Well, I guess its time I through my hat in. Been playin various other decks (Merfolk, D+T, MBC, Pox), but I have been randomly picking up gobbo pieces over the years.Originally Posted by GoboLord
Still, it appears to me that there are more people starting with the deck than ever before (which I find really, really cool).
Here is the list I will start my testing with, any help from the experienced Goblins players would be appreciated. My meta is mostly control and combo decks, with the only real aggro threat being the occasional Zoo or Burn player. Excallibur, AnT, High Tide, MW Staxx, NO Bant, and Ichorid will be there as well.
3 Wastelands (#4 will replace one of the Mountains)
3 Rishadan Ports
7 Fetches
10 Mountains
26 Core
3 Gempalm Incinerator
3 Goblin Chieftain
2 Stingscourger
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Lightning Crafter
SB
1 Kiki-Jiki
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Mindbreak Trap
1 Vexing Shusher
1 Shattering Spree
Goblins might not be the best choice in that meta...many of those decks are bad matches for us.
This is why I finally decided to give this deck a try. I saw alot of people selling Goblin packages online and got a sweet deal of core goblins from my team mate. I'm lazy in buying individual cards to build a deck from scratch. Goblins has been there since the beginning of the format and it's resiliency thru the ages made me want to try out this archetype.
What would replace Weirding in mono R builds aside from Gempalm Incinerators? I was thinking of something similar (8 BR lands like Sulfurous Springs or Dragonskull Summit with Auntie's Hovel) since it would take me a while to get Badlands and Fetches.
Kabayan ikaw pala ang nakakuha ng gobs ni Louiehehe pag mono red ang built ang kapalit ng weirding ay stingscourger. That was my built before
My buddy and I have been messing around with his goblin deck to try to improve some matches. We've decided that the white splash is pretty strong.
White splash gives two main advantages over any other.
1) Anti-combo sideboard
2) Mirror entity as a huge midgame beater
3) Keeps targeted removal in the main (Crib swap)
In combination with adding a few lords to the deck it has become scary blocking goblins (normally you can chump block them easily).
Anyone have any opinions on this?
Hehe. Yup, Kulang ng Manadenial lands (Waste / Port) at Vial pero good start na rin since 8-12 cards na lang naman kumpleto na. So I guess I'll start with 4 Gempalm Incinerators, 4 Stingscourgers and 4 Mogg War Marshall on my initial flex slots. Thanks!Kabayan ikaw pala ang nakakuha ng gobs ni Louie
The cards you have presented have discussed several times in the old thread, if you haven't read those, I suggest you do. There have been pretty good arguments stated there.
Regarding Mirror Entity, I think as mana hungry as the deck as it is, mana is better spent elsewhere. Although it can have the potential to kill plump merfolks, and also have a positive interaction with Lord of Antlantis.
With Crib Swap, I think the card is better now since StP has been neutralized by MM.
Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Pyrokinesis
1 Tin Street Hooligan
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
2 Shattering Spree
Played a 5 round tournament with the above decklist tonight. I went 4-0 and drew the last round, but played it for fun and lost. The top 4 split the money, so it didn't matter, but the deck did very well tonight.
R1 - Goblins
G1 - I kept an opening hand with a Mental Misstep and Aether Vial. My opponent never played a 1 drop this game. He also got overextended on his attacks, making it easy for me to get Lackeys through. i won that game with 2 MMs in my closing hand.
G2- I sided out some MMs for Pyros and Sharpshooter. This game he actually had a 1 drop and was able to connect with his Lackey to play a Chieftain. I used Vial and Gempalms to even out the board, then used Pyros to gain the edge. 2 SCGs in a row was the nail in the coffin.
1-0
R2 - WRB Stoneforge Tempo
G1 - I was on the draw and on the defensive for the start of this game. Things didn't get too out of control until he landed a Batterskull I couldn't answer. Toward the end of the game I let him resolve a Lavamancer despite having a MM in hand. He probably would have won anyway, but that spelled the end for me.
G2- In came the Pyros and another TSH. I took control early this game. I landed a vial then successfully killed his Revoker, and took it home soon thereafter.
G3- More of the same from G2. He made a big mistake when he let my Vial resolve because He had a Revoker in hand. Once again, I had an answer for the Revoker and swarmed him soon thereafter.
2-0
R3 - Monoblack
G1 - I was on the play. Mountain, Lackey, Go. My hand was Piledriver, Chieftain, and 3 lands and MM. He Thoughtseized me. I MMed it. I connected with Lackey next turn for Chieftain and cast Piledriver. His manabase was built around Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers, so it was pretty easy to keep him from mounting an offensive with Wastelands and Ports.
G2- I sided in nothing, since I only saw Thoughtseize last game. He managed to get 2 coffers and an Urborg in play this game, but I shut his Coffers down with 2 Ports each turn while eating away at his life total.
3-0
R4- Zoo
G1- I Gempalmed his Lavamancer, then Wasted his lone dual. by the time he has 2 mana sources it's too late for him. I'm swinging for lethal and when he paths my Chieftain I MM it.
G2- I MMed his T1 Lavanancer, then played Lackey. I then Pyroed his T2 Nacatl and Wasted his only colored mana source, and won soon thereafter. He was slightly manascrewed G1 and super screwed G2. but I'll take the win regardless.
4-0
R5- Reanimator
G1- We were only playing for fun at this point, so it got a little sloppy. He landed the beast that gives his guys +2/+2 and mine -2/-2. I scooped, since there was no way for me to resolve a creature anymore. Once I scooped I realized I had outs in Stingscourger, and I should have stuck around.
G2- I sided in TSH because he had Platinum Angel (or whichever one keeps him from losing), and I also sided in 4 Leylines. No Leylines or MMs in my opening hand. Sad. He landed the -2/-2 guy again, but I cast a Matron which he didn't Force. Mistake! I fetched up Stingscourger and Vialed it in, bouncing his guy. I then used Port to keep him off black mana and won from there.
G3- I had to mull to 6 and had a decent hand with Vial and MM, but no Leylines or Ports (which would have been the bomb). I cast Vial. He Brainstorms in response. I MM his Brainstorm. He MMs my MM. Brainstorm resolves and he Forces my Vial. I resolve another Vial the next turn. His next turn he casts Animate Dead on Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur. I have 1 turn to make something happen. I have Stingscourger in my hand, but Vial is only at 1 and he has the Force. GG.
4-1, $21 for my troubles.
I fishbowled with this deck a lot the past week, and it seems that MM really brings down Ringleader's effectiveness. Still, Ringleader only blanked once over the course of the day. MM was weird in that the only deck it blanked against for me was the Goblins mirror! Pyrokinesis was just so much better. Pyrokinesis was the real hero of the day. It was killing Batterskulls and Nacatls left and right. What a great card. It's pretty easy to use too. Just remember that you only want to pitch gobbos to it that don't give you card advantage, like Lackey, Piledriver, or Warchief. So long as you pitch them, your Matrons and Ringleaders will get you back in the game.
Back to Mental Misstep. It was great against Zoo. It was a great answer to Lavamancer all day. Against the monoblack deck it prevented a Thoughtsieze from eating my hand and slowing my game down. Against Reanimator it gave me a solid chance to resolve the first Vial I cast in G3. All in all, it was fine. It wasn't amazing or game-changing, but it did well for itself.
The question now is whether or not those 4 slots would be better as Warren Weirdings or what-have-you. I think Weirding is still a great card, and i think my day would have gone better with its inclusion than Mental Misstep. But there is one card I'm certain about...
Rishadan Port is awesome. Just awesome. People try to do weird shit with their lands, and Port lets you shut them the hell down that much easier. I've tried the 1 Port, 2 Mox, 4 Instigator build, but it plain-old did not allow me to interact with my opponents the way I wanted to. Port is a beast that will eat your opponent's soul if you land a 1 drop and a T2 Port. That control aspect it allows you is far more effective than the explosive threat of WI. At least it is to the way I play.
So, I've now played 2 tournaments in a post- Mental Misstep world. The rumors of our death were very exaggerated. Including MM in Goblins was fun, but not enlightening. It didn't fundamentally change the way the deck played. The deck still wins by dropping a Lackey or Vial T1, using Wastes and Ports to slow our opponents' plays, generating massive card advantage, and playing trumps that can take care of our opponents' threats (Stingscourger, Pyrokinesis, Warren Weirding). Our worst MU (Combo) has been pushed out of the format. Slower, more manageable decks have filled the void. That's exactly what we prey on.
Try MM out for yourself. It works, but only small wonders.
Thanks for the report! I've been curious about Mental Misstep in goblins and it's nice to see some results.
Do you feel like Warren Instigator would have been useful in any of these matches? It seems you didn't catch any of the blue decks which is where he has really shined for me.
Also, about Misstep - the real question is if you would run it again. The feeling I get from your report is that it has a few niche uses and is otherwise great in the Zoo match-up. I wonder if you would have posted the same results using those 4 slots for some goblins and taking the aggressive path.
As I said a few posts earlier:
Tinkerer is usually considered worse than TukTuk Scrapper or Tin-Street Hooligan, at least, if its your only anti-artifact. Having to wait a turn to activate if you don't have a Warchief can be really harsh, espeically if you're facing down something like a Jitte (which can kill your Warchief in response to the Tinkerer, and then next turn kill your Tinkerer).
If you're going without green and you're only going to run one anti-artifact goblin, I would choose TukTuk.
I'll add my voice to this too - I used Tinkerer in a tournament a month or so back and this is exactly what happened. My opponent was surprised at the MD artifact hate, but he was also able to easily deal with it before I could make use of it. I run TukTuk now and haven't looked back.
Anti-artifact goblin according to rank:
1. Tin-Street Hooligan - best anti artifact goblin if u have green splash, u could use him first turn with cmox/ 2nd turn . . . but cannot use his ability when vialed/lackey connects.
2. TukTuk Scrapper - I ran these on my MonoR built & BR built, works great bec. u can vial him/lackey if connects.... but hard casting him without warchief in play sometimes suck but this is the best choice without the green splash.
3. Goblin Tinkerer - Talanos is right (Having to wait a turn to activate if you don't have a Warchief can be really harsh) thus he ranked 3rd in my list
4. Goblin Vandal - No more explanations needed here . . .
Just a question out of personal curiosity, how often does Warren Instigator see play in this deck? Watching the newest episode of The Magic Show, Evan obviously overestimated how much play that card would see in Legacy. I can't recall ever seeing anyone cast it, myself.
I placed top 8 with a list supporting two Warren Instigators (and 3 Goblin Chieftains) during a GP Madrid qualifier. A friend of mine recently top 8ed with a full set of both cards and barely missed top 8 on the tournament after that.
I personally dropped Instigator from my lists in favour of Mental Missteps.
I'm running the following sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Pyrokinesis
3 Chaos Warp
1 Boartusk Liege
I run two Instigators at the moment and he has been quite good for me. It's a nice turn two play after a Misstep on Lackey and it's always a threat that must be dealt with.
Personally, I think people underestimate him until they sit across the table from one and watch me swing for two and drop Matron into Siege-gang for free.
Damn, I was thinking it was time to sleeve up this deck. Well, time to look for a more compatable deck for my meta then.
PRIMER-UPDATE: June 26th, 2011
* Renamed "7. Untested and bad cards" in "7. Testing the limits"
* Renamed "Untested cards" in '"To-be-tested"-corner' (in order to list not only cards but also card-interactions)
* added "Blood Moon vs. Magus of the Moon"; "Mental Misstep in MD vs. Mental Misstep in SB" and "Chaos Warp" to the above mentioned paragraph
* positioned Mental Misstep from "Untested cards" to "Tested cards that have proven to be useful" with referrence to jwr's last tournament-report
* added Ancient Grudge to "4.4 Others aka. “Hate it Your Way”"
MountainCaverns, Lackey, Go.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchanges our apples, we each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange our ideas, we each have two ideas.
I placed Top 4 at a SCG 5K with a 2 Instigators, 3 Chieftains build. They're both great cards but suffer from being redundant/underpowered. Instigator is just a slower Lackey, and Warchief is almost always preferable over Chieftain. Still, they can have a big effect on the game.
Mental Misstep
I'm looking forward to getting more games in with 4 MM in the main. I haven't seen enough evidence yet to really justify its inclusion, but it isn't clearly underpowered. I thought it performed very well against Goblins (it's only bad if your opponent misses a 1-drop, but if you make your 1-drop you should win anyway), very well against Zoo (stopped Lavamancer G1 and stopped a Path G2 ftw, though my opponent was manasrewed each game so it was sorta a "win-more" card there), it did well against discard (stopped one of the 2 goblins in my opening hand from being Thoughtseized), and well against Reanimator (I would have done better in games where i didn't have it had I drawn it, and in games where I did have it HE needed to have answers for it). Against Stoneforge, not so much, but Pyro was SO much better there anyway.
I found that with it, my opening hands felt stronger. Without it, it didn't really matter. The deck needs a strong hand with Vial or Lackey to do well anyway.
It seems to me that Mental Misstep makes goblins a little less vulnerable while also making Ringleaders a little worse. It makes you less vulnerable in that Goblins now has answers to removal, blockers, discard, Brainstorm, and MM. What's interesting though is that including MM doesn't change the way Goblins plays! You still rely on the core 26 to do what they do; MM just lets Goblins do it a little more consistently. You still really need a 1-drop and mana denial to press the action and keep your opponent on the defensive. You can't keep a hand because it has MM and a Matron. You still need the pieces Goblins has traditionally used to win. MM just allows you to protect those pieces, at the price of running 4 less goblins and thereby having less redundancy.
The dream hand is the same as it's always been:
Mountain/fetch, Waste/Port, 1-drop, Matron/Ringleader, Removal, Piledriver, and now MM. This is the same sort of hand that made us feel Godlike before, only now we can also get Misstep to protect said hand.
Goblins has always lived or died by its 1-drops. MM now gives us the opportunity to cast our 1-drop, then counter our opponents' 1-drop OR their answer. Think about the importance of this. We can now cast and protect our most important play of the game. We can now more consistently execute our most important play of the game without losing tempo.
While playing with MM our gameplan doesn't change. i still recommend mulling to a keepable hand WITH a 1-drop over a slower hand with no 1-drop and MM. This is because MM doesn't really do anything if it doesn't have something to protect. It does though, allow you to stop Lavamancer, which means you will have more time to develop your board position and slower starts will be more playable. MM really does give us a lot to consider.
For instance, mana light hands become WAY BETTER! You know those hands where you only have one land, but a 1-drop and lotsa gas? Those hands with a MM become twice as good because you now essentially have two 1-drops, only you don't lose tempo when playing them. Before MM, a one land hand was very risky unless you had two 1-drops in hand. If your Lackey gets Forced, you could still cast Vial. The problem was, you had lost Tempo. You didn't have a Lackey to attack with T2, and Vial was a turn behind on getting counters. MM is better than 1-drop redundancy in this regard, because it allows you to protect and use the 1-drop in your opening hand instead of relying on redundancy to land a 1-drop in play. That's a pretty significant tempo advantage, and it can really put your opponent too far behind to recover.
After the first turn MM isn't nearly as powerful, but it's still incredibly useful, namely against Brainstorm. Any effect we can use to prevent our opponents from sculpting their hands makes our raw card advantage that much better. And so it is against Brainstorm. Digging for that E Plague or piece of removal? Not today, junior. So while MM can't prevent mid-game effects, it does prevent the single greatest threat that helps our opponents find them.
That's it on my thoughts on playing MM after 1 tournament. It seems promising, more for the tempo boost than anything else.
Well presented jrw! I enjoyed reading that.
It's funny that the card over-hyped to make Goblins obsolete is actually a tool that lets us interact with decks in ways we never could.
How often would you board out the Missteps? Would goblins (Stingscourger, Tuktuk Scrapper, etc.) ever replace them?
Thanks for your insights, jrw!
As said before I will test Mental Misstep in my SB next weekend and write a tournament report that focusses on MMs application.
When you keep reporting about it's usefulness for MD and I' keep testing it's worth as a SB-card, we will soon have a very thorough bit of information on this card.
I'm looking forward to that =)
MountainCaverns, Lackey, Go.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchanges our apples, we each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange our ideas, we each have two ideas.
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