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Seriously, that's the kind of answer I needed, thank you!
On the first look I find Retribution of the Meek not too god, because (unlike Perish) Nacatl, Pridemages, Hierarchs and Warmonks will survive it. On the other hand it might be a very good solution on MUD beasts, Aggro Loam critters and Equipped D'n'Taxes guys.
I'll just try it out and let you know if it'S worth it.
Did you test it yourself?
//EDIT: the word "Meek" reminded me of Meekstone. What you you think? worth it?
No I didn't test Retribution of the Meek, I recently played it in EDH (commander), so it just came to mind when I wrote down my reply.
I'm generally a very conservative player so I don't test if I'm not convinced. Its not always a good thing, I know, but I do take other peoples experience (like yours) into account.
Basically I generally prefer to get rid of creatures immediately and Meekstone is only a semi-permanent solution because it still can be destroyed. And also, back in the day (before Legacy and before I was competitive in magic) I've had bad experiences with Meekstone as a solution to creatures, so that thought kinda stuck all those years. :-)
You probably realized from my earlier replies in this thread that I rather play general cards even if they're slightly less effective in specific cases than a specific card which better in those cases but less general in use.
I was actually thinking about Meekstone just the other day. It screws over pretty much every deck that has creatures and sees play... except for goblins.
It also stops Progenitus and, if your lucky, Emrakul.
I guess the question is if Goblins actually need that much help against against creature decks that wouldn't be served better by adding removal?
I guess Meekstone was a bad idea. WIth Meekstone in play our opponents creatures won't attack anymore and just stand in the way. This is bad, because we often profit from situations in which our opponents attacks and leaves few blockers behind.
Still I'll stick to testing Retribuition of the Meek.
Haha, what about Shrieking Mogg with Meekstone? Seems to be a good solution, but it's kind of weird combo. Meekstone also reduces Goblin Chieftain's power, because pumped Warchiefs and Ringleaders won't untap.
Another thing: If we want to speed up goblins alphastrike, can we just throw some Goblin Grenades instead of Lightning Bolts? ( was playing Pauper goblins and just remembered this card :O)
Well, as its name just says, it's a real bomb, but at sorcery speed, is it a good option to finish those last 5 lifepoints?
Any ideas?
If they would reprint Goblin Grenade with it being a Tribal Sorcery - Goblin I would surely play some.
My first build was playing them as a 2of, not that bad but in what matchups do you really want to see them?
Getting it countered is a 2-1 trade, 2-2 if they FoW it. I guess you can try it in a 4 War Marshall build so the disadvantage is reduced.
Also it doesn't open a path in the first attack phase with a lackey, so I don't think you can just replace the bolts some are playing with grenades.
If you're running the white splash, you can sb orim's chant. Granted, cabal therapy is generally better against combo (more resilient to discard, more proactive).
If they get a well protected hand with a fast combo, you'll lose either way, but chant can shut them down midcombo if they try to go off unprotected. (or buy you a turn in response to their chant). Unlikely also but the kicker can stall an ETW win to let you fish a solution up.
I wouldn't run it instead of CoTV since it requires you to leave mana open early, but 1-3xchant might not be a bad secondary solution if you're into dedicating that much space to stopping combo. (but if you have that much combo, maybe just don't play goblins? =D )
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoboLord
Well, it's always been my impression that Goblins - whatever the splash - does well when paired up against other, aggressive decks. However, the typical failing of Goblins is when fighting either Combo or Board-Control based decks (Landstill, etc.) - which Mono-R, Rb and Rg seem stronger against. Green gives you hate options (both MD and SB), Rb gives you disruption and removal specifically geared towards random combo decks (WW), and Mono-R gives you a rock-solid but incredibly disruptive manabase. Rw, from what I'm hearing from you, does give strong hate options, similar, but inferior, to green's, and probably stronger, but less synergistic removal in the form of Swords to Plowshares. Honestly, the White options for artifact removal are probably beaten by the Mono-R and Rg ones, while it's enchantment removal - though certainly beaten by green - is superior to the 2 or 3 choices Mono-R has.
On this point: you say that you like white because it gives you strong MD removal in StP. However, the main reason to run non-goblin removal is to deal with early game creatures. So why weaken the manabase to run Swords when Bolt would work for that purpose as well? Goblin-based removal (WW, Gempalm, Stingscourger, Sharpshooter, SGC) are all arguably stronger in the late game.
I think that Rb and Rg are by far the strongest options when splashing. I personally like Rb right now because of the decks that are popping up. Has anyone seen how many Green Sun Zenith's were in the last SCG t16? It's absurd. Perish, while may seem to only be good in our strong matchups, would completely wreck these decks. Another deck, Show and Tell, has also been gaiinig popularity recently. Black is better here too, providing the deck with Warren Weirdings as an out to Emrakul.
I think that the only reason to splash green would be if you're expecting a lot of decks splashing black in the meta. Engineered Plague is by far the hardest card to fight against, so this is the only reason that I would splash green. But, black offers Cabal Therapy/Duress/Thoughtseize to get rid of those early Plagues until you can either win or find a lord or two. Also, although I have not tried it yet, Earwig Squad could be another way to fight Plagues.
I have to split your reply up, because I only partly agree with you.
This view is too much black-and-white. Goblins don't perform too good against Affinity, D'n'T, Aggro Loam, Rock and Zoo (even the Merfolk MU tends to be 50:50).Quote:
Originally Posted by bakofried
Goblins is actually best against board-control decks. What does G give us that W doesn't?Quote:
Originally Posted by bakofried
How is WW good against combo?Quote:
Originally Posted by bakofried
True.Quote:
Originally Posted by bakofried
If I weren't to run StoP, I'd run Lightning Bolts (they are as synergistic as StoP, but with a smaller range . especially important in the problematic aggro-MUs)Quote:
Originally Posted by bakofried
In lategame those cards are stronger than BOLT but not stronger than StoP. StoP usefulness is independent from gamestate.Quote:
Originally Posted by bakofried
I dropped B exactly because THIS strategy (getting ird of hate cards via Squad + Discard) doesn't work most of the time. Plus, WW isn't a good solution for Emrakul. If you are worried about the spaghetti-monster just play more Stingscourger.Quote:
Originally Posted by TossUsToLions
At this I'm very confused. Pre-board, yes, Affinity can be a bad MU if they don't shit on themselves with a poor hand (as a former Affinity pilot, it could be fairly inconsistent. That was in the days of Vial Affinity though, so my experience is almost certainly outdated). However, there are several attractive board options to deal with Affinity in Mono-R, Rg, and Rb, that, as Nelis pointed out, are roughly as fast as those available to Rw. Aggro Loam can definitely be a thrashing, but I only have limited experience playing against it, and again, you have options in the board that can strengthen that MU. As for Rock, DnT, and, well, 'Folk, I believe that the Rb version is inferior. Rb, as a splash, necessitates not only WW in the main as at least a 1-of, but the meta must be dominated by green decks, specifically ones that are comparatively light on threats. Perish is not the strongest card vs. Fast Zoo especially (as many times they will board out their green dudes against a deck sporting black), but gains strength against something like Big Zoo (an arguably tougher MU for Goblins than Fast or Normal Zoo).
Green gives us Krosan Grip and Tin-Street Hooligan.
I named WW because of randomfatty.dec. It doesn't have to be Emmy; it could be Progenitus, the other fatty of the format.
Though StP is stronger independently, it does not generate CA like the others do and is, again, less synergistic. And, dolt that I am, I can certainly admit that StP is miles above Bolt.
On another note, I agree with you - Rb does not have an adequate answer to Engineered Plague. Pre-emptive action is poor in that situation.
I've been tinkering around with a new variant of goblins and was wondering if I could get some feedback on the deck.
Its a build of goblins thats designed to beat zoo consistently.
lands//23
4 wasteland
2 rishidan port
4 volcanic island
4 arid mesa
3 scalding tarn
6 mountain
spells//8
4 curfew
4 aether vial
creatures//29
4 goblin lackey
4 goblin warchief
4 goblin ringleader
4 goblin matron
4 goblin piledriver
3 stingscourger
1 gempalm incinerator
2 seige-gang commander
3 goblin chieftain
Incidentally the changes to the deck have also made emrakul and reanimator match ups very easy.
Curfew can be used for early tempo, or can remove blockers during an alpha strike, or reset your ringleaders, matrons, and seige-gangs.
Occasionally you can win off bouncing guys and destroying lands against unprepared opponents as well.
My favorite openings with curfew in the deck is when you get curfew+stingscourger+lackey early, and when you have curfew after a lackey connect when they only have one blocker (it becomes sooooo broken if you have matron or seige-gang).
I've been playing with hibernation to combat zoo even further out of the board, which is actually also really good against enchantress, which can sometimes also be a tricky matchup.
I actually played this list at the tournament at the knightware event last weekend and lost 3 games by completely missing on ringleaders, so I definitely need to find a way to up the goblin count. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can maintain a good enough goblin count while still incorporating the curfews?
Split Second.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoboLord
Hey guys, what about Meekstone + Shrieking Mogg?
Seems too random and absurd, but might work. If you can Vial it EOT and just play Meekstone next turn to go for Alpha Striking, or just to tap out foe's creatures.
It seems a too inconsistent. I think this is one of those things that falls under "the danger of cool things." Yeah, when it works, it's pretty sweet. But you have to get both of them. Also, what would we cut from the deck? Gobbos is such a tight decklist that's it's hard to test new things without diluting the goblin count too much. I'm pretty interested in just trying out 2-3 Meekstones in the board, thoughQuote:
Originally Posted by Vandalize
Affinity is a very bad match up for us goblin players with their new cards like signal pest, etched champion,mox opal and sometimes with AOB they swarm us overwhelmingly with their pesky creatures, its like a 35-65% win con for me. Most of my teamate runs that deck and all I can say that etched champion with cranial plating is the SH$T!!! Then Boarding . . . . expect 3 Plagues on the deck with a bunch of P needles. . . .
If you're talking about splashing for removal that doesn't target, Warren Weirding is your card. If you're talking about improving the Zoo matchup, Mogg War Marshal, Lightning Bolt, and Perish and Pyrokinesis postboard, are the cards you want. But if you insist on the blue splash, there are a few better tempo enablers than Curfew.Quote:
Originally Posted by thefreakaccident
Daze does a superb job protecting your turn 1 Vial/Lackey.
Stifle compliments Wasteland and Ports perfectly for a devastating mana denial package.
Echoing Truth/Chain of Vapors to deal with all problem permanents.
And versus Zoo, Submerge postboard in response to a fetchland is good times.
Blue Elemental Blast in response to Firespout or Devastating Dreams? Lol.
Blue seems to be a more "all in" splash than the other colors, and if I were to go in this direction, I'd rather just play Merfolk.
At Day 2 of GP Madrid I saw a goblin-player with a blue splash for Standstill...
was a funny story, the combo-player he played again didn't realize he played blue goblins until his Ad Nauseam was forced...
I might also be a bit behind on experience with the new version of Affinity, so maybe its a bit harder matchup than I thought. But still if Etched Champion with Cranial Plating is the decks worse threat than Shatterstorm should be the card of choice since it doesn't target. I guess it depends on how quick Affinity can recover from a total board wipe. In how much shit are we if there's one Plague on the board and we've just swiped their board? Usually 1 Plague (in other decks) is doable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinoy Goblin
Maybe if they run Pithing Needle (i guess its put for Aether Vial) should we board it out? If we add Shatterstorm and Pyrokynesis (to get rid of all other creatures but Champion and lower their artifact count) shouldn't that be enough?
And what do they board out if they add Plague and Vial?
Do you know what other blue cards he played? Razorfin Hunter maybe? Thats a surprise for the Merfolk Player too! :-DQuote:
Originally Posted by BWM
While following the single card discussion has been interesting, I am more concerned with match discussion at this point as Wizards will not design replacement cards. I am just not expecting something like a Goblin card on the Coralhelm Commander level in newer sets ever...
A big one for me is this, how can we best combat zoo? Ideally from a conversation stand point on mono red, as it is the most accessible archetype, splashes are mostly personal choice, and frankly, its all I have access to right now. What are the popular card choices here? What are good strategies to combat better creatures and burn than we have? How can we best abuse our makeshift draw engines and mana denial and vial acceleration? Sideboard strategies?