Author - Nathan Jordan

When the good Lord gives you lemons, you make lemonade. And when you open your 3rd pack of M10 and get two Goblin Chieftains in the same one, you start thinking about playing some Goblins. After scrounging around in the Black and Red cards I had, this is what I came up with to take to my local FNM.

Deck Tech: Goblin Renegade

Creatures
2x Wort, Boggart Auntie
3x Siege-Gang Commander
4x Boggart Ram-Gang
4x Goblin Chieftain
4x Mad Auntie
4x Murderous Redcap

Instants
2x Tarfire
2x Magma Spray
4x Flame Javelin
4x Lightning Bolt

Sorceries
1x Banefire
4x Dragon Fodder

Land
1x Auntie's Hovel
1x Dragonskill Summit
3x Veinfire Borderpost
4x Graven Cairns
14x Mountain

Sideboard
1x Magma Spary
2x Goblin Assault
4x Deathmark
4x Doom Blade
4x Goblin Outlander

*Idealy, I want Dragonskull Summit instead of Veinfire Borderpost but the shop I play at was out and I only had the 1 I opened from my box. Also, because of my work schedule, I had no time to run home, which means my sideboard has two Goblin Assaults that I never intended on playing.*

Tonight was a good night for my Goblins. I was 3-1 in Swiss and had a close match in the 1 Top 8 round I played. Here's the quick and dirty of it:

Round 1 - Loss to my job who requires that I work until 7 and the tourney starts @6:30.

Round 2 - Win against RDW.

First game was close. Flame Javelin carried me and the extra draw per turn from Spiteful Visions allowed me to drop more mana and empty my hand to burn him out.

Round 3 - Win against G/W Overrun.

This is when I realized I needed Volcanic Fallout, and bad. Spot removal for Spectral Procession tokens? Lame. I won game 1 narrowly, but sided in Deathmark, Doom Blade, and Goblin Outlanderto lock up game 2.

Round 4 - Win against Boat Brew.

This game was over pretty quick. Killing the mana ramp meant that it took too long for him to get his bigger creatures out and by then there were too many Goblins on the field to deal with. Deathmark and Doomblade to deal with the incoming Burrenton Forge-Tender made this an easy wrap.

Top 8: Round 1

Game 1 - Loss to Honor of the Pure. I ran out of steam in Game 1 and lost to this spirit tokens. This deck was hot and I had a hard time dealing with it. Reinforced Knight of Meadowgrain eats up my Goblins pretty quick.

Game 2 - I came in with the majority of my sideboard again and lulled him into swinging with everything and putting me at two. He made some spirits and passed back. I put down the Outlander, made two Goblins, and doom bladed a spirit and swung in with lots of hasty Goblins for over 20 damage.

Game 3 - I saw my worst enemy, Spectral Procession two times. He swung with one set of 3, tapped two of his Windbrisk Heights to produce another 3 tokens and an Honor of the Pure. Two turns of that kind of abuse and I scooped.

I am relatively happy with my performance but there are some (now) obvious deck tweaks that need to be made:

-3 Veinfire Borderposts
-2 Tarfire
-2 Wort, Boggart Auntie
-2 Mountain

+3 Dragonskull Summit
+2 Magma Spray
+2 Voracious Dragon
+2 Swamp

Lands that come into play tapped are ok for some decks, but with agro like this, a turn without one mana ready for use means you are done for. I found myself wishing I could cast just one more spell but was limited by a borderpost.

Tarfire was meant to be recurring with the help of Wort, Boggart Aunite. This was a good plan, until I realized that I didn’t play her the entire night. Not even once. Not even on my last turn with the game on the board. The reason is that there are too many more relevant things in my hand to play instead. Flame Javelin, Ram-Gang, and Siege-Gang Commander are all more valuable than a 3/3 Fear for 4. Most of what ended up in my graveyard was tokens that got blocked. Mad Auntie does pretty close to the same thing by regenerating the Goblin instead. This allowed me to attack with tokens and regenerate at least one for more mischief next turn. The point is, if I was alive long enough to need to bring things back with Wort, then I was probably already dead.

With a creature slot open, it makes it a no brainer to add in Voracious Dragon. Say I have a Goblin Commander, Mad Auntie, Siege-Gang Commander, and 5 Goblin tokens in play (this is a pretty regular look for my board). When Voracious gobbles them all up with Devour, your opponent takes 16 damage! If you haven’t dealt at least 4 damage, or if they have been gaining enough life to stay alive, a 12/12 Flying Dragon should do the trick.

Such a low number of Swamps in for Mountains seems trivial, until I ended up with no way to make the black mana that I desperately needed. 2 Swamps ensures that you will still be able to cast red heavy spells like Flame Javelin and Goblin Commander turn 3 while still allowing you to go and find Swamps off of a Path to Exile.

The change to the sideboard is:
-2 Goblin Assault
-1 Magma Spray to the Main Deck
+3 Volcanic Fallout

An extra Goblin every turn that has haste is great, but not so much if they cause all your other creatures to run into a superior enemy. Fallout will only wipe your board if you don’t have some sort of lord support. I would recommend only using it when absolutely necessary because the consequences of clearing your own board are just as bad as if you had devoured them all with Voracious Dragon.

M10 gave us some quality Goblins to work with, and I’m putting them to good use. I’ll have another match report for you next week where B/R Goblins 2.0 will face my local meta-game once again.

Until next time Magic players, this is Nate signing off.