Thursday Deck Tech: Goblins!

There comes a time in every mage’s life when they have to face a friend. For many, it comes early, at an 8-man FNM. For others, it happens during the deciding round of a GPT. Such was the situation a few weeks ago when Heebs and myself were battling through GPT Los Angeles at Ron’s Comic World. As we cleaved through the bracket, watching the number of people with our record dwindle, we knew it was inevitable. We were going to get paired. We were both just hoping that it wasn’t until round 6, when we could safely draw into the top 8.

As you know if you read last week’s column, it wasn’t to be. Heebs and I were paired up in Round 5, and my tokens deck stopped his onslaught as the only Red Deck Wins in the room. He dropped two more close rounds afterwards, and finished just outside the prizes at 4-3 overall.

On the other hand, his deck definitely hit on something important here. He hit on the same thing that Patrick Sullivan hit on when he Bolted his way to the top of the SCG Legacy Open: When other people were playing inbred metagame decks, and a 3/2 flyer was the biggest threat in the format, it was suddenly very reasonable to play a ton of burn spells and efficient creatures and get there by turning guys sideways.

Here’s his list, as he ran it that day.

Let’s take a look at some of the interesting departures from a ‘normal’ RDW in this deck, and why I think that they were critical to his level of success.

10 One Drops

Stormblood Berserker is so powerful that he actually forces you to skew your deck construction to accommodate the need to get in for damage on turn 2. To that end, Heebs opted for a slew of unorthodox one drops that each play a distinct and powerful role in the deck.

The least surprising choice comes in the form of Stromkirk Noble. With ‘effectively unblockable’ tagged on, the slith ability has always been a powerful one that lets him grow out of control quickly if unanswered. Blockers can be burned out of the way, leaving him to deal more and more damage every turn. Strangleroot Geist provides some issue, but with the addition of Pillar of Flame with AVR, I anticipate this to be much less of a problem.

Spikeshot Elder is another standby of modern RDW. Serving as a late game mana sync, the power-boosting effects in this deck make him a potent threat on his own.  Between Goblin Chieftain, Wardriver, and the sideboarded Sword of War and Peace, it’s not unreasonable to treat him as a consistent source of damage in the late game. He keeps the number to two because drawing multiples doesn’t get him anywhere.

Goblin Fireslinger is a choice that many weren’t sold on at first, but it does have a lot going for it. First, the damage is utterly unpreventable, and doesn’t involve combat. Fireslinger will continue his beats long after the opponent establishes some manner of board control. In that way, he serves as a pseudo-Shrine of Burning Rage, except that his damage is front loaded and doesn’t require you to hold up mana for fear of an Oblivion Ring. Sure, he’s more vulnerable to removal, but ultimately, you’re going to play so many threats over the course of the game that they’ll be hard pressed to keep up.

Tribal Subthemes

A hidden benefit of both Spikeshot Elder and Fireslinger is that they share a creature type, and do so with eight other creatures in the deck. While Heebs isn’t running subpar cards to keep to a theme, the spine of Goblins supports the whole deck and gives the otherwise wimpy red creatures a strong backbone that they can leverage for additional speed and power.

Who Has Time for Shrines?

When we were testing, we started to realize something. While Shrine was a house in any game that devolved into the super-late game, often contributing upwards of ten damage, it was also a liability. Much of the time, we couldn’t put enough pressure on with an active shrine because of the fear of being blown out by Oblivion Ring or  Ancient Grudge. We always needed to have the Shrine ready to go. Worse, they were terrible in a number of matchups. Against Delver, they would win the game by themselves – eventually – but surviving until turn 8-9 almost guaranteed a win anyway as Delver petered out of tricks designed to fight a very specific format. Ultimately, Shrine was always too slow. The game was either over before it was needed, or was never given enough time to take over

Removing Shrines opened up spots that we could use to help other matchups, and more importantly, let loose the floodgates without throttling the deck.

Top End Titans

While RDW hasn’t traditionally played Titans of any sort, Heebs did add in two of the premiere 4-drops in the format. Koth has proven himself against Control time and again, providing 4 hasty damage that could only be dealt with at instant speed. While his ultimate is rarely relevant, occasionally, you can win the game solely on the back of turning your mountains into Gut Shots.

The other four we’re playing, and significantly more powerful at that, is Hellrider. If you’ve never played with Hellrider in an aggressive deck, do yourself a favor and do it, because it feels like Cheating – Opponent Violation. Some poor control player is sitting there, watching your field of 1/1’s, mentally calculating that he doesn’t need to cast Day of Judgment yet – he’s still on 15! You can’t deal more than 6 with your three measley creatures. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a wild Hellrider appears.

“Alright, maybe 9 damage. Oh, he has a triggered ability. 12 then. That’s getting pretty scary.”

Then you realize that he can top deck virtually half his deck and murder you on the spot, Day of Judgment or not. That’s terrifying.

Things get even more ridiculous when there’s two of them.

Torch Tossing For Fun and Profit

When we were wrapping up the last few cards, Heebs noticed a recurring theme in his previous games.

“It feels like the only thing I lose to is Wurmcoil Engine and Sword of War and Peace.”

He needed an answer to artifacts, but in a deck as aggressive as this, we didn’t want to splash green for ancient grudge – weakening Koth and decreasing the density of threats in the deck. We needed a mono red answer that was aggressively costed, but could also handle an artifact in a pinch. Manic Vandal fit the bill, but his cost seemed a bit high for the aggressive curve we wanted. Torch Fiend provided everything we needed at the same reasonable cost. We slotted a couple of Vandals into the sideboard for good measure though.

Fight Everything with Fire

One constant for burn decks nowadays is a burn package. The metagame at the time was heavily favoring aggressive decks – between RG aggro, Delver, Zombies and Humans making up the majority of the field. Fun fact, almost every creature in all of those decks gets crushed by Arc Trail. As opposed to many recent Red Decks, the burn package here is for blocker-denial, pushing through your attackers until it’s safe to throw it at their head – not an all in burn-you-out plan. Incinerate makes an appearance as a more efficient alternative to Brimstone Volley. The extra one mana actually does matter a lot.

Moving Forward

This list was refined over a ton of testing, and it performed extremely well over the course of the day. The games he lost were close. I can’t speak for some of his earlier opponents, but I know that my survival in game two involved me gaining upwards of forty life to outpace his attacks. I ended below ten. This deck has a remarkable to abuse any deck not running board wipes, and it’s fast enough to burn through those that have them.

I spoke to Heebs about changes that he’s planning on making to the deck, and he tentatively decided on the following.

+2 Goblin Grenade, -2 Incinerate

I’ll just quote Heebs on this one: “The biggest problem I had was Hero of Bladehold, flat out. Goblin Grenade makes it possible to kiss that bitch goodbye. My 2nd biggest problem was leaving my opponent on 5 or less life with nothing to seal the deal. Guess what fixes that?”

+2 Grim Lavamancer, -2 Koth of the Hammer

While I don’t have a quote here, I will note that Koth was consistently lackluster in any non-control matchup. Especially with the number of flyers in the format, it’s relatively difficult to keep him alive through any focused assault. Grim Lavamancers provide extra gas for the deck’s reach, a more consistent Stormblood Berserker, and (with the addition of Goblin Grenades) ammunition for his flame-hurling ways should be plentiful.

Some other cards he’s considering are Bonfire of the Damned (in the sideboard against other creature decks, because it not only breaks open the stalemate, but also acts as burn to the face simultaneously.) When asked about Vexing Devil, the hard truth was simple – four damage was good, but it’s not worth the loss of board presence that you suffer because of it. I would err away from playing him in Standard – though I think he clearly has a home in Legacy Burn.

Other options for the deck include splashing for another color now that Koth is gone. Green seems an obvious option, for Kessig Wolf Run primarily, and possibly Wild Hunger (which seems absurd in conjunction with Spikeshot Elder).

While it may be underrepresented recently, the metagame is bent very much right now towards fighting itself. That makes it an ideal time for a powerful linear strategy like Goblins/RDW to take the field by storm.


Next week, we'll take a look at a spicy new brew for AVR. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, I'd be happy to answer them either here - or in the Reddit thread for the post. Feel free to chime in if you think there's a deck you'd like me to look at, and I'd be more than happy to analyze and suggest possible avenues to explore.