If you're comparing the two lists, you'll definitely notice that I changed the sideboards. Too often I felt like I needed another removal spell in the board, so I cut the extra Faithless Looting for a Slaughter Pact. Faithless Looting was definitely an iffy inclusion; it's really only useful against control when you're searching for a piece of your combo so you can begin to either strip their hand or end the game. Slaughter Pact on the other hand ended up coming in for a few matches, and especially useful when I realized how bad the GW Hatebears match up is... On with the matches!
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GW Hatebears:
Game 1:
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| I felt bad the entire time the first game was happening. |
He plays a vial off of Tectonic Edge on turn one. Followed by a vial on turn 2, and 3, all off of a lone Tectonic Edge. I lost horribly as the anti-search bodies came down and then couldn't recover.
Game 2:
I brought in the Grudges, Angers, and Charm, and I don't actually have the best notes on what I cut! Presumably I shaved in a few places, probably cutting Looting and some of the discard spells. It didn't really matter since he managed to land and flip his Akroma which closed out the game real quickly.
I don't necessarily know if this match up is just awful, but the entire time I felt like I was so far on the defensive, I couldn't compete. Cards like Scavenging Ooze really trash our combo, and then their anti-search men ruin us because we're on four colors; we depend on our fetch lands to achieve domain. I considered making some changes at this point, but I continued on with the original sideboard for a bit longer.
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| Delver isn't usually an issue. Our manabase is the trouble. |
UWR Delver:
Game 1:
I keep a pretty exciting hand with Crime, Ajani, Bob, and lands, including a white one to cast Ajani with. Things proceed and I cast Raven's Crime on turn one, netting a Plains. I end up drawing into another Dark Confidant and one gets Remanded back to me. At this point, I'm guessing UWR Twin, since he has Sulfur Falls out. I know at least he's UWR something or other. He ends up running out Young Pyromancer, Delver, and just keeps getting rid of my threats when I get them down. I never actually end up drawing the important cards in the deck, so I lose.
Game 2:
I bring in Thrun, Ajani, and the Golgari Charm, pulling Liliana and 2 copies of Life from the Loam. I figure the Lifes are too slow and Liliana does basically nothing against a bunch of elemental tokens. I start off with Raven's Crime, Lingering Souls, Life from the Loam and a few lands. I keep and play Crime, netting a fetch land off of him. He ends up playing a Delver anyways. I cast Crime twice on turn two, but he plays out Grim Lavamancer; my discard ends up being the death of me. I can't get anything to stick, and I miss the combo.
The aggro matchup seems to depend pretty greatly on finding a way to keep creatures off the board for a long time; without Seismic Assault it's a pretty lopsided match in the aggro deck's favor. To be completely honest, this may have been the only time I was disappointed with Ajani, since he never really managed to do much and I never had a good opportunity to capitalize on him.
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Dredgevine:
Game 1:
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| I really didn't live long at all game on. I didn't even get to take notes on it... |
He manages to combo off, effectively. On turn 3 there are three Vengevines in play and so far on my back foot, I can't recover at all. He ends it by turn 4.
Game 2:
I cut the Inquisitions and put in Anger of the Gods and Bojuka Bog. He deals with my early Dark Confidant, but after that can't find aggro pieces and just falters under the weight of Liliana and Bojuka Bog getting rid of most of his graveyard recursion. By putting him on one card a turn, I successfully stalled him out and made it nearly impossible for him to get Vengevine back.
Game 3:
I keep the same sideboard. We start off similarly, only he deals with Seismic Assault but he fails to find the pieces to get aggressive and Liliana does her work with Bojuka Bog.
I think this is probably a pretty poor match up game one, but post board it seems to get a lot better. Our manabase here can be the death of us, and missing colors is crippling. It's the same story as the UWR Delver match up; missing a color makes it unwinnable.
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| How does a 2/1 shore up the aggro match up? Blockers, blockers, and more blockers. At least that's the hope. |
So, in review... Aggro match ups with the 4C Loam list definitely seem against us. We end up a bit split between the Loam combo plan and a more midrange-y plan and as a result when we get stuck off color or without the exact bit of the plan we need, we're done. I also played a match against Affinity and saw this same theory play out spectacularly. I missed my red mana game one and then couldn't compete.
Next week, we're going to be trying out the recently popular list involving Smallpox and Young Pyromancer. Obviously we aren't going to copy it directly, and we're going to try a reworked board from the list that 3-1'd a daily.
First, Young Pyromancer definitely helps shore up the aggro match ups a bit. Why? Because your removal spells all gain you life. You get a blocker every time you make them discard, and every time you kill them. Most importantly, you get a blocker every time you cast Life from the Loam; that's every turn when you're winning. Young Pyromancer is an incredible value card, and definitely feels at home in this deck. You get rewarded for doing exactly what you want to be doing. And when we're playing against control decks, Young Pyromancer gives us an incredible stream of attackers. Against combo, our discard spells become insane. Young Pyromancer simply seems amazing. Borderline as strong as Seismic Assault in the deck. When the entire engine is going, we can theoretically generate 4 tokens a turn with retraced spells and Life from the Loam; that's a lot of elementals.
This next week, we're going to be playing this list right below. I'll get back to you next Thursday with some updates to the list, a few match reports, and more analysis of Assault Loam! I hope everyone gets the opportunity to test it out some how, as this just seems like an incredibly fun list and one that's quite finely tuned.
Check back next week for more Archetype of Imagination. We'll probably be bringing Assault Loam to a close soon, and we'll begin exploring our next archetype. If you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see me cover in a few weeks, please don't ever hesitate to comment.
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