I. A History of Success
Recently, out of curiosity, I went looking for a “primer” on how to build and play my usual tournament deck of choice, Goblins. And yet, despite its indisputable popularity (depending on who you ask, as an essential format-driving standard or as an impossible problem to solve), I could not find any comprehensive analysis of the deck by a tournament player. Although I was surprised, I really could not blame them. Yet as a player, writer, analyst, and supporter of Legacy, you might wonder how I could be indifferent to what must amount to apathy, or even deception.
Well, it just so happens that, once again, Legacy is different from everything before. In this case, however, the differences are not designed into the format — they are a consequence of the community’s character. The Legacy community is connected in unusual ways and this leads to completely new behavior. For example, consider how long it took for Legacy players to pick up the ball and start building their decks correctly to beat Goblins. Despite saturation of tournaments and repetitive successes, it took Legacy years to respond. There have been many very innovative players, and I am proud of their success, but it takes action by a majority for the format to evolve. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the format have not always revolved around tournaments, and there is still much room for improvement.
For example, a Goblins player benefits when a forum-only deckbuilder proclaims their success in the matchup with a grossly inferior deck. I don’t expect another Goblins player to spend time and effort convincing people their answers are insufficient, when doing so will just diminish their chances at the next tournament! The withholding of creative ideas and intelligent deckbuilding from opponents is a natural consequence of this, and perhaps one reason why a detailed analysis has been absent until now. Other reasons could be a lack of time available to create such an introduction, or simply satisfaction with existing descriptions of the deck. Regardless of the cause, I am going to remedy this situation by analyzing the deck myself.
Everyone in the format has piloted or faced Goblins. It took on its initial form soon after the format was created, and instantly began upsetting all the players hoping for a draw-go format. After building a slew of new decks and creating my initial reference lists in the fall of 2004, I began taking Goblins to tournaments in 2005 and won a lot of cash at my local store. Yet, despite using similar lists often (periodically I had to play something else, like Stax), I continued winning until another player at my store built a dedicated hate deck full of pro-Red creatures, and even that was not always successful because there are always other decks to beat. I was expecting a much different response, especially since my deck was mono-colored and utilized classically successful cards, but apparently players were having a very hard time developing good decks to counter aggro. I thought this was a local phenomenon, but then it started happening in much larger metagames. After a year of tearing up tournaments everywhere, Goblins took first place at Philadelphia. At the D4D tournaments, Goblins continued to Top 8 and win despite a very consistent record. At Lille, the French pro players developed a strong response to the deck and significantly advanced the Threshold archetype, but the changes were not adopted by the community at large. Currently, the mitigated dominance of this deck is only due to the cumulative effect of a slow but very qualified development of combo and aggro-control archetypes. I can’t address this phenomenon in this article, but its existence is strongly related to the success of Goblins.
One interesting note – at this point in the development of Legacy, this examination of the deck may be as or more beneficial to players of other decks than to Goblins pilots themselves. I hope I can provide some insight into the deck to all players.
II. Building the Deck
At first glance, Goblin decks do look quite similar to each other. They use four-ofs of almost all the same creatures, and the manabase is mostly Red, with perhaps a splash for whatever cards are deemed relevant. However, Goblins can vary widely in how it functions despite decklists looking very similar. Even further, the same Goblins deck can be played in different ways, depending on the player, matchup, and even the draws of the deck. This can be a confusing, as players bringing their experience with Goblins in other formats had to learn how to play a new deck with the same cards in it. Now that the lists have specialized even further, the Goblins archetype is more varied than ever.
However, despite such variation, there are still some core principles that should be understood, either when piloting or facing the deck. I will begin by discussing the most poorly built component of this deck, the manabase.
1. Manabase
Goblins has an intense commitment to Red. Every card requires red mana in the early game or an abundance of it in the mid / late game. This strong need for Red mana conflicts directly with the nonbasic mana disruption that Goblins players rely on, and this has led to a significant evolution and occasional failure of the manabase (which you should note is dominantly monocolored, embarrassingly). The risk of mana screw is offset by stronger draws when you do open with enough mana, and many tournament players (including myself) have taken this risk and succeeded, although I doubt I would take the risk again.
In the earliest incarnations of the deck, a basic 22-land manabase was used. For the mono-Red version this isn’t terrible, but I think at least 23 lands is required for an acceptable level of consistency. However, for the splash versions, this is unsatisfactory. I would advocate at least 23 lands for Goblins splashing White or Green, with 24 being a much safer number.
There are two components to the mana needs of this deck — Red mana itself, and a sufficient quantity of mixed Red and colorless mana. The Red mana quantity is needed to support Goblin Lackey, Mogg Fanatic, Goblin Tinkerer, Goblin Incinerator, and Goblin Warchief, and the general mana quantity is needed to support Goblin Matron, Goblin Ringleader, and Siege-Gang Commander. Another important thing to note is the general mana requirement is needed to support the nonbasic disruption itself, as the use of Rishadan Port ties up your mana, and the use of Wasteland sets you back a land drop.
So, given the presence of Aether Vial in the deck, the combined effects of these mana requirements means that it is possible to run fewer land if there is a consistent amount of Red sources — meaning that the nonbasic disruption would be reduced. Many players have adopted this technique in their manabases, cutting either some amount of Rishadan Ports or Wastelands to make room for more spells. I support this practice if the environment is appropriate, but I think it will be more difficult in the future to find metagames where one of these components is weak enough to cut. The mana disruption of this deck has been a critical part of this decks success, and I am hesitant to weaken it.
The last aspect of the manabase that is not completely understood is the presence of fetchlands. Many players continue to deny the importance and strength of fetchlands, not just in Goblins but in other decks as well. I’m almost at a loss for words when I hear these kind of discussions — it is common knowledge among pro players how valuable their effects are, and this is obvious from their tournament decklists. I won’t go into a comprehensive analysis of fetchlands in general, but to give you some idea of how good they are, I have said several times that I think fetchlands might be the best cards in Legacy. Right now, I will completely ignore two of the most amazing aspects of the cards, flexible mana-fixing and powerful synergy with library manipulation and draw effects (I may go into these topics in more detail in the future), and focus on a third, deck thinning.
I have constructed two examples to demonstrate the effect of fetchlands. I will compare two Goblins decks, which are identical except for one thing — eight Mountains in the first have been replaced by eight Red fetchlands in the second. The decks run 22 land, 4 Aether Vials, and 34 Goblins. Suppose the decks each draw a hand with three lands, three Goblins, and an Aether Vial.
For the first example, fast forward to turn 4, where the decks have each drawn one land and two goblins. Suppose the first deck has simply played four Mountains, where the second deck has played one Mountain fetched three times. Now, if they both cast a Goblin Ringleader, and it resolves, how many Goblins will each deck put into their hands?
The first figure represents the Mountain-laying player, the second is for the Fetchland-laying player.
0 goblins – 2.60% – 1.71%
1 goblin – 16.75% – 13.27%
2 goblins – 37.02% – 34.83%
3 goblins – 33.32% – 36.87%
4 goblins – 10.31% – 13.32%
Average – 2.32 – 2.47 (+0.15)
This is a small effect to be sure, but the point is that it is not negligible. Drawing extra cards is one of the ways you win the game. Paying life to thin your deck without any other additional costs is really a great deal.
For the second example, fast forward to turn 8 instead, where the decks have each drawn three land and four goblins. (In the interest of simplicity, this is just an alternate game state. I would build on the first one but it gets complicated quickly, and the results are harder to interpret in complex examples). Suppose the first deck has played two more Mountains, and the second deck has played one Mountain and fetched one more time. (The second deck has removed four lands from its library, whereas the first deck has removed none.) Suppose that each deck did not cast the Ringleader on turn 4, but is casting it now instead. How many Goblins will each deck put into their hands?
Again, the first figure is Mountains, the second is Fetchlands.
0 goblins – 2.38% – 1.22%
1 goblin – 16.03% – 10.98%
2 goblins – 36.78% – 32.93%
3 goblins – 34.06% – 39.20%
4 goblins – 10.75% – 15.68%
Average – 2.35 – 2.57 (+0.22)
This larger effect is still “small,” but again you are drawing extra cards at the cost of life, and nothing else. It is like an inefficient Yawgmoth’s Bargain, except that you don’t have to spend a card on the engine itself, and you don’t have to invest any mana to cast it — it is an effect built into the fetchlands themselves. This is an invaluable asset that should be taken advantage of as much as possible.
I recommend a manabase that looks something like this:
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
4/7 Mountain
4/0 Dual Land
2. Goblins and Non-Goblins
A significant portion of this deck is completely standardized. Here are the components played in almost every Goblins build:
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
2 Siege-Gang Commander
Along with 4 Aether Vial, these cards are the core of the deck and change very rarely. The only card on here that could leave the core of the deck (by being run at less than the standard number, which is 4 in this case) is Mogg Fanatic, which I am unsatisfied with, but I think it is essential in order to maintain a strong game against other Aggro decks.
In a manabase with 23 lands, this leaves three open slots. This last card varies significantly, especially compared to the minor changes made in the rest of the deck. Some cards have had minor adoption, such as Swords to Plowshares and Goblin Tinkerer, but there is still a wide array of cards played here. Cabal Therapy, Disenchant, Pyrokinesis, and Umezawa’s Jitte have all been played in this slot at one point. I have played with every splash except Blue, and most of these cards, and they all have their strengths. I have preferred mono-red to the splash versions in the past, but after being knocked out by double Engineered Plague two days in a row at TMLO2, I am considering a longer commitment to White or Green. Basic Mountain is really good, but the mono-Red responses to Engineered Plague are insufficient.
While it is obvious that playing goblins in the remaining three slots has high synergy with Aether Vial and Goblin Ringleader, it can be well worth the loss to have access to relevant cards. Depending on your expectations for your environment, access to one or two splash cards may make a huge difference in games 2 and 3.
For mono-Red, I would recommend the following list. Modifying this to include a splash color would be relatively easy — just cut either a Goblin or a colorless land to make room for an extra colored source. There is no sideboard because I will discuss that next time.
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
7 Mountain
4 Aether Vial
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Mogg Fanatic
3 Goblin Tinkerer
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Ringleader
2 Siege-Gang Commander
III. Playing the Deck
The deck construction isn’t too difficult, but playing the deck properly is. Goblins can execute many different strategies. Knowing which cards support what strategy, and when to play them, makes a huge difference in terms of tournament performance. Goblins can be aggressive with damage, pursue mana disruption, concentrate on creature removal, or even play a control game. The early game is the most important time to make decisions, so I will focus on that.
1. General Strategy
The opening hand is certainly a hard problem to solve. In addition to the mana issues I mentioned previously, having an acceptable curve can be problematic for a deck with a heavy top end. There are many ways the deck can spend it’s mana efficiently, but it’s important to have relevant cards early in the game. Usually, this means casting an early Goblin Lackey and / or Aether Vial.
When the format was younger, a mediocre hand with Red mana and a Goblin Lackey may have been acceptable, but that is not always the case now. Despite all of the paranoia, Goblin Lackey has been tamed, and players have realized that it is not the all-important key card that makes Goblins work. The best tempo generator in Goblins is Aether Vial. Aether effectively doubles all mana production for the rest of the game. In addition, it allows the Goblins deck to spend its mana on non-creature effects, such as nonbasic disruption in the form of Wasteland and Rishadan Port, creature removal in the form of Gempalm Incinerator and Siege-Gang Commander, and artifact removal in the form of Goblin Tinkerer. After sideboarding, this extends to whatever answers you are bringing in as well. Aether Vial also trumps decks with permission, which is extremely strong in those matchups, and it also provides instant speed threat deployment, which is basically good against everything. Goblin Lackey, by contrast, dies to a common horde of removal spells that every deck runs and expects to use.
Playing Aether Vial early is a critical component of playing Goblins correctly, but an early Goblin Lackey occasionally triggers as well, and so every hand needs to be weighed by its ability to execute an early aggressive strategy.
Once Goblin Lackey or Aether Vial is in play, I prefer to take the control position. While the deck develops a board position, attacking the mana production and creature development of the opposing deck can set up devastating board positions in the mid game. This is one reason why taking risks with such disruption-heavy decklists works — Legacy decks have many fragile points, and successfully attacking them can lead directly to the end game for Aggro.
It is important to know the opposing decks’ general strategy before adopting a particular role in game. Rishadan Port, for example, is only really good when it is used to prevent the opponent from casting key cards. Using it every turn indiscriminately is a poor tactic, and can even generate tempo for your opponent. Cards like Gempalm Incinerator, while amazing when they work, can be useless against creatures with protection or untargetability, and can fail when their supports are removed, such as removal for multiple goblins. Goblin Piledriver has weaknesses as well — it is excellent in an aggressive stance, but it is a terrible blocker, and by itself provides little advantage.
It is also important to know when the opponent is going to deploy specific pieces of their strategy, which may include mass removal. Being familiar with the opponent’s deck can take pressure off of Goblins to play a particular way, and instead set up to focus on a different point in the opponent’s strategy. Goblins can do many things, but not all at once, and it is vital to know which ones will win the game. Playing around the reactive cards will buy you time and prevent you from wasting card advantage. This can only come from practice against the top archetypes, which you can obtain from tournament results.
Generally, Goblins’ strategy revolves around finding some way of cheating mana costs, and then executing creature and mana disruption at the same time. This can take many different forms, and sometimes only exactly the right balance between threats and disruption will work. This is especially difficult to perform because if the Vial gets destroyed, or your red source gets destroyed, Goblins must choose between threats and disruption, and then standard Legacy strategies can effectively defeat Aggro. Goblins’ tempo generation is obviously very strong, but it is the support on which the deck rests. If it fails, the deck is vulnerable.
Join me next time when I discuss more about how to play the deck, as well as sideboarding and strategies for important matchups.
Christopher Coppola
Machinus @ various websites and email servers