It's just this thread is in a constant state of repetition. Not that there was a huge debate, but some things have been dismissed.
Now on to Counterbalance, even with goblins running more two drops then it has ever done in the past, Usually I'm never worried about a counterbalance. Plus Most players like to board them out against goblins.
Slavering Nulls has to be compared to Frogtosser, and really the only goblin that connects early is lackey because he is pregoyf, I'd Run Frogtosser any day of the week over The slave.
"I Feel Like a Pussy if I don't play 4 Street Wraith's."
I dont think the matchup is unwinnable at all. The previous tournament I played in before this past weekend I faced zoo in my first round and won in G3 with it going to turns and I finished the game at 20 life, and me actually taking him to zero on turn 3 of "extra turns". In the black splash I am considering Mad Auntie instead of chieftain. The 1 less colored mana investment seems appealing, the loss of haste lords 5-7 seems like an iffy trade off, but the regenerative ability seems really useful in a format where goblins pretty much block everything. In a zoo infested meta Auntie seems like a good choice. I need a way to block goyf and not lose creatures every turn. Also, perish out of the board is really good against zoo.Originally Posted by Hunter245
TEAM AWESOME
Well, at least we smell better
A few things.
Quest of the Goblin Lord or whatever is called is horrible beyond belief and you shouldn't even bother testing it.
I'm interested in what happens with Tuktuk Scrapper. You guys seem to think he is good. However, I think he is bad. We are trading 3R for an artifact that will usually cost less than that. Are we really in a metagame that infested with jitte? Then why are we not splashing green for tin street? If Tuktuk Scrapper is playable in any build of 75, I think the better move is to play TSH.
If you have ever played extensively with Tin Street Hooligan, I think you can attest to this. Tin Street is probably the most underplayed card in this deck. How do you win the mirror match? Chieftain + TSH + more lands. How do you make merfolk unloseable? Piledriver + Monored or Piledriver + Tin Street (both have positives and negatives). How do you deal with the slew of random creature aggro-control decks like UBr Faeries, Bant Survival, ProgTop, etc?
TSH is great because TSH is a tempo beast. Any metagame with an overpresence of vial and/or jitte (they come hand-in-hand often) is a metagame for tin street. If you have never tested him before, you are missing out. He is the only reliable answer to jitte in any configuration of 75 for this deck ever.
I can't entirelly dismiss Scrapper though. For now I think he looks pretty unplayable, but I'll give him a month to prove himself.
About Earwig Squad, I'm really disappointed that the search function on the new forums isn't seeming to work properly for me. If anybody knows what I am doing wrong, let me know, because it is only showing posts in my search that have been done since the forum switch. This is very disappointing, as I have always been a big fan of this feature. If it ever starts working again, I strongly advocate searching for cards before asking questions about them. Not only because discussion has already been done, but because a lot of the best goblins players don't post in here anymore. I'm talking about people like Eldariel, Nickrit2000 (although he could be pretentious at times), Tacosnape, among others. The deck isn't going through the spurt of innovation as it did back then when the deck was much more popular and the metagame shifts more directly impacted the deck. As far as Earwig goes, I don't remember who it was, but one of the older players mentioned it was bad. I stand by this as well. If I could search I would point it out better. It doesn't do enough. It is too conditional. It is best as a secondary answer to heavy plague hate and against decks like landstill where a resolved moat is gg for the black splash. The other major problem with it is that it is incompatible with the boarding decisions you will have to make. Oftentimes, fanatic will come out for squad. Well, he is one of the best enablers of squad. Squad is CLUNKY as fuck, and when I tested him a lot back around his release, he was almost always bad as an answer to goyf or other cards that we think are the problem but not really. If you are playing Earwig for non-combo or non-moat/humility reasons, then you are doing it wrong. We are always looking for answers to goyf, answers to wild nacatl, etc. But we are not looking at the big picture. Goyf is not the problem, he is just the most identifiable (because he was/is the final) nail in the coffin. We have to attack the core engine of the deck if we want to defeat those decks.
And if you ARE playing earwig for combo, that's a metagame choice. But I don'tthink diluting the manabase for conditional combo hate is worth it when there are plenty of equal options available to us in monored.
Many people have tested Boggart Mob, and many people have agreed, it is bad and mainly win-more.
I'm interested in what happens with Slavering Nulls if anybody tests him, and the red ETBT land that would replace soaring seacliffs in the experimental 8lackey 4stingscourger build. I don't have much time for testing but I would like to hear how it goes if anybody gets a chance.
Finally, counterbalance can be a problem if you don't play around it right. It is bad against us because of our curve obviously, but another thing: this deck preys on losses in tempo from the opponent. It is what makes us have a winning shot against a deck like aggro loam. Aggro loam would be unwinnable if they didn't have to tap out and wait a turn to actually get that seismic assault rolling, wait a turn for their crusher to get huge, etc. Counterbalance is similar, its impact is powerful (and can be against us), but it is such a tempo sink (especially with top) that they can't afford to jerk off to themselves against goblins, not when we are playing 6-8 haste effects and 6-8 lackey effects preboard. Well, I suppose if you cut those, then nevermind, you are making almost every competitive matchup worse.
And the zoo matchup takes some practice. Knowing you are the control deck is the first obvious part. Knowing when to interact with your opponent and when to set up the card advantage engine is the second. If you are unfamiliar with the matchup, I would just learn to play zoo a little on MWS or something, then play zoo vs goblins yourself 10 or so times, and you should get the jist of what needs to be done, as long as you are actively analyzing what is happening in the gamestate. Moving on to further testing from there may be necessary depending on your meta. But knowing how to play the zoo matchup with goblins not only allows you a better percentage against zoo, but it has helped me in almost every matchup in understanding the big picture of what goblins must do. Along with playing against Nassiftop, I think those two matchups teach you how to play this deck (even if Nassiftop doesn't even see that much play in today's meta).
FoulQ: Although I do admit Earwig can be clunky, in my meta he seems quite reasonable. There is an uprising of enchantress, natural order decks, and show and tell is at least making a slew of appearances. For reference here is my black splash list as it stands now ( I did make changes already from the list I posted earlier)
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)
// Lands
4 [TE] Wasteland
9 [P2] Mountain (1)
3 [R] Badlands
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
2 [MM] Rishadan Port
1 [ON] Wooded Foothills
// Creatures
4 [US] Goblin Lackey
4 [AP] Goblin Ringleader
4 [SC] Goblin Warchief
2 [ON] Goblin Piledriver
2 [SC] Siege-Gang Commander
3 [LE] Gempalm Incinerator
4 [US] Goblin Matron
1 [LRW] Wort, Boggart Auntie
2 [MOR] Earwig Squad
2 [TE] Mogg Fanatic
2 [LRW] Mad Auntie
2 [M10] Goblin Chieftain
// Spells
4 [DS] AEther Vial
1 [MOR] Warren Weirding
// Sideboard
SB: 1 [MOR] Warren Weirding
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [AT] Pyrokinesis
SB: 2 [ZEN] Ravenous Trap
SB: 4 [US] Duress
SB: 2 [TE] Perish
As I mentioned a few posts ago, Mad Auntie seems like a really solid choice against the goyfs out there. With this build I have 6 haste lords and 4 +1/+1 lords. Weirding is becoming almost a necessary evil in my meta since Loyal Retainers/Iona is getting popular and Progenitus is very present, although I did escape those matches this past weekend aside from the one Natural Order Thresh deck I played against, but that match is all racing them hitting double green and a creature when playing mono red. I could easily move the earwigs to the board so I can put the 2nd weirding back in the main and go to auntie #3.
I agree Quest for the ..... seems pretty terrible....
TEAM AWESOME
Well, at least we smell better
Also worth noting Earwig is really solid against Loam strategies which are sort of making a come back. It's often easy for Goblins to swarm around those decks early defenses, so it can be prowled in to cut them off utility or the engine if they hadn't gotten it online yet.
TPDMC
What about the new land that makes unblockable?
Quest for the Goblin Lord R
Enchantment
Whenever a Goblin enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a quest counter on Quest for the Goblin Lord.
As long as Quest for the Goblin Lord has five or more counters on it, creatures you control get +2/+0.
Would this get a play. I think its worth a try. It might be a nice back up plan after a mass removal. Drawing crappy 1/1s after gettng EE'd is a problem for this deck. With this I think drawing 2/2s, or 1/1s with five quest counters on QGL would no longer be crappy.
Even if I play as the control deck in the zoo matchup things never end up good for me. Even with Mogg-Warmarshals and Stingscourgers. I have tested the matchup but it seems everyone gets the god draw. I feel like my deck should do better against zoo then it currently does. Maybe winning the die roll would help the match tremondously. If you feel like the Mono-red list is capable of beating zoo theI will continue to test. Maybe if I Find my notes from my previous testing against zoo i can post it.
On the ally, he is bad it's just a lil better then Tinkerer as a 1 of. I understand Tin-Street is amazing in the mirror but its just another option. I mean how good can a ally be xD.
I was curious that those who splash for black, is not running fetchlands terrible. I mean Not opening yourself to stifle may be worth it. Wastelock is a little bit more painful, but 5t's just an idea that ran through my head
"I Feel Like a Pussy if I don't play 4 Street Wraith's."
So question with the Hooligan...If you have a Warchief out, it is impossible to spend G to play him, right? So why is he so good? Do you make every other card in your deck worse by not playing Warchief?
Or am I looking at this wrong?
He doesn't work with Warchief, Aether Vial, Lackey or Instigator. Not to mention that you have to splash green for no obvious other reasons...
The new ally does work with all above mentioned cards, becomes 3/3 haste 3R (+1 damage) with Chieftain, 2/2 Haste for 2R (+1 damage) with Warchief, and he doesn't require 6-8 fetch lands and 2-4 non basic lands. 4 mana is also useful seeing how we almost always put 4 counters on our Vial because of Ringleader. Finally he's also nuts vs Stax type decks when combined with Kiki-Jiki.
I dunno why people think that this card isn't superior to Tinker and Hooligan...
Exactly. I was testing with a couple maindeck Hooligans and ran into a situation where I needed him but had Warchief out. I was obviously very disappointed. I was never a fan of Tinkerer since I feel like he's too slow. I don't want to wait a turn without a haste effect on board.
What is the general opinion of Krosan Grip? I'm not very experienced with Legacy but as far as I can see the only really prevalent enchantment is Counterbalance (I've seen Survival of the Fittest once, but GY hate helps to stop their Squee shenanigans). If CB is usually sided out anyway and other enchantments aren't a big part of the format, I see no reason to run green now that this guy is available.
Well, I among others, including a lot of respected players, have ran TSH since it was released when the metagame warrants it, and if you look back in the thread history, you can see that tin street hooligan is a very viable card. The tempo gain from Tin Street is enormous. If you have warchief out, you are probably already winning, and this is a very important part, because tin street is a card that is good both as a tempo tool or as a safety valve once you've lost your stuff like warchief to jittes. Tinkerer, on the other hand, is a tempo sink, and can't kill jittes/vials the turn he comes into play, which plays a huge role obviously. If you splashed green you would also get the versatility of krosan grip and could run a lot more hoser cards such as choke if you really wanted to. The green splash is very viable, and tin street is a good card.
I am confused why Tuktuk Scrapper is getting all this love when he costs 3R. The only must-kill artifact is jitte. Do you really want to invest 3R to destroy vials, mox diamonds, tops, etc? With TSH, he is not only reliable artifact removal, he's a reliable artifact killer AND a tempo gain. Tinkerer and Tuktuk (because of his high mana cost) do not offer this.
I can't stress enough that the interaction between warchief and TSH is negligible. And I'm not saying the green splash is superior, I was making a comparison of TSH to Tuktuk: if I felt Tuktuk was good enough for my 75, that means I have a major artifact problem, which means I would rather run TSH and splash green. The green splash does not play the black splash. It is basically monored. I think it is very important that we don't become narrowminded with our splashes. Certain ones are better in certain metagames, including the green splash.
I searched the tread before the recent switch to the new software and I failed to find any reasonable grounds for him being average other than 'He's bad'.
So cheers for the rundown.
My brother runs a mono red version of this deck and he scooped to enchantress. Does the mono red version have any answers or options or do you just chalk it up to a bad match up?
I would have a hard time imagining really needing to metagame a deck towards enchantress, but we have a few options.Warren Weirding and Earwig Squad for the wincons is probably your best bet. However, a well-placed Krosan Grip can help, and you could run Tranquil Domain too (though that is much narrower than the black splash). And if you don't want to splash, there is always Anarchy and the secret tech of Aura Barbs!!
Also you might try grave hate out of the SB to surprise them from replenishing. I haven't really played this matchup because I'm not going to waste time testing it if it such a small percentage of the field (although I do really like the deck's matchups). However, things change, and it could become popular later.
Well since the Star City legacy tourneys have been kicking in enchantress has been creeping up there bit by bit.
There is one good reason, not counting the drawback of running two colors, to run Scrapper over TSH: if you Vial/Lackey/Instigator it into play, it still destroys things. TSH doesn't do this. My guess is that the builds with 4 Lackey/4 Instigator/4 Vial would probably do better to run Scrapper over TSH.
do players still run mogg fanatic?
My biggest gripe with this is is that you have an active vial in play, or a lackey/instigator connecting, you are already ahead. I agree that Tuktuk might be playable as a 1 or 2 of sideboard for monored in metagames where artifacts are a problem. I'm not saying that we should play TSH, I actually think monored is the best right now in generalized metagames followed by RB. What I'm saying is that if artifacts are really a problem enough to warrant Tuktuk Scrapper, then I would rather splash green and run Tin Street Hooligan, one of the most underrated goblins ever.
Artifact and Enchantment removal has always been a safety valve for goblins. It has never been a proactive strategy. This is what makes goblin tinkerer not that great. Therefore, we should be assessing artifact/enchantment removal from a spot of being in a bad position. Krosan grip is great in this position, but not the best: it still costs 2G, a significant investment for goblins. Losing a turn to cast a spell without an immediate effect on the game state is always a ballbuster in goblins. That's why I believe moon effects, choke, etc. have never really been that good in the deck. If they are countered, losing that turn is much more crushing than if say, Eva Green spent a turn to play choke, because turn 3 is a very fundamental and strategic turn for our deck where we need to maximize the tempo gains that comes with the synergy of hasty cheaty goblins. Anyways, krosan grip is good in a losing position, sometimes: tin street hooligan (as long as not manascrewed) is great in a losing position. It kills off the problematic artifact and gives us a free 2/1. In addition, on turn 5 (the turn after they play and equip jitte), we can matron-->TSH.
But honestly, this argument is not that important, and I meant to compare TSH vs Tuktuk Scrapper as simply if I was to play artifact removal, which would imply a slightly wacky metagame. As of now, I'm running 0 artifact removal in my 75. And I'm not trying to be extremely defiant in my point in saying Tuktuk is bad. It will take time to properly evaluate the card, but I think the bigger question is, do we need to even have artifact removal? It's similar to the debate about treasure hunt in 43lands: sweet, draw a bunch of cards! But is that the angle the deck should really be approaching?
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ETA:
Mogg Fanatic...
Like Morbid- said below, his biggest application is ichorid.
One other thing that mogg fanatic does well is kill dark confidant. If there is a lot of him in your metagame, I would consider running some mogg fanatics. Confidant seems like just another dinky card advantage engine at first glance, but if you analyze games where dark confidant is play, you can see that card is absolutely devastating against goblins. Any game where a confidant generates significant card advantage against goblins is a loss, because they are able to catch up to your fast pace of "questions" with an equally fast pace of "answers," and once the confidant player takes care of a few key cards, it becomes easy for them.
Also, he helps smooth the curve a little bit too, and is useful against grim lavamancer and silvergill adept/cursecatcher (surprisingly relevant). I would not make the argument that he is "nuts with sharpshooter," because he isn't even if you are playing 4 fanatics in today's meta. One other card that has become very popular is noble hierarch, a common natural order target, and he pings that thing to death. In combination with ports/wastes you can deal significant blow to a NO-supreme blue list.
Some people play him, but personally I'm more into instigators and chieftains in those spots.
Ichorid - DTW
I put 2 in my list recently so that whenever I do feel like playing it, I can maybe steal a g1 against Ichorid, or at the very least, slow them down. Its popularity is rising, so it's not such a bad option.
Also, regarding Scrapper in Mono-R, I would still play Tinkerer. Never tried the G splash either for TSH, but offered the chance for a splash I would rather head in the B direction for (aforementioned by FoulQ) Earwig, Weirding, and support cards like Mad Auntie.
Delver enthusiast and avid practitioner of blind flipsmanship.
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