WRENN&SEISMIC ASSAULT (Full Primer)

Modern Competitive Control Dredge Land Destruction Loam RG (Gruul)

elpokitolama

Land (27)

• 3x Arid Mesa
• 2x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 3x Copperline Gorge
• 1x Forest
• 4x Forgotten Cave
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Sheltered Thicket
• 4x Stomping Ground
• 3x Tranquil Thicket
• 4x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (11)

• 3x Cathartic Reunion
• 4x Life from the Loam
• 4x Magmatic Insight

Enchantment (6)

• 2x Molten Vortex
• 4x Seismic Assault

Planeswalker (4)

• 4x Wrenn and Six

Creature (8)

• 4x Arboreal Grazer
• 4x Ruination Rioter

Instant (4)

• 3x Lightning Bolt
• 1x Magma Spray

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Sideboard

Artifact (7)

• 3x Damping Sphere
• 2x Grafdigger's Cage
• 2x Pithing Needle

Land (1)

• 1x Bojuka Bog

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Ayula's Influence
• 2x Cindervines

Instant (1)

• 1x Destructive Revelry

Creature (1)

• 1x Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Anger of the Gods

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Maybeboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Ore-Scale Guardian

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Now without obvious bad puns that would make you cringe !

If you like the deck, please click here to discard a land card and throw that upvote at your opponent's face !

*(Pictured: a **very** unhappy Wrenn on her way to burn Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis to the ground for stealing **her** spot as n°1 hype card of MH1)*

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Good evening/morning/whatever's in between ladies and gentle lamas, I am finally back for MH1 woke me up from my deckbuilding slumber!

But let's not *delve* any further on this subject since you all came here not to hear about me, but about the hypest legendary card in the set... No, not that stupid, rotten, crumbling, food for sacrifice of Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. I'm obviously talking about Wrenn and Six, the 2 cmc walker who shows that Tibalt wasn't bad because he was at a low cmc, but only because he was, well, Tibalt.

Modern Horizons despite what may have been said about it really deserves its name. This new set single handedly made this archetype not only playable, but viable. 1-mana cycle lands to fuel Life from the Loam or dig for Seismic Assault. We also have a free, but lower impact loam in the very cheap and oh so important Wrenn and Six as well as pinging 3 toughness creatures who would survive a Mountain thrown at their faces with Assault.

So, what's the gameplan? Basically, survive until we can achieve the Seismic Asault + Life from the Loam lock. Once achieved, it becomes very hard to win the games as it deals with walkers, creatures and eventually players themselves. There are also a few other possible locks which can be achieved with Ghost Quarter and Blast Zone in order to control the game until you can assault your opponent to death... or just yeet a 20 lands loaded Ruination Rioter to their face.

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2.1.The combos

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Loam assault is a wonderful deck full of very interesting synergies, most of which revolving around Life from the Loam and Wrenn and Six:

• Loam/Wrenn + Faithless Looting/Cathartic Reunion: pitching lands for additional value. Note: pitching loam to dredge it immediately with Reunion is a must. Youc an also just pitch it to value and choose tor ecur it at a later date.

• Loam/Wrenn + Seismic Assault / Molten Vortex: the stronger Punishing Fire, dealing 6 damages each turn on whatever's in front of you.

• Loam/Wrenn + Blast Zone: permanents are overrated anyway. Be careful when using it with Wrenn, she can die to it !

• Loam/Wrenn + Ghost Quarter: any deck that would happen to be low on basics in awfully weak to that one. Be careful not to use it on decks full of these, because you will only filter your opponent's deck.

• Loam/Wrenn + Sheltered Thicket/Forgotten Cave/Tranquil Thicket: cantrip through your deck to get to your win conditions. Added value in recurring Loam during your turn: 5 mana nets your 10 damages with Assault out and now lands in hand (cast loam once, gets back any two lands + a cycle one, pitch the two lands to assault, dredge loam with the cycle, throw all 3 away again).

• Seismic Assault + Ruination Rioter: the Rioter's perfect thoughness helps dealing a fatal, 10 damages blow for just a single land.

2.2.Controling the game

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As you have most likely noticed, this deck's gameplan while very sturdy and packed with its fair share of inevitability is fairly slow in a crazy fast format. Controlling the pace of the game will be an absolute necessity in order to assemble Wrenn/Loam + Vortex/Assault and lock your opponent from ever having a creature again.

As such, we play red based removal like Lightning Bolt. While bolt isn't as prevalent as it used to, it is still one hell of a card against Humans, UW control (now running too much walkers for its own good), infect... and the list is quite long. We also run Magman Spray to deal with graveyard based creatures. Then, Seismic Assault and Molten Vortex are the top end of our creature-murdering package and should be able to close out most games.

After that, we've got two important cards: Ghost Quarter and Blast Zone. The fact that we can mindlessly abuse them with Life from the Loam is no joke. These are our best tools to deal with troublesome permanents such as Altar of Dementia or Rest in Peace (at the expense of the sacrified land, sadly).

When it comes to pacing, Arboreal Grazer really helps the deck a lot by ramping and blocking for a single mana. Ruination Rioter is even better at that job, as the menace of an additional removal often deters opponents from attacking with anything that would be able to kill him.

2.3.Using the cards at their full potential

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Let's take a look at several cards which use can be optimized for additional value.

• Cathartic Reunion and Faithless Looting: most of the time, you don't risk anything by binning lands and loams while digging. You can find either of these fairly easily, so don't be shy on the discard! Plus, you can discard Loam to Reunion and dredge it at the same time (but do it only on the third draw, you don't really want to dredge to find a second loam in your hand).

• Arboreal Grazer: this little boi is most of the times only really useful in the early game for ramp purposes, but don't go for his land drop when you have more than 5 lands already on the field. The deck doesn't really need more than that to function at full speed, so you'd better keep some in the hand for Looting/Assault pitching. Remember: unlike Ghost Quarter and Blast Zone, you can't get back a land to your hand if you put it on the battlefield.

• Ruination Rioter: this card is an amazing "oops, I win" but also a fine control tool against decks like who run tons of creatures or any kind of removal that do not exile. As such, play fairly conservatively with them against decks like UW control, because you certainly do not want it to fly under a Settle the Wreckage. Remember that using a bolt to deal 4-10 damages with his death trigger is much more interesting than getting a basic land out of your deck.

• Forgotten Cave/Tranquil Thicket: playing these lands may seem tempting, but try to keep them in your hand as long as possible to keep their cycling value. There are however a few synergies to be aware of: Arboreal Grazer puts a land on the battlefield tapped, so if you need to get that last red source to get your sweet turn 2/3 Seismic Assault... Well, go for it.

• Why Molten Vortex instead of Ayula's Influence? Well, simply put because in current modern removal is more important than creatures. It's a very good turn 1 and a nice substitute to Seismic Assault, but as soon as the second one gets on the battlefield it becomes food for lootings. Plus, it's very, very good at dealing with that damn Meddling Mage due to the lack of representation of the card.

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The sideboard is still a work in progress, so expect this section to be under construction for a while.

As you can see, this is quite an unconventionnal Loam deck. Most loam decks are Jund-colored for extremely potent cards like Raven's Crime, Worm Harvest (which I could run and is considered as a sideboard option for now), Thoughtseize... Or anything Jund could actually run. I've chosen to stay gruul in order to maximise the odds of actually making the gameplan work instead of diluting it with elements I care very few about when trying to win the game. This also calms the already high wonkiness of the manabase, which would become completely unreliable if a third color happened to be added to it. Triple red for Assault is much harsher than one may think.

Another important one is my decision to not run Ayula's Influence in the 60. It's too slow for most match-ups, and interaction/direct damage in more important than creatures in this format. I keep one copy in sideboard to try it out against creature-based decks, but for now it doesn't seem worth the inclusion.

I also build the deck kinda following the turbo xerox rule, considering all 8 cycle lands to be cantrips. That's why I've got 20 + 7 lands around in what would have otherwise been a 24 lands deck. ;)

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If you liked the deck, please click here to discard a land card and throw that upvote at your opponent's face !

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 months
Exclude colors	WUB
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 1 Mythic Rares 27 - 9 Rares 15 - 4 Uncommons 11 - 1 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.70
Tokens	Bear 2/2 G, Emblem Wrenn and Six
Folders	Urza artifacts, MDN Ideas, A Very Cool Modern Folder, loamloam, Noted, Modern, Modern Decks, Loam assault ideas, Modern