Quote Originally Posted by Mental View Post
Everyone says that Goblins needs to play 22 lands. I've built my list around this mentality too, but once, for the sake of messing around, I changed my mana base to this:

4 Foothills
3 Wasteland
4 Badlands
7 Mountains
=18 Lands

And I ran 2 Blood Moon, 1 Goblin King and 1 SGC in the open slots.

The thing is, it wasn't awful. Sure, normal Goblins was better, but this build was faster and drew more threats, however, its late game was much worse. You actually got colorscrewed about as rarely as you do in 22 land Gobs, but often you'd have trouble hitting your 4th Land Drop, and we know how essential that is.

That leads me to ask a strange questions: If not running the full number of ports/wastes, or none, what is the lowest number of lands Goblins can go down to? 18 seemed to low, but 20 might be acceptable.
I think 18 is too low. Like you said, nailing drops after land 2-3 is hard. If you wanted to run fewer lands, you'd probably have to trim out some fetch, as you did. Only problem I see is colorscrew and Wasteland becomes your worst enemy. Also, those Wastelands may or may not stay around if you want to deny your opponent of mana.

With fewer lands, you'd have to rely on Lackey and Vial, meaning you better be packing protection or removal out the butt. Sure Chief helps, but if you're losing, I'd think that you'd have problems with recovering.

Also, I'd run a single Swamp and Mires instead of Foothills. But that's just me. Blood Moon doesn't like your Badlands. I wouldn't dip below 20-21 unless you want to change the average CC.