@Scatena and John: The reports are really awesome. I like both of your builds a lot. Kudos also for the insane play in Game 1 vs Maverick Scatena.
@John: I would not take Thalia out in the mirror as the first striker can take down all creatures of the opponent. Thalia is a removal in the games. Ok the opponent had WI but well that is only one double striker.
Dear guys,
yesterday I played a Legacy Championship during the GP Bochum (GER) and finished 6-1-1 (4th place out of 132) with the nice men.
I played the following deck:
Core (20)
4 Gempalm Incinerator
3 MWM
2 Goblin Chieftain
1 Skirk Prospector
1 SGC
1 Krenko
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Scrapper
3 Piledriver
1 Stingscourger
1 Taiga
2 Plateaus
1 Karakas
6 Fetchies
8 Corelands
4 Mountains
SB
2 Thalia
2 Chalice
2 Null Rod
2 Krosan Grip
4 RiP
3 Pyrokinesis
I played against:
1. RUG - 2:0
2. Dredge - 2:0
3. Esperblade - 2:0
4. UBG Tempo - 0:2 (he won the tournament)
5. UBG Tempo - 2:0
6. UBG Control - 2:0
7. TES - 2:0
8. UBGW Deedcontrol - ID
Sometimes a bit luckey, sometimes well played.
The situation against Dredge game 2: He played City of Brass and passed the turn. I had an opening hand without hate but with a Plateau and some stuff and kept. I drew RiP, dropped a land and passed. He than drew, dropped LED, casting Careful Study, cracked LED in response and dredged and dredged and dredged...He found a Narcomoeba, a bridge and 2 Cabal Therapys and played both (Tormod's Crypt and the 2nd naming RiP). Next turn I would have died and drew....RiP!!! GG
The situation against TES. After I won the first game by taking a mulligin to 5 (he found nothing the hole game), he decided to keep a hand game 2 with Petal, Petal, LED, Duress, Thoughtseize, Ritual and something else. But no land and he didn't wanted to crack a petal for Duress and passes the turn without doing anything. Laucky me, because I had a Chalice in my opening hand and a Chalice "0", a RiP turn 2 and a Chalice "1" turn 4 was too much.
About the SB: On the one hand, it is ok, but on the other hand and I discussed it with GoboLord yesterday, I don't like the Krosan Grips. In matches where I want to be the aggressive player and where I want to finish the game very soon, I don't like a card which do nothing and for which I have to keep 3 mana open.
We need this card against Esper, Omnitell, UW helm. We thought, against Esper and UW, Engineered Explosive could be nice.
What do you say?
Explosives can be a nice catch all card against many decks, specially when running 3 colors (E.Plague, Energy Field, Sloitary Confinament, Delver, Mongoose, and others). The deal is I don't actually see it being faster than K.Grip, since you'll use 3 or 4 mana to use it against most of the cards I can think of on those MUs. Also, id does nothing against Omni, while Grip can win the game, as posted on Jrws report. Nice card to try though.
@Sassan: Clearing inbox space would be nice =p
Super Bizarros Team. Beating everything with small green dudes and big waves.
Nice reports and congrats to JRW, Scatman, and Pee Dee!
Confusion in the Ranks
Scatman, you have much more experience with this card than me. However I believe that it does not trigger for itself... So in match 7 when he already has Sneak Attack on the board and you play Confusion, both stay were they are until ANOTHER enchantment is played.
Isn't this why Confusion works with Show and Tell? They show Omniscience, you show Confusion. Confusion triggers for Omniscience but not for itself so you make the trade. If it triggered for itself then you would switch only to switch back again... Right?
I noticed that you played your game 1s without tutorable artifact destruction. Was this because you anticipated seeing so many Show and Tell decks?
Fair enough. Let's take a look.
A couple months ago I was playing Mono-R for a pretty simple reason: Maverick and Thresh were everywhere. Against those two decks there wasn't really a need for a splash. The only really strong SB card against those decks was Perish, but Perish didn't do much against the rest of the field, except maybe against Elf Combo where it was often too slow. Pyrokinesis seemed like a better card in general and it was better against Mom. Throw in a couple Relic of Progenitus and Relic+Pyro were as good/better than Perish while being more flexible and not requiring a splash. Maverick was very beatable, Thresh took a while to figure out [hint: MWM] but both were solvable with a MonoR build.
Since the two most popular decks were beatable with a mono R build there would need to be a good reason in the rest of the metagame to splash a color. Well the rest of the meta was Stoneblade and Graveyard decks. Colorless graveyard hate (Relic, Surgical, Leyline) provided answers to GY decks without a splash (though they could be clunky) and Tuktuk Scrapper was a serviceable answer to equipment. The only card that really couldn't be replicated with a MonoR build was KGrip. Anarchy could answer potential Moats and Humilities, but nothing monoR had came close to answering Batterskull the way Grip could. I couldn't see adding a splash to run 2 or 3 Grips in the sideboard.
Another reason to not run a splash was that using Ports (I was on 4 Waste, 2/3 Port at the time) meant the manabase would become very susceptible to being cut off from R mana if it ran too many duals. It didn't seem practical to open myself up to that.
As always, Storm combo was a huge pain in the ass. But thanks to RUG and Maverick and Stoneblade it was getting hated out pretty badly. So while I still ran 4 Chalice in the SB (I could never convince myself to concede the Storm MU) it wasn't something I really needed to worry about on the regular.
Since the top 2 decks in the format were beatable without a splash (Maverick was very beatable, Thresh took a while to figure out [hint: MWM]) and there was nothing in the metagame that couldn't be answered to some degee with a MonoR buils, and since the only card I really regretted not being able to side was KGrip, I just didn't see more upside than downside in playing a splash. So I stuck with MonoR for a while and it worked pretty well.
But times change.
The first developement was the rise of OmniTell. While monoR Gobbos had answers to SnT Emrakul (Stingscourger) and SnT Sneak Attack (Pithing Needle) it had nothing against OmniTell aside from Mana denial. The fact that Omni couldn't be hated out with Chalice or gy hate or cards with broader application (Confusion in the Ranks is still too narrow in my mind) made the inclusion of a splash more enticing.
The most obvious inclusion was W for Thalia.
I tried playing the Rwb deck that top 8'd some GP and just didn't like it that much earlier in the year. I went back to MonoR. But the rise of Omnitell made a W splash appealing because Thalia could slow down their game while putting pressure on the board, Karakas could both cast Thalia and bounce a Fatty, and O-Ring because a playable option in the sideboard.
I tried the Gw build and found that Thalia was a beating but O-Ring was weak and narrow. I played around with other SB choices and nothing really stuck out. I was still filling up most of my baord with 4 Leyline, 4 Chalice, 3 Pyro which only left me with a 4 flex slots which I usually wanted to fill with 2 Relic leaving 2 slots fro either Anarchy or some other randomness. The GY was the problem. I felt I needed 4 Leyline because of Dredge and Storm combo, but I also needed 2 Relic to deal with RUG. So my sideboard was pretty squeezy. No REB effects for me.
Then Wizards did a wonderful thing. They printed Rest in Peace. Finally the ultimate graveyard hate card was real. It was great against dedicated GY decks while also being a house against Mongoose and Goyf. RiP allowed me to consolidate my 6 GY SB slots down to 4. It was more playable against Storm than Leyline (which screwed you over when topdecked) and was all around THE card I've been patiently waiting for them to print.
Well, Thalia is W, RiP is W. I felt both cards improved a slew of MUs and both made my sideboard better. Three Thalia MD made the 4 Chalice in the SB much better. Thalia also made Port less-necessary because a resolved Thalia essentially acted as a Port for every spell my opponet wanted to play. This meant I could get rid of Port from my MD since Thalia rendered it irrelevant.
With more room in my manabase for colored mana sources the idea of adding a second splash became more appealing. I had been wanting an excuse to run KGrip and cutting Port was all I needed to do so. KGrip went into my sideboard that had a lot more room now and it's proven to be excellent against OmniTell and Blade decks.
I can't see cutting the splash any time soon.
RiP is better against the GY than any colorless hate.
KGrip is better against artifacts and enchantments than any Red or colorless options, and it's more flexible so takes up less SB space.
Thalia give you a lot of game against creature-light decks while not giving up too much against creature heavy decks.
Rwg improves your MU against Storm, SnT, Control, any GY dependence.
Another way to think of it is the lines of play open to you with the color splash.
T1 Drops
Chalice, Lackey, Vial
T2
Chalice, Thalia, RiP
These lines of play are extremely strong as they all open up either free goblins + disruption, disruption x 2, or disruption x 2 + a clock.
The only downside to playing all the splashes is the slight chance of Wastelock and of course color-screw. But this has been less of an issue than I worried it would be. Fetchlands are an incredible tool, and many deck that run counters + Wasteland sandbag their Wastes for Cavern anyway.
Ultimately I believe Rwg gives Goblins the most competitive sideboard cards available without opening the deck up to inconsistency. That's more than enough from me for now. I hope some folks find this helpful and not too meandering.
Could you walk me through the interactions with Show and Tell assuming your opponent intends to show Omniscience? If it triggers for itself, how do you end up with Omniscience?
Quick response! You got it in before I could get my own answer (from Gatherer)
My question about putting all artifact removal in the sideboard still stands though!Confusion in the Ranks triggers on itself entering the battlefield. If an opponent controls an enchantment, exchange Confusion in the Ranks for that enchantment.
Forgot about that.
The meta that I predicted for the Nationals contained mostly Rug, Bug, Junk, SnT and UW Miracles. Out of those decks, there isn't a single one I'd like MD artifact removal. Also, I thik that there isn't a single common MU we are not able to with the 1st game without a shatter-effect goblin. That's why I opted (for this tournament specifically) to not run MD shatter-dude. In other metas there might be a different story...
Super Bizarros Team. Beating everything with small green dudes and big waves.
And made me sad for a momment.. I finally bought my last port of rishada ...
But was very useful, I just disagree about Thalia, I dont guess it makes rishadan irrelevant, it works very fine indeed with it, the point is, in my view, that with thalia you already found an sufficient answer.
Congratulations to all people that succeed with goblins this weekend, hope soon I can bring a good report too =]
@ScatmanX: Yes, EE does nothing against Omnitell. But I also don't play confusion because in Germany Omnitell is no deck to beat. I hate Sb cards only against one deck. So I left this MU behind and focuse myself on the other ones.
But it's totally right: If you are expecting many Omnitell decks, you have to build the 75 other than me.
So I see, that Grip is a great card. But it's sooooo reactive in matchups where we want to be the aggressive deck. I hate things like that. Gobolord and I also talked about the good old versions without Krenko and with 4 Piledriver and 2 SGC. There are many ways...
I still hate Energy Field ;)
Indeed it was a very instructive panorama that jrw1985 gave us on the shifting on the metagame and its influence on the "splashing".
(And I fit into this "army of lurkers" category).
...
On another issue...
I played at a tournament this weekend where Confusion in the Ranks shined. My opponents were very surprised when facing this card coming down from their SnT.
I took some notes, and even though I did not finish on Top-X, as happens at some recent reports, I'll finish writing a report for this thread.
(You know, to help have some auto-criticism & some feedback.)
Does anyone think Goblin Recruiter will ever be unbanned for Legacy?
Faster alternative for K.Grip could be Nature's Claim. You don't need to leave three mana open each turn. I used to play N.Claim in my meta when I was worried about E.Plague because the splid second wasn't needed against black decks. But against UW and Omni decks I'm not sure is it safe to rely always on that they don't have any counterspells when you are playing your N.Claim.
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