Wild Zombies

[ReAnimator]

I recently won a Mox Ruby at a 41 man tournament in Canada with some of our best players in attendance.

I wrote a report for SCG and they just put it up here --> http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10789.html

I was using a rogue Life from the Loam based aggro deck that abused the synergies between Loam Bazaar and Squee.

The deck isn't tier 1 but I believe it is just as viable as other aggro disruption strategies like RG beatz Stupid Burn Threshold and Fish variants (UG/WTF UB ect.)

This deck has a few advantages over the other aggro control decks in the format, in that it actually has a couple long game plans (including an uncounterable card drawing engine), it beats up on the other aggro decks because it has bigger/more men, and it's clock is usually faster (because of the big / numerous critters and corpses)

It is quite possible there are some cards that belong in here that I have not found yet, I am quite busy with school and I don't have apprentice or MWS (mac user) so it is quite unlikely I will be able to test out any of the changes people come up with. If people do come up with changes I would be happy to hear them and I'm willing to test them at the next tournament or just accept your results.

Some cards that have been suggested but not tested so far are:
Mox Diamond <-- Synergy with Loam and more accell, this also ups your splash colour count without taking away your GB sources
Crop Rotation <--- helps set up a strip lock or gets you a bazaar, Obvious synergy with Loam
Imperial Seal <--- this works well with Bazaar's as it gets you the card right now, the fact that I don't own one and my deck had zero proxies is why it got the cut.

I would be interested to  hear if any one tries out these cards or what their thoughts are.

This is the updated list with the suggestions I made at the end of the article.

Maindeck:

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby

Creatures
4 Basking Rootwalla
3 Krovikan Horror
4 Wild Mongrel

Enchantments
4 Zombie Infestation
   

Instants
3 Death Spark
1 Vampiric Tutor

Legendary Creatures
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob

Sorceries
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Last Rites
3 Life From The Loam

Basic Lands
1 Forest
2 Swamp

Lands
1 Badlands
1 Barbarian Ring
4 Bayou
4 Bazaar Of Baghdad
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
2 Wooded Foothills
   
Sideboard:
2 Rack and Ruin (to get around chalice)
2 Coffin Purge
2 Pithing Needle
2 Artifact Mutation
2 Firestorm (it's possible these are unnecessary as other aggro is a good match up)
2 Ray Of Revelation
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Plateau

I think a lot of my thoughts come out in the tourney report but if this needs more content I will be happy to add some specific card reviews, and I will be happy to answer any questions.

-Andrew

[vartemis]

Nice report... I dont get to see a ton of Ontario Vintage being posted anymore.  I dont think Listowel or Bingemans has been written about in a while.  I am glad to see a different idea using Loam.  I cant believe how good it is.  Quick question about the decklist on here...  You said in your article -3 Horrors +3 duress... yet the Horrors are still in there... change your mind or typo?

j

[ReAnimator]

  Quick question about the decklist on here...  You said in your article -3 Horrors +3 duress... yet the Horrors are still in there... change your mind or typo?

I said Ashen Ghouls not KHorror, The $3 Squee will never get the cuts.  If these were still the days of keeper than the Ghouls would have a place, but as of now they only help in matchups that are already good for you.

[vartemis]

right... my mistake. Got the two recurring black creatures mixed up.  i didnt even notice the ghouls in the decklist. i just thought you had the horrors and squees.  How many times did you get a horror stuck in the grave due to a noncreature on top of it?

j

[ReAnimator]

How many times did you get a horror stuck in the grave due to a noncreature on top of it?

Very few and usually because I had to and didn't care. you can trap it with land , therapies and loam and it doesnt matter as they will all get out of the way eventually.
If you dredge them  you get to choose the order that the cards go into the graveyard so that helps take the randomness of trapping them from dredge away,
Without the ghouls having the low creature count could potentially mess them up more, but as soon as you find 1 squee its largely irrelivant.

[JigglyPuff]

i really like this deck....
I think it has potential but the New England Metagame is known for its control....
I think i might run this at a mox tourney this weekend, but i dont know if its good enough for day 2 of gp philly....

[Razvan]

Congratulations, Andrew.

And I didn't even get a mention... *cry* I hate you!

And this deck is incredible. I was lucky enough to watch it in action, and it's so fun, first of all, and so deceptively strong, second of all. I am curious on how you view the madness that is the stax matchup, though. You have some weapons against them (like loam, for example), but have you tested it any?

[FiReiSFuN]

Hey Andrew, this is Mark from round 5, I never got a chance to say congrats on the win.

Nice work on the article for StarCity, you make me sound way better than I am!  Hopefully we will get to play each other again.  I'd never quite seen anything like your deck so it was a blast to play against it.  We both got some lucky draws, and as you noted I was just a turn away from losing in the second and third games.

I am interested in the Stax matchup though... have you been able to test against it at all?

[ReAnimator]

Sorry I didn't mention you in the report Raz but I didn't play you and it was getting pretty long so I had to leave out most of the amusing anecdotes. Have you cut your hair yet? man it looked long and crazy. 

I tested this deck a little bit vs a 5 colour stax deck no Spheres (sb) but with 4 tanglewires (it was actually my alternate deck). There are usually only a few stax players in our meta so I wasn't to worried about it. Here is what i found out about the match:
• If stax gets a broken nutz hand you can't win (few decks can)
• If they get a decent start but nothing rediridiculousfavours the zombies.
• This deck can get a lot of permanents on the table really quickly which really nullifies wires and stax
• Welders do not like death spark. at all.
• If WZombies gets an agressive aggressiveZI with support it is really hard for the stax deck to lock you out because they have to worry about not getting beat down. This often results in them haveing tohavingp the table with a ramped up stax which isn't always enough if you have Loam on line.
• If WZombies gets any sort of card drawing engine on line it can be hard for stax to keep up since 5colour stax has a lot of tutors but not much real card drawing.
• because of basics fetches and Loam crucible doesn't really bug this deck too much.

I think a lot of it would depend on what sort of build of stax was being played. Any version that had lots of Cotv and Spheres and relied less on crucible would probably be better against this.

[Yames]

I was at that Tourney too.  I was one of only 3 people playing Stax. All of us were playing the 5 colour type.  The rest of the top 8 deck lists can be found here.

http://www.bigbcomics.com/games_weekly.php

[bebe]

Always knew you would win one sooner or later, Andrew. I hope to see you next month at the Vintage championships. I might evn have my own Loam deck to play with.

[Silvios]

I really like this deck, it seems so fun to play.  I think I'll toss it together and give it the old gambit test with my group.  I love Life from the Loam in every format, and it's great to see someone use it well in Vintage!  Grats!

[Dante]

In your stax matchup, are you worried at all about chalice for 2?  Artifact Mutation is great, no doubt, but an early Chalice for 2 can leave you crippled the rest of the game (shuts off ZI, Mongrel, Loam, Artifact Mutation). 

I'm guessing you don't see a lot of Stax up by you...especially not Uba Stax either..

Bill

[yespuhyren]

Nah, we rarely have people playing stax here. Especially Uba stax, as only a few of us (me, razvan, maybe a few others) have shops and zaars and P9

[Razvan]

I used to play most of the Workshop decks around here until Fish became popular and ruined it.

At one point I had people side in 15 sideboard cards vs. me, taking out win conditions and just winning with Artifact Mutation. The ammount of hate decks in Toronto is staggering, and Stax does badly at that point.

[Imsomniac101]

Good job on the article. This deck plays so well against Control it's amazing.
By the way, if you ever see Lam Phan again, tell him to write a damn article on BirdShit.

[Anusien]

Why Death Spark and not Darkblast?  Is it that you can return Death Spark without costing you a draw?

[Jacob Orlove]

Why Death Spark and not Darkblast?  Is it that you can return Death Spark without costing you a draw?

Death Spark gives him even more Squees. Darkblast does not.

[Razvan]

Good job on the article. This deck plays so well against Control it's amazing.
By the way, if you ever see Lam Phan again, tell him to write a damn article on BirdShit.

Usually we just step on Lam when we see him.

And I don't think he'll ever do it. He wasn't very happy when the list came up and was shared.

[ReAnimator]

Always knew you would win one sooner or later, Andrew. I hope to see you next month at the Vintage championships. I might even have my own Loam deck to play with.

I actually won a twister at 401 in June/July. As for the OVC I work at Dueling Grounds so I will be working not playing  however at least one of my decks and a bunch of my cards will be there (seeing as it is no proxy)

In your stax match up, are you worried at all about chalice for 2? Artifact Mutation is great, no doubt, but an early Chalice for 2 can leave you crippled the rest of the game (shuts off ZI, Mongrel, Loam, Artifact Mutation).

I'm guessing you don't see a lot of Stax up by you...especially not Uba Stax either..

Bill

Yeah in my updated board (top of the page) I have 2 Rack and Ruin and 2 ArtMutation. I think the ArtMutation are still necessary for your Tinker/colossus matchups or decks like fish with only a few artifacts you care about (needle/jitte/crucible) and they may not have a second target for RnR.

The thing about Uba Stax Is even at a 10 Proxie event very few people can afford to play that deck, at the last few SCG P9's how many people played it compared to normal stax? Sure it always does well but I cant really see more than 5 people in a tournament being able to run it.

There are a lot of different builds of stax and a lot of disputed cards, some versions will be good against you some will not. Even so its not like any one version will completely blow you out of the water every game, you have a fast clock and lots of disruption and a good solution to welder so you'll be fighting the whole time.

In our meta there are a lot of fish decks (with lots of art hate in the board and Old men of the sea) and because of the fish there is a decent amount of Oath and people here always play dragon as well. Its really not a good meta to bring stax into there are lots of bad matchups waiting to ruin your day.

Good job on the article. This deck plays so well against Control it's amazing.
By the way, if you ever see Lam Phan again, tell him to write a damn article on BirdShit.

Lam and his team (dicemanx and Shockwave) are pretty secretive about their lists (usually). Lam doesn't play all that often any more but when he does he usually runs Threshold in some form. All I know about his new version is that it doesn't run any white.  I know he's going to the Legacy GP this weekend so if you are too you can ask him about the deck there.

[Luiggi]

Just a quick parenthetical (and don't worry, I'm not trying to hijack the thread, ): if anyone thinks this deck might be viable in Legacy (since it only loses about 10 cards), please go check out the Wild Zombies thread I just opened in the Legacy Unproven Forum and chime in: http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=25441.0. This deck shares a lot of similarities with Jacob's Reanimator list, but looks to be better in some ways, and might just be a good deck to run at the GP this weekend.

We now return to our regularly scheduled Vintage program, .

Luiggi

[Liam-K]

I'd just like to mention that Uba Mask totally kicks this deck in the nuts.  Not only does getting your returning creatures into the graveyard become a serious problem, you can't dredge under uba (edit: I have been corrected).  Your whole card advantage routine just breaks down and cries, which makes all your win conditions trash.

Not that it isn't a cool deck with potential.

I also want to question the mana base.  You look SERIOUSLY mana light.  I'm aware that you can sit on 2 mana the whole game and basically not care, but you also look like one wasteland can leave you staring at a single bayou for a long long time.

[Jacob Orlove]

you can't dredge under uba.

Uba is a replacement effect. So is dredge. When two replacement effects would apply to your card draw, you get to choose which one actually happens. You do get to dredge under Uba.

[Liam-K]

My bad.  I had some conception about static effects taking precendence over optional ones.

[ReAnimator]

I'd just like to mention that Uba Mask totally kicks this deck in the nuts. Not only does getting your returning creatures into the graveyard become a serious problem, you can't dredge under uba. Your whole card advantage routine just breaks down and cries, which makes all your win conditions trash.

Not that it isn't a cool deck with potential.

I also want to question the mana base.  You look SERIOUSLY mana light.  I'm aware that you can sit on 2 mana the whole game and basically not care, but you also look like one wasteland can leave you staring at a single bayou for a long long time.

Fair enough, but having one bad match up because of one card that is only run in one deck that isn't played very much doesn't really scare me too much.
Uba mask does nothing to a resolved ZI or Mongrel at all. I don't think the match would be un-winnable though, discard and fast beats have potential game against everything. 
Uba Mask Does not stop Loam (as Jacob pointed out) which can go a long way towards keeping you in the game.
I don't think its a good match up at all but I would way rather have a bad match up to a rare deck like this as opposed to having no game vs Gifts or something more common (at least in my area).

As for the mana base I had no problems at all on the day. You are only ever one Loam away from not caring about wasteland ever again (barring crucible) Also like with dragon if they waste a land instead of your bazaar thats awesome especially in a deck with a mana curve that stops at 2.
Remember you are the aggressor if your opponent wastelands you they are setting themselves back in tempo. If they hit a land or two instead of a bazaar it's really going to bite them in the ass as soon as you get a loam off and you start wasting back every turn.
You have 3 basics 3 moxes and 4 fetchlands plus Loam that is hardly a vulnerable manabase to my eyes.
Its possible that you are right but I guess testing will bear that out.

[Liam-K]

Loam is great against waste when you can ge back up to 2 mana, but if you can get back up to 2 mana you already don't care about waste.  The problem I forsee is getting stripped turn 1 or 2 and then doing 2 turns of draw-go while your opponent wins.

[ReAnimator]

Loam is great against waste when you can ge back up to 2 mana, but if you can get back up to 2 mana you already don't care about waste. The problem I forsee is getting stripped turn 1 or 2 and then doing 2 turns of draw-go while your opponent wins.

Your basing this solely on theory and you failed to address the other 4 points in my earlier post. It really is better illustrated when you play the deck.
Half the mana sources are un-wastable, thats the same or more than stax, dragon, GOath, and others.
and as i also said sometimes an early waste can play into your gameplan especially if you have a bazaar going.

[Liam-K]

Actually I'm basing it on the random MWS opponent I ran into today with your list.  I was running uba stax and we played a 2/3, I won both games through a crushing early advantage from wasteland and uba mask.  It seems like the deck just has problems with disruption because it doesn't have the brokenness to catch up.

Granted this is 2 games against an unknown opponent but it seemed like there was a problem there when he just plain couldn't play his cards.

He then proceeded to walk all over me with this gifts/slaver hybrid thing and was able to have an intelligent discussion about card choices in it so I am not going to put his losses down to being terrible either.

[Vreak]

I thought about this deck a little and my first concern was, that it really looks not very strong against non control based decks.
By that I mean a very fast combo deck, like good old TPS, or something comparable must totally wreck this deck into pieces, because you just can't really do anything against a first or second round kill.
I also suppose, that your matchup against fast aggro decks like FCG is not good either.

Don't get me wrong, i really like the deck and you know your metagame and what kinds of decks run around there, but I just wanted to point out, that in a different environment it probably wouldn't be viable.

[knickers]

This deck won a tournament in Canada ...
We should dismiss the decklist right away, and burn all traces of its existance ... [/sarcasm]
heh

Good job man, and congrads on the win!
Glad to see some pretty neat decks winning ...

Also, what are your thoughts on Darkblast?