Quote Originally Posted by ASSASSIN View Post
In mirror ? Stop with that. The important in mirror is not the number of land or the number of vial, juste the CA. The two opponants are 4 gempalm, 4 pyrokinesis, 4 fanatic and 1 sharp so table are always razed. You must draw, and not necessary draw fastly, just draw.
This isn't true. In the mirror, the player who can play his Goblins wins. Between two good Goblins-builds, Lackey isn't going to connect most of the time and Vial gets Tin Streeted or Tinkered. That leaves you to hardcast your creatures with your lands. A deck with 22 lands takes an aeon to get up to 4 in an average game, especially since your opponent can use Wastelands and Ports to delay you should he be in an advantageous position to do so. Goblins isn't a deck that runs out of cards, especially not in a match-up where there's no countermagic involved. Between Matrons, Ringleaders and Siege-Gangs, you might as well have infinite cards in hand. When you have infinite cards, the player who can play more of his cards wins. Obviously, that player is the one with more mana! Your Ringleaders are worthless if they sit in your hand when you're stuck at 3 lands, Siege-Gang Commanders even more so. A good Goblins-build is going to destroy your Aether Vial and kill your Lackey. Once you do the same, you both are left to topdecking enough lands and the player with more lands in his deck is always the candidate to topdeck more lands, thus having an advantage.

I run as many as 24 lands total, because of the mentioned factors. I haven't lost a mirror match since starting with this number. Yes, some games are lost to unanswered Lackeys and bad draws, but most of the time, my superior landbuild and the fact that most builds don't even run MD artifact removal for Vials means that I'll have an easy time smashing them, and thus far I haven't lost two games in a row when I'm in such an advantage in the mirror. Not only that, but against any deck which has the capability to destroy/stop your Vials and Lackeys, you need to be hardcasting creatures with converted casting cost of 5. That means you'll want to draw 5 lands straight, and even more since you run Rishadan Port and Wasteland. Furthermore, you want to draw two red sources by turn 3 which means that 14 is woefully too low a number. Even furthermore, in the green splash you want to draw GR for turn 2 Hooligan, further making the mana more relevant.

As a synopsis, playing more lands makes your deck more consistent, allows you to fight better against the decks that are prepared for you and allows you to be more reckless with your mana denial lands. It also makes your most common match-up, the mirror, better.

Finally, remember that when you're playing the most powerful, or one of the most powerful, deck(s) in the format, you're mostly in an advantage against your opponent as long as you get your mana right. Therefore, your #1 priority is to get your mana right, since the less games you lose to bad mana, the lower your chances of randomally losing a critical round in a tournament and getting knocked out of the Top 8 are. Your opponent is doing his very damn best killing you. You've got enough of an opponent there, so make sure you don't need to fight your own deck while at it. This is even further highlighted by the fact that Goblins are one of the very few decks that can keep hands with 5-6 lands and one-two business cards if those business cards happen to be Matrons and Ringleaders, preferably with a Rishadan Port available in the landbase. That's because you can generate the nigh' infinite flow of cards from that one creature. That's an added reason to play lots of mana, you aren't hurt as bad as normal decks when you're flooded, especially with Wastelands, Rishadan Ports and 8 fetches. Of course there're match-ups where you can't keep those 5-6 mana source hands, but against anything even a bit slower, or counter-reliant, especially if some of the sources is a Vial, you're well off with manaheavy hands.