Tourney Report!
Went 3-0-1 at my LGS last Thursday. Played a Rg build:
Creatures [34]
1 Tin-Street Hooligan
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Siege-Gang Commander
1 Skirk Prospector
1 Stingscourger
3 Goblin Piledriver
3 Mogg War Marshal
3 Tarmagoyf
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Warchief
Artifacts [4]
4 Aether Vial
Lands [22]
1 Pendelhaven
2 Rishadan Port
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Taiga
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Arid Mesa
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Mountain
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Wasteland
I wanted to play with some Goyfs. So the fuck what?
R1 Tim Doomsday
G1 Tim plays a SDT. I have the option of playing TSH or Piledriver. I can't swing for the win next turn so I play TSH to make him lose tempo by re-playing Top. I don't know if it really makes a difference. I don't think he could have gone off either way this game. W
G2 is a lot like G1, only this time when I use TSH to blow up Top I have Wasteland and Port to follow it up, locking him out of the game.
R2 April Esperblade
G1 I beat her down to 7 then run out of gas. L
G2 I mull to 5, then get a hasty Sharpshooter online and a Krenko. W
G3 I'm at 19, she's at 6, and we run out of time. D
R3 Alex with Eva Green
G1 He gets screwed on lands and I beat him down with Goyf. W
G2 I just build a superior horde and win.
R4 Joe with Junk
G1 I have 1 land and 2 Vials and just go apeshit. Krenko > KotR. I keep a Vial at 2 for a few turns because I have Stingscourger and I he has Liliana + KotR and I'm hoping he makes me discard with Lilly so I can bounce his KotR and make him discard it. No dice. He elects to make me sac instead, so i just vial in a MWM.
G2 He plays a Bayou and casts a blind Cabal Therapy T1 naming Vial. I have 2 Lackeys in hand instead. I play T1 Lackey. He plays no land T2 and cast GSZ for Dryad Arbor. I rip Wasteland. The knee-jerk line of play here is to Waste Arbor and connect with Lackey. But having a 2nd Lackey in hand gave me a better option. I attacked with Lackey, forcing the trade with Arbor. Then I cast the second Lackey in my hand and Wasted his Bayou. Now I had a board of Land, Lackey. He had nothing. The next turn he played a land and cast Top. I connected with Lackey on my turn, cheating in something decent, then played Rishadan Port. On his turn I Ported him in his draw step so he couldn't use the mana to spin the top before drawing. He spun the Top in his draw step (after drawing his card for the turn) and saw that he didn't have land coming so he scooped. W
3-0-1
I still want to have a better game against Esperblade. Has anyone extensively tested against that deck?
Yea yea, So what. (could not help myself.)Originally Posted by jrw1985
How effective was he? Seems like a big beatstick but was he all that useful? Oh and what was the looks you got when he hit the table?
Maybe Shattering Spree? I just don't know how to lock down that deck. They only need Mystic to start most of the time. Pithing can do some damage too but its not really worth running. Maybe more TSH?
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I have played against it a bit. Was your opponent tanking on her turns? Did you encourage her to play faster? Do you think you'd have won if you had more time? Because if so, this draw is actually because of clock management (which you can improve on), not a bad matchup.
Other than that, you only really lost one game. Why was it? Did you just draw a string of lands? Did she hit multiple terminus? Did she manage to get Jitte active? Why did you lose the game?
Edit, realized the question was not for me.... Me a fool.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Heh.
But what you posted was still relevant, since it lines up exactly with my thinking about the matchup as well, in the sense that the matchup revolves around their equipment. We are the control deck in the matchup, trying to defend against their equipment. Once we do that, we can vomit some creatures onto the table and they melt.
Phase 1 - defending against their equipment
The best tools we have to defend against equipment are:
1. Skirk Prospector (to prevent equipped creatures from dealing combat damage)
2. Goblin Sharpshooter (primarily to be a poor man's Prospector, but can also kill their creatures if you finangle the right board state)
3. Stingscourger (for germ tokens, or an emergency for for an equipped attacker)
4. TSH or other artifact kill to get rid of them
(oh look, the toolbox that we shouldn't cut....)
While we are defending vs their equipment, there is a second sub-game going on, where we try to build up a commanding board position while still retaining cards in hand to rebuild with for the eventual board wipe (usually Terminus).
Phase 2 - building a better board state
The best tools we have for building a superior board state are:
1. Aether Vial (great with the Phase 1 cards)
2. Cavern of Souls (because they usually have a large number of counters)
3. Goblin Ringleader (> Jace TMS)
4. Gempalm Incinerator
(these cards punch through their countermagic and help us win an attrition war)
The rest of the cards in the deck are all fairly interchangeable. Sure, SGC can act as another way of preventing Jitte counters, but really, when we land him, we are switching from Phase 1 to Phase 2 and looking to kill the opponent.
tarmogoyf seems interesting, too bad i don't have the money to test with it...
First of all: thx Jon, for the report. How did you like Pendelhaven and Tarmogoyf?
That'S the MU I probably tested the most. My thoughts:
* you need to be fast. I won several games just because they didn't resolve a SFM in Turn 2-4
* the deck is insanely good and strong. It appears to me that if they don't have one strong draw, they have another. So, the deck is extremely potent...and if you manage to win in early game its probably luck.
* the MU isn't easy to play since they got several combination of keycards that are strong vs. goblins. Obviously SFM is one such card, but also StoP + Snapcatsre Mage, as well as multiple (recurring) Lingering Souls are quite effective.
* my strategy would therefore be to deal with SFM in early game (by maxing out spotremoval). Shatter-Gobllins are also quite important. I found out that Goblin Piledriver is probably the best card to side out.
After all, the deck is really hard to beat an I accepted that it's a very interactive 50-50 MU.
MountainCaverns, Lackey, Go.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchanges our apples, we each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange our ideas, we each have two ideas.
I want to just mention Legion Loyalist here. I have found him to be insanely strong against Esperblade. Like, he wins the game all by himself sometimes. But I play more aggro, and if you play the classical type of block-a-lot-with-MWM deck you probably don't run Loyalist. In that case I would strongly recommend him as a 1-of in the sideboard, if you are having trouble with Esperblade which by the way, agreed, is a very strong deck.
What do you mean ? couldn't he simply tap his land for mana in response to you porting him ?
It goes like this:
Opponent want's to use Top usually in his upkeep, to fix his draw that turn. If he uses in his upkeep though, you can simply Port another land, and he will have lost 2 mana.
If he decide to say something like: "are you going to use port?" during his upkeep, it means that he passed priority to you (otherwise you wouldn't be able to use port). You can simply say "no". When that happens, the upkeep will automaticaly end (because both players got priority, and none decided to do anything), and the drawphase will begging. The first thing that happens on the draw phase is him drawing a card. This way, he was not able to fix his draw this turn. You can now proceed to Port him during his draw phase (so he won't have the mana during his main phase) to which he'll likely float mana for Top. Nonetheless, he drew, hopefully, something bad.
Rule of tumb: if he have Top, don't use your Port in his upkeep unless you're responding to something.
Super Bizarros Team. Beating everything with small green dudes and big waves.
I play 2 instigators only, as i only want one in my opening hand to follow up either a goblin lackey or an aether vial, and i want 6 lackey effects to help drop ringleaders, krenko and SGC. I never play chrome mox with instigator, and 6 lackey effects help me mulligan less.
Ok, played tonight. 2-2 losing to combo and Countertop with Equipment.
What I have learned. TSH is not for me. It just is not. You can not vial it, if you do not have a Cavern in play you have to risk the counter and if you matron for it counter decks will just keep a card in hand waiting for it. TSH is fast yes, but the speed you gain is not worth the loss of the ability to cheat him in at instant speed and bugger say a Jite or a Div Top. Granted against a Stone blade deck I can see the speed being more useful, but at the cost of losing Vial or losing it all together with a WarChief? No. No I will not run this card again unless the meta changes.
On the other hand, Krosan Grip is a (censored) godsend. I know there is talk of replacing it with wear // tear. I won't. The a ability to hit Aluren or Omniscience without a chance for their abilities to trigger is plainly worth paying one extra for. This was great.
Also I found out just how good we can be against dredge. Vial in a goblin with an echo cost, don't pay it, Bridge goes. They don't see it coming, they have no answer, in short it is good to do. When Grizzle hits the table tho the trick ain't so useful. Was fun to see someone that could dredge no more because if he did he would deck himself tho.
Last. Played with Confusion. I really want to know why people think it is better than O ring. I get that you can steal with it, but I did not see a time tonight where Confusion would have been any better than O ring and I saw a few times where I would have liked to have answers to things and I did not have them.
Dice.
4 Goblin Lackey
1 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Piledriver
2 Mogg War Marshal
1 Stingscourger
1 Tin Street Hooligan
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Siege-Gang Commander
4 AEther Vial
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Plateau
1 Taiga
3 Mountain
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 3 Pyrokinesis
SB: 3 Chalice of the Void
SB: 3 Confusion in the Ranks
SB: 4 Relic of Progenitus
Match one: Blue Jace.
Game 1.
1st turn Cavern and Lackey becomes a second turn Siege. On my third turn I dropped Warchief and a Piledriver. All I had seen from him was 2 islands and no spells. I have no idea what he is playing.
Side in CotV, out Gempalm.
Game 2.
I do not remember most of this game but it went much like the first game off the back of a first turn Vial. In short the whole Match was over in a total of about 5 minutes. I then asked him what he was playing. He showed me but I never really saw him do anything.
Match two: Counter Top with Equipment.
Memory on this is not perfect.
Game 1.
I drop Vial in my turn after he opened with a Island. He Countered it.
Draw Cavern, Drop a Piledriver. Pass.
He drops Jite
I draw A lackey, play it and hit him with the pile.
He Drops Vedalken Shackles
I swing hit and get into play Siege.
He takes Siege and puts Jite on it. In response I Sting Siege back to my hand.
I hit him on my turn, Drop Sieg and game.
In 2 K Grip
Out, MWM
Game 2.
I mull to 5. Have a hand I can keep but no Cavern. I have Vial.
He opens with a land.
I drop Vial, FoW takes it out.
He Drops top. Ponder.
I get down Thalia.
Counterbalance comes out.
Swing and hit him, I then play a Warchief, FoW.
From here I get no mana, he stops my non basics from untapping and I die.
Game 3.
Turn one Vial. Lands.
He plays a land.
Turn two I play CotV, Fow.
Counterbalance.
Turn three I see no mana. Vial in a Phalia.
Plays Jite.
I draw a fetch, Vial in matron, find Tin. He in response plays Top. I decide since he has no critters its not the best time to play Tin as I am sure there is now a 2 drop on the top of his deck. Attack.
He draws, Spacaster for a ponder.
I find no land. Will not from now on. Attack.
He drops Wurmcoil Engine.
I Sting it, Counterbalance kills it. (Was right about him stacking the two drops)
He drops Shackles, takes Thalia. Hits me, block with Matron. He gains life, not looking good.
I Drop Tin, resolves. I hit Shackles. Too little too late.
Wrum with Jite.
I draw nothing, fold.
Match 3: Dredge.
First game
He goes first and opens with Faithless looting.
I open with a Vial.
He starts Dredge going, gets nothing. LED hits the table.
Lackey goes down.
Dedge, Hits a bridge. Nothing to use it with.
Hit with Lackey, Drop a Chief, drop a topdeck Prospector, pass.
Dedge, pops the LED, in response I sac the Chief, two Bridge go away and he plays a handful of draw cards. Mass dumps his Library. Can't do anything with it (I am so dam happy right now. Can not believe my luck.)
I vial in MWM at the end of his turn, it dies, he loses another Bridge, Hit with Lackey, Sieg and game.
Out, Vial, in Relic.
I mull to four, no lands but have Relic. Not great but will have to do. I top Port, play the Relic.
Faithless again. Mass dumps but gets nothing.
I get another Relic. Keep my land untapped and pass.
He draws, lays down two LED, Plays one, plays a spell to draw for four, I wait, Pop Relic when he is finished as he now has Griselbrand in the grave but can't bounce it. My turn, no land. Drop the second Relic
He draws, pops LED, Drops a draw card and then fires off his combo getting tokens here there and everywhere.
(Note. Once the match was over his friend pointed out that he misplayed here and when he had the two LED down could have gone nuts. I do not totally understand dredge but somehow he could have gotten Grisel into play.)
Out, Krenko, In Sharpshooter.
This game was fast.
He plays LED, dumps his hand.
Relic
Gets nothing in his dredge
Lackey
Gets nothing again (Few)
Lackey hits for Sieg.
He gets Bridge and 3 tokens, I hit one of the tokens with Sieg, kill it and bridge.
My turn, take out the other token, Keep mana open, pass.
Mass drops, gets Grisel but can't bounce him, I pop Relic. Game.
(Match notes. He was borrowing this deck and did not really know how to use it. I don't know the best times to use Relic and I really think RIP will be better in my deck.)
Match 4. Aluren combo.
Game one.
This one is a haze. I have no idea what I did I just remember turn 3 he bounced everything I had and went on a combo loop.
Out Vial and Tin, In K Grip and confusion. (He needed his critters to combo. I thought taking them from him would work.)
This one game whet for half an hour and I do not remember most of it. Here are the highlights.
We both had mana issues. I got a ton, he got none. I ended up with 4 ports and the mana to use them.
I got no critters after the 2nd draw that hit the table for about 9 turns. I either got Mana only (not one cavern) or he FoW'ed them.
Confusion hit the table and he was unable to combo. It delayed him. We exchanged a lot of critters.
He played Aluren, I Gripped it. The look was priceless.
I played Krenko, could have saved me the game but he got it (I played it and got it back with a lackey) with a critter he played. He sacked it to make me discard naming grip. I did not have it.
He built up the mana he needed to combo while I got nothing but Mana. (I am not joking the bottom of my deck was all critters by this point. I had drawn every mana I had BUT the 4 caverns and a single Fetch.) He bounced Confusion and comboed out. I was thankful the game was over.
Now that last game might have gone better if I could have kept Krenko but if I had of not Played Confusion I know he would have killed me a lot sooner.
Anyway, hope this helps and let me know if you can see where I can improve.
Last edited by Dice_Box; 04-30-2013 at 09:41 PM.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
@ Dice:
Could you please edit your posting and add your decklist as well as the exact outcomes of the 4 rounds you played?
MountainCaverns, Lackey, Go.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchanges our apples, we each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange our ideas, we each have two ideas.
Goyf was Goyf. He was great R3. My opponent was playing Eva Green and lead with Swamp, CT naming some Goblin, and hits it. I played Port, Vial. He played Bayou, Abrupt Decay on Vial. I played Waste and Ported his Bayou on his turn, leaving him with a basic (I think a swamp). On my turn I ripped the pendelhaven, cast Goyf, Wasted his bayou. He was stuck on the swamp and I started bashing for 5 with Goyf.
R4 against Junk (or Dark Horizons, whatevers) Goyf just drew a StP, but it was cool having him as an option to Vial in with Vial @ 2. Goyf definitely raised a few eyebrows.
Her rate of play was fine. Not super speedy, but entirely acceptable.
I lost G1 due to petering out. I think I blanked on a Ringleader and couldn't keep parity after that. She was doing what Esper does and I was doing what Goblins does and when I hit that bad Ringleader I couldn't keep pace with her effects anymore. G3 was going well but then we ran out of time. So it goes.
I think a second Sharpshooter in the 75 might actually be a real help in this match. Sharpshooter answers all of their X/1s and TSH hits their equipment, and it's always better to run Goblins than non-goblins.
I feel like trying Helm of Obedience in the side.. Thoughts?
''The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.'' Lord Eddard Stark - A Game of Thrones
-Adsum
-ChrisMeister on MTGO
I've noticed that getting both prospector and sharpshooter out is very powerful. Heck, sharpshooter could be your kill right there if you have krenko, or some MWM's. Is it possible to play a list where you would cut piledrivers in favor of some extra copies of those? The deck would get more of a comboish feel.
A proposed list:
21 lands
14 Mountain
3 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 artifacts
4 Ęther Vial
35 little green men
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Lackey
3 Goblin Chieftain
4 Goblin Warchief
3 Skirk Prospector
3 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
The curve would get a little lower. Furthermore, having more prospectors would allow for second turn haste-makers if need be. Though having multiple in your opening 7 would suck, getting double sharpshooter later on is awesome.
What do you guys think?
This is funny, since it seems that we are both appproaching the matchup from the same perspective in that we see ourselves as playing the control role in the matchup. However, I think that answering SFM is something that our deck can't reliably do and doesn't further our strategic goals in the matchup. We shouldn't be trying to deal with their creatures on a 1-for-1 basis with spot removal because this approach is fundamentally flawed in terms of card advantage in a matchup where we want to grind them out. Using Tarfire to kill a Stoneforge gives you tempo by keeping the Batterskull in their hand, but loses you card advantage (since they still got an equipment out of the deal). Ditto with killing a Lingering Souls token. I think that it's analogous to them Forcing our T1 Aether Vial. Even when they 'win' by countering it, they still lose because it cost them two cards.
Basically I am happy to zero in on the extremely narrow point of them hitting with an equipped creature, and try to defend that. That also gives me the most time to develop my board as well (since I don't *have* to deal with a SFM as soon as it hits play).
I agree that it's a close matchup but I think that it's one that favours us. Maybe I have a more combo oriented local meta, so the Stoneblade decks I play against are more teched out with FOW and Spell Pierce, making them worse against me?
Yeah, I think you have to chalk that one down to variance. As Phil Helmuth says "If it wasn't for luck I'd never lose!"
Prospector is terrible in multiples, and pretty narrow in it's applications. You don't really want to draw itin the matchups where it's bad.
Part of the beauty of the Matron toolbox is that you effectively have 5 copies of your singleton goblins. My list has 5 Prospectors, 5 Sharpshooters. Your list has 7 of each, which is a marginal improvement, but at the massive cost of running NO Siege gangs, NO Piledrivers, only 21 land, and other nonsense.
You say the curve would get lower, but even that's not really true. You have cut a bunch of two-drops for one-drops and three-drops. Your curve isn't fundamentally different from a more conventional build.
Who do you see it being good against? What MD cards would you cut for it?
Interesting view. What would you suggest then? How do you defend yourself against a equipped creature (other than with Skirk Prospector and SGC)? I think you are right in your approach: "deal with the equipment, not with the tutor" - but I don't think that your strategy is all too successful unless you have a reliable card to hold back Batterskull. Suggestions?
A friend of mine (with whom i tested this MU a lot) suggested to play Dismember, as soon as Batterskull is in play. The reasoning was that you basically let them invest 1W+1W+2 turns of tapping-down their mana while you only spendat instant speed. Another answer we found helpful was Ancient Grudge since it's "immune" to discard. However, all in all I didn't find those cards very promising - they didn't turn the MU around dramatically.
Could you tell me how you see the MU in detail? I mean: what are your priorities, what are your goals? This deck really eats me because I was as yet unable to develop a clear-cut strategy against it.
MountainCaverns, Lackey, Go.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchanges our apples, we each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange our ideas, we each have two ideas.
Maybe goblins could splash black to make dismember hurt less and for sideboard cards, i mean, it's not a horrible idea.
Did you see post 5606 ?Interesting view. What would you suggest then? How do you defend yourself against a equipped creature (other than with Skirk Prospector and SGC)? I think you are right in your approach: "deal with the equipment, not with the tutor" - but I don't think that your strategy is all too successful unless you have a reliable card to hold back Batterskull. Suggestions?
A friend of mine (with whom i tested this MU a lot) suggested to play Dismember, as soon as Batterskull is in play. The reasoning was that you basically let them invest 1W+1W+2 turns of tapping-down their mana while you only spend
Could you tell me how you see the MU in detail? I mean: what are your priorities, what are your goals? This deck really eats me because I was as yet unable to develop a clear-cut strategy against it.
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