What – States decks already? It’s never too early to start building decks for my favorite tournament of the year.
Whenever a new set comes out, the best first decks tend to be based upon existing decks, and they tend to be aggro – it’s always easier to find ways to deal twenty damage than ways of preventing twenty damage. Case in point: Onslaught Block Goblins. They translate very well to a post-Mirrodin Standard – they don’t get much, but neither do they lose much. Firebolt, Violent Eruption, Barbarian Ring and Flaring Pain are gone – and Flaring Pain was mostly there to combat Wake decks, which, obviously, aren’t going to be very playable at States.
The biggest – and practically only – gain that Goblins gets from Mirrodin is Pyrite Spellbomb, a cheap, colorless damage source that suddenly makes those Silver Knights even less pesky. And it’s worth a card in the event you don’t need two to the dome!
Post-Mirrodin Goblins
3 Skirk Prospector
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Goblin Sledder
3 Sparksmith
4 Goblin Piledriver
3 Gempalm Incinerator
3 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Clickslither
2 Blistering Firecat
3 Siege-Gang Commander
16 Mountain
3 Goblin Burrows
4 Bloodstained Mire
It’s basically the same death machine you remember from Onslaught Block: Early Goblin beats, followed up by either The Bug, Super Skrull, or even the Firecat for the kill, and save for a single card, untouched by Mirrodin. There’s some room to fudge cards- going to four Sparksmiths, no Firecats, etc. – your mileage may vary.
There are a few cards definitely worth considering from Mirrodin besides Pyrite Spellbomb. Fists of the Anvil, which could serve the same purpose that Reckless Charge did in Frog in a Blender, but I personally don’t think that’s all that necessary. The other, more likely choice might be Shrapnel Blast. Five damage at instant speed is nothing to scoff at, and if it proves to be worthy, then running four copies of Great Furnace and some Equipment cards would be wise – Equipment like Fireshrieker (Sweet Jeebus, putting that on a Firecat is just plain unfair) or Bonesplitter, perhaps.
The sideboard’s composition will depend upon what starts to pop up to combat Goblins. Flashfires isn’t a bad choice against most anything with plains. Sulfuric Vortex I would leave in the sideboard for now, however, if there are a lot of decks running maindecked Worship, then it could easily slide back into the main deck.
If artifacts and equipment pop up in a lot of decks, then Shatter and Detonate can go in. Threaten, Stabilizer – even Ensnaring Bridge might be a good sideboard additions, depending upon the metagame. I’ve gone to a version that is sans Volcanic Hammer, as the Spellbomb replaces it for a burn spell, and at instant speed, but I’m not adverse to finding room for it if it’s needed. For now, however, it’s not Hammer time – so please, don’t hurt me.
My version of Goblins differs from the Onslaught Block version, as I go down to more-old-school twenty-three lands, not the twenty-five land version that needed the extra mana for Rorix Bladewing or Menacing Ogre. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that while this Goblin build is good, the environment may shift to require going back to those beefier builds, due to the prevalence of powerful artifacts – Detonate, for example, might be something to go in the main deck. It’s too bad Goblin Tinkerer or Shatterstorm aren’t around.
If the deck does evolve into a more mana-heavy build, then Goblin Charbelcher might be a good addition. I think it’s a bit mana intensive, but there’s something to be said for reusable burn.
For now, though, this is the Goblin build to go with until someone finds a way to beat it regularly.
There’s another Goblin deck worth looking at; Goblin Bidding. Zvi Mowshowitz The Red Army was undoubtedly the best version of the deck in Standard, but it loses potent weapons in Cabal Therapy and Burning Wish, which allowed the deck to adopt the Wish-based”toolbox” strategy and leave Patriarch’s Bidding in the sideboard to be a Wish target.
Without Burning Wish, the deck will have to move the Biddings back into the main deck. That’s not so good. However, the addition of black to a Goblin deck provides not only Smother but Terror, a card I suspect will not only make mono-black control workable again but also prove to be the bane of Clickslither. The main reason Goblins thrived in Onslaught block was the lack of cheap pinpoint black removal – only Cruel Revival could be counted on to kill either Clickslither or Siege-Gang Commander. Now you only need two mana to do it, not five.
Post-Mirrodin Goblin Bidding
4 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Terror
4 Patriarch’s Bidding
12 Mountain
3 City of Brass
5 Swamp
4 Bloodstained Mire
With this Bidding-based deck, it’s built around straight Goblins and no Clickslither since the deck is based around bringing back hordes of Goblins, and The Bug doesn’t count as such. But the deck’s ability to hit hard, sacrifice some Goblins and then bring back the hordes for another round is what makes it good.
With Terror in the main deck, we can leave the Smothers in the sideboard. Speaking of which, what goes in the sideboard? Well, of course there are the aforementioned cards like Flashfires, Stabilizer, Sulfuric Vortex, et al. Other possibilities include Grim Reminder, which would be a brutal card for the mirror, and one of my favorite cards, Cabal Interrogator, a problematic card for control decks with no direct removal-this guy will shred their hands.
The trouble with Bidding it still has trouble with most conventional straight Goblin builds, and any deck with a Withered Wretch is going to be a definite thorn in its side. The Zvi version of Goblin Bidding had more versatility, this version is more straightforward. Still good, but not approaching the power of pre-Mirrodin versions.
If I was to play a deck tomorrow, it’d be straight red Goblins – but I suspect there’s some scary mono-black control variants out there, at least two good mono-white decks and a heck of a lot of original Mirrodin-based decks, too.
But that’s for the next article.