Deck Tech: 4C Aggro Loam with Burning Wish

          

Introduction
Aggro Loam is a land and graveyard-centric midrange deck that essentially revolves around Life from the Loam and Mox Diamond. Aggro Loam has existed in Legacy for a long time and has assumed many different forms over the years. This is a version that first appeared throughout 2013 in the hands of Jeff Hoogland, its principal developer. Hoogland's style of list was characterized by utilizing Chalice of the Void, White and Black splashes for Knight of the Reliquary and Abrupt Decay, and a full Burning Wish package. These characteristics were rarely all found together in an Aggro Loam deck before, but Hoogland was able to weave them together to achieve several strong tournament results and leave a lasting impact on the archetype.



Deck Theory
At its core, Aggro Loam is designed to utilize Mox Diamond to "cheat" on mana in order to cast powerful spells while using cards like Life from the Loam to generate advantage. Life from the Loam negates the "downside" of Mox Diamond while conveniently synergizing with Wasteland, one of the most powerful cards in the format. There are a host of other "lands and graveyards" matter cards that can be abused in this shell, not to mention powerful two-mana spells that can be cast on the first turn with Mox Diamond.

Hoogland placed at Star City Games events with several very similar lists. Here is one of Hoogland's lists, which earned a Quarterfinals finish at the SCG Invitational in July, 2013:

4C AGGRO LOAM, 7/29/13
Creature Spells (7) 2x Tarmogoyf 1x Gaddock Teeg 4x Knight of the Reliquary	Noncreature Spells (27) 4x Mox Diamond 4x Chalice of the Void 2x Sylvan Library 2x Green Sun's Zenith 3x Life from the Loam 4x Burning Wish 3x Abrupt Decay 3x Punishing Fire 2x Devastating Dreams
Lands (26) 4x Wooded Foothills 2x Taiga 1x Badlands 1x Bayou 1x Savannah 1x Dryad Arbor 1x Forest 2x Grove of the Burnwillows 1x Horizon Canopy 2x Tranquil Thicket 2x Forgotten Cave 1x Bojuka Bog 1x Nantuko Monastery 1x Maze of Ith 1x Karakas 4x Wasteland	SB: 3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben SB: 1x Gaddock Teeg SB: 1x Ethersworn Canonist SB: 1x Chainer's Edict SB: 1x Devastating Dreams SB: 1x Dreadbore SB: 1x Life from the Loam SB: 1x Maelstrom Pulse SB: 1x Massacre SB: 1x Perish SB: 1x Shattering Spree SB: 1x Slaughter Games SB: 1x Thoughtseize

Hoogland's style of list may appear jumbled at first, but is actually finely tuned and packs an excellent suite of support cards for the archetype.

• Chalice has seen ebbs and flows of use in Aggro Loam, but Hoogland opted to play the full amount. Chalice slots quite naturally into Aggro Loam as it can be cast on the first turn and the deck's own key spells cost 2 or 3 mana. Since Chalice is typically set to 1, it generally prohibits playing 1 mana spells of your own and thereby informs many deckbuilding decisions. 

      
          

• One strategy that has perennially appeared in Aggro Loam is to accelerate into a large creature such as Terravore, Countryside Crusher, or Tarmogoyf, or Knight of the Reliquary, and follow it up with a Devastating Dreams. 

• Hoogland has incorporated this strategy with Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf as the large creatures of choice. Knight is excellent in a Loam shell, which can grow it to a large size and supports a toolbox of utility lands like Maze of Ith, Bojuka Bog, Nantuko Monastery (surprisingly effective against control decks in particular!) and Karakas very well.

          

• Ideally, Devastating Dreams functions as both a Wrath of God and Armageddon by destroying all your opponent's creatures and lands, leaving you with a huge threat in play to close out the game in short order. 

• Devastating Dreams can still be a truly devastating play even without a big creature on the field, and with access to Loam and Sylvan Library, the deck is capable of recovering from the self-inflicted damage of Dreams better than most.

    

• Cycling lands provide something to do on turn 1, and can generate card advantage in conjunction with Life from the Loam later in the game.

          

• Green Sun's Zenith is a nice addition that can function as a turn 1 play (which the deck is a bit light on due to a lack of 1 mana spells) fetching Dryad Arbor, scale to fetch a Knight of the Reliquary in the late game, and even enable a small toolbox of utility creatures like Gaddock Teeg.

• Gaddock Teeg functions as a game 1 anti-combo card to complement Chalice, which is facilitated by Green Sun's Zenith. While often boarded out, it offers a tutorable defense against combo strategies which can beat Chalice on 1 or Karakas.

• Burning Wish is interesting technology for a Loam deck. It is essentially used as a tool for increasing consistency in a deck that can suffer from disjointed draws by granting you the ability to "draw" from  a selection of cards in your sideboard when you cast it. One potential downside of this is being unable to Wish for a card and cast it the same turn since you have to pay an extra 2 mana, but a deck with Mox Diamond and Loam is well suited to create a mana advantage that enables this.

• Another advantage of the Wishboard is it lets you keep a copy of Loam insulated from effects like Surgical Extraction. Devastating Dreams is a card that is situational in nature, so it too benefits from having a copy to choose from out of the Wishboard rather than just more in the maindeck.

          

• Outside of Dreams and Loam, the Wishboard presents a suite of options that can be grouped into two main categories: removal and combo hate. 

• Removal should be mostly self-explainatory, and is intended to offer outs to a variety of scenarios and permanent types.

• The two principal combo hate cards are Thoughtseize and Slaughter Games. You won't always have a Chalice out, so Thoughtseize can be a great option to buy time before landing more impactful hate. Slaughter Games has a very strong effect, but is generally prohibitive to cast in Legacy due to the fact that it costs 4 mana. This deck is capable of casting it on turn 2!

• Some newer cards that could have a home in the Wishboard include Toxic Deluge and Council's Judgment, and Collective Brutality.

     

• The non-Wish portion of the sideboard consists exclusively of more hatebears to fight combo decks. Resolving any of them on turn 1 with a Mox is backbreaking against many combo decks.

• Dark Confidant is a fantastic card advantage engine in a Loam deck, which has a low average CMC and is happy to improve draw quality by drawing a lot of cards. Hoogland eventually removed it from his deck, likely because it plays poorly with Devastating Dreams.

         

• Aside from specialized Wish targets, Abrupt Decay is the primary reason to splash Black as one of the best removal spells in Legacy.

• While ignored until now, the Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows engine is yet another powerful aspect of the deck that plays very well with Knight of the Reliquary and Loam.

     

          

     

• The rest of the manabase consists of a mix of dual lands (Taiga being the most important) and one basic Forest tied together by Wooded Foothills.

Conclusion & Other Resources
Unfortunately, development on this interesting take on Aggro Loam has mostly stagnated since early 2014 when Hoogland quit the deck after over a year of playing it. Additionally, Niklas Kronberger developed a new Aggro Loam variant that took down the Bazaar of Moxen main event in May 2014. Kronberger's version has since become established as the dominant one, and has experienced much success since then. However, I would argue that Hoogland's version was crucial in establishing many choices that Niklas was able to build on, and thus still serves as the foundation of the modern Aggro Loam archetype. Hoogland's version is more complex than Kronberger's , but the versatility it offers is unparalleled, and I believe it can still be relevant today.

More decklists:

Mike Pawliuk, Top8 @ Face to Face Games 1K, Toronto (7/18/2015, 40 players)

Roberto Oliveira, 3rd @ #SuperlegacyRS, Brazil (12/7/2014, 37 players)

Daniel Rassiner, 2nd @ Knight Ware Legacy, Los Angeles (1/12/2014, 34 players)

Kurt Crane, 8th @ Star City Games Open Cincinnati (9/1/2013, 277 players)

Jeff Hoogland, 9th-16th @ Star City Games Open Cincinnati (9/1/2013, 277 players)

Jeff Hoogland, 9th-16th @ Star City Games Open Columbus (6/16/2013)

Jeff Hoogland 2nd @ Star City Games Open Milwaukee (4/14/2013, 279 players)

Jeff Hoogland, 3rd @ Star City Games Open Atlanta (4/7/2013, 320 players)


Videos

Hoogland VS BUG Delver, Milawaukee Quarterfinal

Hoogland VS Merfolk, Milawaukee Semifinal

Hoogland VS Sneak & Show, Milawaukee Final

Hoogland VS Esper Deathblade, Invitational 

Hoogland VS Punishing Jund, Atlanta

Kurt Crane VS Shardless BUG, Cincinnati

Kurt Crane VS Belcher, Cincinnati


Other

Here is an article Jeff wrote for SCG about the deck.

Primer: Introduction to Legacy GWx Maverick - with Budget Tips

What is Maverick?

Maverick is a GWx creature-based midrange deck that contains both aggressive and controlling elements. The most important aspect of the deck is a toolbox of "hatebears", disruptive creatures that hinder the opponent's game plan, which can be tutored for and protected. In a sense, the goal of Maverick is to lock out the opponent with an overwhelming board presence. Maverick is built on synergy rather than raw card power, and is flexible enough to have game against almost any strategy. While intuitive to play at a basic level, Maverick is a difficult deck to master, as it is very interactive and has many lines of play available. If you want to play a deck with creature interactions and toolbox elements, Maverick could be the deck for you!



The Short History of Maverick
The original Maverick deck was developed by M@verick in 2010. It was pure GW with cards like Aether Vial and Weathered Wayfarer, and looks a bit like the archetype now known as Death & Taxes. The story of Maverick as we now know it began after the banning of Survival of the Fittest and the subsequent printing of Green Sun's Zenith in early 2011. These new GW Maverick decks, built on the pillars of Green Sun's Zenith, Knight of the Reliquary, and Mother of Runes, began seeing success in 2011 during the Mental Misstep era.

The printing of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben early in 2012 launched Maverick to new heights of power and popularity that lasted until the release of Return to Ravnica. However, the addition of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay to Legacy in Fall 2012 was to have lasting consequences. Both cards proved to be effective against Maverick and pushed other fair decks like Punishing Jund, Team America, Shardless BUG, and Deathblade into new territory. Maverick itself soon adopted Deathrite Shaman and a Black splash superseded GW as the dominant Maverick variant.

By 2013, Maverick was struggling to re-invent itself in the new meta as decks like Sneak & Show, Death & Taxes, and Elves began to rise. The printing of True-Name Nemesis in Fall 2013 was another huge blow to Maverick, not because of that card's effectiveness against Maverick as popularly thought, but primarily because Maverick fell victim to splash damage from the hate people began to play to combat True-Name Nemesis.

2014 looked to be another bleak year for Maverick but for the repeated competitive successes of Thomas Herzog on the SCG tournament circuit in the United States. Herzog's streamlined, "back to basics" approach to Maverick earned him three Top-8 finishes throughout that year, and inspired me (and certainly many others) to pick up Maverick as my first Legacy deck. It was also during this time that Miracles, another challenging matchup for Maverick, finally began to rear its head as a real force to be reckoned with in the Legacy meta.

Treasure Cruise threw most of the format into chaos in the Fall of 2014. In the ensuing onslaught of UR Delver, Maverick was able to re-assert its relevance as a foil to Delver decks, and took down an SCG Open in the hands of David McDarby that December. As Dig Through Time supplanted Treasure Cruise early in 2015 however, Maverick was on the back foot again against new Dig-fueled decks like Grixis and Omni-Tell as Blue continued to push record setting levels of dominance in Legacy.

With the Delve era finally coming to a close in Fall 2015, Maverick may be positioned to make a comeback. New threats like Lands, Monastery Mentor, and Eldrazi have emerged so it won't be easy.

Tl;dr - the reports of Maverick's demise since 2012 have been greatly exaggerated. The deck continues to maintain a small but loyal following, and can still put up strong tournament results in the hands of a skilled player.


Introduction
Here are some reasons to recommend Maverick as a starter Legacy deck:

• Relatively cheap, which will be elaborated on more below. You can build a competitive Maverick deck for less than $1,500.
• Flexible and capable of beating every strategy in the format.
• Highly customizable, can be built to suit personal playstyle and preferences.
• Maverick will help you learn about Legacy. Due to the deck's hatebear-centric strategy, you will have to learn how other decks function in order to identify the cards best suited to fight them.
• Relatively intuitive and easy to play at "level zero". As a creature-heavy GW deck it may feel somewhat similar to decks you have played in Standard or Modern, particularly ones with Green Sun's Zenith, Fauna Shaman, or Birthing Pod.
• At the same time, the deck will often punish you for making misplays. Take these in stride as opportunities to learn and improve your play.

Depending on your budget and interests, it may important to identify what other decks the cards you are buying for Maverick can be used in. Maverick will provide you cards that primarily slot into the following decks:

• Death & Taxes
• Elves
• Bant Stoneblade
• Nic-Fit
• 4C Aggro Loam

If you're only interested in building Maverick, great! Regardless of which Maverick variant you want to end up with, you should start with the GW core. Let's dive right into it.


The Stuff You Really Need
As the name implies, these are the cards that form the backbone of any true Maverick deck. As it turns out, many of them are quite cheap.

4x Mother of Runes ($)
Protects your key creatures from removal spells and combat damage, and can be used offensively as well to push damage past blockers.

4x Swords to Plowshares ($)
This efficient and versatile creature removal spell is among the strongest in Legacy.

4x Green Sun's Zenith ($)
Allows you to tutor for a specific creature and improves your consistency while remaining relevant at all stages of the game.

4x Knight of the Reliquary ($$)
Your principal threat, which can grow to a huge size while affording an invaluable layer of utility with the land-tutoring ability in conjunction with the many powerful lands available in Legacy.

          

4x + Mana creatures ($-$$$)
Maverick needs a lot of mana to function and has many ways to utilize excess mana, so mana creatures fulfill a crucial role in the deck. Avacyn's Pilgrim will do fine to start with, but you want to upgrade to Birds of Paradise, Deathrite Shaman, and/or Noble Hierarch.

1x Dryad Arbor ($)
Invaluable as it converts all your Zeniths to ramp spells for X = 0. Unique card with a number of other nice interactions.

4x Windswept Heath + Green Fetchlands ($$)
Fetchlands fuel your Knights and facilitate color fixing, especially important if you are starting out with zero or only a few dual lands. Windswept Heath is the best choice since it gets every fetchable land in a GWx deck. Beyond 4 of those any Green fetches will do. I would not recommend White fetches like Flooded Strand or Marsh Flats, because being able to fetch a basic Forest or Dryad Arbor at all times is quite important.

4x Wasteland ($$$)
This card is important. Really important. You will win a huge number of games off Wasteland + Thalia and Wasteland + Knight. Getting 4 of these should be a very high priority, and they should be the first expensive card you buy.
UPDATE: Wasteland has become substantially more affordable with its reprint in Eternal Masters!

2x Gaddock Teeg ($$)
G. Teeg is a crucial part of your creature toolbox as a hedge against many Legacy strategies. You can get the 2nd copy for your sideboard later, but having 1 in your maindeck is necessary.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben ($)
Interferes with the many Legacy decks relying on casting cheap noncreature spells. First Strike also makes her very strong in combat against the numerous 1-2 toughness creatures in the format.

Qasali Pridemage ($)
Affords removal for some noncreature permanents in the maindeck while having a relevant body with the Exalted ability.

Scavenging Ooze ($)
Provides some graveyard hate and lifegain, and can become a large threat.

1x Karakas ($$$)
This card fulfills an important role against Legend-centric strategies such as Reanimator and Sneak & Show. It also has marginal utility against cards like Vendilion Clique, or in conjunction with your own Thalias and G. Teegs. If you are playing in a known meta where you know there are no decks it is effective against you can hold off on it, but if you want to do well against an open meta it is a must-have. Fortunately you need only 1 since it can be tutored with Knight.
UPDATE: Karakas has become substantially more affordable with its reprint in Eternal Masters!



The Stuff You Need Eventually
These cards are staples in Maverick, but the deck will function without them so they are lower priority to acquire than the cards listed above. They are valuable additions to the strategy that are strongly recommended for higher level tournament play or if you plan to play the deck for a while.

Dual Lands ($$$-$$$$)
Oh yeah, these are important right? As I mentioned above, as long as you have fetchlands you can get away with basics or shock lands to start with (I consider Wastelands to be more important than Duals). Savannah is necessary, but the other Duals you require depends on which Maverick variant you're building.

Horizon Canopy ($$$)
A land that can turn into another card is quite powerful, and is a nice option to have in your land toolbox.

Sylvan Library ($$)
This notoriously off-color effect can generate a lot of card advantage and is extremely strong against other midrange decks or control decks.

Stoneforge Mystic ($$)
The most powerful White creature in Magic, which slots naturally into a Maverick deck since we have many creatures to carry her accompanying Equipment and can protect them with Mother of Runes.

Umezawa's Jitte ($$)
Often the most powerful Equipment in any "fair" matchup, this card can generate a huge advantage and quickly run away with the game. Importantly, it functions well without the assistance of Stoneforge Mystic.

Other Equipment ($$)
Batterskull and the various Swords can also be paired with Stoneforge Mystic. They cost more mana than Jitte so they are less effective without a Mystic, but are still quite powerful in certain situations.

Ethersworn Canonist ($)
This is a common sideboard card that is effective against many combo strategies in Legacy that win with a critical mass of spells. Maverick is always in the market for effective creature-based disruption since creatures can be protected by Mother of Runes.



Quick Matchup Guide (Depends on your exact 75)

• Favorable: Delver, Dredge, Eldrazi, Goblins, Lands, Merfolk, MUD, Shardless BUG, UWx Stoneblade

• Even: 4C Aggro Loam, Death & Taxes, Painter, Pox, Punishing Jund, Sneak & Show, Storm, UB Reanimator, UG Infect

• Unfavorable: Belcher, Burn, Enchantress, Elves, G/x Cloudpost, Omni-Tell, Oops! All Spells, Nic-Fit, UWx Miracles, Tin-Fins

Next Steps
The cards listed above only scratch the surface of what is possible in the Maverick archetype. There are several different Maverick variants, so I suggest looking at lots decklists to see which variant you want to play, and what other cards are available to fill out your 75 of that variant with. The following posts on this blog contain more information on Maverick variants, including decklists:

GWb Maverick: GW Maverick with Black splash (Most Popular and Best Performing Version Today)

Punishing Maverick: GW Maverick with Red splash

Bant Maverick: GW Maverick with Blue splash

Classic GW Maverick

Also check out my Maverick Card Interactions and Rules Primer for gameplay tips