The problem with Norn or Iona (although Iona can sometimes get around this) is that they loose to Path, which is already a fairly powerful card against us. I definitely like them out of the board, though. Just not sure about the numbers. More testing should help on that front.
The mana is incredibly greedy. There's no question about that. I do think that the mana base needs to be refined (by whihc I mean PLEASE GOD HELP ME FIX THE MANA) and that there's probably room for basics, but the power of the manabase is relatively indisputable. Faithless, dredging, loam and scout give us the tempo and card advantage to not need the early dig as much as you would expect, and along side the plentiful redundancy or engines (8 total between infestation and seismic effects), I've not had a problem finding what I need fast enough (a huge change from previous versions of the deck I ran). The Seismic/Infestation split gives us a good breadth of effects to win games with, and the assult/vortex split gives us speed vs explosiveness. The mana-intensive nature of vortex is largely mitigated by Scout, and Firemanes let us live long enough for it to not matter when the scout isn't there.
Speaking of firemane, don't think of it as a wincon. Although it can definitely get there, those games are already all kinds of wonky (probably multiple surgicals), that's like... plan F or G. It's a free sun droplet in a deck that has an incredibly painful manabase and slightly slow aggro interaction. It's there to stabilize and neuter an opposing clock, not swing into the red zone. I don't think I've ever put it into play with anything but unburial, and that was to stall a board, not kill an opponent. That said, Scout lets you get to the point where you CAN cast it, so it's nice to keep in mind that it's a possibility. Vengeful Pharaoh is much the same.
The primary plan for Unburial Rites here is not one of combo, but of redundancy, similar to how standard lists played it back in it's heyday, and one of enablement. Because you play unburial, once you've found an engine, you can just go to town with the dredging. It adds flexibility and redundancy to a deck that was previously slightly fragile and incredibly decision-intensive and punishing.
The white splash for it is relatively painless; Horizon canopy is powerful enough to play even without it and a single Sacred is more than sufficient to enable the rest of it. It also gives you access to a glut of powerful sideboard options, starting with the unburial fatty plan, touching things like Ghostly Prison, and continuing all the way through to stuff as simple as Ray of Revelation. I don't think the white splash is the biggest (or even a very big) problem for the mana base. {G/R} on one, {B}{B} on two, {R}{R}{R} on three, and {G}{G}+ on four+, on the other hand, ARE. I would very much like to find room for AT LEAST a forest somewhere (probably replacing the Overgrown Tomb, which has proven less necessary than in previous versions) so that I can at least Loam through Blood Moon and flashback Ray/Grudge. This could be further encouraged by swapping Liliana for another utility spell, such as Lingering Souls, Knight of the Reliquary, or Scavenging Ooze, depending on play style and meta.
EDIT: Proposed new mana base:
This mana base gives (Depending on how one counts the filter lands) roughly 90% or greater chance to cast everything in the deck on curve except Liliana, and doesn't account for the effects of Loam (which may cause you to switch the numbers on the B/R//G/R shocks and filters) across 10 fetches, 4 shocks, 1 basic (of the most important color to have under a moon) and a handful of utility/manlands.
Gitrod toad is absolutely bonkers in the shell. Besides being a formidable threat all on his own, the extra land drop is not negligible and the draw effect is game-ending. With ANY engine card and a Gitrod, you are either instantly dominating the game or winning it on the spot. I draw an average of 6-7 cards at instant speed the turn gitrod enters play. He is a game-winning fatty reanimate target here.
This brew borrows heavily from Loam Pox tech, and plays similarly, but without the aggressive creature package; choosing to play the modern-legal exploration that is Sakura-Tribe Scout and the gitrod/unburial package, similar to how previous builds ran Boborgimos.
@mykatdied: I've found Abrupt Decay to be subpar in every version of this deck I've ever played. If I wanted to try to make it work, I'd play (at the least) Jace, Vyr's Prodigy and a BUG or (b)RUG shell. YMMV?
// Sideboard.
SB: 2 Ancient Grudge.
SB: 1 Dakmor Salvage.
SB: 1 Ghost Quarter.
SB: 2 Golgari Brownscale.
SB: 1 Liliana of the Veil.
SB: 2 Pithing Needle.
SB: 2 Raven's Crime.
SB: 2 Ray of Revelation.
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction.
I haven't tested the board yet, so some of the numbers there might need tweaking. In the main, Liliana is essentially a flex spot (maybe KotR?), but having the extra discard outlet is nice, especially one as versatile as liliana. The mana base is painfully tight; the deck wants to play Dakmor Salvage and Bojuka Bog but finding space for them is incredibly difficult, and we haven't even talked about the lack of basics. Still, I'm fairly happy with it so far. It's possible the Firemane Angel should be Golgari Brownscale in the main, but I've really been loving the angels, and not just against burn. Free sun droplets are pretty absurd.
Dakmor Salvage may not be strictly necessary. The deck draws an absurd amount of cards the moment hypnotoad enters play, and it's incredibly easy to find a loam off it.
Mostly someone pointed it out to me. I originally saw the combo in a dredgevine list on /r/spikes a while back. He was playing it for the control and to cast Gravecrawlers. At the time I was playing KotR in my build and figured having a way to cast it out of the yard and nearly unlimited board control would be pretty powerful, so I tested it out in my build. Eventually, I dropped the white splash in favor of Bob (four color with Bob is simply too painful for the deck to deal with), but Haakon has been strong enough as both a recurring finisher and board control option that he made the cut to this final list. One thing a lot of people notice is that I don't run any man lands in my list; I can get away with it because Haakon serves the same purpose. He's a less mana intensive treetop village that essentially lets me pay two to kill something, Having him in also makes me much less vulnerable to slaughter games/surgical extraction from decks looking to force me to play 'fair' and makes Liliana and Faithless Looting that much more powerful.
Another nice side note is that end game Nameless lets me close out or stabilize with batterskull much quicker by buffing it to a 7/1 lifelinker. The only problems I've had with it so far is play mistakes; you have to identify if your opponent has pump spells in their deck and sequence your plays accordingly. Thus far, only Infect and R/G aggro have made that relevant; but it feels real bad to nameless a glistener elf and have them Giant Growth in response and swing in with a 7/1 infect. Getting something Bloodrushed in response to Nameless is similarly depressing. Both of these are relatively simple play errors, though, and you really only have to have it happen once before you learn your lesson.
As a side note, my testing has shown both of these to be rather positive matchups; they have a very hard time dealing with the massive amounts of removal we have at our disposal and basically scoop to any of the control engines going online.
Other cool notes about nameless: It's a house against tribal. That rider is actually very nice in matchups like Fish and Elves where occasionally you blink and they've suddenly got four lords on the board. Your lords don't matter when I remove their creature type... Also, because it's a -X toughness, regeneration doesn't get around it.
Honestly, the only matchups that really scares me (that I haven't had a chance to test against) is the new G/B Rock list that's been floating around. My build is (as far as I know) the only list in the format capable of making Goyf a 8/9 all by itself, and I don't really have an effective way of dealing with Thrun outside of Lili. But, I really haven't had a chance to test it, and from the testing I've done, my build basically wins the late game against ANYTHING. I imagine Thrun really isn't too scary when it's sitting across from a Batterskull...
Hard matchups I HAVE been able to test: Tron and Affinity
Tron is just kinda abysmal pre-sideboard. Basically the only way I can interact with them is Ghost Quarter; if I get early GQs and Loams I can keep up right up until they find one of their Relic of Progenitus, and then I lose. Having no way to interact with any of their finishers in the main is pretty depressing as well. Post board I turn into a rather more typical Rock Disruption deck, aiming to find a Damping Matrix to shut off Relic ASAP and going to town on their hand and land base in the meantime. It really isn't too hard to surgical out Karn and Wurmcoil, and with 5 wastelands and 4 loams it's a pretty simple matter to get seven of their lands into the graveyard as well and stop them from ever casting Emrakul. After that it's pretty easy to find a finisher of choice and slowly beat them to death.
Affinity is kinda a toss up. If they stumble at all, it's pretty easy to get a removal loop online and just control the game. If they don't... Well, that's what affinity does best. I haven't gotten to run many games against this with the finalized sideboard (damping matrix was the missing piece), so I'm not 100% sure how effective it is at slowing them down enough to ensure a win, but in theory it should be pretty sound. Lili is good at killing Etched Champion; as is Engineered Explosives, although that's definitely a subpar use against them and it doesn't work with Damping Matrix online anyway. Hand control also punishes them for keeping loose hands, which is something they do a fair amount. It's definitely a fairly positive matchup if your opponent isn't a skilled player (which robots players tend to not be), although it does make playtesting slightly more infuriating.
Other matches I've tested:
Fish: disgustingly good for you. You have way too much removal that simply doesn't care if they have lords on the board. Their sideboard plan isn't much better.
Elves: See above. You do have to be slightly more discriminating here; they tend to pull the affinity move of randomly dropping their hand on the table but with the bonus of refilling it afterwards.
RWU midrange/control: Favorable. Control decks fair rather poorly against attrition decks; your biggest fear is that they have enough burn in the deck to simply bolt you to death. Lili and EE are both excellent answers to Giest; Colonnade isn't scary in the least, and although Vendillion Clique can send fairly crucial Loams to the bottom of your deck, you almost always have a darkblast to dredge back off of it and kill the bugger dead with. Snapcaster follows a similar fate. Deathright does a lot of work absorbing Bolts, negating Snap and getting back some life. Turn two Lili is pretty game-ending for them as well. Life from the loam + raven's crime also wrecks their day pretty hard.
Boggles: it's basically a race to see if you can find a lili or a EE before you're dead. An abundace of draw and a small amount of ramp tends to tilt the race in your favor. Spellskite, thoughtsieze and pulse out of the side help a lot too.
I've done a limited amount of testing against Valakut but didn't play very well and didn't have a completed sideboard to experiment with. The matchup seems pretty positive (the slower nature of their combo gives us a lot of time to get online) but this is one I plan on doing more testing against soon. Post sideboard, surgical on Stomping Ground or Steam Vents is pretty devastating.
I should also be able to test against Twin and possibly Melira Pod and Hatebears in the near future; I'll post when I get results on those.
Hey, So this is my first time posting in this thread but I've been playing this deck pretty extensively in Modern. However...
As a poster above noted, Assault is best used to control the board. That said, it very definitely has game-winning applications and it's a mistake to forget that. With this in mind, I built my Loam deck in a much more controlling manner- I'm looking to play as a true attrition deck. Aggro, while very powerful with this shell, is way too reliant on tempo and pushing the advantage to survive through graveyard hate, which is the major hurtle to making this deck both tier one and playable through a full day of magic at a GP (etc). As a more controlling deck, however, we can deal with this - our game plan is to stabilize and take over the game; the tempo is much less important. To that end, I think that beaters like Goyf and Countryside Crusher, while undeniably incredibly powerful (especially in this shell), are going contrary to our deck's main mode of operation.
I can elaborate on all my choices if you guys would like. I also thought that maybe I should put this in a different thread since, while we run essentially the same shell, the deck plays very differently....
The mana is incredibly greedy. There's no question about that. I do think that the mana base needs to be refined (by whihc I mean PLEASE GOD HELP ME FIX THE MANA) and that there's probably room for basics, but the power of the manabase is relatively indisputable. Faithless, dredging, loam and scout give us the tempo and card advantage to not need the early dig as much as you would expect, and along side the plentiful redundancy or engines (8 total between infestation and seismic effects), I've not had a problem finding what I need fast enough (a huge change from previous versions of the deck I ran). The Seismic/Infestation split gives us a good breadth of effects to win games with, and the assult/vortex split gives us speed vs explosiveness. The mana-intensive nature of vortex is largely mitigated by Scout, and Firemanes let us live long enough for it to not matter when the scout isn't there.
Speaking of firemane, don't think of it as a wincon. Although it can definitely get there, those games are already all kinds of wonky (probably multiple surgicals), that's like... plan F or G. It's a free sun droplet in a deck that has an incredibly painful manabase and slightly slow aggro interaction. It's there to stabilize and neuter an opposing clock, not swing into the red zone. I don't think I've ever put it into play with anything but unburial, and that was to stall a board, not kill an opponent. That said, Scout lets you get to the point where you CAN cast it, so it's nice to keep in mind that it's a possibility. Vengeful Pharaoh is much the same.
The primary plan for Unburial Rites here is not one of combo, but of redundancy, similar to how standard lists played it back in it's heyday, and one of enablement. Because you play unburial, once you've found an engine, you can just go to town with the dredging. It adds flexibility and redundancy to a deck that was previously slightly fragile and incredibly decision-intensive and punishing.
The white splash for it is relatively painless; Horizon canopy is powerful enough to play even without it and a single Sacred is more than sufficient to enable the rest of it. It also gives you access to a glut of powerful sideboard options, starting with the unburial fatty plan, touching things like Ghostly Prison, and continuing all the way through to stuff as simple as Ray of Revelation. I don't think the white splash is the biggest (or even a very big) problem for the mana base. {G/R} on one, {B}{B} on two, {R}{R}{R} on three, and {G}{G}+ on four+, on the other hand, ARE. I would very much like to find room for AT LEAST a forest somewhere (probably replacing the Overgrown Tomb, which has proven less necessary than in previous versions) so that I can at least Loam through Blood Moon and flashback Ray/Grudge. This could be further encouraged by swapping Liliana for another utility spell, such as Lingering Souls, Knight of the Reliquary, or Scavenging Ooze, depending on play style and meta.
EDIT: Proposed new mana base:
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Blood Crypt.
4 Bloodstained Mire.
1 Fire-Lit Thicket.
2 Ghost Quarter.
2 Graven Cairns.
1 Hissing Quagmire.
2 Horizon Canopy.
1 Forest.
2 Raging Ravine.
2 Sacred Foundry.
1 Stomping Ground.
4 Wooded Foothills.
3 Firemane Angel.
3 The Gitrod Monster.
4 Sakura-Tribe Scout.
2 Vengeful Pharaoh.
// Sorceries.
4 Conflagrate.
4 Faithless Looting.
4 Life from the Loam.
2 Unburial Rites.
3 Molten Vortex.
2 Seismic Assault.
3 Zombie Infestation.
// Planeswalkers.
1 Liliana of the Veil.
This mana base gives (Depending on how one counts the filter lands) roughly 90% or greater chance to cast everything in the deck on curve except Liliana, and doesn't account for the effects of Loam (which may cause you to switch the numbers on the B/R//G/R shocks and filters) across 10 fetches, 4 shocks, 1 basic (of the most important color to have under a moon) and a handful of utility/manlands.
Gitrod toad is absolutely bonkers in the shell. Besides being a formidable threat all on his own, the extra land drop is not negligible and the draw effect is game-ending. With ANY engine card and a Gitrod, you are either instantly dominating the game or winning it on the spot. I draw an average of 6-7 cards at instant speed the turn gitrod enters play. He is a game-winning fatty reanimate target here.
This brew borrows heavily from Loam Pox tech, and plays similarly, but without the aggressive creature package; choosing to play the modern-legal exploration that is Sakura-Tribe Scout and the gitrod/unburial package, similar to how previous builds ran Boborgimos.
@mykatdied: I've found Abrupt Decay to be subpar in every version of this deck I've ever played. If I wanted to try to make it work, I'd play (at the least) Jace, Vyr's Prodigy and a BUG or (b)RUG shell. YMMV?
// Deck: infested loam (60)
// Lands.
1 Arid Mesa.
2 Blood Crypt.
4 Bloodstained Mire.
1 Fire-Lit Thicket.
2 Ghost Quarter.
2 Graven Cairns.
1 Hissing Quagmire.
2 Horizon Canopy.
1 Marsh Flats.
1 Overgrown Tomb.
2 Raging Ravine.
1 Sacred Foundry.
1 Stomping Ground.
4 Wooded Foothills.
// Creatures.
3 Firemane Angel.
3 The Gitrod Monster.
4 Sakura-Tribe Scout.
2 Vengeful Pharaoh.
// Sorceries.
4 Conflagrate.
4 Faithless Looting.
4 Life from the Loam.
2 Unburial Rites.
// Enchantments.
3 Molten Vortex.
2 Seismic Assault.
3 Zombie Infestation.
// Planeswalkers.
1 Liliana of the Veil.
// Sideboard.
SB: 2 Ancient Grudge.
SB: 1 Dakmor Salvage.
SB: 1 Ghost Quarter.
SB: 2 Golgari Brownscale.
SB: 1 Liliana of the Veil.
SB: 2 Pithing Needle.
SB: 2 Raven's Crime.
SB: 2 Ray of Revelation.
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction.
I haven't tested the board yet, so some of the numbers there might need tweaking. In the main, Liliana is essentially a flex spot (maybe KotR?), but having the extra discard outlet is nice, especially one as versatile as liliana. The mana base is painfully tight; the deck wants to play Dakmor Salvage and Bojuka Bog but finding space for them is incredibly difficult, and we haven't even talked about the lack of basics. Still, I'm fairly happy with it so far. It's possible the Firemane Angel should be Golgari Brownscale in the main, but I've really been loving the angels, and not just against burn. Free sun droplets are pretty absurd.
Dakmor Salvage may not be strictly necessary. The deck draws an absurd amount of cards the moment hypnotoad enters play, and it's incredibly easy to find a loam off it.
Let me know your thoughts.
Another nice side note is that end game Nameless lets me close out or stabilize with batterskull much quicker by buffing it to a 7/1 lifelinker. The only problems I've had with it so far is play mistakes; you have to identify if your opponent has pump spells in their deck and sequence your plays accordingly. Thus far, only Infect and R/G aggro have made that relevant; but it feels real bad to nameless a glistener elf and have them Giant Growth in response and swing in with a 7/1 infect. Getting something Bloodrushed in response to Nameless is similarly depressing. Both of these are relatively simple play errors, though, and you really only have to have it happen once before you learn your lesson.
As a side note, my testing has shown both of these to be rather positive matchups; they have a very hard time dealing with the massive amounts of removal we have at our disposal and basically scoop to any of the control engines going online.
Other cool notes about nameless: It's a house against tribal. That rider is actually very nice in matchups like Fish and Elves where occasionally you blink and they've suddenly got four lords on the board. Your lords don't matter when I remove their creature type... Also, because it's a -X toughness, regeneration doesn't get around it.
Honestly, the only matchups that really scares me (that I haven't had a chance to test against) is the new G/B Rock list that's been floating around. My build is (as far as I know) the only list in the format capable of making Goyf a 8/9 all by itself, and I don't really have an effective way of dealing with Thrun outside of Lili. But, I really haven't had a chance to test it, and from the testing I've done, my build basically wins the late game against ANYTHING. I imagine Thrun really isn't too scary when it's sitting across from a Batterskull...
Hard matchups I HAVE been able to test: Tron and Affinity
Tron is just kinda abysmal pre-sideboard. Basically the only way I can interact with them is Ghost Quarter; if I get early GQs and Loams I can keep up right up until they find one of their Relic of Progenitus, and then I lose. Having no way to interact with any of their finishers in the main is pretty depressing as well. Post board I turn into a rather more typical Rock Disruption deck, aiming to find a Damping Matrix to shut off Relic ASAP and going to town on their hand and land base in the meantime. It really isn't too hard to surgical out Karn and Wurmcoil, and with 5 wastelands and 4 loams it's a pretty simple matter to get seven of their lands into the graveyard as well and stop them from ever casting Emrakul. After that it's pretty easy to find a finisher of choice and slowly beat them to death.
Affinity is kinda a toss up. If they stumble at all, it's pretty easy to get a removal loop online and just control the game. If they don't... Well, that's what affinity does best. I haven't gotten to run many games against this with the finalized sideboard (damping matrix was the missing piece), so I'm not 100% sure how effective it is at slowing them down enough to ensure a win, but in theory it should be pretty sound. Lili is good at killing Etched Champion; as is Engineered Explosives, although that's definitely a subpar use against them and it doesn't work with Damping Matrix online anyway. Hand control also punishes them for keeping loose hands, which is something they do a fair amount. It's definitely a fairly positive matchup if your opponent isn't a skilled player (which robots players tend to not be), although it does make playtesting slightly more infuriating.
Other matches I've tested:
Fish: disgustingly good for you. You have way too much removal that simply doesn't care if they have lords on the board. Their sideboard plan isn't much better.
Elves: See above. You do have to be slightly more discriminating here; they tend to pull the affinity move of randomly dropping their hand on the table but with the bonus of refilling it afterwards.
RWU midrange/control: Favorable. Control decks fair rather poorly against attrition decks; your biggest fear is that they have enough burn in the deck to simply bolt you to death. Lili and EE are both excellent answers to Giest; Colonnade isn't scary in the least, and although Vendillion Clique can send fairly crucial Loams to the bottom of your deck, you almost always have a darkblast to dredge back off of it and kill the bugger dead with. Snapcaster follows a similar fate. Deathright does a lot of work absorbing Bolts, negating Snap and getting back some life. Turn two Lili is pretty game-ending for them as well. Life from the loam + raven's crime also wrecks their day pretty hard.
Boggles: it's basically a race to see if you can find a lili or a EE before you're dead. An abundace of draw and a small amount of ramp tends to tilt the race in your favor. Spellskite, thoughtsieze and pulse out of the side help a lot too.
I've done a limited amount of testing against Valakut but didn't play very well and didn't have a completed sideboard to experiment with. The matchup seems pretty positive (the slower nature of their combo gives us a lot of time to get online) but this is one I plan on doing more testing against soon. Post sideboard, surgical on Stomping Ground or Steam Vents is pretty devastating.
I should also be able to test against Twin and possibly Melira Pod and Hatebears in the near future; I'll post when I get results on those.
As a poster above noted, Assault is best used to control the board. That said, it very definitely has game-winning applications and it's a mistake to forget that. With this in mind, I built my Loam deck in a much more controlling manner- I'm looking to play as a true attrition deck. Aggro, while very powerful with this shell, is way too reliant on tempo and pushing the advantage to survive through graveyard hate, which is the major hurtle to making this deck both tier one and playable through a full day of magic at a GP (etc). As a more controlling deck, however, we can deal with this - our game plan is to stabilize and take over the game; the tempo is much less important. To that end, I think that beaters like Goyf and Countryside Crusher, while undeniably incredibly powerful (especially in this shell), are going contrary to our deck's main mode of operation.
Here's my list, much refined and tested:
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
3 Blood Crypt
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Graven Cairns
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Buried Ruin
4 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
Instants
3 Darkblast
3 Nameless Inversion
Sorceries
4 Life From The Loam
4 Faithless Looting
2 Raven's Crime
Planeswalkers
3 Liliana of the Veil
Enchantments
2 Seismic Assault
Artifacts
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Batterskull
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Tectonic Edge
4 Thoughtseize
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Spellskite
2 Damping Matrix
I can elaborate on all my choices if you guys would like. I also thought that maybe I should put this in a different thread since, while we run essentially the same shell, the deck plays very differently....