So I've been tinkering with loam for a few months now. I've taken it to 3 FNMs, going 3-1 with my various builds. I originally ran garruk and deathcloud, which was pretty sweet but it didn't synergize with seismic well. I then tried a stock jund list, but found it a bit underwhelming. I've noticed the problem with finishers as well, which is why tonight I ran this list. Pretty sexy. It played well. I lost to a few timely bloodmoons where I wasn't able to find my a decays or ray of revelation before greater gargodon beat me down (restore balance.dec)
The list is a bit unconventional, but I have found that the rack + bloodchief offers great win-cons at the 1-drop spot. Pretty easy to turn on via damage or R Crime. The list is trying to maximize the flashback ability from dredging. It's been great.
The only changes I am considering making at this point are 3x smallpox for the bolts. Bolts are okay, but I've found I occasionally have trouble with larger creatures that are out of burn range or getting stuck with lingering souls in my hand.
Vengeful pharoah is some sick tech against aggro which I highly suggest. You loam it away when it gets put back on top which destroys their creatures for free without spending a card. With that and anger of the gods, aggro is pretty much a cakewalk.
DSynergy, I see what you are getting at with the flashback cards but Rolling Temblor and Sever the Bloodline seem lackluster. They're going to be rather irrelevant if you are casting them on turn 6 or 7. I feel like those slots would be better used turning some of your 3-ofs into 4-ofs for better consistency of key parts of your deck.
Why Trace of Abundance? Is Blood Moon that prevalent in your meta? Are you worried about mana fixing for the 4 colors of your deck? You could probably swap out some of the lands in your landbase to accomodate 4 Arid Mesas and improve the reliability of your colors and get you back those two slots to put into something that will win the game.
If you are looking at Lightning Bolt mainly as creature removal, you could switch to something like Terminate or Go for the Throat as some heavier removal, or you could look into Flame Slash if cmc is important to you. I'd highly recommend getting 4 Smallpox in your list. It's removal and just a great tempo card that works towards your Rack/Ascension win. Resolving one with Ascension active reads: Both players sac a land and creature, discard a card, your opponent loses 7 life, you gain 5. Plus, Loam lets you break the symmetry on it. Though, you may be better off running Shrieking Affliction since you have hardly any ways to deal 2 damage a turn reliably to get Ascension active.
Any particular reason you are running 61 cards MB?
I bring in blightning against any slower control deck or combo deck. It is fantastic against Twin, Scapeshift, any control variant with raven's crime early. It is also good against burn. Against aggro it is lackluster.
Rolling templor has been okay. I originally ran 2x volcanic fallout main...but I found anger the gods in the board to be a better choice. I can see cutting it. I was not running lingering souls until my recent build, so the need for a sweeper is now much less. It does play nice though with my flying tokens which is pretty sweet. It won me a match g1 against elves. That said, I have since moved it to the board switched it with a maelstrom pulse.
I mean lightning bolt is well.....lightning bolt. One of the best cards in modern...so it is hard to not play it in red. It is also used to turn on ascension. That said, I agree with the smallpox assessment; I am going to make that switch. With ascension it is insane...with lili it is good.
I have found the main problem with cards like terminate or spot removal in general is that unless I play 3-4x of them, I loam them into the graveyard with no way to access them. I have thought about running 2-3x Eternal witness for this reason but I am unsure about it. Honestly, playing 2x terminate probably feels right except for this problem. I lost to a resolved Phyrexian Obliterater recently which showed the need for some spot removal. Flame slash seems very weak. Honestly, once we get seismic online, any sort of burn removal like bolt is a waste. Sever the bloodline is actually pretty nice at the 4 drop spot if you draw it and if you loam it away, it is still a reasonable answer. That I think you guys should test.
Trace of abundance is in the deck to smooth the mana for 4 colors and fix my blood moon problem. Yes, blood moon is pretty relevant in my meta, which can be obnoxious. I added it yesterday for this reason. I was also considering Chromatic lantern instead as a 2-of. Otherwise, I don't see any 2 additional lands that would help. I considered changing the mana-base to reflecting pool + vivid lands, but that also seems iffy. More fetchlands makes the problem worse as they are useless post moon. Pre-moon getting a mountain is pointless...getting a single plains for my 3x souls also seems terrible. I could try to squeeze in more basics...which also puts some stress on the mana. I am already running 2 forests which is more than any list I have seen on here so far. I am running the 61st card to get that extra land in...which would be a ghost quarter. It sounds like people have experience with ghost quarter on here so I won't go into its versatility. That said, if the list can be streamlined a bit, 60 is fine. I feel like 61 with extra colorless land is completely reasonable personally for a deck like this that dredges most of its library anyway.
One possibility I have considered is more filter lands and basics. Run more swamps and graven cairns. That could be reasonable. The main problem I find is once you are bloodmooned, it is the green you really want for loam. 2x forests and 4x catacombs sometimes aren't enough and filter lands can't save you then.
So something like -2x Trace, -1x Rolling/pulse, -3x Bolt, +4x Smallpox, +1x Land, +1x Seismic assault?
Thanks for the feedback. I have several decks I like and play in modern over this one, so I haven't put enough time into it yet to find a truly optimized list. I love the rack + bloodchief but need to figure out the right numbers of the other cards for sure.
I could see you running into the problem of 1. when to start Loaming and 2. what win condition to start rolling.
IMO, Seismic and Rack are two very different approaches that I don't think synergize well together. Seismic Assault doesn't really care what your opponent's hand looks like whereas Rack absolutely wants their hand empty. Unless pinging for 1 each turn is worth it, idk.
I'm still new to the deck, and I'm still learning the nuances of Loaming (when not to do it for risk of dumping Seismic Assault). It looks even more problematic with your list because you obviously don't want to loam away a Bloodchief Ascension or Rack as well as Seismic. Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly?
There's a 1cmc land enchantment you can try instead of Trace, I think it's from Time Spiral?
edit: I was thinking of Utopia Sprawl, then realized it only enchants forests..
I've been thinking, do you guys think engineered explosives would be worth running? I've seen it in some control decks and having access to 4 colors makes it pretty good. I feel like trying those over flame jab, explosives can still kill little guys but it can do a lot more, the only downside being it doesn't trigger pyromancer. We have very few permanents so the drawback of destroying our stuff as well seems irrelevant.
Also if we do run them we could add a buried ruin for extra value from loam.
I think it sounds sweet, kinda hearkens to Pernicious Deed in NicFit. I'm not sure I would use it in Pyromancer lists though. It will absolutely kill all of our tokens and might create some awkward situations where we need removal but don't want to wipe the entire board.
Hey guys I'm building the pyro jund version of this deck, I have all the main pieces. I was just wondering how my manabase can be constructed without the use of fetches (as I do not have them and don't Rlly want to invest in them atm) if someone experienced with the deck could help it would be much appreciated.
Just want to re-ask this, as I'm in the same boat. I do have 1 Scalding Tarn to work with though. Any ideas? I'd maybe also be interested in building RUG Pyro as well.
It won't kill our tokens unless we set it at zero, explosives aren't like pernicious deeds, they destroy permanents with cc equal to the number of counters, not the number or less.
Hey everybody, just picked up the pyromancer version of loam, and loving it so far. I have a question about manlands, as in how many should we play approx. and in what combination. Atm I run 2 Raging Ravines, a Lavaclaw Reaches and a Treetop Village, but feel like 4 might be a bit on the high side of it. Any thoughts on this?
That's my count on man lands. I've considered adding another because they give us a much needed aggro boost to deal with opposing decks running Leyline or rest in peace. They also allow us to block against aggro if we don't yet have an assault online. Man lands are very key I feel to get through U control lists as well.
It won't kill our tokens unless we set it at zero, explosives aren't like pernicious deeds, they destroy permanents with cc equal to the number of counters, not the number or less.
Oh wow, I should probably read cards more often. I would definitely try it out SB for starters.
Hey everybody, just picked up the pyromancer version of loam, and loving it so far. I have a question about manlands, as in how many should we play approx. and in what combination. Atm I run 2 Raging Ravines, a Lavaclaw Reaches and a Treetop Village, but feel like 4 might be a bit on the high side of it. Any thoughts on this?
I would like to see your list before I can make any useful comments. 4 CIPT lands is a lot if you're focusing on disruption and getting a Lili into play on time. They do compliment 1cmc discard spells though, especially if you can chain Raven's for the first few turns. I'm currently playing 4 color Loam and can't really justify fiddling with the manabase that much (being that Treetop only provides green). The strength of Ravine is the 4 toughness, there are only a handful of removal spells that can kill it. Lavaclaw and Treetop are more susceptible to burn etc.
I'd be interested to see Creeping Tar Pit in UB counter-heavy builds.
It's based on bobbth's list but i replaced the bloodghasts with an extra copy of seismic assault, liliana, raven's crime, and faithless looting.
I've done some goldfishing and it might be because I'm playing incorrectly, but there have been a few times where I'm stuck on RR and can't get the third R for seismic because all I drew were fetcehs and there are only 2 fetchable R sources in this list. I think i should either replace a fetch wtih an arid mesa (or just add one) or add another shock, either blood crypt or stomping ground.
I also have only goldfished ~15 hands or so, so it might be from a small sample size and i got unlucky.
@ calamity. I tried the link and it didn't work. What does your mana base look like. I have rarely had issue getting the triple red for assault. I ran 4 graven cairns, 4 blood cleave cliffs, 1 blood crypt, 1 steam vents, 1 storming ground in my creatureless version
@calamity: if you're looking for more fetchables, run one more Blood Crypt. If you can get some fetches, 2 Arid Mesa's could help. Also, upping your Graven Cairns to 3 or 4 would really be beneficial imho.
I would suggest trading a ghost quarter or a tectonic edge for the extra fetchable red source. I would suggest a stomping ground to help cast a Loam as well.
(...) I would like to see your list before I can make any useful comments. (...)
Came to the following list, already cut the Lavaclaws and Treetop, agreeing their butt isn't big enough since Bolt kills em dead (provided Ravine gets a counter at least, otherwise he's dead too ofc).
I switched the 2 manlands for an Arid Mesa to fetch some red, and added a Swamp. Still have 2 flexspots at the moment. I was thinking of perhaps adding a singleton Tombstalker as a diverse wincon, seemed more impactful to me then a Bloodghast, albeit not recursable... Last spot might be a Lili, but then again I'm not sure what the use is of a singleton Lili, so perhaps I'll just up the Bolt count. On the other hand, I also really like the Lingering Souls route, so I'll also be looking into that for some testing.
I would suggest trading a ghost quarter or a tectonic edge for the extra fetchable red source. I would suggest a stomping ground to help cast a Loam as well.
The stomping ground could be fine but I still recommend the blood crypt because he already has 2 overgrown tombs.
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4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Savage Lands
1 Raging Ravine
2 Swamp
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Kher Keep
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Graven Cairns
1 Horizon Canopy
2 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
Spells
3 The Rack
3 Raven's Crime
3 Bloodchief Ascension
4 Faithless Looting
2 Trace of Abundance
4 Life from the Loam
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Rolling Temblor
3 Lingering Souls
3 Seismic Assault
1 Sever the Bloodline
2 Ray of Revelation
2 Syphon Life
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Blightning
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Vengeful Pharaoh
The list is a bit unconventional, but I have found that the rack + bloodchief offers great win-cons at the 1-drop spot. Pretty easy to turn on via damage or R Crime. The list is trying to maximize the flashback ability from dredging. It's been great.
The only changes I am considering making at this point are 3x smallpox for the bolts. Bolts are okay, but I've found I occasionally have trouble with larger creatures that are out of burn range or getting stuck with lingering souls in my hand.
Vengeful pharoah is some sick tech against aggro which I highly suggest. You loam it away when it gets put back on top which destroys their creatures for free without spending a card. With that and anger of the gods, aggro is pretty much a cakewalk.
Standard
Blows
Modern
BWUTeachingsBWU
GUGU TempoGU
WLifeW
RWValakut ControlRW
UBModern MillUB
Legacy
UMUCU
BPoxB
BWRTokensBWR
Pauper
UBGRW Domain UBGRW
Vintage
RVise-Burn!R
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made" - Immanuel Kant
Why Trace of Abundance? Is Blood Moon that prevalent in your meta? Are you worried about mana fixing for the 4 colors of your deck? You could probably swap out some of the lands in your landbase to accomodate 4 Arid Mesas and improve the reliability of your colors and get you back those two slots to put into something that will win the game.
If you are looking at Lightning Bolt mainly as creature removal, you could switch to something like Terminate or Go for the Throat as some heavier removal, or you could look into Flame Slash if cmc is important to you. I'd highly recommend getting 4 Smallpox in your list. It's removal and just a great tempo card that works towards your Rack/Ascension win. Resolving one with Ascension active reads: Both players sac a land and creature, discard a card, your opponent loses 7 life, you gain 5. Plus, Loam lets you break the symmetry on it. Though, you may be better off running Shrieking Affliction since you have hardly any ways to deal 2 damage a turn reliably to get Ascension active.
Any particular reason you are running 61 cards MB?
Rolling templor has been okay. I originally ran 2x volcanic fallout main...but I found anger the gods in the board to be a better choice. I can see cutting it. I was not running lingering souls until my recent build, so the need for a sweeper is now much less. It does play nice though with my flying tokens which is pretty sweet. It won me a match g1 against elves. That said, I have since moved it to the board switched it with a maelstrom pulse.
I mean lightning bolt is well.....lightning bolt. One of the best cards in modern...so it is hard to not play it in red. It is also used to turn on ascension. That said, I agree with the smallpox assessment; I am going to make that switch. With ascension it is insane...with lili it is good.
I have found the main problem with cards like terminate or spot removal in general is that unless I play 3-4x of them, I loam them into the graveyard with no way to access them. I have thought about running 2-3x Eternal witness for this reason but I am unsure about it. Honestly, playing 2x terminate probably feels right except for this problem. I lost to a resolved Phyrexian Obliterater recently which showed the need for some spot removal. Flame slash seems very weak. Honestly, once we get seismic online, any sort of burn removal like bolt is a waste. Sever the bloodline is actually pretty nice at the 4 drop spot if you draw it and if you loam it away, it is still a reasonable answer. That I think you guys should test.
Trace of abundance is in the deck to smooth the mana for 4 colors and fix my blood moon problem. Yes, blood moon is pretty relevant in my meta, which can be obnoxious. I added it yesterday for this reason. I was also considering Chromatic lantern instead as a 2-of. Otherwise, I don't see any 2 additional lands that would help. I considered changing the mana-base to reflecting pool + vivid lands, but that also seems iffy. More fetchlands makes the problem worse as they are useless post moon. Pre-moon getting a mountain is pointless...getting a single plains for my 3x souls also seems terrible. I could try to squeeze in more basics...which also puts some stress on the mana. I am already running 2 forests which is more than any list I have seen on here so far. I am running the 61st card to get that extra land in...which would be a ghost quarter. It sounds like people have experience with ghost quarter on here so I won't go into its versatility. That said, if the list can be streamlined a bit, 60 is fine. I feel like 61 with extra colorless land is completely reasonable personally for a deck like this that dredges most of its library anyway.
One possibility I have considered is more filter lands and basics. Run more swamps and graven cairns. That could be reasonable. The main problem I find is once you are bloodmooned, it is the green you really want for loam. 2x forests and 4x catacombs sometimes aren't enough and filter lands can't save you then.
What cards do you think need to be 4-ofs? Seismic assault?
So something like -2x Trace, -1x Rolling/pulse, -3x Bolt, +4x Smallpox, +1x Land, +1x Seismic assault?
Thanks for the feedback. I have several decks I like and play in modern over this one, so I haven't put enough time into it yet to find a truly optimized list. I love the rack + bloodchief but need to figure out the right numbers of the other cards for sure.
Standard
Blows
Modern
BWUTeachingsBWU
GUGU TempoGU
WLifeW
RWValakut ControlRW
UBModern MillUB
Legacy
UMUCU
BPoxB
BWRTokensBWR
Pauper
UBGRW Domain UBGRW
Vintage
RVise-Burn!R
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made" - Immanuel Kant
IMO, Seismic and Rack are two very different approaches that I don't think synergize well together. Seismic Assault doesn't really care what your opponent's hand looks like whereas Rack absolutely wants their hand empty. Unless pinging for 1 each turn is worth it, idk.
I'm still new to the deck, and I'm still learning the nuances of Loaming (when not to do it for risk of dumping Seismic Assault). It looks even more problematic with your list because you obviously don't want to loam away a Bloodchief Ascension or Rack as well as Seismic. Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly?
There's a 1cmc land enchantment you can try instead of Trace, I think it's from Time Spiral?
edit: I was thinking of Utopia Sprawl, then realized it only enchants forests..
Also if we do run them we could add a buried ruin for extra value from loam.
Just want to re-ask this, as I'm in the same boat. I do have 1 Scalding Tarn to work with though. Any ideas? I'd maybe also be interested in building RUG Pyro as well.
Oh wow, I should probably read cards more often. I would definitely try it out SB for starters.
I would like to see your list before I can make any useful comments. 4 CIPT lands is a lot if you're focusing on disruption and getting a Lili into play on time. They do compliment 1cmc discard spells though, especially if you can chain Raven's for the first few turns. I'm currently playing 4 color Loam and can't really justify fiddling with the manabase that much (being that Treetop only provides green). The strength of Ravine is the 4 toughness, there are only a handful of removal spells that can kill it. Lavaclaw and Treetop are more susceptible to burn etc.
I'd be interested to see Creeping Tar Pit in UB counter-heavy builds.
3x Blackcleave Cliffs
1x Blood Crypt
1x Forest
2x Ghost Quarter
1x Godless Shrine
2x Graven Cairns
1x Horizon Canopy
2x Marsh Flats
1x Mountain
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Raging Ravine
1x Stomping Ground
1x Swamp
1x Tectonic Edge
1x Treetop Village
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Flame Jab
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Life from the Loam
4x Lingering Souls
3x Raven's Crime
4x Abrupt Decay
3x Liliana of the Veil
4x Abrupt Decay
4x Young Pyromancer
3x Seismic Assault
It's based on bobbth's list but i replaced the bloodghasts with an extra copy of seismic assault, liliana, raven's crime, and faithless looting.
I've done some goldfishing and it might be because I'm playing incorrectly, but there have been a few times where I'm stuck on RR and can't get the third R for seismic because all I drew were fetcehs and there are only 2 fetchable R sources in this list. I think i should either replace a fetch wtih an arid mesa (or just add one) or add another shock, either blood crypt or stomping ground.
I also have only goldfished ~15 hands or so, so it might be from a small sample size and i got unlucky.
Came to the following list, already cut the Lavaclaws and Treetop, agreeing their butt isn't big enough since Bolt kills em dead (provided Ravine gets a counter at least, otherwise he's dead too ofc).
2x Graven Cairns
2x Raging Ravine
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Marsh Flats
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Arid Mesa
2x Stomping Ground
1x Blood Crypt
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Overgrown Tomb
1x Mountain
1x Swamp
3x Raven’s Crime
2x Flame Jab
4x Smallpox
3x Seismic Assault
4x Life from the Loam
4x Abrupt Decay
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Faithless Looting
2x Lightning Bolt
I switched the 2 manlands for an Arid Mesa to fetch some red, and added a Swamp. Still have 2 flexspots at the moment. I was thinking of perhaps adding a singleton Tombstalker as a diverse wincon, seemed more impactful to me then a Bloodghast, albeit not recursable... Last spot might be a Lili, but then again I'm not sure what the use is of a singleton Lili, so perhaps I'll just up the Bolt count. On the other hand, I also really like the Lingering Souls route, so I'll also be looking into that for some testing.