Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Another Tournament Report...
I sleeved up the Rgb list I've posted before, only I replaced 1 SGC with 1 Goblin Chieftain. It didn't make a difference. I also changed up the sideboard to look like...
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Cabal therapy
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Perish
1 Pyrokinesis
2 Red Elemental Blast
I cut some Pyros and REBs for Therapies because Therapy is better against Hive Mind than any other combo hate, and REB and Pryo aren't too game winning, if that makes any sense. Basically, Pyro is there for more spot removal, but we already run tons of spot removal. REB is there to counter blue strategies, but it isn't effective enough to be boarded in against most anything other than Merfolk. Also, running Mental Misstep MD gives you a catch-all removal card.
R1 Esper Affinity
G1 I got a Sharpshooter online ftw.
G2 He got a Cranial Plating on an Etched Champion. I lost.
G3 I blew this game. I had a Lackey and three lands in play. I had Warchief, Matron, Piledriver, and Sharpshooter in hand. I cheated in the Warchief into play off the Lackey, then SHOULD have played Sharpshooter and Piledriver. INSTEAD I played Matron into another Piledriver, so that I could be attacking with 2 Piledrivers the next turn to put overwhelming pressure on. Well, after 2 turns of attacking I had Warchief and Sharpshooter left, and he got a Tezzeret online and won the game. I SHOULD have used the Matron to fetch up a Ringleader and keep the card advantage coming my way. Horrible play, and I really deserved to lose.
0-1
R2 Team America
G1 I won
G2 I lost
G3 I blew up his duals. Then I stuck a Lackey when I had 2 Matrons in hand. When I connected with Lackey I cheated one of the Matrons into play, then tutored and cast a 2nd Lackey. I had one mountain untapped and 1 REB and 1 Matron in hand, so I figured REB would protect my Lackeys and next turn I could Matron into Ringleader off of my Lackey triggers. Well, that was not to be the case. It was a pretty horrible play by me because on his turn he just Inquizition of Kozileced me, taking my Matron and leaving me only with REB. On my turn I topdecked a Ringleader. Win.
1-1
R3 UW Stoneblade Visions
G1 We both mulled to 5. I lost.
G2 We both mulled to 5. I won.
G3 My opponent was on the play and started with a Tundra and passed. I had a pretty great hand with Vials and Lackey and MM and Wasteland. I thought I could either play a Vial and use MM to protect it, or cast the Lackey and use MM to protect it, or just Waste his Tundra and use MM to stop his Brainstorm. I thought the Lackey plan was bad because he could just play SFM T2. And the Vial plan might gain me tempo, but ultimately I thought Waste with MM backup would give me the best chance of screwing his gameplan over. So I Wasted his Tundra, he Brainstormed, and I MMed and passed. He played a fetch. I played a mountain and Lackey. He Pathed my Lackey. Then he played a second land and cast SFM into Batterskull. I was stuck on 1 mountain and played a Vial. He played a land and put batterskull into play, while I played a 2nd Vial. He attacked, and I played a third Vial. He attacked again. EOT I Vialed in a Lackey. On my turn I Pyroed his STM (removing Warchief) then Stingscourgered his Germ. i sent Lackey through the open board and cheated in a Ringleader, drawing a couple goblins. He bounced his Batterskull EOT and replayed it on his turn. I Finally drew a 2nd land and Ancient Grudged his batterskull, then pounded in goblins ftw.
2-1
R4 TES brew
G1 I knew what my opponent was playing and for some reason I decided to keep an opening hand of 5 lands, Goblin Lackey, and Vial. I figured with all these lands in hand and a Lackey I could maybe get lucky in topdeck mode. I couldn't. I should have mulled. What a shitty keep.
G2 I mulled to 6 and had 1 land, a Lackey, and a grip full of goblins, but no Missteps or Therapies. Sigh. I kept and loss.
2-2
Against the TES brew I also could have sided in Leyline of the Void, just because it would have kept his Cabal Rituals from having Threshold and stopped his Rite of Flames from growing. Of course I would have had that many fewer win conditions then. Still, G1 was all my fault. I never gave myself a chance.
Against Affinity i got greedy and went for the win when i should have been going the attrition path with Ringleader. I could have won the game and possibly ended in the money. As it was I was 2-2, it was getting late, and 3-2s were very unlikely to get paid (especially with R1 losses) so I called it a night.
2-2
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I've been playing with 3x Mogg Fanatics in the main again. Played a few games against NO RUG and Fast Zoo. I was very impressed. Definitely going to test it more.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Thanks for the report jrw.
Your meta is pretty similar to mine and its nice to analyse the difference in playstyle between me and other goblin players.
I think you did a good job except the fail hand keeps and the affinity one.
If you are struggling in what your enemy is going to bring in just always go for the ringleader, its the most powerful play in goblins.
And again I see that the black splash really isnt that neccessary, except for the combo hate ofc.
@Amon Amarth
Mogg Fanatic IS absolutely amazing for a 1drop and I still run 4.
Cool that you also tried them out.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Tournament Report - 43 players, 6 rounds.
There were 7 Reanimator's floating around and a bunch of Merfolk and NO RUG. I was known as the player using R/B Misstep Goblins; the only Goblin player there.
Was in 5th place going into the top 8 where I was paired against Zoo and lost =/
26 Core
12 Flex
4 Mental Misstep
2 Gempalm Incinerator
2 Warren Weirding
1 Goblin Chieftain
1 Stingscourger
1 Tuktuk Scrapper
1 Wort, Boggart Auntie
22 Manabase
4 Mountain
1 Swamp
2 Badlands
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
Round 1 vs. Dragon Stompy 2-0
Round 2 vs NO RUG 0-2
Game 1 I misplayed a misstep but it didn't matter as the game played out. He had me beat. This was my first match against NO RUG and I now understand how Mogg Fanatic is great against this deck. I lost game 2 because I couldn't draw a fetch land to play the Perish in my hand. Oh well.
Round 3 vs Enchantress 2-0
Misstep stopped his early play and he played more non-basics than I'd have recommended for Enchantress.
Round 4 vs MUC 2-0
Game against a friend of mine. Game 2 Wort pulled her weight by attacking past Morphling for the win.
Round 5 vs Reanimator 2-0
Misstep Entomb game 1
My game 2 hand was Fetchland, Lackey, Misstep, WW, LotV, Port, Warchief. Easy win.
Round 6 vs Zoo -ID-
Top 8 I'm paired against my Round 6 opponent. Never played against Zoo before. Game 1 we both mull to 6. I keep Lackey, Misstep, SGC hand. Never draw a 2nd land.
Game 2 I squeaked out. Tuktuk killed Jitte but not before it killed all my goblins. Top-decking Perish made the board state even. I held back 2 Ringleaders for when he started drawing off the top. Wort and Ringleaders buried him in card advantage.
Game 3 I couldn't draw a fetchland to play one of the 2 Perish I was holding...
So I finished between 5th-8th overall. All-stars were Wort and Misstep.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ThoSha
Thanks for the report jrw.
I think you did a good job except the fail hand keeps and the affinity one.
If you are struggling in what your enemy is going to bring in just always go for the ringleader, its the most powerful play in goblins.
My mistake was going for Piledriver instead of Ringleader. Piledriver is better against decks where you know the damage will get through (like against combo or sometimes Merfolk or staring down a Progenital clock). Against decks that put bodies on the board (AKA Affinity) you really need to drown them in card advantage, and that means tutoring for Ringleader. How could I make a play that bad when the right play was so obvious? I got greedy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ace/Homebrew
Round 5 vs Reanimator 2-0
Misstep Entomb game 1
My game 2 hand was Fetchland, Lackey, Misstep, WW, LotV, Port, Warchief. Easy win.
So I finished between 5th-8th overall. All-stars were Wort and Misstep.
YESH! Finally someone else is on my side with Mental Misstep! Hands like this make MM a fucking bomb, especially if you're on the play. This is the Goblin Godhand. Congrats on your finish.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jrw1985
Progenital
:D
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jrw1985
Just want to point this out =)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ace/Homebrew
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ace/Homebrew
Superstar of the day was
Mental Misstep. I highly recommend this card for a third of our flex spots. It's THAT good game 1.
After a rough day I'll try to focus my energy into something productive... My goal is to spark some discussions about card choices.
To me Goblins is about pushing lethal damage across the table as quickly as possible and making life suck for your opponent as much as you can. Undisrupted we are as fast as Zoo at doing 20 damage. Zoo's strength is it's hyper-efficiency. Our strength is that we cheat. We play creatures for free with Lackey and Vial. We attack with haste with Warchief and Chieftain. We draw crazy amounts of cards for a red deck with Ringleader. We can tutor for answers and threats with Matron. All while wreaking havoc on our opponent's manabase with Port and Wasteland.
I am a fan of Goblins Core 26 cards. It is not scripture to me as I remove a Warchief or Piledriver if I just HAVE to fit in what I want to, but it has proven to be an incredibly consistent and reliable core. It may be time to reconsider our core so it lies on us to test out different cards. JRW and I have found Mental Misstep to be very helpful. I don't think I will play Goblins without it for some time. It allows us to keep 1 mana Lackey/Vial hands again. It protects your turn 1 plays and can completely ruin your opponent's tempo. It is a dead card against some decks but so is Incinerator. You just board it out game 2 and fill the spot with something relevant.
Marcello, I believe you have been toying with the idea of dropping Vials. How's that been for you? At one point I cut vials for Chrome Mox while trying to maximize the possibility of playing Instigator on turn 1. This was very very bad however my testing focus at the time was the adding of 2 mox, not the removing of 4 vials. I've dropped Vials to 3 before and didn't noticed a difference in the frequency of having one in my starting hand. But whenever I sleeve up Goblins for a tournament I make sure I take 4 vials with me because they are so strong against control.
Lets take a look at the 'core' shall we?
Goblin Lackey, Goblin Matron, and Goblin Ringleader really are THE BEST cards for what they do. As long as a Goblin deck has 30+ goblins in it then Ringleader keeps his spot in this category.
Aether Vial - Great against permission based blue decks. Let's us play through Iona naming red. Helps protect against getting mana screwed while also allowing us to screw our opponents mana and still apply pressure on the board. Late game this card is less impressive.
Goblin Piledriver - If we win in less than 4 turns it's because of this guy... He's the best at getting big damage early and he's awesome against fish. Sneaks past Progenitus. Downsides are that he dies easily with only 2 toughness and he really relies on you having lots of other goblins out to be scary.
Goblin Warchief - I've thought about Goblin Chieftain replacing him. What keeps me from doing that is that I like to play Matron for Piledriver and play Piledriver for only 3 mana then swing in for 8... out of nowhere. Warchief allows you to dump your hand after a big Ringleader draw more effectively than Chieftain. However in some matchups the +1/+1 provided by Chieftain is more relevant. I was pleased with a 3/3 split when I was running the Moxtigator list. In a list with lots of RR costs Warchief isn't being used to his full potential. It might be that bigger is better than cheaper nowadays.
Siege-Gang Commander - 4 creatures for the price of 1? The ability to turn a goblin into a shock? Sign me up. I've said before that I wouldn't play less than 3 of him. Turns out I'm a liar, but I still think SGC deserves a spot in the core. I know he's probably the most controversial of the core so I'd love to hear why people prefer other cards. To me, if we play Lackey then we need to play SCG. Like I said above, Lackey putting SCG into play turn 2 for FREE is cheating.
Lastly I'll mention Wasteland and Rishadan Port. I think that both cards are equally strong. I know many will cut Port to fit in luxury items like Chrome Mox or more duals. I find that in some matchups the only way Goblins can interact with the opponent is with Port. When I played the Moxtigator list I dropped both to 3.
Interested in comments from all. ESPECIALLY if you disagree with me.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
@ Ace/Homebrew, Goblin Warchief is the best goblin ever. Goblins is all about pushing the tempo and no goblin does that like he does. Running less than 4 or boarding some out is crazy.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
No doubts in my mind Goblin Warchief is an incredible card!
If you've been following the last couple pages of this thread there's been several comments about how Goblins no longer has what it takes to win in Legacy and it was proposed by more than one player that we might need to reconsider our 26 Core cards.
IF any card can replace Warchief, it'd be Chieftain. There are a few cards in the Goblin arsenal where Chieftain is strictly the better call over Warchief. The list is short.
Goblin Lackey
Mogg Fanatic
Goblin Guide
Warren Instigator
Notice that the quality all these cards share is no colorless mana symbol in their casting cost.
There are also a few cards where Chieftain and Warchief both have their advantages depending on what your goal is... do you want to play all your Goblins in 1 turn or do you want all your goblins as big as possible.
Mogg War Marshal
Siege-Gang Commander
In my opinion Goblins could use as many cards that read "all your goblins have haste" as possible. Most lists I've been seeing here lately have 5 such cards with a 4/1 split favoring Warchief.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I love hasty goblins. I run 4 Warchief & 3 Chieftain. I'be been told it's to many Chieftains but I don't care. He rarely sucks. I may cut 1 to try & fit Mental Misstep but Warchief will always be a 4 of.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
You could get away with playing 3. Normally I cut one warchief from the core to add a single chieftain and that has so far worked out well.
The Core itself doesn't really need that many adjustments. Adding Mental Misstep won't change it's configuration significantly as much as it will be a concession to a format-warping powerhouse of a card.
A question regarding the mana base: If you're playing a single color splash in a 22 land mana base, how many fetchlands are needed? At this point I'm sporting 8 (twice the number of basics) but perhaps feel that playing fewer of them might help towards stabilizing the mana base. Any thoughts on this?
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I feel that you must have a really good reason not to run at least a single Goblin Chieftain. I've been happy with a 5th Haste-enabler as well as the pump effect.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I've been reading this thread and there seems to be some talk of changing the "core". The problem with goblins isn't the core it's the way the game has developed over the years. There are just to many deck that goblins has trouble beating to say it's a top tier deck. Other aggro decks have bigger dudes so we board in more creature hate. Some put more men on the table faster such as shitty elf decks and affinity. There's re-animator, Iona is bad for us so is Akroma. Landstill, I hear Humility or Moat is bad for goblins. Aggro Loam with Devastating Dreams. Not to mention combo. These are somewhat random decks but I run into this crap all the time. I'm sure I'm missing a few decks but hopefully I've made my point. You need yard hate, creature hate, green hate, blue hate, artifact hate, combo hate.... You can't be prepared for everything anymore. Is goblins still good? Of course. I just feel you need to get really lucky with your match ups in order to win it all.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
It's clear that wizards don't plan give us anything goblin related in Innistrad so only help could come from banlist. How much do you think, goblin recruiter could help us? If you look at goblin list you see that we didn't get any real bomb since darksteel. Goblins same (with minor changes like 1-2 stingscourger and chieftain) for 7 years! This will be another rough year for goblin players, and winter is coming...
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yuri8
How much do you think, goblin recruiter could help us?
Making Food Chain Goblins playable again.. hmhm I don't know exactly but you would still be dead in the water vs blue permission, but with a combo kill if they don't have it ;) Then at least cards like Jitte wouldn't be a somewhat "autoloss". Somewhere in community was a thread about just removing one card from the banned list and the others were at least more scary than recruiter, so it could be possible.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yuri8
It's clear that wizards don't plan give us anything goblin related in Innistrad so only help could come from banlist. How much do you think, goblin recruiter could help us? If you look at goblin list you see that we didn't get any real bomb since darksteel. Goblins same (with minor changes like 1-2 stingscourger and chieftain) for 7 years! This will be another rough year for goblin players, and winter is coming...
Goblins is certainly not the powerhouse it was 7 years ago (or even the Tier 1 presence it was 1 year ago). But it's still a deck that will kill turn 4 if left unhindered, which is kinda the clock-standard for aggro decks in Legacy (and Goblins is also the aggro deck that probably draws the most use out of MM). This keeps Goblins playable, though not dominant. Unbanning Recruiter could make the deck a powerhouse again (since aggro and combo kills would be very hard for the format to combat), but that's not gunna happen. I'm not so sure I'd want it to anyway. Playing goblins as a Foodchain Combo deck just doesn't sound as fun to me.
The only thing that could really bring goblins back is new cards at this point. Wizards needs to print a Goblin card (creature or tribal, doesn't matter) that costs R or 1R and is just dirty-broken. I'm talking Lackey/Piledriver broken. Make Goblin Grenade Tribal broken. Goblin Spirit Guide broken. But WotC has already chosen to neglect giving Goblins a boost. They've reprinted Grenade and didn't errata Tribal onto it (what a shame) and they printed Simian Spirit Guide specifically to deny goblins the tribal synergy elves are allowed. What a crock. And they refuse to print new Goblins that are powerful/cheap enough to play in Legacy (RR for Winstigator was not an accident; they knew 1R would make it too playable [unfortunately, casting costs that keep cards fair in Standard make them duds in Legacy]).
Goblins suffers from being a "linear-strategy" in that the deck lives and dies by the addition of new Goblin cards. Compare this to Reanimator. WotC will print badass fatties until it goes out of business. Players LOVE badass fatties. Young players are drawn to Craw Wurms and get excited about buying a 10/10 for their 100 card deck. And all Wizards has to do to appease players that love huge monsters is print one or two decent ones a block (and, yes, the fatties are getting exponentially better; notice how Blazing Archon is the only Reanimator target from before Shards block?). Creature decks generally either cheat huge creatures into play (Reanimator, Show and Tell, NO) or play the most efficient creatures possible (Goyf, SFM, Zoo). Anytime an overpowered creature is printed, those decks will find a home for it. Goblins, on the other hand, needs great Goblins to be printed to keep up. In order for WotC to bother printing good Goblins they also need to make Goblins a theme of the set or block. If they make Goblins the theme of the set or block they need to be very careful not to make Goblins too overpowered: This means making the best Goblins slightly too fair for Legacy. Don't ask me how Coralhelm Commander came into existence (a growing, evasive, pumping Merfolk from a set that wasn't Merfolk themed? Maybe all my assertions about good goblins needing set/block support was wrong... Nope, I'm right! Woldwake had 5 other Merfolk printed in it!).
It's funny that you say a rough winter is coming for Goblins. The fact is Goblins hasn't evolved past the core 26 because the core 26 was so overpowered it kept Goblins in the game until MM + SFM caused a mass exodus. Now that people think Goblins can't win, nobody plays it. The SCG metagame spreadsheets show this. About 1 to 2 percent of any given Open is Goblins these days. It used to be closer to 10 percent.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I want to say s.th. about the "Core-cards"-concept, since many replies are using this term:
This concept was introduced by me. This in turn means that it is a very subjective selection of cards that I consider the core of this deck. As you can read in the deckprimer other users (FoulQ) had a different idea of what a Goblin deck's core is. WHen I was introducing this concept I found out that those cards are most frequently played in goblin-decks back then. This however does not mean that those core card will be the same for eternity.
So, everyone: Please don't let this concept misguide you when discussing about goblins! "Think outside the box!" as lejay would say.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jrw1985
Goblins suffers from being a "linear-strategy" in that the deck lives and dies by the addition of new Goblin cards. Compare this to Reanimator. WotC will print badass fatties until it goes out of business. Players LOVE badass fatties.
Well we might get lucky the next time they visit changeling. Other than, if we are lucky, a better artefact killing Goblin I do not think Standard will add anything to the deck until we get some more Tribal spells.
I agree thought with your comments on fatties; other decks can cheat them into play and R&D will keep pushing the power curve up and thus making the Goblin-Game harder.
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I get your point but I don't see a point in complaining about card printings. Of course WotC wants you to buy new cards and spend your money, that's why SFM and friends are printed.
And it's not like no good gobos were printed-I mean with Kuldotha Red it was quite possible to play Goblins in standart. Those lists involved something like they posted in the "goblin-sigh" thread:
Goblin Bushwhracker
Goblin Guide
Goblin Chieftain etc.
Even Goblin Wardriver serves it purpose, but you're right it's not playable in legacy as we play the deck with vials and a high mana curve.
The only guy that sees common play is Goblin Guide but not in Goblin Decks but Burn and Zoo...
So my question is: why playing Chieftain at all. I don't really see a huge advantage in one copy of him, but rather the lately posted lists were missing Sharpshooter-which is quite a house right now. Talking about Mogg Fanatic in early game makes him a must-have in late game, doesn't it?
Re: [Deck] Vial Goblins 2.0
I run 2 SS and 3 Mogg Fanatic MD. It seems silly to not run at least 1 Sharpshooter with all the dorks running around. Look at all the creatures that Maverick plays. There are so many 1 toughness dorks to mow down. Or all the Cliques, Arbors, Merfolk, Lavamancers, Moms, Confidants, Bitterblossom tokens. I would recommend at least playing 1 MD. It's really good now with how slow some of the green decks are.
