[Deck] Goblins

[Amon Amarth]

The game plan doesn't really change, typically. You want only 2 or 3 guys on the field at any time. If they play a SFM then your dead-ish Gempalms become live. Nothing changes unless they run out a turn 2 SFM and you can't deal with it immediately. Otherwise it dies and they're stuck trying to hardcast a Batterskull.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

That would in fact be the player I lost to.

Goblins vs Miracles is not really a fair matchup. Outliers (or especially prepared players) aside, Goblins is a huge favorite. As a UW player, the absolute last thing I want to see my opponent do on turn one is Mountain->Vial - there's just nothing I want to see less than Goblins.

Against regular Miracles, you basically only lose to a timely Entreat for 3+ and enchantment/artifact-based hate like Shackles, Moat and Humility. Everything else you can just grind out because Terminus nicely restocks your library to continue grinding. Rindleaders/Matrons should keep you going until they run out of action at some point. The only real danger here is a) wiffing off your Ringleaders too much and b) not deploying enough of a clock so that they can Entreat you out.
As for the Miracle-Blade matchup, assuming his list still looks like the one from the Open, the matchup should be even better than that against straight up Miracles because he doesn't have any Entreats, only Batterskull, something that's actually easier to overwhelm/kill as long as you Incinerator the Stoneforges. Personally I'd actually focus on killing the Jitte post-board (because that can actually beat you) and just bum-rushing the Batterskull/killing SFM followed by disabling Batterskull for a turn or two to win.

If you want to particularly beat up on Miracles, I suggest splashing green and running 3 KGrip in the board. It answers Batterskull, Jitte and Enchantment-based hate - exactly what keeps them in the game - and can even randomly blow up a Top during their end-step when they were planning on Miracling a Terminus to not die.

As for how to play the matchup, that0neguy and Amon covered that quite well. Continually use one actual card (Warchief, Chieftain, MWM, etc) and 2-3 power of CA (that is to say Ringleaders/Matrons) to clock them. They will run out of Termini, at which point they rapidly die. You'll want to speed up your clock a little as they hit the 5+ mana range to get around the threat of Entreat.
Because Entreat is the one relevant thing they can do, you should also focus on killing white mana with Wasteland and Port - if they don't have WW available during your turn, at least they can't surprise-Entreat you during attacks.

Hope that helps (as long as I'm not sitting on the other side of the table ;) )

[Julian23]

Here's a trick I recently "discovered" while playtesting. Watch out for situations where they activate Top to enable a Terminus. We once came across a situation where the Miracle player only had a Fetchland in play when doing so. You can prevent the Terminus by Porting the Fetchland in response to the top activation. Doesn't come up every game but I wanted to raise awareness since I see people fail to see that interaction every other tournament.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Here's a trick I recently "discovered" while playtesting. Watch out for situations where they activate Top to enable a Terminus. We once came across a situation where the Miracle player only had a Fetchland in play when doing so. You can prevent the Terminus by Porting the Fetchland in response to the top activation. Doesn't come up every game but I wanted to raise awareness since I see people fail to see that interaction every other tournament.

Good advice. I was going to mention this (particularly useful against Entreat moreso than Terminus, actually, because it's hard to establish WW preemptively against a deck with Ports&Wastes) but decided it was too specific/intricate to mention as general advice. Also works well on upkeep once they announce they want to enter their draw-step after Brainstorm/Jace-activations (once again because they can't establish white pre-emptively against Port for obvious reasons). My opponents missing this has won me games I had no business winning (and I was keenly aware of the possibility, obviously, knowing I had the Miracle on top and praying they wouldn't see it).

[Hyped]

Here's a trick I recently "discovered" while playtesting. Watch out for situations where they activate Top to enable a Terminus. We once came across a situation where the Miracle player only had a Fetchland in play when doing so. You can prevent the Terminus by Porting the Fetchland in response to the top activation. Doesn't come up every game but I wanted to raise awareness since I see people fail to see that interaction every other tournament.

Why can't they respond to port by cracking the fetchland? SOrry for dumb question but I'm missing something there.

[pryite199]

Why can't they respond to port by cracking the fetchland? SOrry for dumb question but I'm missing something there.

Goes like this tap Top to draw a card. In response tap your fetchland (the only white mana available in this situation). Either they draw the card with top and waste the miracle or fetch and the miracle card is no longer on top when the Sensei's Divining Top activation (the draw card one) resolves.

[Hyped]

Goes like this tap Top to draw a card. In response tap your fetchland (the only white mana available in this situation). Either they draw the card with top and waste the miracle or fetch and the miracle card is no longer on top when the Sensei's Divining Top activation (the draw card one) resolves.

Ok I understand. SO they CAN respond with the fetch but it would shuffle away the miracle. Very interesting!

[troopatroop]

The Source

Adding value to your Ports in Goblins, since 2012

[Barbed Blightning]

I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been porting fetchlands for quite some time (first with D&T, now Goblins). Bugs the shit of out of a control player, as it forces them to make a decision--which when playing control is never what you want.

However, maybe that's just crazy talk on my behalf.

[lordofthepit]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not normally a "tournament report" guy that likes to detail all the matchups, but since I'm pretty new at Goblins, and I changed to this deck primarily so I could play something that beats Miracles with regularity, I can use this as a learning experience (with your help!).

I am not sure if you just got unlucky against them, but when I play against Miracles, I usually try to deny them as much white mana as possible. But I run 4x port, which helps to cut them off white or double white indefinately.

I also run 4 Ports: I copied Max Tietze's maindeck, even though I don't like Goblin Piledriver very much, except against combo and "win-more" situations. I was using Port pretty frequently, once to turn off an EOT Vendilion Clique which would have blanked my Vial activation at 4 counters on my next turn. But I couldn't win before the T5 Humility turned things around.

The MiracleBlade decks are a worse matchup than straightup Miracles. It should still be slightly favorable. Blow up their Batterskull and their deck is quite a bit worse. Then they're jamming a control deck with a bunch of squires which is pretty terrible. You can also run a pair of Krosan Grips in the SB too which take care of silly enchantments as well as equipment and other misc. artifacts.

If you want to particularly beat up on Miracles, I suggest splashing green and running 3 KGrip in the board. It answers Batterskull, Jitte and Enchantment-based hate - exactly what keeps them in the game - and can even randomly blow up a Top during their end-step when they were planning on Miracling a Terminus to not die.

I ran three Krosan Grips in the board. I just never drew them.

Let me know what you guys think of my keep/mull decisions, which I find the hardest part of playing a new deck that is so dependent on the opening draw.

G1: Kept 2 Ringleader, 1 Matron (maybe 2?), Cavern, and two Ports on the draw. It would have been amazing in a longer game, but as it was, my opponent landed a turn 2 Stoneforge that I could not easily answer. His only maindeck equipment was Batterskull, which I don't find very scary, since there are a lot of ways to stall it. I ended up stranded with like 3 Gempalms in hand, but no Mountain. I made the decision to Matron for a Tin-Street Hooligan, which was probably a mistake since Batterskull is easy to bounce (should have either killed the Stoneforge instead or bounced the Germ token) and I couldn't even cast it with "kicker"; anyway, that card got Cliqued away. I considered something like Skirk Prospector to stall the Batterskull, but that just loses to Swords to Plowshares; I don't think I had enough mana to cast Siege-Gang Commander, and certainly not to activate it. IIRC, my plan of dropping chump blockers was foiled by an Entreat the Angels before I could stabilize (not sure about this).

G2: I took out the 4 Piledrivers and 2 other cards (probably the Mogg War Marshals, not sure if this is right) for the 3 Krosan Grip and 3 out of 4 Pyrokinesis (since I figure I likely needed to answer the Stoneforge). Bringing in the Pyrokineses was probably a very bad idea, at least on the play, since it's easier to answer a T2 Stoneforge on the play.
Snap kept two Vials, Warchief, Ringleader, maybe a Gempalm, 1 Mountain, and 1 Port. T1 Vial got forced, but the second one stuck. I ported him for a few turns while I waited to draw more gas and for the Vial to tick up. I think a Lackey or Warchief to Swordsed somewhere in there. On his turn 4 (or 5, since I think there was a Wasteland earlier), he had to activate Top for some reason, but passed the turn with 3 mana up. I had 3 counters on Vial. I suspected he'd try to Clique me in response to Vial, so I tapped him down with port EOT, to which he responded with Snapcaster->Brainstorm (to put a Terminus back on top, he later told me, although he did have the Clique in play). Ringleader hit 3 lands and another Ringleader. I may have Gempalmed away his Snapcaster (probably a mistake). I believe I had 4 power on the board at this point (Ringleader + 2 1/1s). The next turn, he drops his 5th land and plays Humility. I think he may have swept the board here too.

In any case, he goes on to hardcast a 5/5 lifelinking Germ and then a naturally drawn Jitte. I trade 2 Goblins and a Pyrokinesis for the Germ and two 1/1 Angels. The Jitte connects 5 or 6 times via a 1/1 Clique, wrecks my board (Gempalm becomes very awkward here), and then my face. My out was ripping into a Krosan Grip to deal with Humility, casting the Tin-Street in my hand to deal with the Jitte, and then slowly stabilizing against the Clique (which would then be a 3/1 flier with me at a relatively low life total) and eventually the Batterskull (which isn't too bad). I made the mistake of cycling a Gempalm away to try to draw into an answer, also thinking that it wouldn't be able to deal damage under Humility anyway; it turned out not to matter since I only had 1 Goblin on the board at that time against a loaded Jitte, but it would have been important against the Clique if I did draw my out (assuming my opponent immediately uses all his counters to gain life, instead of saving one to kill my Tin-Street before I can shoot the Clique with Gempalm).

I think its a good match either miracle blade or miracle control. It's not that hard to just kill the stoneforge mystic, or kill the germ token, or even tutor up TSH/tuktuk and just kill the batterskull.

Even if you can't kill the batterskull, things like MWM and Skirk Prospector give you tons of time before they can kill you. Krenko is also amazing here as well.

Fighting batterskull is a bit more difficult, but I think the same game plan of grinding them out with card advantage still crushes them as long as you don't extend into a terminus. Even if they go up to 30 something life off a batterskull, if you deal with the batterskull, 4 power worth of goblins on the field at a time can take it home without overextending.

I agree that Batterskull is not that scary at all by itself. However, Jitte + unanswered creature is. So is Batterskull under Humility. God forbid you try to answer a Jitte with Humility on the board.

If you guys consider Blade variants a fairly positive matchup, I'll probably give Goblins more run at some point. I think I really want to add some Tarfires in all my matchups (Stoneforge Mystic, Delver of Secrets, and opposing Lackeys were annoying). I won't be playing this every week though: I'm don't want to have to dedicate too much to what should be a pretty good matchup, thereby weakening myself against the rest of the field. Combo decks already tend to be pretty bad matchups, and I don't want to worry about facing random hate like Engineered Plague, Humility, Rough/Tumble, etc.

[Sasan]

Is esperblade also a positive matchup?

Regarding Ports I have an important question.

I run the following main deck:



Goblins Maindeck
60 cards

4 Arid Mesa
4 Cavern of Souls
5 Mountain
2 Rishadan Port
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Taiga
4 Wasteland
22 lands


4 Goblin Lackey
3 Goblin Piledriver
2 Stingscourger
1 Tin Street Hooligan
3 Warren Instigator
4 Gempalm Incinerator
3 Goblin Chieftain
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Siege-Gang Commander
34 creatures


4 AEther Vial
4 other spells

I am thinking of cutting one mountain and raise the number of ports to three. Is that reasonable considering I have a color splash and warren instigator which costs two red mana and 3 chieftains? Will I get color screwed?

Can anyone help me?
And any suggestions about the deck? I wanted to make a combination of Max Tietze's and Cedric Phillips' build.

Ah and here is my sideboard:

Goblins Sideboard
15 cards

1 Stingscourger
1 creatures


4 Chalice of the Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Krosan Grip
3 Pyrokinesis
14 other spells

[lordofthepit]

Is esperblade also a positive matchup?

I've played a lot of Esperblade, and I considered Goblins a favorable matchup for me. I ran 4 Swords, 4 Snapcasters, several Ghastly Demise in the board, along with some Zealous Persecutions, in addition to the Stoneforge package. Discard on your Goblins is also pretty annoying.

However, I'm not sure if this is actually the case. Contrary to what many people expect, it's easier to play Esperblade (and a lot of blue control decks) than it is to play Goblins, at least to the extent that if you fuck something up with Esperblade, all the Brainstorms and Jaces still allow you to cover up your mistakes.

[Sasan]

I've played a lot of Esperblade, and I considered Goblins a favorable matchup for me. I ran 4 Swords, 4 Snapcasters, several Ghastly Demise in the board, along with some Zealous Persecutions, in addition to the Stoneforge package. Discard on your Goblins is also pretty annoying.

However, I'm not sure if this is actually the case. Contrary to what many people expect, it's easier to play Esperblade (and a lot of blue control decks) than it is to play Goblins, at least to the extent that if you fuck something up with Esperblade, all the Brainstorms and Jaces still allow you to cover up your mistakes.

Last weekend on SGC Atlanta a Goblins player lost 3-0 against Esper Blade and made it to the top 8 while the Blade player ranked much higher. So I also think that Esper Blade is a hard matchup for us.

[Avatara]

Last weekend on SGC Atlanta a Goblins player lost 3-0 against Esper Blade and made it to the top 8 while the Blade player ranked much higher. So I also think that Esper Blade is a hard matchup for us.

Huh!? the goblin player got start every game on the top 8 on the play, because he was ranked higher than his opponents. Even in the finals vs the Esper Blade player... new tournament rules. (The Esper Blade player was ranked 8th after the swiss)

This is assuming that you are talking about the open series. I think the match-up starts to get a lot more ugly when they start playing Engineered Plague.

[Sasan]

You are right. It was a Deck of Eason and it got covered on Scg.com...and he lost 3-0 against Esper Blade.

Anyway, can someone help me with my question regarding the number of ports and my decklist in general? :-)

[ScatmanX]

You are right. It was a Deck of Eason and it got covered on Scg.com...and he lost 3-0 against Esper Blade.

Anyway, can someone help me with my question regarding the number of ports and my decklist in general? :-)

Your deck and SB are fine. 16 is the minimum R sources I'd go in an Instigator build. That said, if you want to add a 3rd Port, I'd suggest it to be your 23th land.

About colorscrew, that may happen with K.Grip. There are only 7 G sources for casting K.Grip. I'd cut a Mountain for another Fetch. Running 1 less target for your fetches than the actual number of fetches has never caused me problems. Only one game in my entire life I ran out of lands to fetch, but by then, I had a whole lot of lands into play.
8 G sources seem to be fine, and realistically, you'd have a hard time fitting another one while running Ports.

Changing the subject a little:
Some people are playing 4-1, 4-2 or 4-3 Waste-Port split. That has always been the case. But recently UW Miracle/Blade have become a thing. Considering Port is better against them (and against the mirror match, that might be showing up more) Does anyone consider running a 3-3 split?

[Sasan]

what a Great and helpful reply. can i also Cut a Mountain and a second taiga? or is it better to go with fetches? :-)

[ScatmanX]

what a Great and helpful reply. can i also Cut a Mountain and a second taiga? or is it better to go with fetches? :-)

There problem of cutting the Mountain for a 2nd Taiga, is drawing the Taiga when you don't need it.
There are 3 things to consider imo:
1 - Is there any time when you may want 2 Taigas into play? (that's usually always a No)
2 - When do you want your Krosan Grips, and how many of those matches run Wasteland? (Running 2 Taigas against UW Miracles is fine, since they run few Wastes, and against something like Death and Taxes you may want a 2nd one, since they can Waste the 1st)
3 - When it's bad naturally drawing your Taiga? (This is the dealbreaker for me. Against too many opponents - RUG, Maverick, DnT game 1, Goblins, Merfolk, and others - naturally drawing the Taiga is bad, because you have little to no use for it, and it can set you a huge time back because of a Wasteland)

Because of number 3, I'd suggest trying out just 1 Taiga first.
If you fell that the 2nd one wouldn't hurt, try it too.

[Sasan]

ok thanks :)

But can one not waste a fetch land too and stifle it?

[GoboLord]

ok thanks :)

But can one not waste a fetch land too and stifle it?

Sure, but there you need Stifle AND Wasteland, which is 2 cards, compared to only 1 card (Wasteland) to get rid of Taiga. Plus, I know only 1 deck that features Stifles, while ~60% of all legacy decks have Wastelands.

Seriously dude, please THINK about what you are writing before you submit the message. Yóu could have figured out the answer to your question yourself. Please don't post anything here if you dont make a VALUABLE contribution to the thread. If you are really unsure about questions like this yyou can just PM me or ScatmanX your question and we will answer it.