I'm still not sold on the list either, but just like with the Assault lists, I have won multiple games with just good creatures and Fatal Push / Lightning Bolt to back them up. I think people are overstating how good surgical is against our deck. While it may take out Loams, you can play around it and go down to 3 copies of it post board.
The premise of this archetype is to have a midrange deck that uses AssaultLoam to steal wins. The maindeck should be good enough on its own so that if it never sees Loam or never sees Seismic Assault it still wins. If you want to play a more combo focused version that's fine, but you concede more chance of just folding to hate like Surgical or Rest in Peace. I feel like the primer needs to be updated to cover new options and explain postboard strategy more in depth.
I still insist that while game 1 it may be a negative, post-board the ability to find more exact answers for different archetypes will make the deck stronger. If I can have Surgical every game 2 against Phoenix, then I'll be happy.
That being said, I still understand each deck gets to have better hands, which means linear archetypes will be able to find ways to get around hate and be better against the strategy also, but I think this just leads to better games of magic rewarding better play. I think the mulligan change won't affect the deck that much for that reason. Rock has always been a stable archetype, and I don't think the new mulligan would change its position very much.
I think it is ambitious to cut all racks for 4 Davriel. While Davri is significantly more fragile than the racks, it seems you would run into the situation where you would get multiple Davris in hand very easily. While Racks stack, and many times multiple racks are what close the game fast, Davris stick in your hand. 4 Davriel might be right, but I'd probably still run a couple Racks. I might cut a couple Shrieking Affliction or Necrogen Mists, but I feel like cutting racks is too aggressive.
I haven't tried Jaya, as I always thought she would be too slow on 5 mana.
I have tried Sarkhan, Fireblood in the past to take a similar role looting Loams into your hand, though Jaya would do it a lot faster. I can see her being good, but I just don't see her being as effective as some of the other options we have access too. Still, I don't know though since I haven't tested with her.
In other news, I am currently 9-1 with the Vortex list with a loss to RW Burn. I don't think I would have won against that deck even if I had been playing the other list, so I'm very happy with how the deck has been doing. The turn 1 Vortex on the draw against UW Spirits made me feel so good. Other notable wins were over Dredge twice, Mono-Red Phoenix twice, and Storm.
I added 1 The Gitrog Monster to the list too that has been doing better than I expected. Since the Vortex deck wants to get to 5 mana turn 5 to turn on Vortex + Loam anyways, it makes casting Gitrog pretty easy. The two times it has hit the table, I have won the game on the spot due to its card advantage and huge butt, so I may continue playing it in the list and add a Dakmor Salvage for it.
You could play mono-green CoCo elves, though most lists are splashing black for Shaman of the Pack and select sideboard cards. It's a very light splash, for literally Shaman and to be able to cast Surgical Extraction from your sb in most cases. That's probably your most viable mono-green list, though there are various aggro or Nykthos lists you could play. Mono-Green Stompy has stolen some wins at various SCG IQs recently too.
The vortex deck is an entirely different build than the AssaultLoam version. Because of the nature of Molten Vortex, you have to play ungodly amounts of lands to make a turn 1 Vortex good. The reason why is in the numbers.
If you want to discard 2 lands turn 2 to Vortex, then you have to play 2 lands as well. That's 4 lands turn 2 for profit. If you were playing AssaultLoam, a turn 2 Loam or Wayfinder would turn a t3 Seismic Assault into that same effect a turn later.
That extra turn that Molten Vortex gives you is the key that makes it good or bad in a certain metagame. And while on the play the difference between turn 2 and turn 3 interaction doesn't matter much currently, on the draw it is monumental.
I posted earlier about how my win rate on the draw with Loam being around 50% while on the play I won over 90%. I have been looking for ways to fix the play/draw scenario with this deck for weeks now, and I think this Vortex list may be a step in the right direction.
The biggest thing about Vortex is this: on the draw, it can kill TiTi on turn 2, so the major upside is that it can come down and answer the biggest threat to the deck in the biggest deck in the metagame immediately. Fatal Push does the same thing.
The problem with VortexLoam in the past was that people tried to do too much with it. Tarmogoyf isn't great in the deck because the majority of your deck is lands, and I've found that it ends up a 3/4 too often. A vanilla 2 mana 3/4 isn't that great in modern.
If you don't have anything to kill on turn 2 with Vortex, no problem. Dark Confidant does wonders in this deck, and it is why we go black. Turn 1 Vortex into turn 2 Confidant makes you regain a lot of the cards you lose from Vortex, letting you more easily play lands and discard them at the same time. I have had games with this list where I didn't loam, but used the two cards per turn off of Dark Confidant to get more lands and removal spells to keep the board clear and win the game.
Countryside Crusher is the other major creature in the list. With 32 lands, it flips multiple lands often, and helps us draw gas in the sea of lands. With Dark Confidant, you can choose to stack the triggers either way. If you do crusher first, you dig through more of your deck to draw loam faster. If you stack confidant first, you likely will draw a land and then a spell. Depends on the situation.
Vortex is good against TiTi, but it is not the only reason to play this version of the deck. A similar thing can be done to decks that are playing a lot of creatures like Dredge, Humans, and Spirits, where you can turn 1 Vortex, turn 2 discard 2 lands with a lot of value to get back. Vortex also allows you to pay a red to Shock a Phoenix every time it comes back, to keep the birds off the board. Also, a turn 1 vortex means that it'd be very hard to counter aside from a Spell Pierce on the draw, so the control matchup gets easier (in some ways) as well.
I'm not saying this list is better than the well-tested AssaultLoam. It has a lot of flaws that can be exploited including folding to graveyard hate and not having as much game against control. However, if this list gets optimized, I think it will be better overall on the draw. Whether this small percentage increase will be better is to be seen, but so far I like how it plays in testing.
TL;DR: VortexLoam answers some of the problems with the AssaultLoam list, but is unoptimized atm. If this archetype gets optimized, it will likely be better on the draw, which may or may not decrease the variance of the list.
Explosion Zone seems like a really solid choice for Tron Decks, who normally have some issues running Engineered Explosives. Stirrings hits it, it's tutorable with Sylvan Scrying, and it can hit It also seems strong with Life from the Loam, as now there's good, repeatable boardwipes attached to it. Since there isn't an actual draw engine attached to Loam yet, I don't think this will actually build a new archetype, but it'll have a spot once the archetype finally hits critical mass. The one big flaw is that without removing the counter, it can't hit 0 cmc cards, like tokens, Chalice, Opal, etc. etc. Doesn't hit Blood Moon either.
Blast Zone is too expensive of an effect to be amazing with Life from the Loam. You can loam, play it and crack it on 1 for 6 mana on turn 6 (maybe faster with Exploration effects), or put 1 counter on it and crack it the next turn with 5 mana. It's quite an expensive Engineered Explosives.
With a Crucible effect, I think it would be better as you don't have to pay 2 to cast loam, but it is slow either way.
Merged with the WAR Spoiler thread from the Horizons spoiler thread. - Torpf
I like Conduit of Ruin in budget lists as it can search to find Ulamog, Void Winnower, or World Breaker to act as more copies as each of those big haymakers. It also makes them cost less, so you don't need a double tower to cast Ulamog turn 4 off of it.
Also, 1 to 2 Sanctum of Ugin could be good over a couple forests. The Tron list that won Sao Paulo last weekend played 5 Forest so I don't expect it to be that much of a hassle.
I think it looks pretty good. Against Bogles, we only need to interact with 1's and occasionally 2's, so this can wipe away everything turn 4. That being said, it comes down later than EE and is harder to get charge counters on, so I don't see it being great. EE can destroy all 0 mana non-lands against affinity, hardened scales, chalice of the void prison strategies, and tokens, can be put on 1 to wipe all your opp's mana dorks and Bogles, and can be put on 2 to kill goyfs and Scoozes. I think EE is way bigger and better.
It reminds me of an old RUG Loam list that used EE and Academy Ruins to continually wipe the board. If you want a recurrable Explosives effect, I think this would still be better since it is more flexible and easier to crack.
If the goal is only to have a better matchup against Bogles, throwing a couple of these into the maindeck wouldn't be so bad. I just don't think this replaces EE just like I don't think Ratchet Bomb replaces EE. While it may be a more budget option, it loses a lot of what makes EE good.
The incomplete Raven Man arc is what really tells me she's not gonna die, unless they give the arc so someone else to carry on her legacy or make the Raven Man a big villain to have his story arc be fleshed out.
This may take up that BBE spot. The list as I see it has about 4 flexible top end slots to fill with different stuff. Raging Twister incentivizes the deck to play more lands, so I'm more inclined to play cards like Courser of Kruphix and even ye ol Ramunap Excavator + Fetchlands / Ghost Quarter / Horizon Canopy combo. In the loam decks of the past, you would want to play only 3-4 lands and then discard the rest to Seismic Assault. With AKH, we started to play lands up to Loam-Cycle-Loam. Now with twister, we can play limitless lands and return them to our hand in the late game. How good this would be IDK, but it is something we should consider. What cards like having lands being played?
The obvious answer to me is Tireless Tracker, which I think gets better with Twister in the deck at a very base level. If we don't have a land to play, you can tap a Rootbound Crag to bounce Rootbound Crag and play Roodbound Crag for 0 mana lost. I wanted to test Courser of Kruphix to see how good it is now, and may try BBE as well. The thing about BBE before is there weren't many great targets to hit and I didn't really want to play it turn 4 for 4 mana. Now that we are incentivized to play more lands, it may be way better, idk.
I think this card is going to be good, but is only going to be a 2 of or so in the archetype. It is a fairly slow card, but the inevitability it would give to the deck is surely something to like. I think it is better in the former Burning Vengeance spot for more Seismic Assault effects. I have already done some testing with it with my friends online and it has performed well and won me the game already against UW Control, though I was playing 4 just to be able to draw it in the games...
I usually use untap.in to test spoilers and other new cards, so if anyone wants to run real tests on the Loam deck, let me know and we can use the site to run guantlets.
I really like the new Raging Twister in RG AssaultLoam. I think it may breath new life and energy into the archetype since it will give it more play against the Trophy decks that can just kill Seismic Assault or surgical Loam to win the game.
The premise of this archetype is to have a midrange deck that uses AssaultLoam to steal wins. The maindeck should be good enough on its own so that if it never sees Loam or never sees Seismic Assault it still wins. If you want to play a more combo focused version that's fine, but you concede more chance of just folding to hate like Surgical or Rest in Peace. I feel like the primer needs to be updated to cover new options and explain postboard strategy more in depth.
That being said, I still understand each deck gets to have better hands, which means linear archetypes will be able to find ways to get around hate and be better against the strategy also, but I think this just leads to better games of magic rewarding better play. I think the mulligan change won't affect the deck that much for that reason. Rock has always been a stable archetype, and I don't think the new mulligan would change its position very much.
I have tried Sarkhan, Fireblood in the past to take a similar role looting Loams into your hand, though Jaya would do it a lot faster. I can see her being good, but I just don't see her being as effective as some of the other options we have access too. Still, I don't know though since I haven't tested with her.
In other news, I am currently 9-1 with the Vortex list with a loss to RW Burn. I don't think I would have won against that deck even if I had been playing the other list, so I'm very happy with how the deck has been doing. The turn 1 Vortex on the draw against UW Spirits made me feel so good. Other notable wins were over Dredge twice, Mono-Red Phoenix twice, and Storm.
I added 1 The Gitrog Monster to the list too that has been doing better than I expected. Since the Vortex deck wants to get to 5 mana turn 5 to turn on Vortex + Loam anyways, it makes casting Gitrog pretty easy. The two times it has hit the table, I have won the game on the spot due to its card advantage and huge butt, so I may continue playing it in the list and add a Dakmor Salvage for it.
I've been testing Molten Vortex more.
The vortex deck is an entirely different build than the AssaultLoam version. Because of the nature of Molten Vortex, you have to play ungodly amounts of lands to make a turn 1 Vortex good. The reason why is in the numbers.
If you want to discard 2 lands turn 2 to Vortex, then you have to play 2 lands as well. That's 4 lands turn 2 for profit. If you were playing AssaultLoam, a turn 2 Loam or Wayfinder would turn a t3 Seismic Assault into that same effect a turn later.
That extra turn that Molten Vortex gives you is the key that makes it good or bad in a certain metagame. And while on the play the difference between turn 2 and turn 3 interaction doesn't matter much currently, on the draw it is monumental.
I posted earlier about how my win rate on the draw with Loam being around 50% while on the play I won over 90%. I have been looking for ways to fix the play/draw scenario with this deck for weeks now, and I think this Vortex list may be a step in the right direction.
3 Sheltered Thicket
1 Blast Zone
1 Canyon Slough
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Field of Ruin
1 Raging Ravine
2 Rootbound Crag
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Stomping Ground
2 Blood Crypt
4 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Countryside Crusher
Spells: 14
4 Faithless Looting
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Fatal Push
4 Life from the Loam
1 Damping Sphere
1 Cindervines
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Life Goes On
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Scavening Ooze
2 Engineered Explosives
The problem with VortexLoam in the past was that people tried to do too much with it. Tarmogoyf isn't great in the deck because the majority of your deck is lands, and I've found that it ends up a 3/4 too often. A vanilla 2 mana 3/4 isn't that great in modern.
If you don't have anything to kill on turn 2 with Vortex, no problem. Dark Confidant does wonders in this deck, and it is why we go black. Turn 1 Vortex into turn 2 Confidant makes you regain a lot of the cards you lose from Vortex, letting you more easily play lands and discard them at the same time. I have had games with this list where I didn't loam, but used the two cards per turn off of Dark Confidant to get more lands and removal spells to keep the board clear and win the game.
Countryside Crusher is the other major creature in the list. With 32 lands, it flips multiple lands often, and helps us draw gas in the sea of lands. With Dark Confidant, you can choose to stack the triggers either way. If you do crusher first, you dig through more of your deck to draw loam faster. If you stack confidant first, you likely will draw a land and then a spell. Depends on the situation.
Vortex is good against TiTi, but it is not the only reason to play this version of the deck. A similar thing can be done to decks that are playing a lot of creatures like Dredge, Humans, and Spirits, where you can turn 1 Vortex, turn 2 discard 2 lands with a lot of value to get back. Vortex also allows you to pay a red to Shock a Phoenix every time it comes back, to keep the birds off the board. Also, a turn 1 vortex means that it'd be very hard to counter aside from a Spell Pierce on the draw, so the control matchup gets easier (in some ways) as well.
I'm not saying this list is better than the well-tested AssaultLoam. It has a lot of flaws that can be exploited including folding to graveyard hate and not having as much game against control. However, if this list gets optimized, I think it will be better overall on the draw. Whether this small percentage increase will be better is to be seen, but so far I like how it plays in testing.
TL;DR: VortexLoam answers some of the problems with the AssaultLoam list, but is unoptimized atm. If this archetype gets optimized, it will likely be better on the draw, which may or may not decrease the variance of the list.
With a Crucible effect, I think it would be better as you don't have to pay 2 to cast loam, but it is slow either way.
Merged with the WAR Spoiler thread from the Horizons spoiler thread. - Torpf
Also, 1 to 2 Sanctum of Ugin could be good over a couple forests. The Tron list that won Sao Paulo last weekend played 5 Forest so I don't expect it to be that much of a hassle.
It reminds me of an old RUG Loam list that used EE and Academy Ruins to continually wipe the board. If you want a recurrable Explosives effect, I think this would still be better since it is more flexible and easier to crack.
If the goal is only to have a better matchup against Bogles, throwing a couple of these into the maindeck wouldn't be so bad. I just don't think this replaces EE just like I don't think Ratchet Bomb replaces EE. While it may be a more budget option, it loses a lot of what makes EE good.
The obvious answer to me is Tireless Tracker, which I think gets better with Twister in the deck at a very base level. If we don't have a land to play, you can tap a Rootbound Crag to bounce Rootbound Crag and play Roodbound Crag for 0 mana lost. I wanted to test Courser of Kruphix to see how good it is now, and may try BBE as well. The thing about BBE before is there weren't many great targets to hit and I didn't really want to play it turn 4 for 4 mana. Now that we are incentivized to play more lands, it may be way better, idk.
I usually use untap.in to test spoilers and other new cards, so if anyone wants to run real tests on the Loam deck, let me know and we can use the site to run guantlets.