When naming a legend, what is the correct format for using an epithet, commas, or the word "the" in the name? I know that there was an article by Wizards about this a long time ago, but I can't find it.
Stingscourger seems like a good choice. It competes with Incinerator, but against Threshold, the stinger is the only answer post-pyroclasm or post-fire//ice. This card also fills the rather elusive 2-drop slot, although it's not exactly ideal to plan to drop it on turn two each game. This is because you may want to save it and instead play two one-drops or use an incinerator. Incinerator still works great early game, and turn 1 lackey turn 2 fanatic + something else is always strong too.
Right now, I'm using Jitte maindeck. It also drops turn 2, and it helps in the aggro matchup obviously. I have found myself going into longer games against threshold so I'm not too worried about the speed issues. I ususally try to save up for an alpha strike while incinerating some of their creatures to clear a path. My main concern is that it's not matronable or ringleaderable.
Another interesting choice is 3x or 4x goblin king maindeck. It moves all of your goblins to at least 2 toughness so that fire//ice isn't a 2-for-1. It works proactively against any deck that uses plague. It gives your creatures mountainwalk against red threshold, mirror match, and some versions of 43-land deck. Two kings out will also negate pyroclasm, although this may be a little too much to hope for. As I'm typing this up, I'm considering switching over to using Kings. The best part about it is that it's unexpected maindeck, and you may be able to play it and swing for a win on the same turn. This is of course somewhat risky because of the burn, though. The biggest drawback seems to be that its cost contains RR. It also ends up competeing with the crucial 3-drop slot, which is unfortunate.
Monored is my favorite choice against threshold because it doesn't rely on duals, which gives you better protection against wasteland.
Quick comment: I think that Eplague is overrated. 1x maindeck goblin king to matron usually buys enough time to combo off. Being able to answer it preemptively also prevents all your small goblins from dying. Colorsplash will always have to deal with rebuilding after a plague. The king also doubles as a body and an answer to the mirror match. Most importantly, threshold (which is apparently the new top deck to beat) does not run plague, and pure combo decks usually do not bother with plague either.
Does anyone know where those older goblin decklists with fecundity are? I'm considering testing something like that. Goblins might have to become much more combo-oriented. Other than that, I'm just going to stock up on lorwyn. That black tribal sorcery looks pretty fun even though it costs a lot. The five life loss is pretty nice, but I still wish it were an instant.
This deck is actually very popular in my area. Another choice is white splash, which takes advantage of a few weenies from ravnica block. It also used hypnotic specter, which worked wonders in the mirror match against me.
Anyway, I was considering working with a decklist that uses a red splash to get some of the useful madness cards. It would take advantage of smallpox and, dare I say, mindlash sliver. Some cards that I am considering are fiery temper, reckless wurm, mogg fanatic, and bogardan firefiend. The green version ports into red quite well actually. Here is the completely untested but very theoretical red version:
concerns: Fiery temper is extremely underwhelming compared to incinerate. However, I'm hoping that the card advantage of madness will make it worthwhile in this deck. Without Bob, the deck needs to actually be slightly efficient until turn five or six when graveborn comes into play. Reckless Wurm won't see play until turn six or seven as it will cost five mana to cast with or without madness if you discard it to smallpox. Mindlash sliver makes this look a little better, but there really arn't any cards that let you discard for free anymore. I figure that the muse tag team will be threatening enough until the reckless wurms start hitting. The deck really shines if you can combine bogardan firefiend and/or fiery temper with smallpox. Remember that smallpox does not give any natural card advantage, even if you don't have a creature in play to sacrifice.
edit: Hunted Wumpus seems like an alright choice. It obviously has some synergy with the deck. The problem is that the wumpus is nothing more than a cheap 6/6 body. Tarmogoyf will usually be at least 3/4 for half the mana cost and it doesn't run the risk of letting the opponent play a creature for free. That is to say, if your opponent still has some card in hand when you want to play the wumpus, then it would be a lot nicer if the wumpus was a tarmogoyf instead. As for running multiple creature threats, I think that tarmo+wumpus would be a bad choice. Both of these cards would try to fill the same role. A better choice for additional creatures would be hypnotic specter or troll ascetic.
I still think mono red gobos is really bad. They will fall to the new thresh even easier. Plus, mono red looses to almost everything else in the format right now anyways. I don't think anyone at gen con even ran mono red. hahaha
Why does monored lose to threshold even faster? I've already pointed out that monored is immune to wasteland, which is apparently a huge problem all of a sudden. In my testing, I found maindeck needle to be much more annoying, although both cards are easily answerable in any goblin deck. Wasteland hardly seems worthwhile in threshold, which will already suffer some card and tempo disadvantage against goblins (fow, daze). I don't think that sacrificing your own land drops to take out the opponent's is a very good idea for a quasi control deck, especially when it is facing goblins, a deck that doesn't really need land. However, this isn't the place to argue about threshold; my point is that wasteland is nothing new to the format. At the least, a goblin player would have just as much trouble with it in a mirror match. Secondly, if anything, monored will have a superior matchup against wasteland for obvious reasons.
There's no reason why monored loses to everything else in the format. That is to say, there's no reason why monored loses worse than R/x goblins. Considering the Gen Con results, all goblin decks appear to be lacking. The only thing that monored can't deal with directly is plague, which is clearly not as big of a problem as combo. Suffice it to say, even if monored is weaker, according to Gen Con, all goblin decks are weak.
I don't think that a white splash for StP/Condemn is very justified considering how much better gempalm incinerator is. The only advantage of the white spells is that you do not need to have goblins on the field in order to use them. Against threshold, if you have no goblins on the field, it doesn't matter how many colors you splash because you've already lost. Gempalm incinerator replaces itself, dodges counters, is matronable, is ringleaderable, and also works as a creature in a pinch.
Keep in mind that Tarmogoyf is not automatically a 4/5 or larger if it appears on turn two. There should be plenty of time to find an answer. Aside from that, goblins can easily outrace threshold. With only a piledriver and two goblins attacking, the opponent would likely lose their tarmogoyf in a block. Tarmogoyf is nothing more than a deformed werebear that can't even produce mana. The fact that one doesn't need threshold is irrelevant; threshold is still forced onto the defensive, and any fat bodies will simply fall to piledriver. The piledriver is much easier to replace on the field with the efficiency of goblins. Besides, a turn one crypt is still a pain for threshold to deal with.
Monored dodges wasteland. If you're going to splash, then black is the best choice if combo is so rampant. Which win condition does Iggy currently use, anyway? Is anyone else kind of excited about Fodder Launch? At the least, I'm sure Lorwyn will have something cool for goblins. The last time they did a tribal block, it basically made the current goblin deck for legacy, even in spite of the loss of goblin recruiter.
I'm not sure about loxodon warhammer. I read that article, but it seems to advocate a deck that uses way more green to power elves and birds.
1st turn birds
2nd turn hypnotic
3rd turn smallpox + augur / tarmogoyf
4th turn loxodon warhammer
This sounds great, but this isn't our deck. Our deck is a monoblack discard deck. It uses The Rack as a win condition. It used to use Korlash. Currently, it either splashes red or green for additional win conditions, such as tarmogoyf or lavaborn muse. The only reason that these cards are used is because they have synergy with discard. Specifically, tarmogoyf works so well because it gets bonuses when you make your opponents discard things.
It sounds like some people want to make a deck focused around tarmogoyf. That is not this deck! In fact, I was strongly considering changing my deck to include a lot more red in place of a small amount of green. Red seems like it just has better cards. Green adds tarmogoyf, which is nothing more than a beatstick. It dies to every removal spell. The only advantage is that it only costs 1G, which makes it very playable post-smallpox. However, this is kind of difficult with the inclusion of treetop village as a main green source. Village plus smallpox puts the deck two turns behind on land.
Anyway, I think we should develop the red build a little more. After rotation it would be something like a black-red muse deck. Right now I'm thinking of doing this:
-4 tarmogoyf
+3 lavaborn muse
-3 coth
+4 mogg fanatic? not sure.
Rain of Tears does seem really nice. The red version could sideboard Cryoclasm on top of that.
The most interesting thing about the decklists that top-8'ed seems to be that the replaced ravenous rats with call of the herd. This seems like a good idea because of all the congestion around the 2 drop slot.
As for bottle gnomes versus darkheart sliver, I would pick the gnomes just because it's easier to cast. I like how darkheart works against sliver decks, but it's only a 2/2, and I have always had an easy matchup against slivers anyway. As soon as the smallpox's start coming, the slivers just crumble. If you can kill their gemhide sliver early, the smallpox will ruin their manabase. Slivers is a great deck, but it really crumbles to board disruption like smallpox.
I'm still keeping plague sliver on the table though, just because it's a cheap fatty that also works in the metagame, unlike nihilith or that delve guy, both of which just fight for attention with tarmogoyf.
Here is the decklist that I'm currently working with for post rotation:
3x graveborn muse
4x augur of skulls
4x tarmogoyf
4x big game hunter
3x call of the herd
side
4 bottle gnomes
3 damnation (this is very important)
4 rain of tears (this just seems too good to pass up)
3 seal of primordium (obvious)
1 stupor (the card is bomb against control)
I'm going to experiment with calls maindeck in place of rats.
I kept 4 creature removal slots except that I decided to fill them with BGH because I love that card.
I increased the land count to 24 and may increase it further as the deck really needs to get to 4 land on top of all the smallpox's. then again, graveborn muse isn't crucial to the deck. if the deck sacrifices itself early to slow down the opponent as well, it should be able to win and find the muse at the right time.
I'm hoping for some kind of dual land in lorwyn, which is basically a given since they did allied color duals in timespiral.
Also hoping for another good discard slot to replace distress. Otherwise, it is quite likely that I will run rain of tears maindeck because it works so well with smallpox. I'm also considering using some kind of land acceleration from green to make up for what I lose to the pox. Something along the lines of mwonvuli acid-moss, but the GG really hurts in this deck when it's facing down BB from smallpox.
Echoing Truth is the best answer for Pyrostatic Pillar. I assume that you meant to have this in your sideboard instead of Echoing Courage. On a related note, Gigadrowse is also a popular meta choice, especially against goblins.
Why not? This card is at least a one-for-one at instant speed. It pumps the goyf for instants (hard to do with discard spells). It can kill a variety of creatures as a combat trick. It has ridiculous synergy with BGH, which is one of the only solid removal cards post-rotation (that is, it can kill black creatures and regenerators). Charm wont replace Cry, but I don't think that Cry is so good that the loss of it will cripple our deck.
In Lorwyn, there wont be many discard spells for only B. This spell is one of the best. Distress is obviously sub-par, but after rotation, it could become useable. Just looking at what wizards has done with discard lately, it looks more and more likely that things like Distress will have to be played.
As for Mindlash Sliver, it still costs you 1B, a creature, and a card from your hand before you can make your opponent discard. The only advantage of playing this over rats occurs if your opponent is playing slivers. That shouldn't matter, though, because if the opponent starts playing good slivers, then you've quite probably lost anyway.
Using cry on a mindlash does equalize your card advantage. However, using the cry on a good creature, like augur of skulls, gives you a 2-for-4 advantage. Using it on the rats is even a better choice than on the sliver, as rats will likely die blocking or from a smallpox and give you a minimum of 2-for-3.
As for the SliveRack idea, I have doubts that someone will need to find 7-8 Darkheart Slivers to be able to win. This deck does quite well against aggro/burn strategies even without Damnation because it has so many small efficient creatures running around.
On a slightly related note, one techy card that I dug up for post rotation is Plague Sliver. In a vacuum, this is a Juzam Djinn. Against a sliver deck, this is a win condition. Plague sliver blocks their biggest creature every turn (being a 5/5 on top of all the bonuses floating around) while they desperately try to race the plague clock. The only reason that I bring this up is because slivers probably wont lose much post rotation except for the top-notch burn, so it seems like it could be a reasonable threat.
Mindlash seems like card disadvantage. You lose two cards only to cause the opponent to discard one of their choice. Rats is an automatic one-for-one, and can always chump or trade on the field for another weenie. If you just don't like rats for some reason, Distress and Call of the Herd are better choices.
With Smallpox and a host of weenies, is getting a creature in the graveyard really that difficult? The opponent can always chump your goyf to give you a pump that way too. Everything else aside, if you actually use GOOD discard, then the opponent will be forced to start discarding good things, like creatures, which pumps the goyf.
This deck shouldn't become some kind of weird speedgoyf deck. There is no reason to pick card disadvantage just to make goyf stronger. With this kind of logic, you might as well maindeck seal of primordium so that you can destroy your own rack and give goyf +2/+2. Goyf isn't even that good because it dies to almost anything. Goyf is better off as an alternate win condition to the rack, and goyf should be played only after the opponent is crippled. It is a lot harder to keep pressure on the opponent when you're losing card advantage.
Using both slivers together doesn't make mindlash any better. This way, you just end up losing a GOOD sliver to pay for the mindlash cost. Darkheart is a good card, especially because it works against burn, aggro, and slivers. Bottle Gnomes is also good, but I would choose Darkheart just because it is great tech against slivers. This is important because I believe that slivers is poised to do well post-rotation, just like B/x rack.
Right now, I'm using Jitte maindeck. It also drops turn 2, and it helps in the aggro matchup obviously. I have found myself going into longer games against threshold so I'm not too worried about the speed issues. I ususally try to save up for an alpha strike while incinerating some of their creatures to clear a path. My main concern is that it's not matronable or ringleaderable.
Another interesting choice is 3x or 4x goblin king maindeck. It moves all of your goblins to at least 2 toughness so that fire//ice isn't a 2-for-1. It works proactively against any deck that uses plague. It gives your creatures mountainwalk against red threshold, mirror match, and some versions of 43-land deck. Two kings out will also negate pyroclasm, although this may be a little too much to hope for. As I'm typing this up, I'm considering switching over to using Kings. The best part about it is that it's unexpected maindeck, and you may be able to play it and swing for a win on the same turn. This is of course somewhat risky because of the burn, though. The biggest drawback seems to be that its cost contains RR. It also ends up competeing with the crucial 3-drop slot, which is unfortunate.
Monored is my favorite choice against threshold because it doesn't rely on duals, which gives you better protection against wasteland.
Anyway, I was considering working with a decklist that uses a red splash to get some of the useful madness cards. It would take advantage of smallpox and, dare I say, mindlash sliver. Some cards that I am considering are fiery temper, reckless wurm, mogg fanatic, and bogardan firefiend. The green version ports into red quite well actually. Here is the completely untested but very theoretical red version:
deck:
4 fiery temper
4 smallpox
3 stupor
4 funeral charm
4 (another removal/discard slot) mindlash sliver/bogardan firefiend/?
4 augur of skulls
3 graveborn muse
3 lavaborn muse
4 the rack
3 reckless wurm
8 duals
2 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
4 ghitu encampment
2 kher keep
6 swamp
2 mountain
side:
4 bottle gnomes
4 cryoclasm
3 damnation or pyroclasm
4 bgh
concerns: Fiery temper is extremely underwhelming compared to incinerate. However, I'm hoping that the card advantage of madness will make it worthwhile in this deck. Without Bob, the deck needs to actually be slightly efficient until turn five or six when graveborn comes into play. Reckless Wurm won't see play until turn six or seven as it will cost five mana to cast with or without madness if you discard it to smallpox. Mindlash sliver makes this look a little better, but there really arn't any cards that let you discard for free anymore. I figure that the muse tag team will be threatening enough until the reckless wurms start hitting. The deck really shines if you can combine bogardan firefiend and/or fiery temper with smallpox. Remember that smallpox does not give any natural card advantage, even if you don't have a creature in play to sacrifice.
edit: Hunted Wumpus seems like an alright choice. It obviously has some synergy with the deck. The problem is that the wumpus is nothing more than a cheap 6/6 body. Tarmogoyf will usually be at least 3/4 for half the mana cost and it doesn't run the risk of letting the opponent play a creature for free. That is to say, if your opponent still has some card in hand when you want to play the wumpus, then it would be a lot nicer if the wumpus was a tarmogoyf instead. As for running multiple creature threats, I think that tarmo+wumpus would be a bad choice. Both of these cards would try to fill the same role. A better choice for additional creatures would be hypnotic specter or troll ascetic.
Why does monored lose to threshold even faster? I've already pointed out that monored is immune to wasteland, which is apparently a huge problem all of a sudden. In my testing, I found maindeck needle to be much more annoying, although both cards are easily answerable in any goblin deck. Wasteland hardly seems worthwhile in threshold, which will already suffer some card and tempo disadvantage against goblins (fow, daze). I don't think that sacrificing your own land drops to take out the opponent's is a very good idea for a quasi control deck, especially when it is facing goblins, a deck that doesn't really need land. However, this isn't the place to argue about threshold; my point is that wasteland is nothing new to the format. At the least, a goblin player would have just as much trouble with it in a mirror match. Secondly, if anything, monored will have a superior matchup against wasteland for obvious reasons.
There's no reason why monored loses to everything else in the format. That is to say, there's no reason why monored loses worse than R/x goblins. Considering the Gen Con results, all goblin decks appear to be lacking. The only thing that monored can't deal with directly is plague, which is clearly not as big of a problem as combo. Suffice it to say, even if monored is weaker, according to Gen Con, all goblin decks are weak.
I don't think that a white splash for StP/Condemn is very justified considering how much better gempalm incinerator is. The only advantage of the white spells is that you do not need to have goblins on the field in order to use them. Against threshold, if you have no goblins on the field, it doesn't matter how many colors you splash because you've already lost. Gempalm incinerator replaces itself, dodges counters, is matronable, is ringleaderable, and also works as a creature in a pinch.
Keep in mind that Tarmogoyf is not automatically a 4/5 or larger if it appears on turn two. There should be plenty of time to find an answer. Aside from that, goblins can easily outrace threshold. With only a piledriver and two goblins attacking, the opponent would likely lose their tarmogoyf in a block. Tarmogoyf is nothing more than a deformed werebear that can't even produce mana. The fact that one doesn't need threshold is irrelevant; threshold is still forced onto the defensive, and any fat bodies will simply fall to piledriver. The piledriver is much easier to replace on the field with the efficiency of goblins. Besides, a turn one crypt is still a pain for threshold to deal with.
1st turn birds
2nd turn hypnotic
3rd turn smallpox + augur / tarmogoyf
4th turn loxodon warhammer
This sounds great, but this isn't our deck. Our deck is a monoblack discard deck. It uses The Rack as a win condition. It used to use Korlash. Currently, it either splashes red or green for additional win conditions, such as tarmogoyf or lavaborn muse. The only reason that these cards are used is because they have synergy with discard. Specifically, tarmogoyf works so well because it gets bonuses when you make your opponents discard things.
It sounds like some people want to make a deck focused around tarmogoyf. That is not this deck! In fact, I was strongly considering changing my deck to include a lot more red in place of a small amount of green. Red seems like it just has better cards. Green adds tarmogoyf, which is nothing more than a beatstick. It dies to every removal spell. The only advantage is that it only costs 1G, which makes it very playable post-smallpox. However, this is kind of difficult with the inclusion of treetop village as a main green source. Village plus smallpox puts the deck two turns behind on land.
Anyway, I think we should develop the red build a little more. After rotation it would be something like a black-red muse deck. Right now I'm thinking of doing this:
-4 tarmogoyf
+3 lavaborn muse
-3 coth
+4 mogg fanatic? not sure.
The most interesting thing about the decklists that top-8'ed seems to be that the replaced ravenous rats with call of the herd. This seems like a good idea because of all the congestion around the 2 drop slot.
As for bottle gnomes versus darkheart sliver, I would pick the gnomes just because it's easier to cast. I like how darkheart works against sliver decks, but it's only a 2/2, and I have always had an easy matchup against slivers anyway. As soon as the smallpox's start coming, the slivers just crumble. If you can kill their gemhide sliver early, the smallpox will ruin their manabase. Slivers is a great deck, but it really crumbles to board disruption like smallpox.
I'm still keeping plague sliver on the table though, just because it's a cheap fatty that also works in the metagame, unlike nihilith or that delve guy, both of which just fight for attention with tarmogoyf.
Here is the decklist that I'm currently working with for post rotation:
3x graveborn muse
4x augur of skulls
4x tarmogoyf
4x big game hunter
3x call of the herd
4x funeral charm
3x distress
3x stupor
4x smallpox
4x the rack
4x treetop village
4x llanowar wastes
2x forest
10x swamp
2x urborg
2x pendelhaven
side
4 bottle gnomes
3 damnation (this is very important)
4 rain of tears (this just seems too good to pass up)
3 seal of primordium (obvious)
1 stupor (the card is bomb against control)
I'm going to experiment with calls maindeck in place of rats.
I kept 4 creature removal slots except that I decided to fill them with BGH because I love that card.
I increased the land count to 24 and may increase it further as the deck really needs to get to 4 land on top of all the smallpox's. then again, graveborn muse isn't crucial to the deck. if the deck sacrifices itself early to slow down the opponent as well, it should be able to win and find the muse at the right time.
I'm hoping for some kind of dual land in lorwyn, which is basically a given since they did allied color duals in timespiral.
Also hoping for another good discard slot to replace distress. Otherwise, it is quite likely that I will run rain of tears maindeck because it works so well with smallpox. I'm also considering using some kind of land acceleration from green to make up for what I lose to the pox. Something along the lines of mwonvuli acid-moss, but the GG really hurts in this deck when it's facing down BB from smallpox.
Dimir Funhouse
Land
Spells you play cost 1 more to play.
T: Add UB to your mana pool.
The fact that you can use it on abilities is balanced by the fact that having two or more of these land would shut you down.
Why not? This card is at least a one-for-one at instant speed. It pumps the goyf for instants (hard to do with discard spells). It can kill a variety of creatures as a combat trick. It has ridiculous synergy with BGH, which is one of the only solid removal cards post-rotation (that is, it can kill black creatures and regenerators). Charm wont replace Cry, but I don't think that Cry is so good that the loss of it will cripple our deck.
In Lorwyn, there wont be many discard spells for only B. This spell is one of the best. Distress is obviously sub-par, but after rotation, it could become useable. Just looking at what wizards has done with discard lately, it looks more and more likely that things like Distress will have to be played.
As for Mindlash Sliver, it still costs you 1B, a creature, and a card from your hand before you can make your opponent discard. The only advantage of playing this over rats occurs if your opponent is playing slivers. That shouldn't matter, though, because if the opponent starts playing good slivers, then you've quite probably lost anyway.
As for the SliveRack idea, I have doubts that someone will need to find 7-8 Darkheart Slivers to be able to win. This deck does quite well against aggro/burn strategies even without Damnation because it has so many small efficient creatures running around.
On a slightly related note, one techy card that I dug up for post rotation is Plague Sliver. In a vacuum, this is a Juzam Djinn. Against a sliver deck, this is a win condition. Plague sliver blocks their biggest creature every turn (being a 5/5 on top of all the bonuses floating around) while they desperately try to race the plague clock. The only reason that I bring this up is because slivers probably wont lose much post rotation except for the top-notch burn, so it seems like it could be a reasonable threat.
With Smallpox and a host of weenies, is getting a creature in the graveyard really that difficult? The opponent can always chump your goyf to give you a pump that way too. Everything else aside, if you actually use GOOD discard, then the opponent will be forced to start discarding good things, like creatures, which pumps the goyf.
This deck shouldn't become some kind of weird speedgoyf deck. There is no reason to pick card disadvantage just to make goyf stronger. With this kind of logic, you might as well maindeck seal of primordium so that you can destroy your own rack and give goyf +2/+2. Goyf isn't even that good because it dies to almost anything. Goyf is better off as an alternate win condition to the rack, and goyf should be played only after the opponent is crippled. It is a lot harder to keep pressure on the opponent when you're losing card advantage.
Using both slivers together doesn't make mindlash any better. This way, you just end up losing a GOOD sliver to pay for the mindlash cost. Darkheart is a good card, especially because it works against burn, aggro, and slivers. Bottle Gnomes is also good, but I would choose Darkheart just because it is great tech against slivers. This is important because I believe that slivers is poised to do well post-rotation, just like B/x rack.