Zombie Loam, another off-the-wall feathers creation!
This is my first primer, so constructive criticism is welcome and I hope you like it.
The deck is very simple: Dredge Loam, cast Loam, get lands, make zombies. Doing this every turn, you should be able to make zombies every turn, and surely overwhelm your opponent.
Look up.
For the deck to function correctly, you need these two cards. A Squee in the graveyard assists Infestation by being one more card in your hand. See, because you're skipping your draw to dredge the Loam you'll only have three cards in your hands for the Infestation. That's only one token. If you dredge a Squee, however, you can return the Squee to your hand at the beginning of each turn for that one more card you need to be able to make two tokens a turn. He also has synergy with the other support card
Liliana is a new addition. Straight out of Innistrad and looking like a total babe, Miss Lili offers a number of synergies that are imperative for the deck to function. Her first Loyalty ability will hurt your opponent a lot more than it will hurt you. As you may have noticed, discarding Squee, Loam, Rites, or a fatty makes this ability fairly one-sided. But it's very important not only because it's one-sided. This disruption is needed to fight other decks. You can't just throw some zombies out there and expect to win. The disruption that's built into the deck is what really pushes it over the top.
Her second loyalty ability, while hitting even Hexproof or protected creatures, helps the deck by being usable removal that doesn't interfere with the functionality of the deck. Once we get the Loam engine going, we won't be drawing removal spells. In fact, we won't be drawing anything. Liliana helps this along by giving reusable removal that you can get into play ahead of time. Moreover, getting things out of the way of your zombies is pretty nice.
Together, Liliana's abilities help you control the game while still pitching everything in your deck into the graveyard. She allows you to disrupt and remove even though you're not actually drawing anything that does this.
Now we're getting into the built-in synergistic disruption that the deck supports while they simultaneous support it.
We'll start with the Specter. It's basically a Blightning that costs one Red less and discards one less card. Anyone who's every played Jund can tell you that damage and discard in one spell can be very good. It provides a level of pressure that some decks just can't deal with. It's also nice for your clock. The extra three damage helps you along a little bit because you can only do so much with 2/2 zombies toward the beginning of the game. Unearthing a Specter can help you really drop your opponent's life total quickly. Otherwise, you would be slowly swinging with gradual numbers of 2/2 guys, which won't be fast enough to beat combo decks.
Smallpox is almost completely one-sided, much like Liliana. You'll be discarding a card you want in the graveyard anyway, you don't really need the land once you've got two in play, and you can just make more creatures (if you even have any). Now, of course, this card requires a little bit of a working to get the most out of it, and you might want to side it out if you'll be on the draw (because it's not really as good if you're behind) but the pros outweigh the cons with this spell.
Make no bones about it, Modern is not now nor will ever will be a slow format. To win against combo you need some method of picking off those last few points of life as quickly as possible, and reanimating a fatty is a great way to do this. Unburial Rites handles this in a big way. Because of its flashback cost, we don't have to draw it. We are free to dump it into the graveyard with out Loam engine. This gives us a simple, unobtrusive method of closing games.
I chose Akroma because Rite is unfortunately Sorcery speed, so her being a Hasty angel is very welcome. I am also using Iona, Shield of Emeria because, while she does not have Haste, her ability can shut down certain decks all the same. Especially combo decks like Storm on Twin, which cannot possibly function with the inability to cast red spells.
I don't always use removal, but when I do, I use Dismember.
Okay, that's not entirely true, but Dismember is indeed the best removal spell available for this archetype. It's flexible cost allows it to work around the mana constraints the deck sometimes experiences while also having no constraints on what it can target. If course, two-mana spells like Doom Blade and Go for the Throat are usable, but be wary of creatures that each spell is unable to destroy. One mana spells such as Vendetta and Deathmark are also feasible. But the life lost from the former can be much more than that from Dismember and the constraints of the target of the latter plus being sorcery speed make it a bad choice for the main deck.
However, Deathmark is a very, very good sideboard card. Picking off first turn Nobles and Nacatl with no life lost can make some matches easily winnable.
Inquisition of Kozilek is the discard spell of choice for this deck. The life lost from Thoughtseize on top of that from your fetches, shocklands, and Dismember is unwelcome and isn't worth it to hit a few extra things. Duress can be a budget choice, but if you can get Inquisitions, use them.
Crucible of Worlds is a very feasible choice for helping you continue to make land drops even after you've begun Loaming. This card was used in the original version of the deck and worked pretty good. The ability to discard lands to Infestation without few of being screwed on mana helped out more times than you'd think.
If you have any suggestions for other filler cards to make the deck better, please speak up!
Speculation: Very good. The deck is naturally resistant to methods control uses to win games. The control deck will usually be unable to counter the tokens made with Infestation, and countering Loam doesn't really get them anywhere because it just goes back into the graveyard to be redredged the next turn (aside from buying a single turn, which doesn't help them much.
Speculation: Probably good. Depends on how we can tweak our deck with the sideboard. We have a lot of built-in disruption, but we'll probably need more to beat combo decks.
Speculation: Probably bad. If we can get the Loam engine going early, we can very easily outlast them. They won't be able to just throw removal spells at use until we run out of creatures because we won't run out of creatures. However, Qasali Pridemage is a huge issue. Granted, it's less so now without GSZ, but it's still a mainstay of Zoo decks and will screw us over.
Affinity will probably have too many threats for us to answer. We might be able to squeak through with a Wrath, but it's hard to get Wrath with the Loam engine going.
More on the way.
Hope there aren't too many spelling and grammar mistakes.
This deck is very much still a work in progress. A lot of the information here could change as the deck becomes fully realized. I would be infinitely grateful to anyone who could help me test and tweak this deck because I really enjoy playing it but I'm not really a deckbuilder. I'm an idea man.
I built a deck on the same ideas some time ago, and it was honestly bad :frown:, because of that "huge, debilitating weakness" you somehow missed :
it didn't do anything, and I really mean anything, when you didn't have Infestation. You can't dig for it with Loam, you have absolutely no draw engine, and you play 14 dead cards without it online.
And the worst thing is that even if you have Infestation, it really is terrible without Loam, and once again you have absolutely no way of digging for Loam (except Loam itself :p). At least I ran some Stinkweed Imps, so I could dig more aggressively for my Loams or one of my 4 Squees, but here you have nothing.
If you really want to try and make that deck work, at least play a little more dredgers, and run some Raven's Crime.
Well, I think this is somewhat mitigated by Liliana. She can give you a fighting chance by herself and even enable some of the cards you'd need Infestation for. But I see your point. I don't know about Raven's Crime, because I don't feel the RavenLoam thing is really all that powerful (though I'd like it for the combo match-up), but something needs to be done about consistency.
Shred Memory tutors for both of our combo pieces. Why not use that?
Bonus Points: It also shrinks Goyfs and Knights, counters Reanimator, and can throw a wrench into Living End.
Edit: It occurs to me that a way to draw extra cards for extra dredging would be nice. Anyone have any ideas? Originally I used Horizon Canopy with Crucible. Should I revisit this?
Edit2: I gave it a test run, and even without the Crucible having Canopies seems really good. You can fetch one with Loam, play it, crack it, and dredge three more cards. Definitely keeping them, I think.
Hello there. First of all: nice primer, if that's your first you're a natural.
Really like the idea, been tinkering with something similar, but since I'm exclusively a Modo player I have not gotten the chance to play with the Innistrad goodies yet (of which Lilliana is an autoinclude)
I have been playing with a slight red splash and thought I'd throw in some ideas.
Aggro is an awful matchup, red lets you SB Firespout, slowrolling the zombie army, swarming the board post spout. I agree on deathmark being a necessary sideboardcard.
Red lets you actually play Squee in a pinch, he's definitely no Tarmogoyf, but he chumps decently.
Since you pretty much dump your hand every game hellbent is a possible fit. Keldon Megaliths pick off a lot of utility creatures, hierarch and Bob among others. I have also been playing Gathan raiders as an additional thing to do with Squees and extra lands. He's also a beefy body, 3 mana 5/5 are ok against a lot of decks.
I play 4 bloodghasts, they're very good against control and decent for racing. They get sideboarded out a lot though, reprint cabal therapy please!
I have also tried a singleton Demon of Death's Gate. It has broken a few stalemates, eating Bloodghasts and dime a dozen Zombies. One of the advantages of playing a deck where your hand is mostly for throwing away is that playing weird miser singletons does not hurt too bad, they're already half a zombie anyway
Ancient grudge is a good card for the sideboard, leylines could also be ok, free or random cards for infestations.
Playing a single Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace too, surprisingly decent in some situations, notably against control and as an emergeny discard outlet.
Anyway, just some stuff off the top of my head, regards.
The problem with being BGr is that you don't have a kill. You would lose Unburial rites, and the potentially nice pack Haakon + Knight of the reliquary + Crib Swap + Nameless Inversion (yes, that was my kill before Unburial rites got spoiled).
I mean, 2/2 zombies are nice when they are many, but even then sometimes they're just not enough.
Anyway, I really think in a deck that runs Life from the Loam and wants to consistently get back 3 lands early with it can be BGwr. With all those fetches, a couple W and R duals seems pretty easy to add.
Oh, and for Shred Memory, the problem is it's terrible alone. If there were some grave-based decks in modern, it would probably be a playable tutor, but here it will just be a bad tutor most of the time (3 mana, heavy black, sorcery-speed... It's almost the same power level as Diabolic Tutor, 1 for polyvalence seems fairly cheap). Muddle the mixture and Tolaria West are terrible tutors, but at least they're a decent counterspell and a land, that's why they are played.
I think finding another discard outlet that does something nice seems like the most viable solution. At some point I switched colors and tried running Zombie Infestation + Magus of the bazaar, but it still wasn't good.
Alright. We can try four colors. We don't even need red for the Raiders because we'll be morphing it so we only need one red source. And Unburial Rites only needs a single white, so we only need one White source. This shouldn't be too hard.
What do you think of Gale's suggestion of Gathan Raiders? I think it's pretty good, but I'd like your thoughts as well.
And Madness cards could work. I don't think and of the Modern-legal Madness cards are very good, though.
Gathan Raiders are ok I guess, never tried them in that kind of deck. The only problem may be that you want as few dead cards in your graveyard as possible, and they would be additional ones. Oh, and they would force you to empty your hand *before* the attack phase every turn, but I'm not even sure that's a problem here. Just worth noting if you decide to run Madness stuff.
Talking about Madness, the 2 good ones in modern are Dark Withering and Grave Scrabbler. But they're both really bad without Infestation in play, which adds to the inconsistency again. Potentially Big Game Hunter in the sideboard, also.
Yeah, BGr is kinda grindy without the Unburial Rites and giant legends. Been playing some matches and going over the Innistrad spoiler. Really like the knight-package, guess the challenge is streamlining and avoid cramming all the synergistic cards in. Anyway, some thoughts and untested ideas:
Punishing Fire. Already playing green, so is it worthwhile? It's a decent spell and additional discard fodder for the cost of giving the opponent a life. Honestly dunno, I ll playtest it some.
Infernal Tutor. With a dump-your-hand playstyle it's a demonic tutor. Both this one and the fire are pretty mana intensive though, generally uses up a turn. Probably too low-impact without the powerlevel of Legacy/Vintage
Vengeful Pharaoh as a singleton to help shoring up some matchups. The top of your library-clause is mostly irrelevant with dredge+discard outlets
And a couple of Innistrad cards:
Gnaw to the Bone. Strictly sideboard, but should be able to gain 10+ life without costing a card.
Rally the Peasants. Prolly far-fetched, but swarm strategy with a 2 power bonus could kill out of nowhere. Singleton at most.
Mulch. No immediate impact, but carddrawing+graveyard dump could be ok. For 2 mana it does not do enough methinks.
Madness cards:
Gibbering Descent for the kitchen table :tongue:. Big Game Hunter is sporadically played in legacy, so the powerlevel is clearly there. Really do not know. Dark Withering does much of the same work.
The deck concept has been seen before as Dawn of the Dead in vintage and has some things in common with Baghdad Bob as well. The core is strong, but Bazaar of Baghdad is hard to replace, to say the least.
Any ideas for good discard outlets? Sorry bout posting only loose ideas and thoughts, let's streamline it together
Punishing Fire looks really promising. I personally don't like the card, but I can't overlook how fantastically synergistic it could be. It might even be worth trying over Unburial Rite, because you can simply dredge a bunch of PFires into the graveyard, regrow them, and then repeatedly throw them into the opponent's face. This plus Zombie attack could very well be a decent clock.
The main nut to crack for me is how to justify having 4 Squee maindeck. It has historically been a very powerful card, but with merely 4 infestations, I am unsure. this may very well change with Lilliana though. Seismic assault is way too heavy on red, imo that is a different deck. When Innistrad is released I will prolly playtest something like this:
I find I'm able to grind it out against most aggressive strategies (that don't have Pridemage). Post-board should hopefully be even better, because I'll have things like Deathmark which are good against Zoo.
The problem is getting going, tbh. It can't get moving without Infestation. If only there were a way to get dredging early and then just lift Infestation of my graveyard one I've dredged it. Or maybe something like that Vault card Infect used to find it's Shoal or Infect guy. All I really need is to be able to find Infestation quickly.
I'm not sure about exiling things, though. And the life loss.
edit2: Or maybe I can form the deck in such a way that it can function until it finds what it needs. Like put the engine into a different shell. A Junk/Rock deck or something.
Seems like that's a bit win more. I like the idea, but I'm not sure it fits.
I'm gonna try and find a Rock shell to build around this. I think it will work because Rock decks already use Life from the Loam with Raven's Crime, so it shouldn't be hard to fit the enchantment and some enablers in.
yeah probably just thinking about a deck with all land, i saw one in standard b4 the rotation, it was treasure hunt so this and loam and zombie infestation??? maybe lol, alough running BUG might be a bit tricky :S
Standard: pft, i love to see my cards depreciate in value once they rotate :S
Mordern: Melira, UR Storm, RDW, Infect, W life/control, UW Tron
Legacy: RDW, Pox
Vintage: Dark Depths, R Grey Orge
I don't like the Hunt version. It's far too fragile and inconsistent.
One day I'm going to figure this deck out and it will be the best freaking deck ever. I know for a fact that this can work and be stupid good, I just have to wrap my head around it. I have to figure out just what puts it over the top.
At any rate, I tried out Gathan Raiders and I like them. I think they work really good, especially against Zoo.
This has been working really well lately. The additions of Goyf, Crucible, Lili, and Routes give the deck some much needed depth. Winning games without seeing a single Infestation are now possible, as I have multiple ways of generating advantage, not just the deck's namesake engine. These cards are also quite synergistic. There are many combinations of these cards that work very well together (though Lili doesn't work with all of them).
Forbidden Alchemy is a beautiful card. Especially in this archetype. Dumping Squee, Loam, Think Twice is all solid and doing this after a Tarmogoyf for an abrupt increase in stats is just gravy.
I still need to figure out my sideboard. I'm not quite sure what I want. Merfolk seems to still be lurking on the fringe of playability on Trice, so I think I prepare for that in addition to the usual suspects. I think more Raven's Crime and a couple of Thoughtseize will probably be present as well.
Zombie Loam, another off-the-wall feathers creation!
This is my first primer, so constructive criticism is welcome and I hope you like it.
The deck is very simple: Dredge Loam, cast Loam, get lands, make zombies. Doing this every turn, you should be able to make zombies every turn, and surely overwhelm your opponent.
For the deck to function correctly, you need these two cards. A Squee in the graveyard assists Infestation by being one more card in your hand. See, because you're skipping your draw to dredge the Loam you'll only have three cards in your hands for the Infestation. That's only one token. If you dredge a Squee, however, you can return the Squee to your hand at the beginning of each turn for that one more card you need to be able to make two tokens a turn. He also has synergy with the other support card
Liliana is a new addition. Straight out of Innistrad and looking like a total babe, Miss Lili offers a number of synergies that are imperative for the deck to function. Her first Loyalty ability will hurt your opponent a lot more than it will hurt you. As you may have noticed, discarding Squee, Loam, Rites, or a fatty makes this ability fairly one-sided. But it's very important not only because it's one-sided. This disruption is needed to fight other decks. You can't just throw some zombies out there and expect to win. The disruption that's built into the deck is what really pushes it over the top.
Her second loyalty ability, while hitting even Hexproof or protected creatures, helps the deck by being usable removal that doesn't interfere with the functionality of the deck. Once we get the Loam engine going, we won't be drawing removal spells. In fact, we won't be drawing anything. Liliana helps this along by giving reusable removal that you can get into play ahead of time. Moreover, getting things out of the way of your zombies is pretty nice.
Together, Liliana's abilities help you control the game while still pitching everything in your deck into the graveyard. She allows you to disrupt and remove even though you're not actually drawing anything that does this.
Now we're getting into the built-in synergistic disruption that the deck supports while they simultaneous support it.
We'll start with the Specter. It's basically a Blightning that costs one Red less and discards one less card. Anyone who's every played Jund can tell you that damage and discard in one spell can be very good. It provides a level of pressure that some decks just can't deal with. It's also nice for your clock. The extra three damage helps you along a little bit because you can only do so much with 2/2 zombies toward the beginning of the game. Unearthing a Specter can help you really drop your opponent's life total quickly. Otherwise, you would be slowly swinging with gradual numbers of 2/2 guys, which won't be fast enough to beat combo decks.
Smallpox is almost completely one-sided, much like Liliana. You'll be discarding a card you want in the graveyard anyway, you don't really need the land once you've got two in play, and you can just make more creatures (if you even have any). Now, of course, this card requires a little bit of a working to get the most out of it, and you might want to side it out if you'll be on the draw (because it's not really as good if you're behind) but the pros outweigh the cons with this spell.
Make no bones about it, Modern is not now nor will ever will be a slow format. To win against combo you need some method of picking off those last few points of life as quickly as possible, and reanimating a fatty is a great way to do this. Unburial Rites handles this in a big way. Because of its flashback cost, we don't have to draw it. We are free to dump it into the graveyard with out Loam engine. This gives us a simple, unobtrusive method of closing games.
I chose Akroma because Rite is unfortunately Sorcery speed, so her being a Hasty angel is very welcome. I am also using Iona, Shield of Emeria because, while she does not have Haste, her ability can shut down certain decks all the same. Especially combo decks like Storm on Twin, which cannot possibly function with the inability to cast red spells.
I don't always use removal, but when I do, I use Dismember.
Okay, that's not entirely true, but Dismember is indeed the best removal spell available for this archetype. It's flexible cost allows it to work around the mana constraints the deck sometimes experiences while also having no constraints on what it can target. If course, two-mana spells like Doom Blade and Go for the Throat are usable, but be wary of creatures that each spell is unable to destroy. One mana spells such as Vendetta and Deathmark are also feasible. But the life lost from the former can be much more than that from Dismember and the constraints of the target of the latter plus being sorcery speed make it a bad choice for the main deck.
However, Deathmark is a very, very good sideboard card. Picking off first turn Nobles and Nacatl with no life lost can make some matches easily winnable.
Inquisition of Kozilek is the discard spell of choice for this deck. The life lost from Thoughtseize on top of that from your fetches, shocklands, and Dismember is unwelcome and isn't worth it to hit a few extra things. Duress can be a budget choice, but if you can get Inquisitions, use them.
Crucible of Worlds is a very feasible choice for helping you continue to make land drops even after you've begun Loaming. This card was used in the original version of the deck and worked pretty good. The ability to discard lands to Infestation without few of being screwed on mana helped out more times than you'd think.
If you have any suggestions for other filler cards to make the deck better, please speak up!
3 Swamp
3 Forest
2 Plains
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
3 Woodland Cemetary
1 Razorverge Thicket
1 Isolate Chapel
4 Sedraxis Specter
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
2 Iona, Shield of Emeria
//Planeswalkers:
3 Liliana of the Veil
//Sorceries:
4 Life from the Loam
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Unburial Rites
3 Smallpox
//Instants:
4 Dismember
//Enchantments:
4 Zombie Infestation
15 ?
Affinity will probably have too many threats for us to answer. We might be able to squeak through with a Wrath, but it's hard to get Wrath with the Loam engine going.
More on the way.
This deck is very much still a work in progress. A lot of the information here could change as the deck becomes fully realized. I would be infinitely grateful to anyone who could help me test and tweak this deck because I really enjoy playing it but I'm not really a deckbuilder. I'm an idea man.
So.. anyone interested?
I certainly hope not. This thing is one of my babies.
it didn't do anything, and I really mean anything, when you didn't have Infestation. You can't dig for it with Loam, you have absolutely no draw engine, and you play 14 dead cards without it online.
And the worst thing is that even if you have Infestation, it really is terrible without Loam, and once again you have absolutely no way of digging for Loam (except Loam itself :p). At least I ran some Stinkweed Imps, so I could dig more aggressively for my Loams or one of my 4 Squees, but here you have nothing.
If you really want to try and make that deck work, at least play a little more dredgers, and run some Raven's Crime.
Shred Memory tutors for both of our combo pieces. Why not use that?
Bonus Points: It also shrinks Goyfs and Knights, counters Reanimator, and can throw a wrench into Living End.
Edit: It occurs to me that a way to draw extra cards for extra dredging would be nice. Anyone have any ideas? Originally I used Horizon Canopy with Crucible. Should I revisit this?
Edit2: I gave it a test run, and even without the Crucible having Canopies seems really good. You can fetch one with Loam, play it, crack it, and dredge three more cards. Definitely keeping them, I think.
Really like the idea, been tinkering with something similar, but since I'm exclusively a Modo player I have not gotten the chance to play with the Innistrad goodies yet (of which Lilliana is an autoinclude)
I have been playing with a slight red splash and thought I'd throw in some ideas.
Aggro is an awful matchup, red lets you SB Firespout, slowrolling the zombie army, swarming the board post spout. I agree on deathmark being a necessary sideboardcard.
Red lets you actually play Squee in a pinch, he's definitely no Tarmogoyf, but he chumps decently.
Since you pretty much dump your hand every game hellbent is a possible fit. Keldon Megaliths pick off a lot of utility creatures, hierarch and Bob among others. I have also been playing Gathan raiders as an additional thing to do with Squees and extra lands. He's also a beefy body, 3 mana 5/5 are ok against a lot of decks.
I play 4 bloodghasts, they're very good against control and decent for racing. They get sideboarded out a lot though, reprint cabal therapy please!
I have also tried a singleton Demon of Death's Gate. It has broken a few stalemates, eating Bloodghasts and dime a dozen Zombies. One of the advantages of playing a deck where your hand is mostly for throwing away is that playing weird miser singletons does not hurt too bad, they're already half a zombie anyway
Ancient grudge is a good card for the sideboard, leylines could also be ok, free or random cards for infestations.
Playing a single Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace too, surprisingly decent in some situations, notably against control and as an emergeny discard outlet.
Anyway, just some stuff off the top of my head, regards.
I'll get rid of White and add Red. See where that takes me.
Also, cardtags please.
currently playing:
Standard
UW Control
UWB Control
UB Control
MODERN
BRGJund
X Affinity
UWR Control
LEGACY
Dredge
R Burn
UWx Miracles
EDH
BRW Kaalia
______
Quotes:
My Magic Card nicknames.
I mean, 2/2 zombies are nice when they are many, but even then sometimes they're just not enough.
Anyway, I really think in a deck that runs Life from the Loam and wants to consistently get back 3 lands early with it can be BGwr. With all those fetches, a couple W and R duals seems pretty easy to add.
Oh, and for Shred Memory, the problem is it's terrible alone. If there were some grave-based decks in modern, it would probably be a playable tutor, but here it will just be a bad tutor most of the time (3 mana, heavy black, sorcery-speed... It's almost the same power level as Diabolic Tutor, 1 for polyvalence seems fairly cheap). Muddle the mixture and Tolaria West are terrible tutors, but at least they're a decent counterspell and a land, that's why they are played.
I think finding another discard outlet that does something nice seems like the most viable solution. At some point I switched colors and tried running Zombie Infestation + Magus of the bazaar, but it still wasn't good.
What do you think of Gale's suggestion of Gathan Raiders? I think it's pretty good, but I'd like your thoughts as well.
And Madness cards could work. I don't think and of the Modern-legal Madness cards are very good, though.
Talking about Madness, the 2 good ones in modern are Dark Withering and Grave Scrabbler. But they're both really bad without Infestation in play, which adds to the inconsistency again. Potentially Big Game Hunter in the sideboard, also.
I'd like to give the Raiders a try. The extra discard outlet plus extra draw from Horizon Canopy could work out okay.
Another workable discard outlet is Peace of Mind. It probably requires a little bit more white but with Squee and Loam you can gain a lot of life.
Punishing Fire. Already playing green, so is it worthwhile? It's a decent spell and additional discard fodder for the cost of giving the opponent a life. Honestly dunno, I ll playtest it some.
Infernal Tutor. With a dump-your-hand playstyle it's a demonic tutor. Both this one and the fire are pretty mana intensive though, generally uses up a turn. Probably too low-impact without the powerlevel of Legacy/Vintage
Vengeful Pharaoh as a singleton to help shoring up some matchups. The top of your library-clause is mostly irrelevant with dredge+discard outlets
And a couple of Innistrad cards:
Gnaw to the Bone. Strictly sideboard, but should be able to gain 10+ life without costing a card.
Rally the Peasants. Prolly far-fetched, but swarm strategy with a 2 power bonus could kill out of nowhere. Singleton at most.
Mulch. No immediate impact, but carddrawing+graveyard dump could be ok. For 2 mana it does not do enough methinks.
Madness cards:
Gibbering Descent for the kitchen table :tongue:. Big Game Hunter is sporadically played in legacy, so the powerlevel is clearly there. Really do not know. Dark Withering does much of the same work.
The deck concept has been seen before as Dawn of the Dead in vintage and has some things in common with Baghdad Bob as well. The core is strong, but Bazaar of Baghdad is hard to replace, to say the least.
Any ideas for good discard outlets? Sorry bout posting only loose ideas and thoughts, let's streamline it together
This also works really well with Chandra's Phoenix.
I assume you mean this Rootwalla, and not regular Rootwalla, because of the former's 0 cost Madness.
It's not Modern-legal, though.
I'm not a fan of Bloodghast, personally, because I've never gotten good use out of it, but I think here it's really important.
4 verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
2 Keldon Megaliths
1 Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace
1 Forest
4 Bloodghast
4 Squee, goblin Nabob
3 Gathan Raiders
1 vengeful Pharaoh
4 Sedraxis Specter
1 Demon of Death's Gate
Spells
3 Liliana of the Veil
4 Punishing Fire
4 Zombie Infestation
4 Smallpox
4 Life from the Loam
Gotta explore the white though, definitely sounds interesting, Knight of the Reliquary is pretty ok with loam I've heard
There has to be something. I know the engine is solid, I just don't know what the problem is.
The problem is getting going, tbh. It can't get moving without Infestation. If only there were a way to get dredging early and then just lift Infestation of my graveyard one I've dredged it. Or maybe something like that Vault card Infect used to find it's Shoal or Infect guy. All I really need is to be able to find Infestation quickly.
edit: Spoil of the Vault
I'm not sure about exiling things, though. And the life loss.
edit2: Or maybe I can form the deck in such a way that it can function until it finds what it needs. Like put the engine into a different shell. A Junk/Rock deck or something.
I'm gonna try and find a Rock shell to build around this. I think it will work because Rock decks already use Life from the Loam with Raven's Crime, so it shouldn't be hard to fit the enchantment and some enablers in.
Mordern: Melira, UR Storm, RDW, Infect, W life/control, UW Tron
Legacy: RDW, Pox
Vintage: Dark Depths, R Grey Orge
One day I'm going to figure this deck out and it will be the best freaking deck ever. I know for a fact that this can work and be stupid good, I just have to wrap my head around it. I have to figure out just what puts it over the top.
At any rate, I tried out Gathan Raiders and I like them. I think they work really good, especially against Zoo.
4 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Island
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Breeding Pool
1 Watery Grave
3 Twilight Mire
3 Horizon Canopy
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
Planeswalkers:
1 Liliana of the Veil
Sorceries:
4 Life from the Loam
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Raven's Crime
1 Worm Harvest
4 Dismember
4 Forbidden Alchemy
3 Think Twice
Enchantments:
4 Zombie Infestation
1 Trade Routes
Artifacts:
1 Crucible of Worlds
This has been working really well lately. The additions of Goyf, Crucible, Lili, and Routes give the deck some much needed depth. Winning games without seeing a single Infestation are now possible, as I have multiple ways of generating advantage, not just the deck's namesake engine. These cards are also quite synergistic. There are many combinations of these cards that work very well together (though Lili doesn't work with all of them).
Forbidden Alchemy is a beautiful card. Especially in this archetype. Dumping Squee, Loam, Think Twice is all solid and doing this after a Tarmogoyf for an abrupt increase in stats is just gravy.
I still need to figure out my sideboard. I'm not quite sure what I want. Merfolk seems to still be lurking on the fringe of playability on Trice, so I think I prepare for that in addition to the usual suspects. I think more Raven's Crime and a couple of Thoughtseize will probably be present as well.