[Deck] Goblins

[ScatmanX]

@Diotram: Nice games man. Nice play G2. Thanks for the report.
G1 though, O think what costed yo the game was T1 as well. You had a slow hand, and you are playing against a sort of combo deck, but that can block. Lackey was unlikely to connect, and you would need those Vials to tick up pretty quick. So imo the tempo boost of Vial T1 would be better than the possibility of Lackey connecting.

[MGB]

So is there a way to make a build that exploits Goblin Dark Dwellers?

[Diotram]

@Diotram: Nice games man. Nice play G2. Thanks for the report.
G1 though, O think what costed yo the game was T1 as well. You had a slow hand, and you are playing against a sort of combo deck, but that can block. Lackey was unlikely to connect, and you would need those Vials to tick up pretty quick. So imo the tempo boost of Vial T1 would be better than the possibility of Lackey connecting.

Yeah, that may be right. Vial on the draw just seemed too slow against infect, so I went with the lackey turn 1. I actually wasn't trying to get lackey to connect, although that would have been nice. I was trying to get him to block/pump and waste his spells or creatures.

[goblinpiledriver]

So is there a way to make a build that exploits Goblin Dark Dwellers?

What would we be flashing back? Copies of warren weirding? Otherwise we are adding non-goblin spells to the deck to take advantage of his ability. I think at 5 mana we want to be doing things like siege gang.

[Chatto]

@ Diotram: congrats, thanks for the report. One remark: against Burn Chalice would be awesome (I've been on the receiving end, so speaking out of experience). Other than that, good run!

[ScatmanX]

Yeah, that may be right. Vial on the draw just seemed too slow against infect, so I went with the lackey turn 1. I actually wasn't trying to get lackey to connect, although that would have been nice. I was trying to get him to block/pump and waste his spells or creatures.

Yes. I agree that neither starts are amazing with your given hand. But Vial should give you a better fighting chance.

[Diotram]

@ Diotram: congrats, thanks for the report. One remark: against Burn Chalice would be awesome (I've been on the receiving end, so speaking out of experience). Other than that, good run!

Yeah, chalice is great against them. I would have definitely brought it in on the play. I was concerned that it would be too slow on the draw, and that half of their spells didn't cost 1. I also know my burn opponent pretty well and I assumed he would be bringing in smash against me.

[Chatto]

Yeah, chalice is great against them. I would have definitely brought it in on the play. I was concerned that it would be too slow on the draw, and that half of their spells didn't cost 1. I also know my burn opponent pretty well and I assumed he would be bringing in smash against me.

Aah, that makes sense!

[jrw1985]

I took JPR's list to a 40 player tourney last weekend. I just missed top 8 (9th) going 4-2.

R1 TES
G1 I hit his Burning Wish with Warping Wail and win from there.
G2 I put on a fast clock and he cannot kill me first. Win.

R2 Aggro Loam
G1 I Waste and Port him out of the game.
G2 i side incorrectly (as I have done multiple times now against Aggro Loam) and I bring in artifact hate rather than graveyard hate. I lost to PFire.
G3 I have an early Relic but no early pressure. Relic eats AD and PFire gets rolling again. Lose.

R3 Enchantress
G1 Earwig squad rips all his win cons and he scoops.
G2 Port keeps him tapped down and i build an overwhelming board. Win.

R4 Miracles
G1 He makes a big Entreat and I can't win.
G2 I make a Chalice @ 1 and that is enough.
G3 Again I have Chalice @ 1 which allows Sharpshooter to make easy work of Monk tokens and I win from there. Win.

R5 MonoG 12Post
G1 I lost to an Eldrazi.
G2 I had the sickest hand ever. I played T1 Waste>Vial. He played T1 Needle naming Wasteland. I played Chalice @ 1 T2 and Vialed in Lackey. I played 2 More Wastes and killed Needle with Tuktuk and left him with 1 Forest in play. It was pretty brutal.
G3 I kept a shit hand which was way too slow after mulling to 6. I get stuck on two lands with 3 and 4 drops in hand. I needed to keep mulling here. Speed is key in this matchup. Lose

R6 Burn
G1 Goblin Guide gives me two lands and I only take 2 damage from him thanks to Tarfire. The extra land helps me dump my hand and my opponent draws 6 lands so I win.
G2 I land a Chalice at 1 but my opponent plays all 4 Searing Blaze to keep me from presenting a clock and whittling me down. Rough loss there.
G3 I get Krenko going cray-cray and he has a more creature-centric attack, so I stabilize and win.

JPR's list was very good to me. Playing Ports again felt excellent and they did a lot of work. Warping Wail only came up once but when it did it stole G1 against Storm! The only thing I missed was a Blood Moon effect. JPR's sideboard is a little artifact/enchantment hate heavy, so I would maybe cut K-Grips or Ancient Grudge to make room for Blood Moon or Surgical Extraction, both of which would have helped my MUs. Also, I've noted before that there is always some sort of Lands deck in any tournament I go to, so it just makes sense to run BM in the sideboard.

[Chatto]

@ jrw: thanks for the report. I like to ask you some questions about Warping Wail:

- You said it only came up once: do you mean you only got to draw it once? Or did you cast it just this one time?
- Do you think WW is worth the second slot for consistency?

I like the card, but am having trouble finding room in my 75 for even one. Hell, I haven't even decided what colour or colours to splash

[GoblinTurkey]

So through my personal testing I have found that other than 4x Aether Vial we can get away with about 3-4x non goblin spells and still run optimally.

TLDR: Warping Wail is pretty solid, but still needs testing.

My current list splashes for white. My personal meta has lots of Burn, Dredge, and Storm. There are a couple Miracle, Shardless and Junk players.

Current List

4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Warchief
3 Goblin Piledriver
2 Skirk Prospector
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Goblin Chieftain
1 TukTuk Scrapper
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Stingscourger
1 Goblin Settler
1 Siege-Gang Commander

4 Aether Vial
1 Tarfire
3 Warping Wail

4 Mountain
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Plateau
4 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire


Sideboard

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Rest In Peace
2 Wear / Tear
2 Containment Priest
1 Boartusk Liege
1 Goblin Sharpshooter


I tested a bunch this past weekend against Miracles and Shardless Bug. I originally started with 2x Warping Wail, but after I exiled a Deathrite Shaman off of one and countered an Ancestral Visions, it was really evident how powerful the card was. (Also it counters Toxic Deluge and Maelstrom Pulse which is the only way Shardless can answer Krenko.)

In the Miracle matchups, I just stomped. Goblins is already really good against Miracles with our card advantage, tutors, shuffling and Cavern of Souls. But being able to counter a Terminus or Entreat felt awesome.

It is not a hard spell to cast due to running effectively 12x <> sources. Cavern of Souls actually becomes the most important land in the deck if you decide to run Warping Wail. The only time I found it a bad draw was when I was already losing (lots of removal and it shows up after the fact). But it felt about as bad as drawing a land or useless utility goblin in the matchup (you know who you are TukTuk Scrapper/Tin Street Hooligan). So I'll keep testing this weekend if I have the time.

[jrw1985]

@ jrw: thanks for the report. I like to ask you some questions about Warping Wail:

- You said it only came up once: do you mean you only got to draw it once? Or did you cast it just this one time?
- Do you think WW is worth the second slot for consistency?

I like the card, but am having trouble finding room in my 75 for even one. Hell, I haven't even decided what colour or colours to splash

I only drew Wail twice that tourney. I only cast it once. They second time I drew it I already had a hand stocked with Goblins and was way ahead.
Second slot? I don't know. I could see it replacing a Tarfire MD. GoblinTurkey seems pretty pleased with running three MD.

[GoblinTurkey]

Update on Warping Wail:

Tested more against Shardless this weekend.

Game 1: Goblins just does the goblin thing.
Turn 1 Lackey.
Turn 2 Lackey Swing and in comes Warchief and in comes a Port. Port down their land. They play DRS.
Turn 3 Draw Warping Wail. Play Piledriver and exile DRS using Warping Wail and swing in putting in Krenko. Next game

Game 2: Kept a solid hand with Vial, Lackey, Ringleader, and Tarfire with some Mountains and Cavern.
Turn 1 Vial. Gets countered
Turn 2 Lackey. They play DRS.
Turn 3 Play a chieftain and swing with both, DRS dies to Lackey. They shardless into a DRS
Turn 4 I tarfire the DRS and swing with Lackey. They respond with Abrupt Decay
Turn 5 I play matron and get Krenko. They manage to get Goyf, Shardless into Goyf.
I don't draw enough gas or blockers I lose.

Game 3: I get this game due to the opponent having minimal lands. But I managed to Warping Wail a Maelstrom Pulse which was pretty cool.

Overall I liked Warping Wail a lot more than Tarfire. But they are both important for their own reasons.

Hopefully I'll get some play in against storm next week and we shall see how it goes.

[jrw1985]

Update on Warping Wail: Tested more against Shardless this weekend. Game 1: Goblins just does the goblin thing. Turn 1 Lackey. Turn 2 Lackey Swing and in comes Warchief and in comes a Port. Port down their land. They play DRS. Turn 3 Draw Warping Wail. Play Piledriver and exile DRS using Warping Wail and swing in putting in Krenko. Next game Game 2: Kept a solid hand with Vial, Lackey, Ringleader, and Tarfire with some Mountains and Cavern. Turn 1 Vial. Gets countered Turn 2 Lackey. They play DRS. Turn 3 Play a chieftain and swing with both, DRS dies to Lackey. They shardless into a DRS Turn 4 I tarfire the DRS and swing with Lackey. They respond with Abrupt Decay Turn 5 I play matron and get Krenko. They manage to get Goyf, Shardless into Goyf. I don't draw enough gas or blockers I lose. Game 3: I get this game due to the opponent having minimal lands. But I managed to Warping Wail a Maelstrom Pulse which was pretty cool. Overall I liked Warping Wail a lot more than Tarfire. But they are both important for their own reasons. Hopefully I'll get some play in against storm next week and we shall see how it goes.

I wouldn't even bother testing against Storm. Against them WW is just a counterspell. It did just occur to me that Wail is pretty good against Belcher five years ago because it hits Wish AND kills Xantid Swarm! :) but onto what really matters: Wail gives you a T2 play against Storm that keeps them from winning. It plays perfectly off of T1 Lackey or Vial, just keeping Storm honest t2. T3 we can go back to mana denial and try to get the kill t4.

[jrw1985]

Alright kids, what's the correct number of Warping Wail to play? I'm thinking three. Here's why: I generally run six pieces of removal. WW can take up half those and still let me run a diversified removal package (in my case singletons of Tarfire, Gempalm and Stingscourger). So I will still have six pieces of removal for most of the format, plus three counterspells against combo. That will be a huge boon against combo while not costing me much except slightly less awesome Ringleaders. I could potentially run 4 also and just run 22 lands (last list was 23 lands). Potentially I could cut color splashes as well since I always felt B or W splashes were required to have a shot against combo. Well now we have a MD option against combo that is still strong against the rest of the field, so why splash B for Earwig Squad (especially since WW counters all Miracles)? My final reason for wanting to run three WWs is that there always seems to be three flex slots at the end of the day. WW fills those nicely.

What do you all think?

[Chatto]

I agree with cutting splash-colours, yet still like Green for Grip. Right now I'm testing two WW main. Still having doubt, and can see it going into my SB. So, still not sure about how many/ MD or SB...

[mrblueduck]

This is the list I played over at CFBs Quartely 2.5k. Ended up with a top 4 split. I don't think I would tweak anything in the main board right now, maybe change a SB card or two depending on what I was expecting.

7 Red Fetch
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Wasteland
3 Badlands
3 Mountains
2 Pendelhaven
4 Aether Vials
4 Tarfire
1 Warren Wierding
2 Pyrokinesis
4 Goblin Lackey
3 Mogg War Marshal
2 Warren Instigator
2 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Grenzo, Dungeon Warden
4 Goblin Matron
2 Goblin Chieftain
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Krenko, the Boss Himself
1 Goblin Settler
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker


SB
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Magus of the Moon
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Pyrokinesis
1 Thorn of Amethysth
1 Chains of Mephistopholes
1 Pyroblast
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Jitte


Rd 1 Showed up late, Match Loss
Rd 2 Miracles 2-0, Very Favorable match-up.
Rd 3 BUG Delver 2-1 Slightly Favorable to Even match-up
Rd 4 12 Post 2-0 Very Favorable match-up
Rd 5 MUD 2-0 Favorable-up
Rd 6 Goblins 2-0 Favorable-up
Rd 7 Merfolk 2-0 Favorable to Slightly Favorable match-up
Rd 8 T8 4 Color Delver 2-0 Slightly Favorable match-up
Rd 4 T4 Burn Split Even to Slightly Unfavorable match-up

Not sure I would want to include warping wail. If you want to improve your storm match up that much you should dedicate a lot of SB slots for it, run Thalia in the main, move cabal therapy into the main, or just play Death and Taxes. Keeping two mana up is really hard against alot of combo decks. I have played blasts in the SB for years, and keeping one mana up can be challenging.

[GoboLord]

This is the list I played over at CFBs Quartely 2.5k. Ended up with a top 4 split. I don't think I would tweak anything in the main board right now, maybe change a SB card or two depending on what I was expecting.

7 Red Fetch
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Wasteland
3 Badlands
3 Mountains
2 Pendelhaven
4 Aether Vials
4 Tarfire
1 Warren Wierding
2 Pyrokinesis
4 Goblin Lackey
3 Mogg War Marshal
2 Warren Instigator
2 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Grenzo, Dungeon Warden
4 Goblin Matron
2 Goblin Chieftain
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Krenko, the Boss Himself
1 Goblin Settler
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker


SB
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Magus of the Moon
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Pyrokinesis
1 Thorn of Amethysth
1 Chains of Mephistopholes
1 Pyroblast
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Jitte


Rd 1 Showed up late, Match Loss
Rd 2 Miracles 2-0, Very Favorable match-up.
Rd 3 BUG Delver 2-1 Slightly Favorable to Even match-up
Rd 4 12 Post 2-0 Very Favorable match-up
Rd 5 MUD 2-0 Favorable-up
Rd 6 Goblins 2-0 Favorable-up
Rd 7 Merfolk 2-0 Favorable to Slightly Favorable match-up
Rd 8 T8 4 Color Delver 2-0 Slightly Favorable match-up
Rd 4 T4 Burn Split Even to Slightly Unfavorable match-up

Not sure I would want to include warping wail. If you want to improve your storm match up that much you should dedicate a lot of SB slots for it, run Thalia in the main, move cabal therapy into the main, or just play Death and Taxes. Keeping two mana up is really hard against alot of combo decks. I have played blasts in the SB for years, and keeping one mana up can be challenging.

Very impressive run, sir. Thanks for sharing your list. I agree with you on WAILS usefuleness vs. Combodecks. ANT hardly has any Problem dealing with fast clock + free counter magic, so I dont see how a counterspell that basically only Hits Infernal Tutor and PiF could be problematic for them. Looking at SneakShow I dont mind the cast Show and Tell at all - it's Sneak Attack that I keep losing against.
However, rrunning WAIL seems like a good idea never the less , because it can improve at least 2 "fair" , unfavorable MUs: Elves and ShardlessBUG. Also being a hard removal spell for most creatures in the format there are really few downsides of playing that card in MD. For me the real deal would be to find out how Many Ports you need to run on top of your 4 Wasteland and 2 Pendelhaven in order to support WAIL.

[Stevestamopz]

Congrats mrblueduck, very nicely done sir.

Re Warping Wail, I get the feeling you are mis-interpreting how I and others feel about it. It is not that it's inclusion makes Goblins impervious to storm or show and tell or whatever. It's that it has uses against almost every deck in Legacy, whilst also allowing you to interact against decks we previously could not. Thalia is great against Storm, but it's shit against Elves and not very good against Sneak and Show or Reanimator. You could play Containment Priest which is good against the latter 3, but it's a hard to cast bear against Storm combo. You could play Ethersworn Canonist but it doesn't do anything against Sneak and Show or Reanimator, and then you can only play 1 dork at a time. If you play Thalia maindeck you always have to always fetch for a plateau unless you either have Vial or a 2nd fetch/Plateau already in hand, thus opening you up to Wasteland. I don't say these things to be condescending, obviously you have thought about Goblins far more than me, but rather to lay out what Goblins has done before. So you would end up playing a small mixture of both, which meant you couldn't consistently draw the one you wanted.

If you're playing Winstigator in your decklist then I agree, you don't want Warping Wail in your deck, given that holding up 1C doesn't really fit in with the game plan of "hit opponent with Warren Instigator until they're dead." The manabase also doesn't support it.

For the boys playing the classic lists though, Wail is a gift from on high. You have more colourless sources than red sources, so playing it in your deck is free. You're looking to play a longer game, so you're in no rush to tap out. You have fuck all 2 drops outside of Driver and War Marshal, so it fits nicely in fixing the curve of the deck. Most importantly however, it allows you to dedicate 4 slots to every combo deck, meaning the rest of your sideboard can be more specific. The fair decks have gotten much better over the years, so being able to fit a Krenko and 2 Magus in the sideboard for the fair matchups is refreshing. Before it was one or the other, now we can play both.

This has ended up being a much longer post than I intended, but I am loving Warping Wail right now and really think it could change Goblins viability in Legacy for the better.

[goblinpiledriver]

Agreed with Steve 100%

The card is great in the classic lists because of its versatility. I definitely understand not wanting to run it in winstigator lists due to mana constraints.

I'm definitely keeping my one copy in the main for now. I will consider a 2nd copy but the hardest part is finding a card to remove. They all seem so useful.