LegacyStandard

Outcast from the Loam

This week I got back to playing Magic.

My last day at my summer internship was two weeks ago and, having graduated from University, I found myself unemployed and without a school to attend.

So what did I do?

The same thing I did in high school: sat on the couch and played videogames. Each time Magic came up, I decided to pass in order to play more video games or hang out with friends.

After doing literally nothing of productive for a week (sorry but earning Trophies on Playstation is not productive), I shifted my focus back to Magic. The reason is that this weekend is the Face To Face Games last chance qualifiers for their Invitational tournament. If you are in the Montreal area, this applies to you.

Basically, if you qualify, the store pays for both your lunch and supper and there are tons of prizes. Last year, first place was free entry into all constructed tournaments for the whole year and second was a playset of dual lands from unlimited. After that, there are still a bunch of prizes.

There are two ways to qualify: monthly qualifiers or points. I’ve actually taken months off here and there from playing Magic, so I’m lagging behind on points. I’ve top 8ed in the monthly qualifiers, but only the winner gets the invite.

Which brings us to Saturday and Sunday. There are two LCQs with Saturday’s being Standard and Sunday’s being Legacy. I was hoping to play a little Magic before the weekend to get back in the groove.

Let’s start with Saturday. Recently I have been extolling the virtues of Bant Pod and while I still think it’s a strong deck in the right hands, it is a huge dog to Valakut. Rather than hoping to not face Valakut, I think it is better to just play another deck.

The only other decks that I have played in this Standard environment are CawBlade, Mass Polymorph and White Weenie. White Weenie also loses to Valakut and I’m not a fan of this iteration of CawBlade. Yes, it is still a good deck, but the learning curve is steeper than just a week and while there are decks in the format capable of doing unfair things, I would consider playing those than other decks. Also I would prefer avoiding Blue/White, so [card]Mass Polymorph[/card] is out as well.

Thus, the choices that are available are Blue/Black Control, Mono Red, Exarch Twin, Pyromancer, RUG Pod (Combo or No) & Valakut. This list can be quickly narrowed down due to my personal preference. I’ve never been a fan of U/B or Mono Red (in any variation it has bad matchups against individual cards which I’m not a fan of). RUG Pod, while having a better Valakut matchup, still loses to Valakut regularly.

This leaves Exarch Twin, Pyromancer Ascension and Valakut.

Of the three, and in Standard in general, I believe that Pyromancer is the best deck. The skill level required to make it the best deck is quite high and out of reach for a week of learning. Even an all-day cram session with Alexander Hayne would not be good enough. Which leaves us with two unfair decks. While some may have a different definition or consider different decks unfair. Twin can combo on turn four. Unfair. Valakut has the inevitability as lands cannot be countered. Unfair.

Given the two, I have to choose Exarch Twin. Part of the reason is I sold my [Card]Primeval Titan[/Card]s back when they were worth more as everything will be rotating soon and I wanted to clear out as much as possible before everything dropped. The second reason, and more important one, is I’ve been wanting to play Exarch Twin since New Phyrexia released, but have never gotten the chance. As an added extra, covering Dan Lanthier at Nationals provided a first hand view as to the power of the deck and how to play it correctly which was very helpful. Thank You Dan.

This was the list Dan piloted to third at Canadian Nationals:

[Deck Title=Dan Lanthier – Exarch Twin]
[Lands]
2 Arid Mesa
2 Halimar Depths
9 Island
6 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
[/Lands][Creatures]
4 Deceiver Exarch
3 Spellskite
[/Creatures][Spells]
4 Dispel
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Into the Roil
3 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Shrine of Piercing Vision
4 Splinter Twin
1 Twisted Image
[/Spells][Sideboard]
1 Combust
2 Dragonmaster Outcast
2 Flashfreeze
2 Mental Misstep
2 Mutagenic Growth
2 Negate
3 Pyroclasm
1 Shatter
[/Sideboard][/Deck]

I hate to lay too much praise on Dan, but the list the Ottawa crew came up with is solid. This past week I spent a while testing different matchups and different card combinations and none seemed to outperform this list. [Card]Dragonmaster Outcast[/Card] is superior to [Card]Grim Lavamancer[/Card] for what the deck is trying to accomplish and the only creature that really causes problems for the deck is [Card]Spellskite[/Card], which [Card]Twisted Image[/Card] and [Card]Shatter[/Card] seem to answer better than [Card]Dismember[/Card].

Next week, I’ll have the tournament report up for both Saturday and Sunday and be able to give a more in-depth account of the deck before the mandatory GP Montreal report and then brewing for a new Standard.

In the mean time though, there is Sunday!

And Sunday brings about Legacy, which is the best format that exists!

For the past two or three months I’ve been testing with variations of Aggro Loam. Rarely do I ever feel like an underdog against the other Legacy decks in the format. I haven’t tested against Storm, as the deck seems to have died off, but the results I’ve been putting up have been very satisfactory. I based myself off of Micah Greenbaum’s list from SCG Cincinnati.

[Deck Title=Micah Greenbaum – 4-Color Aggro Loam]
[Lands]
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Dust Bowl
1 Forest
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
1 Plateau
1 Riftstone Portal
1 Savannah
1 Taiga
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands]

[Creatures]
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Tarmogoyf
[/Creatures]

[Spells]
3 Burning Wish
2 Devastating Dreams
3 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
2 Punishing Fire
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sylvan Library
2 Vindicate
1 Worm Harvest
[/Spells]

[Sideboard]
2 Choke
1 Devastating Dreams
3 Leyline of the Void
1 Life from the Loam
1 Nomad Stadium
1 Perish
1 Pulverize
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Retribution of the Meek
1 Tormod’s Crypt
[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Quick primer to the deck: Everything basically revolves around lands and the graveyard. Playing [Card]Life From The Loam[/Card] allows one to access many utility lands which support your creatures. A central spell is [Card]Burning Wish[/Card] which allows access to sideboard cards like [Card]Devastating Dreams[/Card]. Dreams can wipe the board while still allowing your Knight and Crusher to survive. Plus, [card]Life from the Loam[/card] allows you to fill your hand with the cards needed to discard as well as allowing you to recuperate quicker from a Dreams.

With the games I’ve played, either testing or matches, the manabase is the central part to the deck and, while it runs along decently, it is certainly not perfect. Originally the list played 26 lands, and the lists I’ve been playing have always had 26 lands as well, but I think the number should be increased to 28 lands.

When deckbuilding, the way I look at cards is by having everything in a pool, as elimination is much easier for me when building. To start, I throw in the 26 from the original deck list. Next, I think the deck needs a second basic land to go with the [Card]Forest[/Card] in the form of a [Card]Mountain[/Card]. Next come utility cards with [Card]Bojuka Bog[/Card], [Card]Tower of the Magistrate[/Card] & [Card]Volrath’s Stronghold[/Card].

The total card pool for lands is now 30, but I’ve been using the Tower out of the sideboard. It has very limited use and can usually be swapped for [Card]Karakas[/Card]. I realize that the Bog is also very useful, but the number of graveyard decks seems to have increased and I’ve never had any problem with the card while playing it, especially combined with [Card]Knight of the Reliquary[/Card]. It might require a bit more testing, but I think cutting the [Card]Riftstone Portal[/Card] is the correct choice as the mana requirements are not extreme (see below for more details), and its performed sub par in many games. It might be nice to have it to discard to [Card]Mox Diamond[/Card], though most of the time it sits in my hand doing nothing or sits in play producing colorless mana. As a last change, I’ve preferred [Card]Windswept Heath[/Card] over an [Card]Arid Mesa[/Card] as it allows one to search for the basic mountain as well as provides access to all of your duals.

Moving on is the creature base, which is where many of the deck’s problems begin and end. While looking at the creatures in the deck, they all seem very solid. At first glance, the [Card]Countryside Crusher[/Card] is very situational and works well in this deck but the other three are All-Stars. As it turns out, that is not always the case. It is made worse by Dredging Life and losing even more creatures. That is the main problem, as there are situations where you need both creatures and the Life and you Dredge away a bunch early on and in the late game are left struggling. The reason for the Stronghold is to alleviate this problem but I would recommend cutting a [Card]Tarmogoyf[/Card] to use that slot for the Stronghold. Otherwise the creature base can stay the same.

Next are the spells. There are two cards that I’ve not been too keen on. The first is [Card]Vindicate[/Card] and the second is [Card]Worm Harvest[/Card]. In all the games I played, the Harvest was really bad. The only match I can think of where it was useful was against a weird Blue/Green Aggro Loam deck where I could make more tokens than him, but even then, they were mostly just blockers. It should be gone. As for [Card]Vindicate[/Card], it seems rather “meh” because while it can remove something you don’t want, I would prefer relying more on [Card]Burning Wish[/Card] to fetch a [card]Vindicate[/card] out of the board in situations where I need it. I have also been testing [Card]Exploration[/Card] and [Card]Crucible of Worlds[/Card] and while Exploration is quite good, it also happens to bite the [Card]Mental Misstep[/Card] bullet quite often. When it lands, it can provide some tempo: it truly shines when combined with [Card]Crucible of Worlds[/Card], which is an auto-include in a deck like this, or at least I think so.

Last is the Sideboard. As a minor note, I do not own Red Blast, so I play [Card]Pyroblast[/Card] instead, but that’s not a huge deal. Thanks to the [Card]Bojuka Bog[/Card] in the main, I cut the [Card]Tormod’s Crypt[/Card]. In my area there is a high number of weenie decks, so I added another copy of [Card]Punishing Fire[/Card] to the board removing a Leyline. That is only due to a very small Meta and the correct call should be a [Card]Vindicate[/Card] in that slot. The Crypt was replaced with a [Card]Tower of the Magistrate[/Card]. The last card that is interchangeable would be the [Card]Nomad Stadium[/Card] which if you are expecting Mono Red would be useful, but personally I replaced with [Card]Reverent Silence[/Card] as you can Wish for it and it provides for additional removal against nuisance cards like [Card]Back to Basics[/Card] or the entire Enchantress deck.

With all that done this is the final version of the deck I should be playing on Sunday:

[Deck Title=William Blondon – 4-Color Aggro Loam]
[Lands]
1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Dust Bowl
1 Forest
3 Forgotten Cave
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mountain
1 Plateau
1 Savannah
1 Taiga
2 Tranquil Thicket
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
2 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands][Creatures]
3 Countryside Crusher
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Tarmogoyf
[/Creatures][Spells]
3 Burning Wish
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Devastating Dreams
1 Exploration
3 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
2 Punishing Fire
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sylvan Library
[/Spells][Sideboard]
2 Choke
1 Devastating Dreams
2 Leyline of the Void
1 Life from the Loam
1 Perish
1 Pulverize
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Retribution of the Meek
1 Reverent Silence
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Vindicate
[/Sideboard][/Deck]

Those are the two lists I’ll be playing this weekend. Next week, I’ll provide a report of how the decks performed and what changes I’ll be looking to make in the future, though with the current Standard environment wrapping up, there will be a greater focus on Legacy and some miscellaneous items such as how Legacy is better than Modern!

Before wrapping up, a quick shout out to Mat Schmaltz who provided me with some free T-Shirts and is always good for a conversation or two, though he does sometimes forget to attack!

‘Til next week, have Fun Playing Magic.

William

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