Barring any card availability catastrophes, this is what I’ll be playing at the St. Louis PTQ in two days.
Creatures (10)
Lands (26)
Spells (24)
You may notice some similarities between this list and the BGW Knight of the Reliquary Loam deck I posted last week. This one can no longer be reasonably called “Aggro Loam,” as it is much too far down the control end of the spectrum at this point, but it is capable of quite a lot more than that list was.
I love this deck’s manabase. 26 lands, six of them cycling, four of them basic, five colorless, and, you know, four colors. You look at it and you think, that cannot work, and yet it does. I will say that this is a manabase that demands close management; you cannot just fetch out “whatever” and expect your colors to work out. The tools are there to get the colors you need pretty much every time, but if you fetch them in the wrong order, or play the wrong one, or cycle a cycling land when you should have laid it, you will probably see the correct play on the following turn and smack your forehead.
So what’s different between this week and last week? I’ll go one chunk at a time.
+2 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Path to Exile
-2 Raven’s Crime
-2 Darkblast
While Thoughtseize and Path to Exile are easily the most consistent disruption and removal spells in Loam, Raven’s Crime and Darkblast are easily the most situational. Even when you have Life from the Loam, Raven’s Crime isn’t even all that good in most matchups; Loam into Crime-Crime-Crime is basically the same thing as casting Three Tragedies except that you can pay for it over multiple times. The simple truth is that five mana to make your opponent discard three cards is just not that great in a lot of matchups, even when you can make him pitch another few next turn.
Loam-Crime is amazing against Red decks, very strong against Elves!, and can be excellent against TEPS if their draw is vulnerable to it. Affinity and Wizards will just kill you if you try nonsense like that, and the only way it’s good in the mirror is if the opponent doesn’t have Life from the Loam (in which case you’re probably not losing anyway). However, there are plenty of times when I draw it and go “wow, what a blank piece of cardboard.”
Sadly, the same is true of Darkblast; unless you also have Loam and Cycling lands to turn it into more of a Crippling Fatigue-style effect, and in many matchups (particularly Zoo, Affinity, TEPS, Loam, and All-In Red) you are often stuck holding it and wondering when your opponent is going to play something it can productively target.
Enter Gifts Ungiven. With Gifts, you can pull up that singleton Darkblast or Raven’s Crime for the midgame, along with whatever else you need to support them. Obviously this works much better with Darkblast than with Crime, since Crime is best when you can start using it right away, whereas Darkblast is more of a midgame cleanup hitter against Wizards and Elves! Still, as Crime is just fine in a cleanup role against Elves! (provided you’ve Exiled a key Elf or two to keep the combo in check until you can cast Gifts, which is typically not a problem), and as its goodness against TEPS depends more on their draw than on how quickly you get it going, early Crimes are only really missed against Red. This is one of three factors that led me to the following change.
+4 Loxodon Hierarch
-4 Tarmogoyf
I hope it will not shock you to learn that Loxodon Hierarch is better against Red than Tarmogoyf is. Having a full set of them, with a couple of Kitchen Finks playing backup, lets you present a formidable combination of lifegain and massive blockers. The big difference between Hierarch and Finks against Red is that, although both typically demand two spells to remove, Finks can often be marginalized by shooting it once and then swinging in with things like Kird Ape, Wild Nacatl, and Keldon Marauders that would have traded for the 3/2 but do not care about the 2/1.
Besides the lifegain, the second-most important factor that draws me to Hierarch over Tarmogoyf is the way it interacts with Engineered Explosives. Not only does it dodge nearly every opponent’s attempt to kill it with Explosives, it also makes my own Explosives more one-sided because I can blow up as many Goyfs as my opponent has while leaving my own Hierarchs intact.
The final reason for the swap is that Hierarch does a much better job dodging Control Magic effects. Obviously he cannot be hit by Threads – in fact, I have no Threads targets left in my deck – but when you get to the midgame, you can play him with GW open without fear of losing him to a topdecked Sower or Shackles, even if you do not have an answer in hand.
+1 Executioner’s Capsule
-1 Kitchen Finks
This one is a nod to the Affinity and Wizards matchups. Capsule is a touch worse against Zoo than a Finks would be, but a recurring way to kill things like Sower of Temptation and Master of Etherium that only costs three mana (as opposed to five and six like Explosives) makes a huge difference in the midgame. I suppose Capsule is also better against Elves!, though it’s not as if I really need more removal to make that matchup go well.
Executioner’s Capsule is partly the card of choice for this slot so I can Gifts for removal (Explosives, Exile, Capsule) and also to interact with Academy Ruins more efficiently than Explosives. Not only is it usually cheaper to recur Capsule than Explosives when gunning down a single threat (and when you’re recurring, it’s always a single threat you’re killing), but you can also just recur it and leave it on the table in order to have “Terror in hand” until you need to pop it next. You can’t do that with Explosives because you won’t know what to set the Sunburst to. Finally, it satisfies my Explosives-like criterion for being able to kill a Wild Nacatl on turn 2, which will typically make it faster than the three-mana alternatives (Slaughter Pact, Putrefy, etc.) I could have included strictly as Gifts targets.
+1 Engineered Explosives
-1 Umezawa’s Jitte
I am actually fairly sure the Jitte count I would prefer for this deck is zero or maybe one (how awesome would it be to have the other two Finks maindeck?), but the unfortunate reality is that this deck has a very tough time beating an active Jitte, and Umezawa’s Jitte is perhaps the best answer to Umezawa’s Jitte Wizards has ever printed, so I am keeping in two. I certainly do not want to draw more than one copy, though, and adding in an extra Explosives leaves me with just as many answers to Jitte as Michael Jacob originally played – not counting the fact that I can recur Explosives and Jitte with Academy Ruins.
+1 Scrabbling Claws
-1 Worm Harvest
No card was more situational for me in testing previous iterations of Loam than Worm Harvest. So often I’d draw it and think, “oh, Scatter the Seeds. Great.” The one place where I really wanted an effect like that was the mirror, where it could quickly become a Bitterblossom on crack; Loam does not have any ways to counter it, and it provided blockers for everything but Bitterblossom tokens. While thinking about ways to deal with my opponent’s Worm Harvest without playing it myself, Scrabbling Claws came to mind. I realized pretty quickly that this could instead be used to take out opposing Loams (though Loam targets like Ghost Quarter turned out to be the more likely targets) instead of just Worm Harvest, thanks to the magic of Academy Ruins, and given that it essentially has Cycling 2 against the rest of the field, I felt comfortable including it in the main.
Playing the Deck
Without going into too much detail, in game 1 this deck has inevitability over everything. No jokes – even Tron, thanks to Ghost Quarter and recurring Explosives. Post-board is a different story, as people start to bring in answers like Relic of Progenitus that can take big chunks out of your toolbox if you do not adequately deal with them, but for game 1 it’s all gravy.
Between Life from the Loam, Ghost Quarter, Academy Ruins, Engineered Explosives, Jitte, Scrabbling Claws, and Executioner’s Capsule, you can recursively take out anything relevant in the format. Mutavault plus Loam (plus recurring Jitte) gives you a recurring finisher for the long game. Best of all, one Gifts Ungiven on a stable board can typically set you up with whatever recursion package you need to lock up the game.
That said, the inevitability is more of a strategic comfort that lets you play in a certain way than something to lean on. Typically you will be plowing ahead, drawing cards with Loam, blowing things up, casting Thoughtseize, and dropping big fatties. Only when you run out of answers will you resort to Academy Ruins (sometimes fetched up with Knight of the Reliquary in emergency situations), and at least half the time you will be casting Gifts Ungiven for four business spells that will have an immediate and powerful impact on the board, with little or no regard for their recursion potential later on.
Remember, answers served up via Academy Ruins are extremely expensive. If you start looping things prematurely, your opponent may be able to overwhelm you by playing multiple threats in one turn. For this reason, it is often safer to play as though you did not have it in play until you absolutely must use it.
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Darkblast
2 Trickbind
2 Pithing Needle
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Nightmare Void
1 Ethersworn Canonist
It was only in sideboarding that I realized I could get away with maindecking four Thoughtseize. I had three at one point, but noticed that I was boarding in the fourth copy against literally everything, including Zoo. (Burn is unwinnable, so I don’t really care what my maindeck looks like against them.)
I assumed it would be bad to have four maindeck against Zoo – what if I drew two? – and rationalized bringing in the fourth copy post-board by telling myself that it was critical to take out Blood Moon. Then I realized how often it was just good against Zoo, period.
When you hit something devastating like Molten Rain or Tribal Flames with your first Thoughtseize and see a pair of Tarmogoyfs in there, you can bet you’re happy to have a second Seize in hand; you’ll save yourself plenty of damage by trading one mana and two life for a big beater like that. It doesn’t happen every time, but it happens often enough that I don’t think it’s worth it to hide the fourth copy in the sideboard, away from all the other matchups that want its attention, just because you might not want to draw two of them against Zoo.
Trickbind has three primary targets: Mind’s Desire, Ancestral Vision, and Relic of Progenitus. Obviously it is pretty thoroughly Good Game against TEPS if I resolve it targeting the Storm trigger for Mind’s Desire (or from Tendrils, I suppose), and it is an enormous beating to counter Ancestral Vision or Relic from Wizards, not to mention the surprise effect it can have countering an ability like Spellstutter Sprite, Vendilion Clique, Sower of Temptation, Glen Elendra Archmage, or Umezawa’s Jitte. Given how many counters Wizards plays, Trickbind was the clear choice over Stifle.
The Katakis are basically a necessity. Game 1 against Affinity is dodgy and very draw-dependent. If they draw enough Ravagers, Cranial Platings, and Masters of Etherium to overcome your Explosives and Exiles, there’s not a whole lot you can do and you’ll be dead in a hurry. This is also probably the matchup in which the situational cards hurt the most; if you draw that one Raven’s Crime, or Scrabbling Claws, or even just the Darkblast when they don’t present a target – it’s going to put you behind in a matchup where you can rarely afford to be behind at all.
That said, it’s not all bad news. If Affinity doesn’t put you away fast enough, you can lock them out of the game with Ghost Quarter recursion without really disrupting the flow of your stream of answers.
Sideboarding Plans
Versus Loam (the mirror)
+1 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Tormod’s Crypt
-1 Raven’s Crime
-1 Darkblast
Raven’s Crime and Darkblast are both garbage in the mirror, and Finks is not so exciting that I actually want to board any in. As both decks are filled with large animals, post-board games can quickly devolve into a fatty slugfest even if one or both players have Loams, so it’s important to keep every speck of big guy removal in.
I typically expect Extirpate from my G/B opponents, where I have Tormod’s Crypt, Gifts, and Academy Ruins instead. If the opponent keeps leaving one Black mana open on your turn, you pretty much have to start playing around it, meaning at the very minimum you should not cast Loam until you can return three strong lands with it.
Do your non-Loam activities first, and try to see if you can get the opponent to tap out. If he does, do a bunch of Loaming all at once and make sure the Loam ends up back in your hand before you pass the turn. If he won’t tap out, you can either keep hoping to draw into a Thoughtseize or just keep applying pressure until you absolutely run out of other things to do, and then Loam back three lands and hope he was bluffing.
Or you can just be a total master and get a sick read on him for not having it despite representing it. I leave that risk up to you!
I wish I could say I had a big edge in this matchup due to the fact that I have “six” Loams maindeck (thanks to Gifts) and “seven” post-board, and recurring maindeck answers to my opponent’s Loams, and so on… but really, the mirror remains quite draw-dependent. Often the game is over well before any of that stuff has a chance to matter, simply because one guy got started Loaming four turns earlier than the other guy, or because some random animal just went the distance.
I do think I have fewer dead cards and more power cards for the matchup, but I don’t harbor any illusions about those advantages translating into some sort of auto-win matchup. It’s an edge, but it’s not a huge one.
By the way, be careful not to fetch out Breeding Pool too early here if you don’t have Loam, as it is awful to get it Ghost Quartered away before you draw Gifts.
Versus TEPS
+2 Trickbind
+2 Kitchen Finks
+1 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Nightmare Void
+1 Ethersworn Canonist
-4 Path to Exile
-1 Executioner’s Capsule
-1 Darkblast
-1 Scrabbling Claws
This is definitely the deck’s worst matchup, but Trickbind is about as good as it gets when it comes to stopping Mind’s Desire in its tracks. It can’t be stopped by Pact of Negation or Electrolyze (or Echoing Truth), but it does require that I keep mana open. Fortunately, Loam helps you get out enough mana to play big guys while keeping two mana open pretty quickly.
I included a Canonist mainly so that they cannot simply board in Gigadrowse alone for my trump card.
Adrian Sullivan suggested Nightmare Void here, and I took his suggestion. Raven’s Crime plus Life from the Loam makes the opponent discard three cards for five mana, generally speaking. For four mana, Nightmare Void lets you instead make him discard his best card. Considering the games you generally lose to TEPS are the ones where they pull off a small Mind’s Desire and chain it into another and kill you from there, it’s really of a higher priority to kill off the Desire itself than anything else.
Nightmare Void is obviously vastly more expensive than alternative ways to stop a Desire (e.g. Thoughtseize, Tidehollow Sculler, even Castigate), but has the huge upside that you can fetch it with Gifts Ungiven. Gifts for Nightmare Void, Raven’s Crime, and some combination of cycling lands and Life from the Loam (depending on your need) will put you in a position to strip the Desire from their hand and then drain their resources over the next couple turns.
If you’re especially well-set-up, you can even include a Canonist and Academy Ruins in the Gifts pile and take out some insurance against Ad Nauseam as well – though remember that the priority is on stripping their hand bare, as one topdecked Electrolyze can instantly reinvigorate a hand that was being held prisoner by Canonist, but it is much harder to recover from a Mind Twist.
As evidenced by the fact that I am bringing in Kitchen Finks here, my main focus in this boarding plan is taking out dead cards. Scrabbling Claws and all the creature removal is totally dead here, and even a 3/2 Venerable Monk is better than those blanks.
Versus Wizards
+2 Darkblast
+2 Pithing Needle
+2 Trickbind
+1 Nightmare Void
+1 Gifts Ungiven
-4 Engineered Explosives
-2 Kitchen Finks
-1 Scrabbling Claws
-1 Raven’s Crime
Darkblast is a huge upgrade over Engineered Explosives, and the Pithing Needles are the best answers on the market to Relic. I’ve explained Trickbind before, and Nightmare Void – intended for the TEPS matchup, really – is better than the underwhelming Kitchen Finks in this matchup, so I went ahead and brought it in.
It’s very important that you get your Breeding Pool out early in this matchup, as if you dredge into it, subsequently have your Loam countered when you try to return it, and then lose it to Relic, it becomes extremely difficult to win. Just fetch it out early and you should be fine.
The beautiful part about Gifts Ungiven against Wizards is that it can singlehandedly recover you from a Relic-ing. Fetch up Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins, a cycling land, and Pithing Needle (or Ghost Quarter, if there is a clear and present danger). Not only can you instantly set up Relic defense, you’re also all set to go with Loam and at least one cycling land.
Choke is pretty hit-or-miss in this matchup, which is why I’m not boarding it. Particularly against the Wizards builds that feature Blue-producing nonbasics such as Secluded Glen, River of Tears, Minamo, etc., Choke is often little more effective than a Stone Rain. Given that, I don’t think I can justify running it.
Versus Zoo:
+2 Kitchen Finks
+1 Darkblast
-2 Gifts Ungiven
-1 Scrabbling Claws
Post-board you basically transform from Gifts Loam into Rock with Loam. You use the same tactic that Rock players have used to crush Red players since the dawn of time: overwhelm the opponent with removal, creatures that gain you life, and card advantage.
As long as you can stop Blood Moon from hitting before you have a chance to fetch out a Forest, a Plains, and a Swamp, you can cast any spell in your deck. Even if you only have two different basics out, a Blood Moon will provide you with Red mana with which to play Explosives at Sunburst 3. Gifts Ungiven comes out here not only because it’s slow, but also because you don’t want to be fetching out Breeding Pool early when you could be getting a basic.
If you look at this deck’s post-board setup against Zoo, you will see a pretty solid Rock deck featuring:
4 Life from the Loam
4 Thoughtseize
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Loxodon Hierarch
4 Path to Exile
4 Engineered Explosives
2 Darkblast
1 Executioner’s Capsule
That’s eleven removal spells and eight lifegain spells, plus some disruption, fatties, and card advantage in the form of Thoughtseize, Knight, and Loam. The rest of the deck is just lands.
By the way, if you can, it’s a good idea to fetch out a second Basic Forest so that they can’t lock you out of Green by casting Molten Rain on your only Forest with Blood Moon out; this exact situation is specifically why I included two Forests and one Swamp instead of the other way around.
Versus Mono-Red Burn:
+3 Kataki, War’s Wage
+2 Kitchen Finks
+2 Darkblast
+2 Pithing Needle
+1 Ethersworn Canonist
+1 Gifts Ungiven
-4 Thoughtseize
-4 Life from the Loam
-1 Scrabbling Claws
-1 Executioner’s Capsule
-1 Raven’s Crime
This is what one might call a Hail Mary boarding plan. It doesn’t go as far as to board out lands (though I can recall seeing that tactic in the Top Eight of a Pro Tour), but this matchup is just miserable. Yes, the Pithing Needles are for Blinkmoth Nexus. Loam is too slow (and returns fetch lands, as if I want to ding myself more in this matchup) , Thoughtseize hurts too much, and there are too many do-nothings against them. Game 1 might actually be about 20-80.
The plan here is to just race as best you can; your only shot is mising a victory, and crappy bears like Kataki and Canonist help you capitalize when the opponent mulls to five. Hey, if they have Darksteel Citadel, you might even get them to use a burn spell on Kataki instead of your face!
Yeah, let’s move on. This one is just depressing.
Versus Affinity:
+3 Kataki, War’s Wage
+2 Pithing Needle
+2 Kitchen Finks
-2 Umezawa’s Jitte
-2 Gifts Ungiven
-1 Scrabbling Claws
-1 Raven’s Crime
-1 Darkblast
I don’t generally like Jitte in this matchup because your guys do too much blocking in combat. Affinity’s men are so huge, you will often find that you have traded all your men away to stay alive, and have none left to hold a Jitte. Or you’ll find that you need to attack in order to kill that Plating-equipped Ornithopter with your Jitte counters, but if you do attack, the Myr Enforcer will crash back for the win.
Kataki is as much of a giant beating against Affinity as ever, but as it has not seen much (any?) play this season, a lot of Affinity players are opting for anti-Grudge measures instead. So much the better!
By the way, you really shouldn’t ever name anything other than Cranial Plating when you cast Pithing Needle, unless you are absolutely convinced you will die if you don’t name something else. Plating off the top is probably the number one cause of death for Loam players in this matchup, so don’t let it blindside you when you already drew the answer to it.
Versus Elves!
+2 Darkblast
+2 Pithing Needle
+1 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Ethersworn Canonist
+1 Nightmare Void
-4 Loxodon Hierarch
-2 Kitchen Finks
-1 Scrabbling Claws
I am boarding out most of my win conditions here, for the sake of maximizing my answers to combo pieces. The main purpose of Needle is to stop Relic, but if Wirewood Symbiote is giving you a lot of trouble and you lack other removal spells, there’s no reason you can’t just use it on him.
The nice part about this matchup is that you don’t need a whole lot of finishers; all you really need is a Jitte or a Loam-chain of Darkblasts or Raven’s Crimes. You have a lot of different ways of locking Elves! out of the game, and each of them is more productive in the early game than a plain old finisher, which is why Knight “I fetch Academy Ruins” of the Reliquary is about the only one who can stay.
Be careful with Canonist here. Remember that it is only a roadblock, and that Elves! will draw a Viridian Shaman for it sooner or later. If you get Loam/Crime set up, do not hesitate to kill off your own Canonist for the sake of wrecking Elves! for good – just make sure you’ll actually wreck them rather than giving them the window of opportunity they needed.
Versus All-In Red:
+2 Kitchen Finks
+1 Ethersworn Canonist
-2 Gifts Ungiven
-1 Darkblast
The most important thing to remember about this matchup is that you must aggressively fetch out basics. Remember that they may have as many as eight Blood Moon effects a topdeck away.
Gifts comes out simply because it demands Blue mana, and it’s rare that you can afford to fetch out a Breeding Pool instead of a basic. Scrabbling Claws stays in because it is actually sometimes relevant to take out a Demigod in case the opponent topdecks a second one that you could otherwise have raced.
…
This is the type of deck I absolutely love to play. It includes a minimal amount of dead cards, has a lot of cheap cantrips to dig you to your best effects, is full of tricks, has some extremely powerful effects, and is relatively resilient to the format’s hate. As strong as Relic of Progenitus is against this deck, it is no Kataki against Affinity, or Night of Souls’ Betrayal against Elves! – it’s merely good, and Pithing Needle answers it preemptively for one mana. Blood Moon can be worked around, and the other big hosers in the format, Ancient Grudge and Choke, are utter jokes against this deck.
Mostly, though, I am planning on playing this deck because I am happy to sit down across from any deck except TEPS or Mono-Red Burn. Once sideboarding is taken into consideration, I like my Wizards matchup, my Affinity matchup, my Zoo matchup, my All-In Red matchup, and especially my Elves! matchup. I would say I am comfortable with my “mirror” (versus G/B or G/B/W Loam, that is) matchup, and freely acknowledge that TEPS and Burn are bad, but I like my odds against the format as a whole more with Gifts Loam than with any other deck I am aware of.
If you are brave enough to audible to this complicated beast at the last minute for this weekend’s PTQ, I am duly impressed and salute you.
Either way, good luck to all of you!
Richard Feldman
Team :S
[email protected]