Originally Posted by
mrblueduck
After taking a break from Legacy with the switch to V4, I have been back playing quite a bit in the 2mans and the 8 PM dailies. I was able to win some, but over nothing crazy. I feel most games I win my opponents deck stumbles, or I earn them with some unknown tech and synergies. There are rarely the 'free wins' where my deck just thrashes my opponent. That is mostly because of SFM, DRS, and AD. I am just going to type some stuff I am thinking about various topics. -I agree here. I used to be able to control opponents with Waste, port and removal. Now the control route isn't effective, runnig Ports is a liability, and most of my wins in recent memory are due to my opponent's misfortune rather than my skill
The Decline of Goblins - Here is what I think the biggest problems Goblins face in order of importance.
1) Hands that are good against Delver or DRS decks are often unkeepable or auto loses against combo decks. -And the other way around! I am in the rare minority where I think combo isnt that bad. Belcher/Oops all Spells are miserable matchups. Omniscience/ Tendrils + Empty/Reanimator are bad, Sneak and Show is pretty even, and traditional storm/High Tide I believe are favorable. The thing is you are often getting wrenched game one, so you need to 2-0 your opponent. That is the problem. In smaller tournaments, you actually know often enough what you are playing against. So you should mulligan hyper aggressive. No hand without a Lackey or Instigator ( or Thalia if you have that in the mb) are even keep-able. Thats why I so often dismiss these 4 rounds reports, people mulligan and play differently when they know the match ups before hand.
Unfortunately there is no way to fix this issue with our list, and traditionally has always been a problem. However with the addition of Thalia, I believe Goblins can put up much better results, but that comes at a heavy cost. We have to either 1) Ignore combo match ups or 2) Have a very heavy Combo SB to 2-0 your opponent post board. A few Thalias alone is not enough, so you often need to dedicate 6-8 slots to those matchups.
2) Lackey is not a particularly good magic card on the draw. If you look at my win rate on the play vs on the draw, I imagine it is a huge difference. So when people say " variance really hurts goblins," but can't really say why, it is often because of Goblin Lackey. I have started cutting 1-2 Lackeys every game on the draw against non combo decks, added Pendelhavens to make them better, and have bombs like Pyrokinesis to force them through, but they all come at a cost. Your SB space is already limited due to our storm match-up, so Lackey stinking is really stretching it thin. You could look to run Goblin Chieftains and they do work sometimes. But when they don't work, its glorious, often losing the game on the spot when you attack get your chieftain ADed and Lackey eaten. I am down to running 2 chieftains, as he often is a poor draw and interacts poorly with Pendelhaven.
I have tried cutting Lackey, but you need to replace it with something, anything else. You have to have some one drops. Jamming Moxes, does nothing, literally nothing to solve this problem. It makes your mulligans backbreaking, so I guess there's that. I would recommend Cabal Therapy, and have a list which runs them. Even though the list is pretty mediocre, it just reminds me that it is an extremely strong card. -I too have been looking for playable 1-drops to increase the T1 consistency of the deck. The only two that seem to make any sense are Discard and Sensei's Divining Top. But discard gives us another terrible mid-late game card (like Lackey and Vial) and Top isn't terribly effective in out mana-hungry deck.
3) Our one drops scale extremely poorly. A turn 1 Aether Vial is an extremely strong play, but what about a turn 3, or even turn 5. Our collection of one drops are almost comically bad later in the game when compared to BS, DRS, SDT, STP, Ponder. I mean, you can look at D&T or Folk and say, they have the same issues, and while that is true, we have 8 bad draws, to there 4. Its much easier to get punished.
Quick Thoughts about Card Choices-
1) Chrome Mox. I was brewing random Goblin lists, and I was never really sure if I should be the control deck or the beat down. I finally get it. With my original list, I was almost never the beat down, but in these games I didn't know what I should be doing. I was thinking, maybe Mox is what I should be doing. I have a strong feeling that came from inexperience and lack of knowledge with the deck. When in doubt, just smash I guess. -I have found Chrome Mox to be entirely OK, but it doesn't make the deck consistently better since Chrome Mox itself is such an inconsistent card. But, since we can't lower the curve, playing accelerators seems like the most obvious route to regaining power parity in the format. What sucks though is there is no way to do it without giving up CA (Skirk Prospector, Mox, lotus Petal) since we really need RR.
2) Grezno, Dungeon Warden. I have a feeling if this card was Red Red X he would be a 2-3 of in basically all my lists. Being multicolored is a massive massive downgrade. That being said, it scales extremely well, single handledly can beat Engineered Plague, and helps smooth out your already below average 2s. He isn't really what we are looking for, but helps patch enough holes, that I am rarely unhappy to draw him. I have been running 1, and reasonably happy. In my other solidly black/red list, he was actually much more impressive then I thought, and went up to 3. Not running a single black source is awkward, but as a one of, I don't mind. -I've not played any real games with Grenzo. He seemed underwhelming in playtesting, and I hate that he's RB because i want to play Rw.
3) Pendelhaven. When its bad, you often don't notice it. When its good, its game breaking. Its worth checking out, and would not run less than 1 in any Instigator build.
SB
1) Spirit of the Labryinth. So we need help in the combo match-up. I don't think Thalia and blasts are quite enough. I like Spirit as the 2nd 'hatebear' of choice. I think its better than Canonist at this point. It is actually good against Sneak and Show, Reanimator, Omniseince, Tezzeret, and much more versatile. You can bring it in for a number of random matches. Canonist is just much much more narrow. - I played some SB Spirits once, and they weren't terrible, but Thalia would have been better. It sucks that all these hatebears are so much better suited for DnT.
2) Moon Effects. I think death blade might be our worst matchup. Right there with Belcher. Why is it so bad? They usually run 4 of DRS, SFM, TNN. Geeez. Ohh and they run Jitte, Batterskull, Targeted discard, and postboard wrath effects like Zealous Persecution. So how do you win, well they stumble, and you can win. You can run something like Mirror entity, or you can cheese them. Moon effects wreck that deck. They have proven to be very effective against both the BUG and ESPER lists, as they have cut down on basics because of DRS, so they have the potential to be game ending. - 3CMC Moon effects have always been too slow, and sometimes with DRS they don't even matter. Plus, monoR isn't that great, and losing a splash is less than ideal.
I was going to discuss a lot of match-ups, maybe another time. Hopefully you find this rambling to be somewhat entertaining or valuable. Let me know if you want to talk about something in particular.
