Originally Posted by
FoulQ
Congrats man.
Big events with goblins placing all seem to include a similar removal package of 3 bolt/3 weirding. At least the last two I remember. And a pair of gempalms and a lucksack stingscourger. Nice, nice.
If you look back in this thread, mantis ran 2 bolts main and 3 weirding main at GP madrid and liked it alot. I tested the bolts and liked them alot.
There are a few things that make me like it alot:
1) It buys you time against zoo where gempalm is trash early. Nailing early nacactls, pridemages, etc, maybe a goyf if you get lucky really helps you keep your life high and have time to get the card advantage rollin
2) It can't be dazed second turn, and yes I know gempalm can't either but this at least makes me prefer it a bit more over weirding and alot more over more stingscourgers.
3)In the mirror, bolt gives you an out against opponents first turn lackey shenanigans. If they lead lackey and you don't have bolts then you are completely at the mercy of their gempalms and stingscourgers. With bolt you can just bolt him and not worry.
4) Bolt isn't dead against combo/lands/other things where gempalm/weirding are, and yes i know gempalm is a goblin too, but lets face it, hes subpar in that role. This 4th point matters little anyway.
Honestly, I like it mostly because of the zoo matchup, thats the tipping point for me putting it in the deck with a close second being the mirror and a more distant third being the daze reason. Honestly, I just wanted it for zoo, but i was gonna show it had more uses than that.
Blood Moon is good against lands/landstill, but I would board it in against very little else. Don't know if that's really a significant portion of any meta. But...what does everyone think elsewise about his blood moons? Yes, it's rehashed discussion, but there is nothing wrong with a little hash.
I don't know what the amount of lands at the tourney was, according to tacosnape he saw it everywhere in the early rounds and our teammates ran into it several games. Honestly though we were all clueless on what the meta would be like so I was just taking a shot. It straight up won me the ultimate walker match so I'm gonna be a bit biased now. But basically I chose it because I thought it could steal matches against lands/landstill etc and that seemed better than other stuff I could put in the sb.
In my testing pithing needle has been ineffective against "randomness," as I feel goblins is more of a proactive deck. It's ok if you are expecting survival, but especially against jitte I've always been disappointed with it. Do you feel differently?
You probably didn't read all of the long tourney report, but at the end I stated needle was worthless and if I could go back I would axe a lightning bolt and 3 needles for 4 mb traps. So no I don't feel differently.
You have nothing to side in against NOBant/Countertop. Does this concern you? I noticed you sided nothing against one of these opponents.
My memory of the NOBant/Countertop is hazy as hell for some reason, but I'm pretty positive I crushed the first game and felt pretty confident for the 2nd and had no problem going in with no sideboard cards. In the weeks leading up to the tourney perish was def there but tbh I didn't have any testing with it against zoo to know whether it would be effective or not. I talked with Tacosnape about it and he didn't like it in the sb because he thought the countertop matchup was already favorable enough and I liked that reasoning so it got cut.
I will test your mainboard, I think it is very strong. However, I'm going to go -1 Piledriver, +1 Instigator for personal reasons.
Def your choice to do that esp if their is some metagame consideration, I think piledriver is such a house though that I'd never go below four. Every list that I have ever seen do well has run 4 that I know of. As for instigator, he is great, he def won at least two games where he connected. I just can't fit more of him in and get everything I want in there.
But I'm going to try this sideboard, for now:
4 Perish
4 GY Hate (3 relic/1 crypt)
4 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Earwig Squad
1 Warren Weirding
Perish is awesome. I recommend x4 for zoo, NObant. Two of the three most popular decks in legacy, along with merfs.
Like I said before I can't really speak to the quality of perish against zoo, its an obvious house against NOBant but I gave my reasoning there. I like 4 pyrokinesis in this spot cuz its solid against zoo, beast against merfolk and beast in the mirror. Where perish is worthless against the last two obv.
I hold onto my GY Hate in my sideboard like a woman hangs onto her stocks. I + GYH = BFFs 4-3v4r
This is obvious, especially after reanimator had 3 of the Top8 slots at atlanta and also 11th place. It crushed me completely. I like leyline purely because of its uncounterability and its better against dredge, not that anyone hardly plays that deck anymore. I def like it over relic beacuse I want to be able to play my threats, lackey esp, out on first/2nd turn and not be dropping hate that kills my speed.Leyline can be used against lands pretty effectively as well if you want I think.
A well-placed thorn can go a long way, not only against combo, but against burn and a few others. I wouldn't say "(ex.) board it in against tempo thresh all the time," but once in a while you will reaaally surprise random non-creature decks with +4 additional must-counters (most of the time).
Like I said above, I'd pack 4 mindbreaks from now on for me. I like mindbreak trap for the same reasons as leyline, you can continue to play your threats full speed while also having combo hate. Yes you can go lackey, then thorn, but id rather go lackey, trap in hand, piledriver second turn. I don't have any testing to back this up though, in fact everythign I say here should be taking with a grain of salt since my playtesting consists of mws, a little bit the night before, and the tournament. I'm just combining what I've experienced and intuition.
Earwig Squad defeats Prog and sticks it to Reanimator. Can help against goyf strategies, combo, landstill, lands, and fucking MORE. Gotta love him in today's metagame, though he's clunky as fuck. I wouldn't go over x2 despite his versatility (because if you think about it, it's not actually a very good card)
I bought an earwig squad originally planning to run one in sb. Tacosnape didn't like the card though and honestly I don't like it that much, like you said, its not actually a good card really. I don't think I would board it against prog even if i had it in the sb, I just don't think you need to be worrying about stopping prog, you need to worry about beatingdown on him. Sticking it to reanimator is iffy as the earliest he can come down is turn 2 with the god draw of lackey,warchief, him in the opener and him not getting countered. Also all the builds I saw in atlanta were packing more than 3 creatures main so its not like its game ending, altho im sure it helps. The other matchups you listed I'm sure you can find better cards to bring in.
Warren Weirding is good against goyf-based aggro-control strategies, so I added the fourth to my board. I heard those are popular in legacy.
I'm fine with a fourth in the board, I nearly did that over the 4th bolt in the board but I like bolt more for merfolk,mirror,zoo so I chose it.
I just prefer a higher instigator count and only 3 piledrivers because of playstyle considerations.
I know tacosnape touched on this earlier in the thread about playstyle considerations referring to not running more instigators because of that reasoning. I believe he hammered it pretty hard, I run less than 4 instigators but I just believe they aren't as strong. If thats your reasoning for piledriver then cool but I don't believe playstyle has anything to do with it, the cards strength and your meta should be the reasoning.
If anyone is looking for a starting point for a sideboard in today's general metagame, I would start with mine as a launching point. I do think x4 combo hate is worth it... though it doesn't increase your win percentage dramatically, it does increase it, and there is a lot more combo than there used to be. Sneaking wins is possible against combo, especially with 4 thorns. But if combo hate is stupid to you, I would personally try +2 Needle +2 Chieftain instead of the thorns.
Agreed on the combo hate, even though we choose different cards.
Congrats man. Your only losses came to a pro and the deck's absolute worst matchup in the entire god damn world. Just curious, do you know if you would have made it if you drew in the last round against goblins? 2 goblins in the t8 would have made me wet.
I've never been in the situation so I was clueless on how to figure it out, I got advice from someone that plays pro tours and he said it wasn't guaranteed to get me in and he did not recommend drawing, so I played. I stated in the report I woulda been pissed to draw and not get in obv so it was an easy choice. You can see the list of the other goblins player on SCG but I think it was suboptimal. He had a poor mirror matchup with no pyrokinesis and 4 weirdings maindeck. He also had cabal therapy and planar void in the sb which I thought were poor choices.
