Legacy Goblins - July 2019
- Derek Gill Holden Gabriel
- Jul 29, 2019
- 10 min read
This is the current Goblins list I am running (thank you to MTGGoldfish for visual guides, I would recommend going over there because they're an amazing resource). I hope this is a good resource for anyone wanting to join the Goblin horde - I will try to update the deck as often as possible.
Most important thing is that in our opening hand we want either Aether Vial or Goblin Lackey . My favorite opening is Wasteland into Aether Vial on game one making the opponent think we are on D&T. Our main win condition is just pounding our opponent's face with Goblins, however, we also have the Skirk Prospector / Goblin Sharpshooter , Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Lightning Crafter combo. Our Vials and Lackeys let us cheat big scary Goblins into play (the classic is Turn one Lackey, Turn two Siege-Gang Commander ). We can slow down fast decks with Wasteland , Rishadan Port , Stingscourger and our sideboard has Chalice of the Void , Surgical Extraction, Containment Priest , Blood Moon , and Mindbreak Trap . We out value fair decks with Goblin Ringleader , Skirk Prospector , Mogg War Marshal , Goblin Piledriver , Goblin Matron , Goblin Warchief , Krenko, Mob Boss , Earwig Squad , and Siege-Gang Commander . Our basic removal is Tarfire which we can both tutor and draw from Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader , and our uncounterable removal is Munitions Expert when we have Aether Vial or Cavern of Souls and our free removal spell in the sideboard Pyrokinesis . We can overwhelm our opponents late game with all our Lords, Goblin Chieftain, Goblin Warchief , and in our sideboard Goblin Trashmaster . Against Death and Taxes and Delver decks, we also have Goblin Sharpshooter and Goblin Chainwhirler .
Why some cards are in this deck:
A lot of Goblins decks aren't playing Goblin Piledriver which I can understand, the card has a high ceiling but a very low floor. Which is why I like playing one in the mainboard and one in the side. The mainboard decision is our #1 clock for Fish and Delver. Some times this card is just a powerhouse which is why I like it in the mainboard but too often it can be worthless and counterproductive, which is why I only have one in there and the second in the sideboard. Believe me, Fish are just hard to deal with.
For everyone who reads through the list and sees the one-of cards Goblin Sharpshooter + Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Lightning Crafter and thinks "this is an amazing combo but it can't be consistent," I have one thing to say to you. You're right. This isn't our win condition, but it certainly helps that this can happen. Each of these cards can win us games on their own, having them together in the deck just make it better. Yes, a "win more" card is usually not what we want because they don't increase our win percentage by all that much, these are a little bit more than just for winning more.
Another two one-ofs that some people would argue are bad for this deck are Krenko, Mob Boss and the (a lot less removable) Skirk Prospector . Most people see what Krenko does and realizes that he's a slow, win more card. This is something our deck very much so dislikes. However, he does double our goblin count in a matter of one turn. If you're trying to win with Goblin Piledriver this is the second half of not needing to go to game three. While we have a lot of dead hands with him, he can get us there if we also have Siege-Gang Commander or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker in hand and we've got Aether Vial in play. The second half of this dynamic duo is the mana-man Skirk Prospector . He can eat his friends from Krenko and turn them into mana for another Goblin or Siege-Gang's Goblin Launcher. So many people love this card, and I feel I don't give it enough love. He can turn our dead hands into something powerful. If your opponent goes to kill a goblin, eat it instead and use the mana for Tarfire .
Unpopular opinion: I love Stingscourger . It used to be a guilty pleasure of mine to play another in the sideboard and Vial him in against Show and Tell or ReAnimator or Dredge. However, it can be the worst card in our deck against Death and Taxes. He was quickly replaced in the sideboard with a strictly better card: Containment Priest
The first thing in this deck that sticks out is the inclusion of Containment Priest . Before everyone knocks the Human in a Goblin brigade hear me out. Repeatedly the worst match ups for Goblins is Reanimator and Show and Tell (and all their variants), so we play one Stingscourger in the main board just in case our opponent Show and Tell s in something scary or if our opponent Reanimate s Griselbrand . Slowing down these decks is the most important thing for us. We also like our Containment Priest against Dredge, but that match up is infinitely better for us if we can Wasteland them or get out Goblin Sharpshooter (and killing our own Goblins if they have a Bridge from Below in their bin). This card is the reason for the Plateau , which I used to play two of, but having two you too often draw it when you don't need it or worse, its the only land in your hand after a mulligan to 5 against a D&T player.
Other cards that might stick out are Mindbreak Trap which is there for us to counter ANT and TES (both of which are difficult to deal with because we don't play Blue, and this is the absolutely best counterspell against them) as well as Reanimator (believe me, some people don't like a conditional counterspell against them but the more you play against them in games 2 and 3 the more you want that in your hand). We don't play any blue lands because it would upset our manabase too much if we had the blue needed to pay retail for this.
In the maindeck cards that people might take out are the Earwig Squad s. Personally, when I was trying to play in longer games against Miracles and D&T I found myself needing a way to get more advantage because I would often have mana left over and just needing something to sink it into after swinging in. This guy is our turn three, tutorable Surgical Extraction in the mainboard. Now, that's not exactly what it is, but it's close enough that it can just make your opponents scoop or prevent them from winning. If you resolve this against a linear deck, you take their wincon, otherwise you cripple their gameplan.
Here's a riddle: what kills Delver of Secrets and Wrenn and Six ? Anyone thinking Gempalm Incinerator I am sorry to inform you that he cannot target planeswalkers. The correct answer is Munitions Expert . This card is out of this world. While it doesn't draw us a card (as opposed to its cycling counterpart) it can bombard planeswalkers. Narset, Parter of Veils usually isn't a huge concern of ours but we don't want the Miracles player drawing more cards, Wrenn and Six is really scary because it can ping our smaller goblins, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor is more than just card advantage. Thankfully, we have an answer to these already hard-to-stick permanents against us. Munitions Expert really is one of my favorite cards in Modern Horizons (next to Goblin Matron for Modern and Echo of Eons for Storm). If you play in a creature/planeswalker heavy meta I would definitely replace a Goblin Chieftain for a fourth one of these bad boys.
Why I am not playing Sling-Gang Lieutenant ?
Well, the card is a little more annoying to be stuck with than Siege-Gang Commander because it comes with 3 bodies instead of 4, and the difference between a 1/1 and a 2/2 is HUGE when its only a one mana difference. I also don't want the deck to fall prey to Wasteland decks any more than it already can, because the more black cards we play the more we want to play black lands. "Well, why don't you play 2 Swamps and Bloodstained Mire s?" Because when I usually play this deck its at a Team Constructed tournament and our Modern player is using 4 of them, otherwise, I would consider replacing the Badlands with a Swamp and the Arid Mesa s with Bloodstained Mire , however, be warned, you might lose out on a little bit of consistency if you draw it but you'd worry less about Wasteland . No matter what your decision is on the Swamp in the deck, I don't feel like running more than 21 lands is a good idea, you already draw a lot of them as it is.
What about Gempalm Incinerator ?
Look, I LOVE this card but even though it draws you a card its nowhere near the power of Munitions Expert . If you have to, sure you can play Gempalm Incinerator instead but you might as well go out of your way to pick up a card that you don't have to pay a single mana to get value out of. Aether Vial is the biggest reason to switch from Gempalm to the new guy because unlike the cost you have to pay for Gempalm you can scoot around it with our Experts. Leaving the Vial at 2 isn't great but if you know what deck you're up against, maybe its better if you have an Expert in hand. Who doesn't want a free kill spell?
Where's Goblin Chirurgeon ?
This is not a good magic card. Yes, it saves a goblin but it also kills a goblin. I can see you arguing playing it in an Aristocrats goblin deck with Pashalik Mons and Sling-Gang Lieutenant but it does not fit in this deck. I tried it out for a while but it drags the deck so far down and there are no redeeming qualities of the card for this version of the deck.
Talking about Pashalik Mons ...
This card doesn't fit in this deck either. I know there are a lot of people playing it in Legacy, but I do not like it. Its a three-mana creature that takes away one of our better three mana slots - because ask yourself, if you had the chance to play Goblin Matron , Goblin Sharpshooter , Goblin Warchief , or Goblin Chieftain over this which would you play. You'd play any other three drop.
What about cards X, Y, or Z?
Chances are they aren't what Goblins wants to be doing. There are a lot of Goblins we like in Modern but this notably not Modern. We try to abuse the fact that we are playing Wasteland , Aether Vial , Rishadan Port and Goblin Lackey so we won't always have mana open to cast cards like Goblin Bushwhacker or Legion Loyalist . I know some people are interested in a Reanimator theme with cards like Unearth but I think that makes us too prone to getting screwed off a color or even worse being more fragile to an opponent's Wasteland .
Cards worth considering?
No. 1?
Goblin Settler . This wins our games against Lands but the Settler is very expensive and doesn’t entirely feel comfortable devoting so much of the sideboard to just the Lands match up because Lands isn’t very popular (mostly because The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale price). So if we lose any one game, I don’t feel bad about it being against Lands. Also, the deck would want 2-4 Goblin Settler . But if you’re encountering a lot of Lands decks than I would definitely put in 1 mainboard and 1-2 sideboard.
What's the second No. 1 card?
Technically I already named the No. 1 card worth considering, but I think this card is almost tied for first place as far as valuable-ness. Goblin Cratermaker . It is a bear with upside, and for 1 extra mana you can shock something or destroy an artifact. My only dislike for this card is the 1 mana requirement. If you activate its ability you lose a body for Munitions Expert and you can't always use him reliably. If there is any slot he takes here he is a one-of replacing Munitions Expert . Otherwise, I think that Goblin Trashmaster is 1000x better.
What about something to fix our Lands/Loam or the rare Maverick deck?
Recently I tried running Karakas in my sideboard and I was super happy because I forgot that Containment Priest only hit non-tokens, and I was thinking "this enables Containment Priest and can bounce Marit Lage!" But this came up in my first game for the night after sideboarding attempting to cast Containment Priest and realizing how little it did against BG Depths.
A solution to this could lay in another card. Dead / Gone . The upsetting part is it costs the price of Goblin Settler and doesn't give us a body. The upside to this card is that it also hits Plague Engineer , but it isn't that big of an upside because we have Tarfire which is better than the first half of this. Maybe this isn't that good of a card, it is just a little versatile.
I am still trying to look for a good answer to these decks, Goblin Settler is currently our best bet. I will test that card to see if it is worth a sideboard slot.
"But I'm having issues with Mono-Red Prison"
So we don't have very much mainboard because we don't have Goblin Trashmaster and we aren't playing Goblin Cratermaker so we need to have our Rishadan Port s or Wasteland for their City of Traitors or Ancient Tomb . This is the biggest reason that I think Goblin Cratermaker is what we might need. However, if we had a way to get Goblin Trashmaster into play more consistently or quicker we would be fine. We need a way to kill their Ensnaring Bridge and we usually win when we do but pre-sideboard we usually can't do that, but if we play Sling-Gang Lieutenant we don't need artifact removal the same with Pashalik Mons . I have found that Pashalik Mons is better in Legacy but it isn't great. I wrote up about why we don't really want to play either of the cards in the "Cards I'm not playing" section.
So you get in for damage and you want to end the game before your opponent...
To quote myself from earlier: Umezawa's Jitte is definitely worth putting in the deck (although I don't know which sideboard card to replace yet). This card is actually just amazing. It's best when you can tutor for it with Stoneforge Mystic but after playing Elves at an event I realized how good this card is even without Stoneforge. Maybe the future of Goblins has this in the deck.
What should we do about Counterspells/Tendrils/Hymn/K Command/any other blue or black spell that targets?
That's oddly specific, but the closest thing we can get to prevent this is Veil of Summer . This card is actually amazing, but not in the Black Red version of this deck. I think there is an argument for this card being played in a Goblins list, but it's Food Chain Goblins. If we were able to play Goblin Recruiter we would be playing it no matter if we are playing Food Chain or not, but until Wasteland decks are unpopular we can't fathom the idea of playing Taiga to help us cast this (because we need Green)
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