What Are The Top Decks In Modern – Loam

The card Life from the Loam is a powerful card advantage engine capable of fueling itself by putting land cards and useful spells from your deck into your graveyard, then fishing out land cards for some sort of benefit. The main goal behind any Loam deck is to fill up your graveyard while casting cheap, disruptive cards from your graveyard, and gaining marginal advantage until you are in a spot to secure the win.

There are two main breeds of Loam strategies in Modern – Aggro Loam and Loam Pox.

Aggro loam is an aggressive strategy that can typically be found utilizing Seismic Assault as a means of dealing large amounts of consistent damage, in addition to cheap and aggressive creature spells such as Tarmogoyf, Young Pyromancer, and Man-Lands like Treetop Village.

Aggro Loam can be a cheaper aggro option than other builds, but is more often used as a “non-meta” aggro option to get an edge on opponents who have less experience in the format.

Loam Pox, in contrast, is built more like a control deck that grinds the opponent with a very heavy attrition strategy. Loam Pox utilizes the card Smallpox as a means of cutting your opponent off of resources while using cards with graveyard synergy to take advantage of the resource shift. Common cards in Loam Pox lists range from Lingering Souls and Flagstones of Trokair to Zombie Infestation , sometimes also including Seismic Assault and man-lands as a secondary win condition.

Loam Pox is often seen as The Rock deck on a budget, a deck well suited for those that like a slow, grindy ordeal.

Sideboarding against this deck:

Graveyard hate is very powerful against any sort of Loam strategy for obvious reasons. Bojuka Bog, Relic of Progenitus, Rest in Peace and Grafdigger’s Cage are all cards that Loam hates to see. Aside from that, this deck has trouble handling resilient creatures like Wurmcoil Engine. Illness in the Ranks may be another option if you happen to know that a local Loam player is relying on cards like Lingering Souls or Young Pyromancer. Some lists also cannot handle a Blood Moon, but that varies from build to build.