4 Goblin LackeyI originally had another Pyrokinesis and one fewer Chalice of the Void in the board. I arrived at the final list after taking a test drive the Thursday before the event at my local shop. I beat 3 fair decks and lost to some sort of combo deck. I forgot my notebook for the warm-up tourney so I don't have details, sadly.
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Matron
2 Mogg War Marshal
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Gempalm Incinerator
2 Stingscourger
1 Goblin Chieftain
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Æther Vial
8 Mountain
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Rishadan Port
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
Sideboard:
1 Surgical Extraction
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
2 Pyrokinesis
1 Umezawa's Jitte
I'm not going to give a tournament report for the Open in this post--I was originally going to, but as I wrote it turned into a deck primer for Mono-Red Goblins, and I don't want to dilute that by adding in content that will get dated far before the rest of the post. So on to the deck.
I had been on Red-Black for quite some time. The incentives to splash Black are maindeck Warren Weirding and a plethora of sideboard options, most importantly Wort, Boggart Auntie for the mirror and Perish against Tarmogoyfs, Knight of the Reliquaries, and Progenituses. You also have access to disruption like Duress if you like.
The reason to be Mono-Red is that, as one might expect, the incentives to go Black aren't as exciting as they once were or can be roughly substituted by Red cards at little loss. You also get better mana, which is sort of relevant. One thing I noticed about the addition of Cavern of Souls is that it makes it harder to cycle Gempalm Incinerator and makes you more vulnerable to Wasteland. You want your Red sources to stick around, which means Mountains over Badlands.
In addition, the decks trying to sneak guys into play are playing fewer Eldrazi and Ionas and more Griselbrands. This means that Stingscourger is a suitable replacement for Warren Weirding. On top of that it's better to put the fattie back in the Reanimator player's hand rather than the Graveyard, although post-board they have Show and Tell.
You basically always want to have either an Æther Vial or a Lackey in your opening hand to accelerate you. I could see keeping a hand without either if I were on the play and knew what I was playing against, but in general you need one of those two cards to (a) resolve your spells through countermagic (if Lackey/Vial resolves, great, if it doesn't, that's one fewer counter to fight through) and (b) be fast enough to keep up with the speed of the format. Hopefully then you can start putting goblins into play for free, usually first Matron and Ringleader and later Siege-Gang or Krenko. That this is a Red creature deck, and that it was usually the beatdown in Standard incarnations, often makes people think Legacy Goblins is an aggro deck. It's not. You will be the control deck in most of your matchups, and your plan is to grind out resource advantage. Sometimes you'll "oops I win" by hitting Siege-Gang on your second turn, but that's not how most games go.
The "core" of the deck is the triad of Goblin Warchief, Goblin Matron, and Goblin Ringleader. I occasionally see people playing less that 4 of each and I'm very certain they're wrong. I occasionally side down to 3 Ringleaders if I need to bring down my mana curve and have no idea what else to take out, but I would never go below 3 and siding out the 4th is probably just wrong. I guess there's always an exception, so never say never, but if you want your deck to operate these are the things that have to be there.
Goblin Warchief is Ruby Medalion and Fires of Yavimaya on a hasty bear. The turn after you play him is usually explosive. Often you'll have a 4 or 5 drop you can't cast until he's in play. Other times you'll be able to play a Goblin Matron and the thing you tutored for in the same turn. If you get Piledriver, that's 6 power out of nowhere. Hasty Sharpshooter is important. God forbid you have multiple Piledrivers or a Piledriver and a War Marshal. And if you have Krenko, your opponent should probably just scoop.
You have a package of tutor targets to go get with Goblin Matron. Despite this, very often the correct play is to just find Ringleader. You need to balance holding on to the Matron to answer a specific threat (this deck's version of being patient with Brainstorm) against finding Ringleaders and advancing your gameplan.
Goblin Ringleader is the focal point of most games as they play out. Before you resolve a Ringleader, your goal is to survive until you resolve Ringleader. After you resolve Ringleader, your goal is to overwhelm your opponent with the resulting card advantage.
The Gempalms and the Stingscourgers are fairly straightforward--this is your suite of spot removal. I do want to point out two wrinkles. Sometimes your opponent will have goblins (most commonly Goblin Guide and dudes in the mirror), so be aware that Gempalm counts all goblins. Also, it will sometimes be correct to use Stingscourger to bounce your own guy to recycle the comes-into-play effect.
Goblin Piledriver can create a lot of damage out of nowhere. Despite this, he will come out in a lot of matchups because you're playing the control role and he beats down. When you side him out, leave one in as a tutor target. This is a good rule in general for sideboarding with this deck--try to leave singleton copies of cards if you think they have any chance of being potentially useful. The other thing to note about Piledriver is that protection from blue is often relevant but easily forgotten. One of the only ways Merfolk can beat you is to get a Jitte on a guy, and blocking with Piledriver prevents the Jitte from adding counters as the equipped creature will not deal damage to the Piledriver.
I used to play Warren Instigator over Mogg War Marshal. This was probably wrong. You have a hard time dealing with early Tarmogoyfs and being able to block three times essentially solves that problem. War Marshal also makes your Gempalms more reliable and can lead to draws where you tutor up Goblin Chieftain and kill them with a horde of 2/2s. War Marshal also plays well with newcomer Krenko, Mob Boss but that's really just gravy.
Siege-Gang Commander is your haymaker punch. He's sort of a hybrid Inferno Titan/Grave Titan. If the game has gone long enough that you can get him into play, or if you lucksacked into him off of Lackey, it will be very difficult for your opponent to recover. He can also sort of perform as an ersatz Ringleader in that he will put you way up on cards if he resolves. He gives you reach through cards like Moat, Glacial Chasm, Blazing Archon, and Propoganda. An important trick to know with this guy is that if you can use him to keep counters off of Jitte by blocking the equipped creature with a token and then sacrificing it. You can also prevent lifelink from happening in the same way. Usually this will involve Batterskull or Wurmcoil Engine.
That leaves the singletons.
Tuktuk Scrapper is there almost exclusively to kill Umezawa's Jitte. The card gives the deck fits. You're trying to eek out these marginal advantages with 1/1s and 2/2s that cantrip or better, and Jitte undoes all of it quickly and at low cost. Sometimes you will hit a Batterskull, but if that was all we were worried about Goblin Tinkerer might be better. Tin Street Hooligan is available if you want to be Green, but who wants to be Green?
Krenko, Mob Boss will win the game on his own if unchecked. He's your MVP against decks that want to play fair and don't run a lot of removal. Okay, so I just described Maverick and basically nothing else--but he's still amazing in other matchups once you've made them use a few kill spells on Lackey, Piledriver and the like. If you get him down with Goblin Chieftain, you can feel like you're playing Standard!
Goblin Chieftain is sort of your fifth lord. In most situations, he's not as good as Warchief, but in other's he's better. If your draw has War Marshal, Siege-Gang, or Krenko, it's nice to be able to tutor up this guy. He also helps you be able to actually kill things by blocking as opposed to just chumping with 1/1s for years. He has haste himself, but it's often correct to play him like an Anthem and keep him out of the red zone where he might die tragically. Back in the day you used to want this guy to end the mirror match:
...but you had to be careful not to get blown out by Pryokinesis. Ditto with Goblin Chieftain. Try not to turn their Lightning Bolt (or worse, their Gempalm Incinerator) into a Plague Wind when you use this guy.
I saved the best for last. Goblin Sharpshooter is my favorite Magic card by a mile. Oh, the fun we used to have, killing control players from 30 life through Story Circle! Oh, the joy of watching our opponent go from confused to incredulous as we kill them through Moat, one ping at a time. He's Blood Seeker. He's Prodigal Pyromancer. He's Curse of Death's Hold. He's Orcish Oriflamme. He's Hellrider. Really, what can't this guy do? So obviously you want to make sure you don't miss triggers. Remember that if multiple guys die at once, you get multiple untap triggers that all go on the stack together. But that's just the basic stuff. You can go real deep with a Sharpshooter.
Here's one that always confuses people--attack with your 2 power guy into their 4 toughness guy. They will usually bite and block. Then ping their guy. Then let damage resolve. Then ping their guy again. Goblin Sharpshooter, in addition to all the other things I've mentioned, is also basically Goblin Burrows with no activation cost.
You can kill your own Goblins to keep them off Jitte counters or to stop them from gaining life with lifelink creatures. You can kill your own Goblins to git rid of Bridge from Below.
Things get bonkers with Siege-Gang, of course. You also have two guys with Echo that can get you triggers if need be. Some lists also play a Skirk Prospector; he turns your Sharpshooter into Raid Bombardment with upside. Some lists play Kiki-Jiki. If you thought one Sharpshooter was nuts, imagine two. And the token dies to untap your real one!
My point being, there are a lot of problems that only Sharpshooter can solve for you, and often times you will be aware of interactions that your opponent doesn't see. More than any other card you have, Sharpshooter rewards you for having experience with the deck. When you have an active Sharpshooter, assume that your opponent is basically already dead and then try to figure out exactly how.
I haven't talked much about the lands yet. A lot of modern Goblins lists are eschewing Rishadan Port. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, you've added 4 lands to your deck (Cavern of Souls) that don't cycle Gempalms and do die to Wasteland; something has to give. On the other hand, sometimes they just give you free wins by locking your opponent out of a color (Green is usually a good one to keep them off as most of their Green cards will be Sorcery speed) or out of main phase mana entirely. I played 3 in the Open, I would probably go down to 2 in retrospect. I played a few fetchlands to avoid flooding late and to bluff that I had a second color. Over the years the deck has spashed White for Swords, Green for Tin Street Hooligan and Tranquil Domain, Black for the reasons discussed above, and now we're seeing Blue for Phantasmal Image.
I've been wanting a singleton Tarfire and a singleton Kiki-Jiki in the main as tutor targets, but I can't really find room.
So, the sideboard. Basically, you have a good matchup with the fair decks, but you want something for the mirror and something to make sure you get better against the fair decks post board because they'll be getting better against you. I played Jitte and 2 Pyrokinesis. The Jitte is good both as a Jitte and as Jitte removal. One of the only ways you lose to fair decks is them having an active Jitte. Some people have been playing Pyrokinesis main. That may be correct sometimes, I'm not sure. I'd have to try it out. The standard number to run in the board is 3, I cut down to 2 which may have been a bit greedy.
So once you have a few slots set aside to help you in matchups with creature battles, you basically get to pick two unfair decks that you want to beat, three if two of them are Dredge and Reanimator.
Most of the successful lists these days are playing six pieces of graveyard hate or more. I really wanted to be able to interact with graveyard decks on turn zero, ergo the Faerie Macabres and the Surgical Extraction. Relic isn't really that much slower than Tormod's Crypt, so I ran two. When I was playing Black, I had Leyline of the Void in the sideboard. You can still play it when you're not Black, but it's better if you are since that way it's not dead if you draw into it later.
The Pyroblast and the Red Elemental Blasts are pretty flexible. You want them against Reanimator to stop Show and Tell after boards. They also counter Brainstorms and Ponders, which I hear are the best cards in the format. This helps you against decks like Storm. They're basically Vindicates against Merfolk, although that may be the deck's best matchup already. They're good against RUG delver because they can kill Insectile Aberration and counter Force of Will, although you probably don't want all 4. They're obviously good against High Tide if you run into that. The reason for the 3-1 split is to dodge things like Meddling Mage and Cabal Therapy. One caveat is that you can change the target of Pyroblast to something that isn't blue, whereas this is not the case for Red Elemental Blast. Might be relevant if you play Phantasmal Image or something, and your opponent has Misdirect.
The two Chalices are just excellent against a large number of decks. Pretty much any combo deck hates Chalice on 1; Chalice on 0 is good against decks with LED and Lotus Petal and locks out Cascade Combo (Hypergenesis, Living End, okay mostly just Hypergenesis) pretty well. RUG Delver has precisely Tarmogoyf that doesn't cost one mana. You have Vial and Lackey, but the Lackies you can force through with Cavern of Souls and the Vials you don't care about as much when Chalice is slowing them down.
A word about matchups before I go.
You want to play Merfolk, control decks (BUG, Countertop, etc), Stoneblade, and Maverick. Basically if the other deck's plan is to play fair and maybe Force of Will some stuff, you're golden.
RUG is probably still good for you but much closer to even than the matchups above. The times I've run into trouble, it's because they draw a lot of Lightning Bolts, Forked Bolts, and Chain Lightnings and I can't get up to critical mass to kill their guys with Gempalms or even block to stay alive. This makes the matchup build dependent in terms of how much cheap removal they have, with Forked Bolt being especially bad. If they're on Spell Pierce, that's good for you. Zoo (Kird Ape, Wild Nacatl, and friends) doesn't see much play these days but it's similar to the RUG matchup except worse for you as they have fewer dead counterspells and more three toughness guys it's hard for you to kill.
Burn and Dredge are bad matchups but not very bad. Your combo matchup is bad, and these decks play like the "true" combo decks but a bit slower.
Ad Nauseam Tendrils/Past in Flames or similar are tough. See also High Tide and Goblin Charbelcher. You will almost never win game 1, and you have to mulligan aggressively in the follow up games.
If you're planning to win a tournament, you want to play on a day when Merfolk is popular and then dodge combo for the first two or three rounds. Alternatively, play on a day when Maverick is popular and dodge the combo decks in the last few rounds. You can steal a win here and there from the unfair decks, but it's hard. It's much easier to X-2 with this deck than with other choices, but comparatively harder to X-1-1. Generally speaking it's a good pick if you want to money, make day 2, etc, but you need to get luckier than usual to win an event outright.
The real reason to play the deck, though, is that it is amazingly fun to play. It mulligans well, is very synergistic with lots of fun little interactions, is relatively low-variance, rewards planning, and rewards having experience with the deck. I'm less than thrilled that Standard is about blind flipping Delvers and miracle-ing Bonfire of the Damned, making Goblins a pleasant break from the PTQ season that just finished.
Next time I'll write about my Open experience and about M13 Limited. See you then.
