Johnny on the Spot: Down, Down to Goblin Town

Hello and welcome to the first edition of Johnny on the Spot. I'm David Ozalas (The Junktroller) and as you can read in my intro I love building new decks. I view it as an essential part playing Magic. But I don't just build them for fun. I want them to be competitive. Deep down I am a spike.

So, where's the best place to begin? Brewing is a complicated topic. It is hard to build something that no one else has built before. It can also be expensive if it doesn't work out. I think the best place for new brewers to start is with a simple, cheap, yet incredibly fun and competitive brew: Modern Goblins!

4 Goblin Guide 4 Legion Loyalist 4 Foundry Street Denizen 4 Goblin Bushwhacker 4 Spike Jester 2 Warren Instigator 2 Goblin Wardriver 4 Goblin King 4 Goblin Chieftain 4 Blackcleave Cliffs 4 Blood Crypt 4 Auntie's Hovel 4 Arid Mesa 1 Scalding Tarn 3 Mountain 4 Goblin Grenade 4 Lightning Bolt SB: 4 Thoughtseize SB: 2 Shattering Spree SB: 2 Rakdos Charm SB: 4 Goblin Assault SB: 3 Grafdigger's Cage
This isn't Legacy Goblins. There's no ticking up Aether Vial and cheating in uncounterable 4-drops. This deck's goal is to make sure the game never goes that long. This is an all-out-aggro-spend-all-of-your-mana-every-turn-casting-hasty-creatures-to-pull-your-opponent's-pants-down deck. And it actually works against a lot of the metagame. Let's go over how.

Independence – Most of the creatures were chosen because they are good on their own. Sure, Legion Loyalist likes triggering battalion and Goblin Chieftain wants to pump a whole army. But look at the other choices. Goblin Guide smacks for 2 right away with no help. Spike Jester does it for 3. There's no “silver bullet” card (meaning stop that card and the rest of the deck falls apart). Your opponent can kill any individual threat and it really won't matter.

Does he look like he needs help?

Other goblin builds I've seen rely on Mogg War Marshall and Dragon Fodder to build up a 1/1 army and hope to get a lord or Shared Animosity out. But what if they kill the lord? What if you never draw Shared Animosity? You have a sorry army of vanilla 1/1's. Not this deck. Every individual goblin requires an answer from your opponent.

Haste – Don't underestimate haste on a goblin. Haste makes a goblin feel like half burn spell and half creature. When most of your creatures have haste it seems like you get to Time Walk every turn. Your opponent will have to scramble to get a defense up. This usually means playing untapped shocklands. Haste gives you an extra attack. Opponent's untapped shocklands feel like an extra attack. These “extra” attacks add up and put them in bolt and grenade range fast.

By far the worst creatures in this deck are the non-haste goblins. Warren Instigator and Goblin Wardriver have amazing abilities but they are slow and allow your opponent to catch up. I've thought about replacing them with non-goblin counterparts like Hellspark Elemental and Ash Zealot. If you're on a budget build of this deck feel free to replace Spike Jester with either of those. They won't have synergies with the lords or Goblin Grenade but they're still ok. It does feel odd to spend $400 on lands so you can play four 10 cent uncommons in the maindeck. But Spike Jester is that good. He's worth it.

He wants you to invest in a real estate pyramid scheme. You can trust him.

Swarm – I've noticed something interesting about modern decks. They either have 0-2 slots dedicated to removal or have half of the deck dedicated to removal, with few decks in between. 0-2 slot decks are comprised of Birthing Pod decks, Affinity, and combo decks (i.e. Ad nauseam, Amulet of Vigor, Mono-green Devotion, etc). If your opponent is incapable of removing your goblins they will hit a critical mass of power very quickly.

Quick enough to kill those combo decks before they combo. Fast enough to out aggro affinity. (A lot of people won't believe that last statement. Test the match-up. You might be surprised.) Pod decks are interesting. Kiki-Pod is about a toss-up. Their Kitchen Finks turning into Restoration Angel will give us headaches but Goblin King's mountainwalk and Goblin Grenade's burn will give them a hard time. Melira Pod is a pretty bad matchup. They gunk up the board with two-for-one blockers and they don't play mountains. It happens. Almost every Modern deck has a hard time against Melira Pod so I don't feel too bad.

                                      

Only douchebags play with these cards.

The news gets worse. The removal heavy decks like RWU control are miserable and almost unwinnable. They have about as much removal as we have creatures so we can never hit a critical mass and swarm them. If you have a heavy RWU and Melira metagame I would steer clear of this deck.

The sideboard does what it can to close the gap in those matchups. Goblin Assaults help provide a stream of goblins that are tough to continually remove. Grafdigger's Cage helps to stop Pod decks. Thoughtsieze is brought in against combo decks. The Shatering Sprees come in against affinity (we CAN, not ALWAYS, beat it in a race). Rakdos charm is an all around all-star for a variety of situations. The goblin lords are usually the first cards to side out since there are 8 of them and they are the slowest cards in the deck.

Despite those short-comings this deck is incredibly fun to play. Watching your opponent writhe in fear when on the draw is incredible. CHOO!! CHOO!! Here comes the goblin train to run you over. The win percentage on the play is unreal. No deck in modern can give a new player a better chance at winning. The odds are your opponent has never faced a deck as fast as this. One mistake (for either player) will lose the game.



              

Show me your hand! Oh....let's just go to game 2.

You're prepared though. They probably aren't. That gives you a huge advantage. Did they start their first turn like this; fetchland, shockland, Thoughtsieze? Oops! That's a game loss. Did they cut Pyroclasm from their sideboard in favor of Anger of the Gods? Do they know that Anger is too slow against us? Oops! That's another game loss.

                        VS.     


When our opponents go to games two and three, they will realize that a lot of their opening hands are not keepable because they don't set up a fast enough defense. Forcing your opponent into these mulligan decisions is much tougher for them and gives them another chance to make errors. It also gives us virtual card advantage.

Another bonus that often gets overlooked is the time is takes to finish a round. Game three will usually end with 37 minutes left in the round. This leaves a bunch of time to eat a candybar, drink a soda, go to the bathroom, trade with other players and watch all the grimy RWU mirrors go to time and end in a draw. Good. Put them in the 0-0-1 bracket. It doesn't matter whether we've won or lost. Either way, we won't be in the draw bracket and won't have to face them.

Well, that's about it for goblins. It's great for new players to the format because it's cheap and explosive. It will help you learn just how fast other decks in the format are. And you can exploit the metagame if there's little to no control. Come back next week when I show off a different brew that exploits Jund's diminished presence in the meta.