MTG Salvation

This is a thread/resource for midrange goblin decks. Any assistance with this would be appreciated, especially experience trying to make it work, a replacement for aether vial/cavern of souls in pauper, side board suggestions.

Goblins are the tribe with the most variety of abilities in pauper, including effects unique to the goblin tribal.






None damage based removal:

















Not goblins (but related):
Ramp:Brightstone Ritual

Tokens:
Dragon Fodder
Krenko's Command
Kuldotha Rebirth

Damage:
Goblin War Strike
Goblin Grenade

Pump:
Goblin Caves
Goblin Shrine

Acknowledgements: Darkninja107 for his pointing out changelings are goblins too.

Looking at the cards available, there are several obvious trends:

• Three colors here, red black and green. Green is the least used but gives Tin Street Hooligan which is awesome.
• Cards more then 3 mana are generally overcosted, with perhaps the exception of beetleback chief.
• There is an incredible toolbox available, from bouncing creatures to blowing up artifacts to edict effects.
• Skirk Drill Sergent is amazing as a card generator, either giving you "free" goblins or filtering your draws. Particularly good with Skirk Prospector or Goblin Chirurgeon
• The available options are great against a lot of decks, but not great against draw-go/delver as vexing shusher or other anti-counter strategies are missing. Luckily Red Elemental Blast is a thing.

Good collection of cards and great categorization.

Some additions to the list can be all the cards with Changeling, but the two most notable options would be Nameless Inversion and Blades of Velis Vel. They are tutorable with Goblin Matron and recurable with Boggart Birth Rite (which makes Nameless Inversion very good removal!)

Good inclusions! I have added them, will tag you as a contributor in the post. I'm hoping to start putting some lists together and get this made into a primer.

Additional suggestions/finds:

We need a section for Heavy Hitters or Beaters. You can swap your "Big" section for this and keep Scuzzback Marauders to keep things consolidated. This section can include Foundry Street Denizen, Facevaulter and any other efficient hitters.

As far as token creators you should include Empty the Warrens. We are in the paper Pauper section so it should be included even if it might be banned for some play groups. Casting a couple of cheap token creators then cast Brightstone Ritual to cast Empty the Warrens + Goblin Bushwhacker is a winning turn.

Some extra removal options are Pack's Disdain and Massive Raid. Goblin War Strike is a better finisher than Massive Raid, but Raid gives a bit more variety if you feel your deck needs extra removal without using up extra spell slots.

Raid Bombardment is the closest Pauper can get to Hellrider and it works great with Goblins.

Render unblockable can have Intimidator Initiate. I know it doesn't make a creature unblockable, but you can rename the section "Evasion" if you have an issue with semantics.

It might be helpful to include a section for efficient goblins that don't fall into any specific support role. Cards like Mogg Conscripts, Goblin Cohort, and Mogg Flunkies.

Other missing creatures are Goblin Arsonist, Shambling Goblin, Festering Goblin (which are good with Sac Outlets). There's also Mardu Scout (Great for decks with Mogg Conscript/Goblin Cohort), Goblin Freerunner, Spike Jester, Goblin Deathraiders. While some of these creatures may not be the most optimal choices I feel they should be mentioned because they allow for a bit more brewing variety. The multicolored or black ones allow for more Rakdos builds which will be a bit more midrange with access to great removal and card advantage. While other creatures will be good for a mono red midrange/sligh build.

One more note: to clean up the look and flow of the "Primer" you might want to put the sections in spoiler tags. They's look like:

Goblin Protection:

Here's what it looks like with underscores added (just remove underscores to make it work):

Name of section:
[_SPOILER](insert card tags)[_/SPOILER]

Sorry for the spam of information! Hope this helps!

Interesting choices here. I went through a lot of the same searching when re-building my Goblin Matron control deck, which I've been playing to great success online.

If you're intent on going midrange, here's a thought I've had: Goblin Caves is an incredibly powerful card in Pauper. Imagine getting two of them on the battlefield at once, all Goblin Tokens would be 1/5s. This could make for a really resilient army and an almost impenetrable force against aggro decks. Token producers like Dragon Fodder and Beetleback Chief could generate so much more value. I feel like there could be an interesting deck built around this idea.

An a completely unrelated note, there's Hungry Spriggan, who's an interesting midrange Goblin.

If you get the chance I would love a list.

I'll do some updates soon, but currently I am too busy to put together a few dozen decks to see what works. Goblins are so much stronger and more varied as a tribe then anything but slivers it seems like a tier deck is in there somewhere.

Here's my Matron Control deck:



I have been loving this list. It plays incredibly well. It's not really a Goblin deck, though. it's a Goblin Matron deck.

If I wanted to really build more of a midrange or grindy mono-red or maybe splashed dedicated Goblins list, I'd start with something like this:



There are plenty of good targets for a Matron to fetch up, ranging from removal to ramp to evasion to pump and even beef. There are tons of token producers to clutter up the board or go for a go-wide beatdown plan. A single Goblin Caves will turn your army into a mass of hard-to remove threats or blockers, skewing combat math in your favour.

Martyr is for elves, slash and tinkerer for affinity, slingshot for blue decks, and I have a good matchup against almost everything else. It can't quite turn 3, but it turn 4s frequently while being able to tutor up recursive damage for the long term.

The deck looks great! It's not really midrange anymore, is it? Your telling about turn 4 kills tells me that.

You dropped Goblin Caves altogether?

Considering you're running a full playset of Goblin Matron, you can afford to cut a lot of slots down and include spicier cards. I certainly wouldn't be running a full 4 Sparksmith, for one.

With my experience with Matron Control, I can tell you Slingshot Goblin is not worth it, as Sparksmith generally does its job better. I would cut all 4 Slingshots and move a Sparksmith to the sideboard.

Goblin Lookout is also a candidate for a cut for tutoring. I think 2-3 copies would seem more appropriate. Then again, I'm not sure how good the card is when you compare it to Goblin Bushwhacker. Any thoughts on that?

Quote from Upkeep »

The deck looks great! It's not really midrange anymore, is it? Your telling about turn 4 kills tells me that.

You dropped Goblin Caves altogether?

Considering you're running a full playset of Goblin Matron, you can afford to cut a lot of slots down and include spicier cards. I certainly wouldn't be running a full 4 Sparksmith, for one.

With my experience with Matron Control, I can tell you Slingshot Goblin is not worth it, as Sparksmith generally does its job better. I would cut all 4 Slingshots and move a Sparksmith to the sideboard.

Goblin Lookout is also a candidate for a cut for tutoring. I think 2-3 copies would seem more appropriate. Then again, I'm not sure how good the card is when you compare it to Goblin Bushwhacker. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah I ended up moving to a classic sligh distribution, focused on repeated effects to clear the way for my smallish guys to pummel the opponent to death.

Matron usually grabs lookout, sparksmith or bushwacker based on the circumstances. It also grabs Stingscourger for knocking gurmag anglers and ullamog's crusher back to my opponents hand.

I dropped goblinlookout to 2 a while back for stingscourger. Lookout is great with bushwacker as an instant kill combo turn 4, but alone is pretty bad. It typical goes turn 1 gobbo, turn 2 mogg, turn 3 matron grabbing lookout or wacker, drop lookout than give it haste with wacker. Lookout kills itself, all of your goblins are 4/1 until end of turn.

I disagree about sparksmith. I want to see at least 1 every game, and usually 2 as the first one invariably eats a bolt. Worse case scenario it is a very cruddy beater.

Slingshot goblin can probably go, it is only good against delver decks. Just a little sad because it is so perfect for knocking fliers down again and again. What would you suggest in its place?

I understand you want to see sparksmith every game, but my point is that it's fetchable with Matron, so you see it less in matchups where it's bad. I think moving one Sparksmith to the sideboard would be a good idea. This would also answer your question as to what to replace slingshot with.

I see your point, I will try that then

I'm thinking 1 of skirk drill sergeant or beetleback in its place. I would go with goblin caves but land destruction is making movements right now.

I had no idea Skrik Drill Sergeant was a common online! Nice.

Beetleback Chief is a really good card. I like it as a 1-of.

Yeah skirk drill sergeant seems good, but my hunch is he will either be too expensive or simply eat a bolt and die. I prefer not to max out on 1/1 creatures, the deck already falls apart under wipes.

So I went with some of the suggestions, my list is as follows:



The new deck has a lot of improvements and some new weaknesses. Beetleback is amazing, the side is much better, but skirk drill seargent is for a different deck. He really needs sledders and prospector to be able to decide when to remove a card on opponents end step or in response to removal. I'm going to pull him, put the additional sparksmith and simian spirit guides back in for a slightly better mana base and removal package.

The deck just runs over stompy, RDWs and Burn. Affinity is around 50/50, delver is 60/40, the shades of rainbow tron are easy (especially now that they are using moment's peace and we have flaring pain), turbofog is easy now, the rainbow teachings decks are fairly easy, MBC is 50/50, UB is horrible. Board wipes and masses of removal in one deck :C

Edit: oh and RG tron is rare but gobbos just collapses. Pulse of murasa doesn't scare me, but fangrens running through 20 life in a turn do.

Been playing around with a paper only version that is based on the old goblin foodchain deck.

Aztek Goblins
"Your Sacrifice Will Not be in Vain"


The deck is a fairly typical goblin deck, but with the unbelievable combo of Drill Sergeant and Ashnod's Altar. This turns off removal and chains together goblins in a way that no other pauper deck can do.

You would have to tell us about it, its quite interesting. Seems a shame not to run prosperous pirates in a flicker deck though.

Quote from Captain_Herlock »

Has anyone tried something similar?
Do you think it can have some success or, at least, be funny to play?

I built a very similar deck in Grixis colours that I've had great success with.


Here's me playing it online:
Matron Control playlist