I think Blood Moon is a viable answer to the Eldrazi decks, but it's something you're going to want to cheat out on turn 2 if you can. Whether to mainboard them or sideboard them, I don't know. I'd be more inclined to go sideboard, just because the Eldrazi are still just a small percentage of the meta so you might as well go that route.
Yeah Shattering Spree and Ancient Grudge both do work against Chalice, but by that time we have lost serious tempo. If we cannot get in for significant damage before T4 we cant win really.
Our lack of evasion really kills us in these matches. I wish we had a 2-drop mountain walk lord! Our goblins can go wide, but so can they sadly and our creatures will never really trade profitably. While we have to chain BTEs to get a ton of creatures out all at once, they can just plop them into play off of an eye of ugin. So fair lol.
The deck isn't dead or anything, but rather than go so hard against the grain, I will adapt and make some LD shenanigans. Join me in my signature lol
Well I have been playing affinity for years. I'm tired of it. :| Goblins is that something similar but new. So, regardless how bad it gets I'll toy with it till it works as best as it can.
You bring up a good point. We do not have evasion, but we do have "magmatic chasm" and a similar RG version that gives us evasion. The issue is fitting it into the deck while still having a large enough threat density.
So far our SB needs to account for protection from board wipes, artifact destruction, anti-life gain, and creature dense evasion. That's a good chunk to tackle. Transformatives will have go to the way side.
@Gry: I think he might be the best anti artifact card because it's a creature, enter into play effect, and it's a goblin.
@Jed
It's what I'm hearing my bets on as I have a streamlined Kadulotha version I want to verse against the colorless beasties. It is capable of a first turn kill, but those are super nut draws. However if chalice hits it's all over. I don't even want to think about it and pyroclasm added into the same deck. >_<
Funny how RedMage was warning us of this before it hit and now it's here.
So rather than suggest we put goblins on hold we should look towards what the answers are to the current Eldrazi decks. It's clearly that a chalice for 1 owns our deck. So that's the first issue because that is mainboard. So do we start main boarding Tin-Street Hooligan? Is it really worth it just for one deck? If yes then 2 hooligans mainboard could help us gain a board state even if eldrazi decks are running 4 CotV mainboard. But again our entire game plan is speed. So do we start working around that chalice of the void? Maybe lowering the one drop count in our deck? Do we add Cavern of Souls mainboard again in order to battle it effectively? Do we sacrifice speed for more of a midrange jund version that utilizes early game disruption to gain control of the board before speeding away with goblins?
Idk all the answers, but i'm sure we all can figure this out together...hell everyone helped towards the speed goblin build did we not? Let's start brainstorming. Oh and all of us who have MTGO should start playing together online to practise against the new Eldrazi decks and other top tier decks in order to help us benefit. The only way we can solve this situation is if we help each other.
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My current thoughts are to go full 4 Cavern of Souls in order to play around chalice. The major ramifications I can see of running this many: Atarka's Command and Destructive Revelry are much harder to cast, and builds with Burning-Tree Emissary and Monastery Swiftspear are less consistent. This seems to incentivize a lighter splash, perhaps cutting it entirely.
Mainboarding artifact hate dilutes the gameplan of goblins, namely winning quickly, too much. It's also too big of a tempo hit to have to take your critical second turn off to be reactive rather than proactive. Better IMO to try and play around chalice with your landbase than dilute your gameplan.
The niche of Goblins is that it is fast. It's unlikely to ever be a viable midrange, grindy deck, as goblins as a tribe are inherently value-negative.
Dismember is where we want to be in terms of creature removal, I think. It's the best answer we're going to have access to against Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher, and is robust enough to be live in most other matchups. Whether it should be mainboarded or sideboarded is an interesting question, though.
The only pseudo-evasion that goblins commonly has access to is from Legion Loyalist's batallion trigger. Maybe a list running a full set of Mutagenic growths, Gut Shots, and other unexpected damage/pumps would be able to do some tricky things with combat to help get damage through the beefy eldrazi wall.
Most of the time you will be losing 2 life to cast those spells, odds are you aren't always casting them on a creature that wins you the game. Its tough to include those, i rather just run dismember then gut shots to be honest. Sideboards will have to change accordingly, to be honest, i think zoo will phase out a little bit, since more people will be drawn to the eldrazi deck, and it's just as hard for zoo as it is more us to keep up with it.
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I think we also have to consider what the meta will look like with eldrazis. I mean, other people are certainly going to come up with answers for them.
Talking to some friends I heard that hard controls decks such as lantern or even boros control may be able to lock eldrazis down, so we may have to deal with them as well.
Most of the time you will be losing 2 life to cast those spells, odds are you aren't always casting them on a creature that wins you the game. Its tough to include those, i rather just run dismember then gut shots to be honest. Sideboards will have to change accordingly, to be honest, i think zoo will phase out a little bit, since more people will be drawn to the eldrazi deck, and it's just as hard for zoo as it is more us to keep up with it.
Gut shot is definitely more of a spitball than a serious inclusion, but I think it's the kind of thing we need to be considering. Playing a fair game of 1-mana worth of spells, 2 mana worth of spells, 3 mana worth of spells is not going to cut it anymore. Also, life loss is irrelevant as long as we're the beatdown, and we've already lost if we're not.
Also, slow decks like lantern and boros bridge are what I love to see, personally. They're likely to durdle for the first two turns, so if you can goldfish a turn 3 kill, those are the decks where you can achieve it.
Personally I like the idea of combat tricks using Mutagenic growth, I've been running it on a build along with Monastery swiftspear and so far it really pays off, also it wouldn't be dead against other decks too, something we have to consider.
As for Dismember, we probably want it on sideboard, since it wouldn't be viable against some decks
I think we're actually in a much better spot than most of the rest of the meta to deal with eldrazi. We can have a lot of game without having to make such huge concessions like other decks. Enemy number one is obviously chalice. I think the best answer to chalice is to mb one cavern, and poast board up the cmc of the deck overall by leaving in war marshals and bringing in piledrivers. I think we also make room for painter's servant and/or vexing shusher. Lightning bolt is the worst card in the mu, and talking it out to make room for the cards i mentioned still gives us faster wins while making us more resilient to their game plan. I've also since swapped one og bushwhacker for reckless since he gets over chalice.
Another option is the medrage old T3 deck with Gideon. They have to attack to win and mb effects that clear up the ground, if they have to attack him, seem good. They also don't run a ton of removal so he's more likely to flip, and can become an indestructible chump if we leave him unflipped.
I like the increase in inevitability that Eidolon of the Great Revel and Grim lavamancer give. This is clearly going for a slower, more consistent gameplan, which can be seen in the manabase of 19 lands/0 ssg.
Stoke the Flames is interesting. I guess it gives you something to do with your creatures if they can't profitably attack?
The sideboard choices are also really interesting. Natural State instead of the traditional destructive revelry, 2 Gut Shot along with a slew of other removal, and 2 Engineered Explosives. Natural State was getting dismissed when it was spoiled because it didn't hit twin, but with that gone, it actually looks excellently positioned, accomplishing the same thing as Revelry at half the cost.
Hey guys, back from a busy weekend and the celebration over the success of my Goblin/Burn list is over. The fact that the Eldrazi lists have coalesced around the strongest builds, and that those builds have decided to start running x4 chalice MB is, uh, a huge deal. Before this development, I almost always ran over the Eldrazi lists. We're now faced with a few tough questions that have already been raised...
1. Do we simply take a break from competitive play for a few months until an important piece to the Eldrazi deck is banned?
2. Do we warp our main decks to handle eldrazi or rely on the sideboard?
3. If we warp the main deck, to what degree should we be willing to do so?
4. Is all the testing and warping even worth it? We will still get rocked by eldrazi? Or if we are successful in shoring up the matchup, will we have sacrificed too much on the other matchups?
I'll share some preliminary thoughts -
1. I don't blame anyone for simply waiting for an Eldrazi ban. Don't expect an emergency ban though, WOTC has too much $ to make riding the Eldrazi wave to allow it happen. Has an emergency ban ever even happened? For myself, with all the time and effort I've put trying to build an optimal list, I'm not really in the mood to rebuild and retest right now. Part of me does just want to wait it out.
2. Considering that the Eldrazi lists run 4 chalice MD, we probably do want adjust our MD to account for it, although just hoping they don't draw one G1 and packing the SB with all sorts of hate isn't a bad idea.
3. How much to warp the maindeck is the toughest question to answer. Part of me likes the suggestion to just pack 3-4 tin street hooligan. Running painter's servant to slow them down doesn't work as well for us for two reasons. 1. They can kill it. 2. Slowing them down at the cost of slowing ourselves down seems counterproductive - our best bet against eldrazi is to just overwhelm them as fast as possible. Blood moon solves the "they can kill it" problem, but it's a turn slower and/or requires us run more Simian Spirit Guide's just to power it out. Also, to play it MD we'd need to be mono-red, which powers the deck down (sorry mono-red true believers). At least blood moon hurts other decks though. I'm not as hot on the idea to shift our curve upward to include more 2 and even 3 drops, although that may ultimately be the best bet.
4. Whether its even worth it makes me shudder. It might not be, we might still lose to the deck at a % we aren't happy with. As far as the other matchups go, I'm pretty sure warping the deck will hurt us in the other matchups, so uh, that sucks.
I think adding artifact hate main will be a fine answer, we have Tin Street Hooligan as I mentioned before and with Affinity appearing to be the best performing deck besides Eldrazi this strategy works well for both match ups.
Oh, and there was an emergency ban, many years ago, for the original Affinity deck. Back when artifact lands were legal (miss those days)
I agree that mono red is not a great answer and that a green splash gives the best options for dealing with the pesky artifact. I also like the idea of using Cavern of Souls and dropping Atarka's Command from the main in favor of more Bushwhackers and perhaps a few side board cards to give some evasion. This has an added benefit of protecting our plays in the face of counter spells that will become more prevalent as a way for other decks to deal with the Eldrazi.
Been giving this some thought over the last few days. That white sideboard of jwelt's is pretty good. Deflecting Palm could be pretty useful against Eldrazi. The problem then is getting over the Chalice or the Ratchet Bomb. Blood Moon is a good thing to bring in to mess up their general plans, but it still doesn't deal with either Chalice or Bomb.
If you want destruction besides Shattering Spree (which would be locked out by Chalice), you can use Ancient Grudge but I might prefer something like Smash to Smithereens as it gets a bit of damage through in the process.
Another option is to start running land destruction and keep them at bay. That would require a new shell, but it could be an option. Those cards push the curve up to 3 and you would need to run a little more land yourself. This would also work to disrupt Eldrazi, but by how much I don't know... you'd likely need to cheat out LD on turn 2 to be effective.
We could start running Painter's Servant in the sideboard. This card is a house against Eldrazi considering they don't run mb creature kill...most of the time. I have seen a few boards running Dismember but that's about it.
It's a 2 drop, it shuts off the search Ancient Stirrings, shuts off Eldrazi Temple and Eye of Ugin. On the bright side it slows us down turn 2, but keeps us ready for turn 3 and 4 considering they can't play anything else after that.
If we are still running Gruul/Naya/Jund lists, Destructive Revelry is still our best bet for Chalice, considering it's a two drop does extra damage.
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Hey guys, are you sure that Shared Animosity can't be a good answer? Last Friday I went 3-1 convincingly with a win against the Eldrazi aggro, but an unlucky drawing vs Affinity. I think that going quite wide with this card is pretty tough, minus the Chalice on one
Modern:
B 8Rack
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BG Elves (Attempting)
UBW Mill
G Stompy
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Legacy:
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Gutshot can also be annoying though...
Well I have been playing affinity for years. I'm tired of it. :| Goblins is that something similar but new. So, regardless how bad it gets I'll toy with it till it works as best as it can.
You bring up a good point. We do not have evasion, but we do have "magmatic chasm" and a similar RG version that gives us evasion. The issue is fitting it into the deck while still having a large enough threat density.
So far our SB needs to account for protection from board wipes, artifact destruction, anti-life gain, and creature dense evasion. That's a good chunk to tackle. Transformatives will have go to the way side.
@Gry: I think he might be the best anti artifact card because it's a creature, enter into play effect, and it's a goblin.
@Jed
It's what I'm hearing my bets on as I have a streamlined Kadulotha version I want to verse against the colorless beasties. It is capable of a first turn kill, but those are super nut draws. However if chalice hits it's all over. I don't even want to think about it and pyroclasm added into the same deck. >_<
Funny how RedMage was warning us of this before it hit and now it's here.
YOUTUBE CHANNEL: GOBOTS
Idk all the answers, but i'm sure we all can figure this out together...hell everyone helped towards the speed goblin build did we not? Let's start brainstorming. Oh and all of us who have MTGO should start playing together online to practise against the new Eldrazi decks and other top tier decks in order to help us benefit. The only way we can solve this situation is if we help each other.
Modern:
B 8Rack
RX Goblins
BG Elves (Attempting)
UBW Mill
G Stompy
UB Tezzerator
Legacy:
W Stax
My current thoughts are to go full 4 Cavern of Souls in order to play around chalice. The major ramifications I can see of running this many: Atarka's Command and Destructive Revelry are much harder to cast, and builds with Burning-Tree Emissary and Monastery Swiftspear are less consistent. This seems to incentivize a lighter splash, perhaps cutting it entirely.
Mainboarding artifact hate dilutes the gameplan of goblins, namely winning quickly, too much. It's also too big of a tempo hit to have to take your critical second turn off to be reactive rather than proactive. Better IMO to try and play around chalice with your landbase than dilute your gameplan.
The niche of Goblins is that it is fast. It's unlikely to ever be a viable midrange, grindy deck, as goblins as a tribe are inherently value-negative.
Dismember is where we want to be in terms of creature removal, I think. It's the best answer we're going to have access to against Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher, and is robust enough to be live in most other matchups. Whether it should be mainboarded or sideboarded is an interesting question, though.
The only pseudo-evasion that goblins commonly has access to is from Legion Loyalist's batallion trigger. Maybe a list running a full set of Mutagenic growths, Gut Shots, and other unexpected damage/pumps would be able to do some tricky things with combat to help get damage through the beefy eldrazi wall.
Modern:
B 8Rack
RX Goblins
BG Elves (Attempting)
UBW Mill
G Stompy
UB Tezzerator
Legacy:
W Stax
Talking to some friends I heard that hard controls decks such as lantern or even boros control may be able to lock eldrazis down, so we may have to deal with them as well.
Gut shot is definitely more of a spitball than a serious inclusion, but I think it's the kind of thing we need to be considering. Playing a fair game of 1-mana worth of spells, 2 mana worth of spells, 3 mana worth of spells is not going to cut it anymore. Also, life loss is irrelevant as long as we're the beatdown, and we've already lost if we're not.
Also, slow decks like lantern and boros bridge are what I love to see, personally. They're likely to durdle for the first two turns, so if you can goldfish a turn 3 kill, those are the decks where you can achieve it.
As for Dismember, we probably want it on sideboard, since it wouldn't be viable against some decks
Another option is the medrage old T3 deck with Gideon. They have to attack to win and mb effects that clear up the ground, if they have to attack him, seem good. They also don't run a ton of removal so he's more likely to flip, and can become an indestructible chump if we leave him unflipped.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=98535
Thoughts?
I like the increase in inevitability that Eidolon of the Great Revel and Grim lavamancer give. This is clearly going for a slower, more consistent gameplan, which can be seen in the manabase of 19 lands/0 ssg.
Stoke the Flames is interesting. I guess it gives you something to do with your creatures if they can't profitably attack?
The sideboard choices are also really interesting. Natural State instead of the traditional destructive revelry, 2 Gut Shot along with a slew of other removal, and 2 Engineered Explosives. Natural State was getting dismissed when it was spoiled because it didn't hit twin, but with that gone, it actually looks excellently positioned, accomplishing the same thing as Revelry at half the cost.
Modern:
B 8Rack
RX Goblins
BG Elves (Attempting)
UBW Mill
G Stompy
UB Tezzerator
Legacy:
W Stax
1. Do we simply take a break from competitive play for a few months until an important piece to the Eldrazi deck is banned?
2. Do we warp our main decks to handle eldrazi or rely on the sideboard?
3. If we warp the main deck, to what degree should we be willing to do so?
4. Is all the testing and warping even worth it? We will still get rocked by eldrazi? Or if we are successful in shoring up the matchup, will we have sacrificed too much on the other matchups?
I'll share some preliminary thoughts -
1. I don't blame anyone for simply waiting for an Eldrazi ban. Don't expect an emergency ban though, WOTC has too much $ to make riding the Eldrazi wave to allow it happen. Has an emergency ban ever even happened? For myself, with all the time and effort I've put trying to build an optimal list, I'm not really in the mood to rebuild and retest right now. Part of me does just want to wait it out.
2. Considering that the Eldrazi lists run 4 chalice MD, we probably do want adjust our MD to account for it, although just hoping they don't draw one G1 and packing the SB with all sorts of hate isn't a bad idea.
3. How much to warp the maindeck is the toughest question to answer. Part of me likes the suggestion to just pack 3-4 tin street hooligan. Running painter's servant to slow them down doesn't work as well for us for two reasons. 1. They can kill it. 2. Slowing them down at the cost of slowing ourselves down seems counterproductive - our best bet against eldrazi is to just overwhelm them as fast as possible. Blood moon solves the "they can kill it" problem, but it's a turn slower and/or requires us run more Simian Spirit Guide's just to power it out. Also, to play it MD we'd need to be mono-red, which powers the deck down (sorry mono-red true believers). At least blood moon hurts other decks though. I'm not as hot on the idea to shift our curve upward to include more 2 and even 3 drops, although that may ultimately be the best bet.
4. Whether its even worth it makes me shudder. It might not be, we might still lose to the deck at a % we aren't happy with. As far as the other matchups go, I'm pretty sure warping the deck will hurt us in the other matchups, so uh, that sucks.
Oh, and there was an emergency ban, many years ago, for the original Affinity deck. Back when artifact lands were legal (miss those days)
I agree that mono red is not a great answer and that a green splash gives the best options for dealing with the pesky artifact. I also like the idea of using Cavern of Souls and dropping Atarka's Command from the main in favor of more Bushwhackers and perhaps a few side board cards to give some evasion. This has an added benefit of protecting our plays in the face of counter spells that will become more prevalent as a way for other decks to deal with the Eldrazi.
If you want destruction besides Shattering Spree (which would be locked out by Chalice), you can use Ancient Grudge but I might prefer something like Smash to Smithereens as it gets a bit of damage through in the process.
Another option is to start running land destruction and keep them at bay. That would require a new shell, but it could be an option. Those cards push the curve up to 3 and you would need to run a little more land yourself. This would also work to disrupt Eldrazi, but by how much I don't know... you'd likely need to cheat out LD on turn 2 to be effective.
It's a 2 drop, it shuts off the search Ancient Stirrings, shuts off Eldrazi Temple and Eye of Ugin. On the bright side it slows us down turn 2, but keeps us ready for turn 3 and 4 considering they can't play anything else after that.
If we are still running Gruul/Naya/Jund lists, Destructive Revelry is still our best bet for Chalice, considering it's a two drop does extra damage.
Modern:
B 8Rack
RX Goblins
BG Elves (Attempting)
UBW Mill
G Stompy
UB Tezzerator
Legacy:
W Stax
Legacy: Pox, R/B Goblins
Commander: Mono Black, Mono Blue
Pauper: Goblins
How many times must the point be made that Shattering Spree does in fact kill Chalice with its replicated copies? >:O