enables sick plays that Looting cannot hope to do. Dealing 10 damage a turn with Seismic Assault is very feasible with Tibalt out (Dredge Loam on draw step, cast Loam, Dredge Loam again with Tibalt's +1 and pray you don't discard it, cast Loam again), and it's not even win-more if you're racing RG Artifact Tron or you're staring down 2 Kitchen Finks and a 5/6 Goyf (both actual game scenarios). I've ended at least two games with the Tibalt Assault endgame. I've also won against RG Artifact Tron with merely a Seismic Assault endgame; it felt crippled compared to the Tibalt Assault one because it only dealt 4-6 damage a turn.
Tibalt is also decent at handing you what you want. He is guaranteed to eventually let you access LftL. I tend to continuously +1 him unless I can take out a planeswalker with his -4 (unlikely) or steal creatures with his -6 (also unlikely, but at least opponents play around the threat). Yes, the random discard is worse than normal discard, but not significantly worse.
He's the red Jace Beleren. You may prefer the red Serum Visions (Looting), though. He shows his edge in grindy games, and Loam decks tend to be grindy.
Tron hates Goyfs. Goyfs are fast clocks against them. LD and discard are fun (so is popping Liliana OTV's ultimate), but you need to kill them fast. Goyfs and Seismic Assault (especially Tibalt Assault) kill Tron fairly fast.
While I can see the draw of Tibalt, I have to ask myself.. is he a better turn 2 play than Confidant? I think it's a mistake to replace Looting as it reliably smooths our draws, gives us main-phase recursion loam and a sink for dead cards. Tibalt seems too random and his latter two abilities near on irrelevant, in my eyes.
Which part of Jund are you struggling against? We match them in Lili wars, we can recur ghost quarter against manlands. We have an easier time removing their bobs and goyfs and roughly equal disruption..
Really, we're playing "Jund" in a lot of ways.. the core of our deck (especially early game) plays out a lot like theirs but we aren't slowed down by CIPT lands. We can easily go over the top of their midrange by locking their creatures out with a well-timed assault assuming that you can IoK their pulse.
Our real trump card is Faithless Looting. It allows us to sculpt our hand in a way they can not.. so we're virtually running extra Lili's, extra GQ's, extra goyfs, extra bobs. You see what I'm getting at.
To get back on the actual strategy against Jund, I've found it very important to control their pulses. Most lists only run 3, so if you can bait one out on a Lili or a Goyf before they recognize you're playing Loam, you have a reasonable chance of not seeing another in the early turns.
To me, it feels like we're all but set maindeck to deal with them. Fulminator Mage is a champ!
So after last night there is no doubt in my mind that Assault Loam is a powerful T1 deck in modern. I played in and 4-0ed a local modern tournament piloting a list pretty similar to l3dzpplin's (and by similar I mean almost exactly the same):
Round 1 vs UB Mill
Game 1 was a pretty big blowout once he realized his win condition was actually helping me , I finished him off in short order with a combination of Bob beats and Seismic Assault
Game 2
No sideboarding (I'm an idiot)
was a little less favorable for me as I was stupid and forgot Leyline of the Void existed but I almost won anyway despite him dropping it turn 0 with no enchantment hate in the sideboard. The lesson you should take away from this is pack enchantment hate in your sideboard, I am considering a third nature's claim because of this.
Game 3
-2 Flame Jab
+2 Nature's Claim
was a similar match to game 1, he kind of got land screwed but with his mill strategy feeding my goyfs there wasn't much he could do. One thing that I distinctly remember was turn 2 after a Faithless looting he tried a Surgical Extraction on a Life from the Loam in my graveyard but Noxious Revival proved it was worth including in the deck at that very moment when it saved my Life. 1-0
Round 2 vs Bant Enchantress
Game 1 he powers out a couple of spirit dancers, enchanting one of them with a hyena umbra and starts to attack me. Meanwhile I've set up a fat-assed goyf and a bob to get me more cards and eventually I set up SA and just burn him out while he's stuck at 4 lands with a Bruna and a Sun Titan stuck in his hand.
Game 2
-2 Flame Jab, -2 Raven's Crime, -1 Darkblast
+2 Nature's Claim, +2 Go for the Throat, +1 Jund Charm
This game went even better than game 1, more of the same spirit dancer crap but this time he only got to 3 lands. 2-0
Round 3 vs Knights
Game 1 he lands a turn 2 Honor of the Pure which paniced me ever so slightly because that meant it would tkae at least 2 lands to take down a single knight but fortunately for me the only knights he landed after that were Paladin en-Vec and Stillmoon Cavalier couldn't effectively race my goyf before getting burned.
Game 2
-2 Flame Jab, -2 Raven's Crime, -1 Darkblast
+2 Pyroclasm, +2 Nature's Claim, +1 Jund Charm
Now you may be wondering what the hell I am doing sideboarding like that but let me make it clear that I temporarily forgot how to read game 1 when he dropped a Paladin en-Vec which clearly states "PROTECTION FROM RED" on it. He mulls down to 5 and keeps a no-lander with what I would later see was a hand full of 3-drops (2 O-ring, Paladin, Exemplar and a 4cmc Kinsbale Cavalier) via Inquisition of Kozilek (taking an O-Ring of course). Luckily for him he yanks 2 Marsh Flats of the top of his library on turns 2 and three but I think that do-nothing turn one of his was all I needed to drop a goyf too fat for him to swing through. Also it was a good thing that I sided in the Nature's Claims because that second O-Ring ended up hitting a Seismic Assault I had in play. So my turn he gained 4 life up to 16 after I had hit him a couple of times with Confidant and the fetchlands and my SA came back. It was at that moment that I burned his face for 18 damage with the 6 lands and LftL in my hand. 3-0
Round 4 vs UB Darkfinity
So before we start the report on this round I thought I would tell a little story. THis guy is obviously a competitive magic vet, during round 3 he asks around about other people who are 3-0 and I tell him I am. He proposes a top prize split and I am ok with this because I didn't know what he was playing and 3/4 of a box was better than half a box in case my luck ran out. It turns out there were 3 3-0s so we agreed to split if the other guy lost but to play anyway just in case. Had I known he was playing affinity I wouldn't have agreed to split but this guy was really cool so I didn't feel so bad about it.
Game 1
I don't remember much of game 1 except that once I got Seismic assault online there as litterally nothing he could do to stop it. Confidants, frogmites, signal pests all fell to the might land shocks and so eventually did he. During the matche he commented on how smart I was for including Faithless Looting in my Assault Loam deck, my response was "there are AL decks that don't run Faithless Looting?" to which he replied "not good ones."
Game 2
-2 Flame Jab, -2 Raven's Crime
+2 Ancient Grudge, +2 Pyroclasm
I remember this game pretty distinctly. His turn 1 wehn Inkmoth, signal pest, pass. That's when I knew I had him. I drew for the turn, put down a Blackcleave cliffs and then passed as I glanced at the Darkblast in my hand. Turn 2, inkmoth, activate inkmoth, swing with it and the pest. Darkblast. I think that that point he knew it wasn't to be either, but this game was far from a one-sided blowout. HE cast Tezz 2.0 in a last ditch to find an answer but all he came up with was a Memnite. Eventually I was swinging at him with a pair of 7/8 goyfs for the win, one of which he double dismembered out of spite going down to 3 I think. One more draw for him and he conceded. I did misplay a little bit during that game; when I was looking through my graveyard I laid my hand face up on the table by accident but all he could see was noxious revival and after the game he told me that I should have revival'ed an ancient grudge in my graveyard instead of just flashing it backto bone him even more. It was a good call but I got the job done anyway. 4-0
So you may notice that I didn't exactly go up against an accurate representative of the Modern metagame but the ease with which I was able to win these matches is nothing to scoff at. The LftL engine is insanely powerful and not to be underestimated. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from my report is that enchantment hate is absolutely necessary and should come in game 2 under most circumstances. I think I am going to replace the Jund Charm in my sideboard with another Nature's Claim, JC is just too much of a pain to cast and there has not been a single instance where it has been useful where NC is clutch no matter what.
I would also like to note that I did not win a single die roll all night.
How are you feeling about the 2 maindeck Noxious Revivals? I've filled up the spot of the second with a miser's Jund Charm. I'm usually unhappy to see Revival in my opening seven.. how has it treated you?
Noxious Revival allows for some peace if mind as far as dredging goes, it lets me reclaim a Seismic assault that may have been dredged away or destroyed or it could be a goyf or Liliana depending on the situation. Having two of them just makes sure I have at least one to use on other cards I might need to rebuy at a moments notice. Jund charm is a solid main deck choice for its versatility but it has never worked for me.
My preferred method of recursion is Eternal Witness. I like getting a body when I need to retrieve Liliana from the yard again. Then again, I'm currently running a Haunted Fengraf to act as a poor man's Volrath's Stronghold.
I think I used up a flex slot for a singleton Maelstrom Pulse; I really like that card, and it's always found a target when naturally drawn.
Thanks for doing all the work l3dzpplin, couldn't have won without you lol. One other thing I noticed was that I didn't like Horizon Canopy, mostly because its a forest that can't be fetched and it costs me more life to use it but I can't think of another land to replace it with.
Considering Canopy is only in there to provide an instant speed, non-spell method of drawing a card to get Loam out of the gy in the face of graveyard hate on the stack, you could switch in anything that cycles for one mana or less. Personally, I'm going to try to find space for a Street Wraith or two. It's not as good as Canopy because if you dredge it you can't Loam it back to your hand though.
Try to think of Canopy as a spell, not a land, and it might help you handle it a little better.
Thanks for doing all the work l3dzpplin, couldn't have won without you lol. One other thing I noticed was that I didn't like Horizon Canopy, mostly because its a forest that can't be fetched and it costs me more life to use it but I can't think of another land to replace it with.
i think it's invaluable as a 1-of to save a Loam from an opposing Jund Charm, Bog, Spellbomb, Crypt, etc. It can also serve to blank a Surgical Extraction on your Loam; I suppose, maybe, if you're just playing Locally, and you don't have to worry about Grave hate as much, you could take them out for Forests or Stomping Grounds. I can see why you don't like playing with it, in TPF standard I remember specifically adding a 2-of Loxodon Warhammer to my GWB rock deck just to stem the flow of life loss (ofc i was running 3 of them), But, i really think they're completely worth it. I figure you'll lose a lot more games because they blew you out with graveyard hate, than because you need 2-4 more life just to get there.
Are there any variations of this that don't require 4 goyf's/have budget alternatives to goyf? I"m not looking to win a PT in Modern but if the deck isn't even worth playing without goyf i'll have to find another deck to play.
Can't comment on Tibalt aside from saying that a free mill every turn via his +1 seems sweet. If you have 2 Loams in the yard, you're binning 6 a turn and still refilling your hand.. but that may be taking a few steps too far into the magical christmasland.
As for Bojuka Bog.. I really don't think we can sustain a cipt mono color land. My current list is running 1 Lavaclaw Reaches, 1 Horizon Canopy and 2 Ghost Quarters and I still sometimes feel like I'm being slowed down by a turn too often.
IoK > Confidant > Assault is the line we dream of and adding another land that dilutes that is a step in the wrong direction. With that said, I have squeezed in a 1-of Jund Charm to give me some play against Living End/GY Strategies/Goyfs and have not been disappointed. It double-dips as a sweeper against tokens and GoblinStorm, which is worth looking in to.
---
Right now this deck is in a fantastic position. But (perhaps I'm alone in this?) I'm not at all confident in our Tron matchup and we still have a lingering weakness to Geist of Saint Traft. 2x Pyroclasm 1x Jund Charm helps solve the latter problem but Tron is yet about hoping to draw several disruption spells -and- crossing your fingers that they don't naturally draw more than a single piece of their puzzle.
Perhaps the meta will do us a favor (for once) with the rise of 'new zoo', but for now it feels like Tron is the elephant in the room for this deck.
I'm trying Tibalt replacing Faithless Looting, and he's decent. He plays nice with Liliana because opponents tend to attack her instead. What he does not play nice with is Raven's Crime--I think I've activated his -4 once out of at least 6 games because Crime depletes opponents' hands. He also does not like being milled into the graveyard, unlike Looting.
Tibalt, however, enables sick plays that Looting cannot hope to do. Dealing 10 damage a turn with Seismic Assault is very feasible with Tibalt out (Dredge Loam on draw step, cast Loam, Dredge Loam again with Tibalt's +1 and pray you don't discard it, cast Loam again), and it's not even win-more if you're racing RG Artifact Tron or you're staring down 2 Kitchen Finks and a 5/6 Goyf (both actual game scenarios). I've ended at least two games with the Tibalt Assault endgame. I've also won against RG Artifact Tron with merely a Seismic Assault endgame; it felt crippled compared to the Tibalt Assault one because it only dealt 4-6 damage a turn.
Tibalt is also decent at handing you what you want. He is guaranteed to eventually let you access LftL. I tend to continuously +1 him unless I can take out a planeswalker with his -4 (unlikely) or steal creatures with his -6 (also unlikely, but at least opponents play around the threat). Yes, the random discard is worse than normal discard, but not significantly worse.
He's the red Jace Beleren. You may prefer the red Serum Visions (Looting), though. He shows his edge in grindy games, and Loam decks tend to be grindy.
Tron hates Goyfs. Goyfs are fast clocks against them. LD and discard are fun (so is popping Liliana OTV's ultimate), but you need to kill them fast. Goyfs and Seismic Assault (especially Tibalt Assault) kill Tron fairly fast.
I like Mulch in conjunction with Bojuka bog
MTGS - My Favorite forum to troll ALL DAY ERRY DAY
Really, we're playing "Jund" in a lot of ways.. the core of our deck (especially early game) plays out a lot like theirs but we aren't slowed down by CIPT lands. We can easily go over the top of their midrange by locking their creatures out with a well-timed assault assuming that you can IoK their pulse.
Our real trump card is Faithless Looting. It allows us to sculpt our hand in a way they can not.. so we're virtually running extra Lili's, extra GQ's, extra goyfs, extra bobs. You see what I'm getting at.
To get back on the actual strategy against Jund, I've found it very important to control their pulses. Most lists only run 3, so if you can bait one out on a Lili or a Goyf before they recognize you're playing Loam, you have a reasonable chance of not seeing another in the early turns.
To me, it feels like we're all but set maindeck to deal with them. Fulminator Mage is a champ!
Oh, and on a final note.. win your die roll.
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Graven Cairns
2 Arid Mesa
2 Blood Crypt
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Stomping Ground
1 Fire-lit Thicket
1 Forest
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Dark COnfidant
4 Tarmogoyf
Spells 25
4 Faithless Looting
4 Life from the Loam
4 Seismic Assault
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Flame Jab
2 Noxious Revival
2 Raven's Crime
1 Darkblast
3 Thoughtseize
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Go for the Throat
2 Nature's Claim
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Pyroclasm
1 Dark Blast
1 Jund Charm
Here's a brief tournament report:
Round 1 vs UB Mill
Game 1 was a pretty big blowout once he realized his win condition was actually helping me , I finished him off in short order with a combination of Bob beats and Seismic Assault
Game 2
No sideboarding (I'm an idiot)
was a little less favorable for me as I was stupid and forgot Leyline of the Void existed but I almost won anyway despite him dropping it turn 0 with no enchantment hate in the sideboard. The lesson you should take away from this is pack enchantment hate in your sideboard, I am considering a third nature's claim because of this.
Game 3
-2 Flame Jab
+2 Nature's Claim
was a similar match to game 1, he kind of got land screwed but with his mill strategy feeding my goyfs there wasn't much he could do. One thing that I distinctly remember was turn 2 after a Faithless looting he tried a Surgical Extraction on a Life from the Loam in my graveyard but Noxious Revival proved it was worth including in the deck at that very moment when it saved my Life.
1-0
Round 2 vs Bant Enchantress
Game 1 he powers out a couple of spirit dancers, enchanting one of them with a hyena umbra and starts to attack me. Meanwhile I've set up a fat-assed goyf and a bob to get me more cards and eventually I set up SA and just burn him out while he's stuck at 4 lands with a Bruna and a Sun Titan stuck in his hand.
Game 2
-2 Flame Jab, -2 Raven's Crime, -1 Darkblast
+2 Nature's Claim, +2 Go for the Throat, +1 Jund Charm
This game went even better than game 1, more of the same spirit dancer crap but this time he only got to 3 lands.
2-0
Round 3 vs Knights
Game 1 he lands a turn 2 Honor of the Pure which paniced me ever so slightly because that meant it would tkae at least 2 lands to take down a single knight but fortunately for me the only knights he landed after that were Paladin en-Vec and Stillmoon Cavalier couldn't effectively race my goyf before getting burned.
Game 2
-2 Flame Jab, -2 Raven's Crime, -1 Darkblast
+2 Pyroclasm, +2 Nature's Claim, +1 Jund Charm
Now you may be wondering what the hell I am doing sideboarding like that but let me make it clear that I temporarily forgot how to read game 1 when he dropped a Paladin en-Vec which clearly states "PROTECTION FROM RED" on it. He mulls down to 5 and keeps a no-lander with what I would later see was a hand full of 3-drops (2 O-ring, Paladin, Exemplar and a 4cmc Kinsbale Cavalier) via Inquisition of Kozilek (taking an O-Ring of course). Luckily for him he yanks 2 Marsh Flats of the top of his library on turns 2 and three but I think that do-nothing turn one of his was all I needed to drop a goyf too fat for him to swing through. Also it was a good thing that I sided in the Nature's Claims because that second O-Ring ended up hitting a Seismic Assault I had in play. So my turn he gained 4 life up to 16 after I had hit him a couple of times with Confidant and the fetchlands and my SA came back. It was at that moment that I burned his face for 18 damage with the 6 lands and LftL in my hand.
3-0
Round 4 vs UB Darkfinity
So before we start the report on this round I thought I would tell a little story. THis guy is obviously a competitive magic vet, during round 3 he asks around about other people who are 3-0 and I tell him I am. He proposes a top prize split and I am ok with this because I didn't know what he was playing and 3/4 of a box was better than half a box in case my luck ran out. It turns out there were 3 3-0s so we agreed to split if the other guy lost but to play anyway just in case. Had I known he was playing affinity I wouldn't have agreed to split but this guy was really cool so I didn't feel so bad about it.
Game 1
I don't remember much of game 1 except that once I got Seismic assault online there as litterally nothing he could do to stop it. Confidants, frogmites, signal pests all fell to the might land shocks and so eventually did he. During the matche he commented on how smart I was for including Faithless Looting in my Assault Loam deck, my response was "there are AL decks that don't run Faithless Looting?" to which he replied "not good ones."
Game 2
-2 Flame Jab, -2 Raven's Crime
+2 Ancient Grudge, +2 Pyroclasm
I remember this game pretty distinctly. His turn 1 wehn Inkmoth, signal pest, pass. That's when I knew I had him. I drew for the turn, put down a Blackcleave cliffs and then passed as I glanced at the Darkblast in my hand. Turn 2, inkmoth, activate inkmoth, swing with it and the pest. Darkblast. I think that that point he knew it wasn't to be either, but this game was far from a one-sided blowout. HE cast Tezz 2.0 in a last ditch to find an answer but all he came up with was a Memnite. Eventually I was swinging at him with a pair of 7/8 goyfs for the win, one of which he double dismembered out of spite going down to 3 I think. One more draw for him and he conceded. I did misplay a little bit during that game; when I was looking through my graveyard I laid my hand face up on the table by accident but all he could see was noxious revival and after the game he told me that I should have revival'ed an ancient grudge in my graveyard instead of just flashing it backto bone him even more. It was a good call but I got the job done anyway.
4-0
So you may notice that I didn't exactly go up against an accurate representative of the Modern metagame but the ease with which I was able to win these matches is nothing to scoff at. The LftL engine is insanely powerful and not to be underestimated. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from my report is that enchantment hate is absolutely necessary and should come in game 2 under most circumstances. I think I am going to replace the Jund Charm in my sideboard with another Nature's Claim, JC is just too much of a pain to cast and there has not been a single instance where it has been useful where NC is clutch no matter what.
I would also like to note that I did not win a single die roll all night.
I think I used up a flex slot for a singleton Maelstrom Pulse; I really like that card, and it's always found a target when naturally drawn.
Try to think of Canopy as a spell, not a land, and it might help you handle it a little better.
i think it's invaluable as a 1-of to save a Loam from an opposing Jund Charm, Bog, Spellbomb, Crypt, etc. It can also serve to blank a Surgical Extraction on your Loam; I suppose, maybe, if you're just playing Locally, and you don't have to worry about Grave hate as much, you could take them out for Forests or Stomping Grounds. I can see why you don't like playing with it, in TPF standard I remember specifically adding a 2-of Loxodon Warhammer to my GWB rock deck just to stem the flow of life loss (ofc i was running 3 of them), But, i really think they're completely worth it. I figure you'll lose a lot more games because they blew you out with graveyard hate, than because you need 2-4 more life just to get there.
Sig courtesy of DOLZero
[82/360] Custom Cube
Blog about the Custom Cube
Link to daily in question?
I think this is the list...
It's the 9th deck down, second from the bottom.
Although, correct me if I'm wrong.
Looks like it, thanks.