Stonecoil Serpent seems neat. At the very least, it's a great budget finisher (compared to Wurmcoil Engine. I like that you can cast early to aid convoke and block or whatever. The stats seem really pushed for this guy too. Reach, trample, and protection? Jeeze. Also fetchable with Trinket Mage.
Emry, Lurker of the Loch is a cool card (I totally just lost to it on turn 2 in a Jeskai Ascendancy deck), but I am not sure it's what we want to be doing with our deck. Seems kinda slow, and there's not always going to be artifacts to cast from the graveyard or ones in play to make him cheap. I guess we can loot stuff away with Copter and then cast it. That's pretty cool.
I like the serpent as well, seems like we could abuse it.
Emry can just be a value engine. We mill 4 when she enters, anything we get from that is card advantage. The ability to buy back our threats seems good. We can apply pressure with golems or whatever threats and with emry out we get to buy it back when it dies in combat or from bolt/push/trophy/lili minus/whatever.
She's not an artifact so she isn't vulnerable to typical removal our opponent uses vs us post board. Also discharging ballistas and buying it back with all these useless mana creatures we have late game seems like it could win games. We can just have constant threats with her, seems good, maybe she could be better in the sideboard when we expect removal?
Emry, Lurker of the Loch
2U
Legendary Creature - Merfolk Wizard
This spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact you control.
When Emry, Lurker of the Loch enters the battlefield, put the top four cards of your library into your graveyard.
T: Choose target artifact card in your graveyard. You may cast that card this turn.
1/2
Value doesn't get much more efficient than this... dodges the golem tax with reduction. Unloading ballista and recasting them seems like a deadly play.
Thoughts?
I've included 2x damping sphere in my sideboard as well because twiddle storm and tron are back, but i'm not convinced on cutting GY hate, so i'm also keeping 2x grafdigger's cage in the 15. Those are the only non-goblin spells in the sideboard, because ringleader/matron value.
I'm sold on the painless mana. My mana base is currently:
Forget about the counterspell thing, cavern and unclaimed are just painless untapped perfect fixing lands. I don't think we need any of the non goblin black spells to be honest, so why take damage when we can not take damage? Its just a free bonus.
We have enough sources (13) for a turn two Munitions Expert or Warren Weirding. That's literally the cutoff, any more sources would be redundant, albeit a little more consistent.
That doesn't make any sense. This notion comes from karsten's article, which is a great article, but you're taking it way to litteraly. 13 lands gives you approximatly 90% chances to hit your color on turn two. But 90% isn't a magical number, its just a abitrarily chosen number to use as a guideline, because the author of the article had to pick one to do the math.
Having more chances to hit your colors is always good. There is always a trade-off between good mana and utility lands. There is nothing special about «90%» probability other than it pleases the mind because it feels kind of likely and can be divided by ten i guess? There are no cutoffs at all, you just have to weight the pros and cons when building your land base.
I was 100% on the Frogtosser Banneret train at the start but I'm now convinced the card is too weak. The acceleration is great, but individually it is rarely worth a card, needing multiple Ringleaders to be worth the investment.
Well for my part i'm still 100% on the frogtosser banneret bandwagon. Playing multiple goblins a turn is key to winning and cost reduction is the best way to do that. Note that i play only 20 lands as opposed to a lot of people's 22-23, so if i did like a lot of people do, these frogtossers would just be more lands anyways.
Playing 4x aether vials, plus 4x skirk prospectors + 4x goblin warchiefs and 4x frogtosser bannerets in addition to the new mulligan rule makes 20 lands very reasonable for this deck in my opinion.
And to answer the last part of your response: the purpose of Piledriver is to race your opponent.
All of the points you make are very fair. I'll give old goblin piledriver a try, probably in the place of my two goblin chieftains, since they both have the same purpose of racing. We'll see how it goes!
I would strongly disagree, and say that playing 3 Piledrivers is not a bad option at all.
The protection from blue is very relevant, making you able to race decks like Dredge (Amalgam and Narcomoeba can't block), Urza Thopter (the thopters are blue), UR Phoenix (Thing in the Ice), Storm (both creatures can't block), and makes your UW Control matchup even better. It's pretty strong against any combo deck, which is one of Goblins' weaknesses. Also doesn't die to Plague Engineer, which is an important upside as well.
They have to be blocked most of the time, which makes them act like a removal spell which is also a creature. It's completely nuts with Warchief.
Edit: I would still play a Tarfire as well, pretty good Matron target if you need it and decent extra removal.
All of those are best case scenario. I don't think cards should be evaluated this way.
Protection is a busted keyword, but blue is probably the worst protection a creature could have in this format. There is not a single piece of removal i can think of that is blue, and piledriver can be countered making the immunity to interaction aspect of protection useless. There are very few commonly played creatures that it can block, making this other aspect of protection bad.
While piledriver may be good vs some creatures in a given deck, it is never good against the whole deck. Dredge/hoogak have other creatures they can use to block. Phoenix has red creatures they can use to block it or fly over it all day. Urza/thopter have the construct token and the thopter will whipe all other attacking goblins. Plague engineer kills other goblins that we would need to pump it to make it a good attacker, and the few 2/2 we have would die in combat to the engineer itself if we attack with them.
The removal by attacking thing isn't that great value, because even when you have potential good attacks with piledriver you need to commit other creatures to combat, and those other attacks might be bad making it very awkward. I've played with piledriver in other decks a long time ago and thats the worst about them, for them to be good you would need to send all your stuff and make bad attacks, and if you don't do that they just sit there doing nothing.
The fact that it is good in combo matchups (not based on creatures) might be an argument to play it, but it seems the card has all properties of a sideboard card at best, not a maindeck one. There is not a single card in my main deck list i would cut for it. I'm not really sure what purpose it would serve in the deck.
I play zero piledrivers, they are very bad in combat, not worth it unless you play the 8 whack aggro version with legion loyalists.
I play 4x marshals, they are just good goblin fodder.
Here's my updated list:
I streamlined the deck a bit, removing the one ofs, making the deck very consistent.
I'm playing tarfire because we lack other turn one action, i dislike legion loyalist and knucklebone witch. The extra removal has been very useful.
My experience playing with the deck convinced me that we should run 8x cost reducing goblins, those effects are totally busted with matron and ringleader.
I also think that for the most part running the painless mana base helps a lot. The non shuffling thing i mentionned in my last post doesn't actually make sense since matron shuffles our deck, but, unless you plan on playing black non-goblin cards in the sideboard, i don't see a reason to hurt ourselves when we can have near-perfect painless mana. For this reason i plan on removing warren weirding from the sideboard for maybe engineered explosives vs bogles.
sideboard is still a work in progress. Still missing cavern #3-4 and auntie'S hovel #4, played with blood crypts instead.
The deck is very fun and effective, you have aggression and value and reach.
Goblin ringleader is nuts in this deck, especially with all the acceleration.
No fetchlands seems good with ringleader, you never shuffle the stuff you put on the bottom back in the deck.
Love the deck, gonna play some more and do some tweaking.
Do you think warchief is still necessary even with the full playset of frogtosser banneret? I'm not high on warren instigator, seems slow at 2 mana and no evasion makes me wonder why its played. Prospector is another source of mana so maybe i could play more of those.
The curve is kind of high with 12 3 drops and 4x 4 drops... I'm not against more haste enablers so maybe warchief is worth it.
Hi! i'm new to this archetype but recent additions made me want to try out this deck.
I like krarzan's deck and i also think knucklebone witch is a decent one drop (until we get better stuff maybe at some point). Doing things turn one seems pretty important and a more conditional champion of the parish may be good enough.
I'm still missing a couple of lands to play this in an fnm but i'll try to get them by the time ringleader becomes legal.
My current list:
So the deck is 100% goblins. I did the 3/1 split with ringleader and sling gang because i feel we need the gang as a finisher. It is also probably our only chance of winning vs burn because of the lifegain part. Ringleader seems like a minimum of 3x in this deck.Chaining them into matrons into more ringleader seems like a pretty busted card advantage engine.
I'm also trying out new krenko as a cheap way of generating board presence. Also cratermaker seems fine as a one of for artifact hate. I feel like we need a minimum of 4 interactive goblins. Cratermaker at worst kills 2 thoughness stuff. I feel good about expert, the fact that it can hit planeswalkers too at flash seems great vs control, and with cavern of souls it seems even better.
Like i mentioned at the start of my post, i'm starting with mono black because i don't own all of the needed wb lands yet. You can't play tidehollow sculler in mono black, i know its good but you need white mana to cast it.
By the time corspe knight is available i'll switch to wb, i'll probably be able to get the lands i need by then.
ok so here's my first attempt at post modern horizons zombies. I'm starting with a mono black version because i don't have the lands for BW yet.
It is very value centric and features unearth, which i think should be a staple for the deck.
There is only 20 lands because there is a lot of card draw and the curve is relatively low. Unearth can bring back any creature which is why i put 2x fleshbag marauder. You can do sac shenanigans with relentless dead and it makes unearth a one mana edict. Unearth can also be a one mana stone rain with fulminator mage from the sideboard, and can bring back all other creatures in the deck.
I really can't wait to play the deck, i'll be testing tomorrow and see if this works.
So in a month we went from having nothing new since ever to having carrion feeder, undead augur and then corpse knight. I'm now very excited for this deck again! The more new stuff we get the more i think an aristocrats/value version of zombies has the most potential. Between these and wayward servant, plague belcher and maybe even diregraf captain, we have a lot of ways to chip away our opponent's life. Trying to find the perfect mix will be a challenge for sure!
I like the serpent as well, seems like we could abuse it.
Emry can just be a value engine. We mill 4 when she enters, anything we get from that is card advantage. The ability to buy back our threats seems good. We can apply pressure with golems or whatever threats and with emry out we get to buy it back when it dies in combat or from bolt/push/trophy/lili minus/whatever.
She's not an artifact so she isn't vulnerable to typical removal our opponent uses vs us post board. Also discharging ballistas and buying it back with all these useless mana creatures we have late game seems like it could win games. We can just have constant threats with her, seems good, maybe she could be better in the sideboard when we expect removal?
Emry, Lurker of the Loch
2U
Legendary Creature - Merfolk Wizard
This spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact you control.
When Emry, Lurker of the Loch enters the battlefield, put the top four cards of your library into your graveyard.
T: Choose target artifact card in your graveyard. You may cast that card this turn.
1/2
Value doesn't get much more efficient than this... dodges the golem tax with reduction. Unloading ballista and recasting them seems like a deadly play.
Thoughts?
I'm sold on the painless mana. My mana base is currently:
4x cavern of souls
4x unclaimed territory
4x auntie's hovel
2x swamp
4x mountain
2x field of ruin
Forget about the counterspell thing, cavern and unclaimed are just painless untapped perfect fixing lands. I don't think we need any of the non goblin black spells to be honest, so why take damage when we can not take damage? Its just a free bonus.
also:
That doesn't make any sense. This notion comes from karsten's article, which is a great article, but you're taking it way to litteraly. 13 lands gives you approximatly 90% chances to hit your color on turn two. But 90% isn't a magical number, its just a abitrarily chosen number to use as a guideline, because the author of the article had to pick one to do the math.
Having more chances to hit your colors is always good. There is always a trade-off between good mana and utility lands. There is nothing special about «90%» probability other than it pleases the mind because it feels kind of likely and can be divided by ten i guess? There are no cutoffs at all, you just have to weight the pros and cons when building your land base.
Well for my part i'm still 100% on the frogtosser banneret bandwagon. Playing multiple goblins a turn is key to winning and cost reduction is the best way to do that. Note that i play only 20 lands as opposed to a lot of people's 22-23, so if i did like a lot of people do, these frogtossers would just be more lands anyways.
Playing 4x aether vials, plus 4x skirk prospectors + 4x goblin warchiefs and 4x frogtosser bannerets in addition to the new mulligan rule makes 20 lands very reasonable for this deck in my opinion.
All of the points you make are very fair. I'll give old goblin piledriver a try, probably in the place of my two goblin chieftains, since they both have the same purpose of racing. We'll see how it goes!
All of those are best case scenario. I don't think cards should be evaluated this way.
Protection is a busted keyword, but blue is probably the worst protection a creature could have in this format. There is not a single piece of removal i can think of that is blue, and piledriver can be countered making the immunity to interaction aspect of protection useless. There are very few commonly played creatures that it can block, making this other aspect of protection bad.
While piledriver may be good vs some creatures in a given deck, it is never good against the whole deck. Dredge/hoogak have other creatures they can use to block. Phoenix has red creatures they can use to block it or fly over it all day. Urza/thopter have the construct token and the thopter will whipe all other attacking goblins. Plague engineer kills other goblins that we would need to pump it to make it a good attacker, and the few 2/2 we have would die in combat to the engineer itself if we attack with them.
The removal by attacking thing isn't that great value, because even when you have potential good attacks with piledriver you need to commit other creatures to combat, and those other attacks might be bad making it very awkward. I've played with piledriver in other decks a long time ago and thats the worst about them, for them to be good you would need to send all your stuff and make bad attacks, and if you don't do that they just sit there doing nothing.
The fact that it is good in combo matchups (not based on creatures) might be an argument to play it, but it seems the card has all properties of a sideboard card at best, not a maindeck one. There is not a single card in my main deck list i would cut for it. I'm not really sure what purpose it would serve in the deck.
I play 4x marshals, they are just good goblin fodder.
Here's my updated list:
4 skirk prospector
4 mogg war marshal
4 frogtosser banneret
4 munitions expert
4 goblin matron
4 goblin warchief
2 goblin chieftain
2 pashalik mons
2 sling-gang lieutenant
artifacts: 4
4 aether vial
tribal instants: 2
2 tarfire
lands: 20
4 cavern of souls
4 unclaimed territory
4 auntie's hovel
2 swamp
6 mountain
1 goblin trashmaster
2 goblin cratermaker
2 goblin chainwhirler
2 goblin ruinblaster
2 earwig squad
2 warren weirding
2 tarfire
2 relic of progenitus
I streamlined the deck a bit, removing the one ofs, making the deck very consistent.
I'm playing tarfire because we lack other turn one action, i dislike legion loyalist and knucklebone witch. The extra removal has been very useful.
My experience playing with the deck convinced me that we should run 8x cost reducing goblins, those effects are totally busted with matron and ringleader.
I also think that for the most part running the painless mana base helps a lot. The non shuffling thing i mentionned in my last post doesn't actually make sense since matron shuffles our deck, but, unless you plan on playing black non-goblin cards in the sideboard, i don't see a reason to hurt ourselves when we can have near-perfect painless mana. For this reason i plan on removing warren weirding from the sideboard for maybe engineered explosives vs bogles.
My updated list is:
4 skirk prospector
2 legion loyalist
4 mogg war marshal
4 frogtosser banneret
4 munitions expert
4 goblin chieftain
4 goblin matron
2 goblin warchief
1 mad auntie
1 pashalik mons
1 krenko, mob boss
1 sling-gang lieutenant
artifacts: 4
4 aether vial
lands: 20
4 cavern of souls
4 unclaimed territory
4 auntie's hovel
2 swamp
6 mountain
1 pashalik mons
1 sling-gang lieutenant
1 goblin trashmaster
2 goblin cratermaker
3 goblin chainwhirler
3 goblin ruinblaster
2 relic of progenitus
2 pithing needle
sideboard is still a work in progress. Still missing cavern #3-4 and auntie'S hovel #4, played with blood crypts instead.
The deck is very fun and effective, you have aggression and value and reach.
Goblin ringleader is nuts in this deck, especially with all the acceleration.
No fetchlands seems good with ringleader, you never shuffle the stuff you put on the bottom back in the deck.
Love the deck, gonna play some more and do some tweaking.
The curve is kind of high with 12 3 drops and 4x 4 drops... I'm not against more haste enablers so maybe warchief is worth it.
I like krarzan's deck and i also think knucklebone witch is a decent one drop (until we get better stuff maybe at some point). Doing things turn one seems pretty important and a more conditional champion of the parish may be good enough.
I'm still missing a couple of lands to play this in an fnm but i'll try to get them by the time ringleader becomes legal.
My current list:
2 skirk prospector
2 legion loyalist
4 knucklebone witch
4 mogg war marshal
4 goblin instigator
4 frogtosser banneret
3 munitions expert
1 goblin cratermaker
4 goblin matron
2 mad auntie
1 pashalik mons
1 krenko, tin street kingpin
3 goblin ringleader
1 sling-gang lieutenant
4 cavern of souls
4 unclaimed territory
4 auntie's hovel
2 sunbaked canyon
2 swamp
4 mountain
So the deck is 100% goblins. I did the 3/1 split with ringleader and sling gang because i feel we need the gang as a finisher. It is also probably our only chance of winning vs burn because of the lifegain part. Ringleader seems like a minimum of 3x in this deck.Chaining them into matrons into more ringleader seems like a pretty busted card advantage engine.
I'm also trying out new krenko as a cheap way of generating board presence. Also cratermaker seems fine as a one of for artifact hate. I feel like we need a minimum of 4 interactive goblins. Cratermaker at worst kills 2 thoughness stuff. I feel good about expert, the fact that it can hit planeswalkers too at flash seems great vs control, and with cavern of souls it seems even better.
By the time corspe knight is available i'll switch to wb, i'll probably be able to get the lands i need by then.
Here's the w/b list i'm currently messing with:
4 cryptbreaker
4 gravecrawler
4 carrion feeder
4 tidehollow sculler
4 wayward servant
4 corpse knight
4 diregraf colossus
2 fleshbag marauder
sorceries : 6
4 unearth
2 dark salvation
4 cavern of souls
4 concealed courtyard
4 silent clearing
2 plains
1 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
5 swamp
Sadly won't get to test the mono black week until next week. Any thoughts?
It is very value centric and features unearth, which i think should be a staple for the deck.
4 cryptbreaker
4 gravecrawler
4 carrion feeder
4 relentless dead
4 undead augur
4 plague belcher
4 diregraf colossus
2 fleshbag marauder
4 inquisition of kozilek
4 unearth
2 dark salvation
lands : 20
4 cavern of souls
16 swamp
1 fleshbag marauder
2 dark salvation
4 duress
2 fulminator mage
2 faerie macabre
2 wail of the nim
2 open slot
There is only 20 lands because there is a lot of card draw and the curve is relatively low. Unearth can bring back any creature which is why i put 2x fleshbag marauder. You can do sac shenanigans with relentless dead and it makes unearth a one mana edict. Unearth can also be a one mana stone rain with fulminator mage from the sideboard, and can bring back all other creatures in the deck.
I really can't wait to play the deck, i'll be testing tomorrow and see if this works.