Damn ... where can I delete my posts?

You generally don't need any registration sheet, just a written decklist and a DCI number.
The official start of T1 tournaments is 16:00 but usually they start thirty to forty-five minutes later - depending on the number of players. So unfortunately, you can't tell before you arrive. I can find that out for you how often that is, though. I'll edit it in here in a few days.
And yeah, no proxies (which sucks).

Actually, there is no German language at all. It's just a group of dialects that are called German. (I study german lunguistics ...) So I guess noone's right.


They are actually very closely related. I should be able understand what you're trying to say to me in Czech ... but I suppose English would be much easier.

You should be able to beat most of the scrubs without talking too much and I suppose the skilled players all are okay with speaking english (or how would they read TMD?).

And yeah, it's in Vienna alright. Btw, we talk German here. There's no language as "Austrian". I also can try some Slovak on you ... not sure that'll be of much help, though
There's a T1 tournament each month, always Friday 16:00 (it does tend to begin half an hour later, though). There's also a monthly T1.5 tournament, als on a friday, 16:00.

Well yeah, but control decks play very differently from aggro. But to be frank, I was writing a juicy answer as to why Brainstorm's bad, which got me thinking and now I believe it's testable (if you're not in an aggro-meta and only if playing fetchlands - and preferably Grim L).


Problem is, against those decks you have to play AK eot after they've ve played theirs, then kill them immediately before they kick your teeth in. That's no problem unless you draw two AKs, so I'd doubt they are an automatic 4-of. If you don't play four, however, they're dead against the non-AK decks. I could see this be a very sweet sideboard card in certain metas, though.


Opt, reveal land, drop it, draw burn.
Opt, reveal burn, draw it.
Is both cases, you get a burn/damage spell at best, which is what you probably cut for Opt in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Teferi's Response requires two mana open, which will be on your third turn, and after the first one it's rather useless because the opponent knows you have it and won't try to cripple you without thinking first.


F/I is a great control card. It's not even conditional against Worship, since you can burn creatures. Personally, I think it's too slow for Sligh, though. I prefer three to the head to making a blocker vanish. And a Fog won't help much, except against Hulk, but again, I would concentrate on killing faster.


I don't say it's good, either. I just think it's better than Standstill and Opt. Not sure about Brainstorm.


Help me out; what's CoF? You don't mean Cone of Flames, do you?  
Cloud of Faeries[/color]

I guess no one proposes adding blue for burn.

Of the blue draw  you mentioned, the most cards are either unplayable or unplayable in Sligh.

[card]Brainstorm[/card] just makes sure you draw burn. Well, if it was burn, it would ensure the same thing.
[card]Complicate[/card] no fucking way.
[card]Disrupt[/card] is reactive and sometimes dead. Besides, it's a cantrip, not card draw.
[card]Frantic Search[/card] is useless if your hand is empty.
[card]Gush[/card] doesn't go well with a tiny splash in a minimalistic mana base.
[card]Fire/Ice[/card] is not card drawing, but a cantrip.
[card]Opt[/card] Why the hell would anyone play that over even Volcanic Hammer!?
[card]Read the Runes[/card] is far too expensive and almost useless with an empty hand.
[card]Teferis Response[/card] is reactive and very conditional.
[card]Whispers of the Muse[/card] far too expensive.
[card]Careful Study[/card] is useless with no cards in hand.
[card]Dream Cache[/card] is too expensive for the little it does.
[card]Fact or Fiction[/card] is too expensive. By turn four, you'd like to have won, not draw extra cards.

Draw X, discard X effects are generally useless in Sligh because there's nothing other than burn and lands you can discard. If you get excess lands often, you should take car of your mana base, not play dXdX cards. Also, they generate card disadvantage, not advantage.

Reactive spells you have to keep mana open for and they are highly unreliable, something Sligh can't stand. And cantrips just use up mana to make the quality of the draw better, which is something Sligh doesn't need badly enough to ruin its mana base.

Edict I wouldn't be tat worried about, but removal is bad, that's true.

Mask of Memory is a bit on the slow side, giving you a burn or creature spell on turn three where it might well be crucial to Bolt or PoP instead. This is a problem it shares with Still.


Except that Ball Lightning has been unplayable in high-profile tournaments for quite some time now.
I won't discuss the build you mentioned cause I don't see the point. However, a RU Sligh would obviously need to take back some of its speed for later card advantage. If that's good or not is very matchup-dependant. If Curiosity > Standstill is so, too.
The ultra-aggressive plan looks good on paper, but then, so does Stompy. The fact is that Sligh can be shut down with a silver bullet rather easily and let the other player win at half their life or less. Sligh has few ways to build up again after the initial rush, so it really depends on how fast the opponent can win/take control.


I totally agree with everyting you say here, barring extreme metagames. Oh, and also I don't think black is very good with red.



While in a metagame with very, very few control decks I could understand the inclusion of four grenades, I have absolutely no idea why you have four Fireblasts there. It's a card you never want do draw three times a game, or, if you'r trying to goldfish on turn three, even twice.
Also, I've found the Flunkies very suboptimal, since they, too, are very conditional and easily dealt with.
Final Fortune is very discussable, too.

I'm also pretty sure the few Zombies don't outweight the disadvantage of having a split mana base in such a mana-light deck. Carnophage and Sarcomancy aren't that much better than Pup and Cadets. Rotting Giant is a bit on the unreliable side, especially against random md-gy-removal. Wretched Anurid in a two-color creature swarm deck with md PoPs?!
Why not green? Green has better weenies, too, and a bit of extra sideboard versatility. A metagamized RG-Beatz build is far superior to this list imo.

In the first deck you don't even run Wastelands? And Mox Monkeys are absolutely crucial in powered metagames, in which they are far better than Fanatic or Raging G.



FCG is a very different deck design. It trades a chunk of its explosiveness for the possibility of comboing out. That's how it cements it chances in the midgame/late game and that's what makes it flexible. Against aggro, you play aggro, until you get the combo. Then you win, even against fattie-aggro which Sligh always has problems with.
Against control, it's slower than ordinary Goblins, sure, but the control player has not only to survive, but also consider the possibility of a Food Chain in your hand. Even with the reduced speed, Lackey/Warchief + Ringleader is very good card advantage, refilling your hand, allowing yourself not not to overextend and control is a very winnable matchup with any aggro, anyway ('xcept Tog).

I'm not convinced if this will see any play outside of metagamed Workshop decks. As was mantioned before, it's on the slow side against decks that win fast. It' slow against any kind of aggro (you have your one-drop equipped on turn three, if at all) and obviously useless against combo. Against control, it grants protection, yeah, but is mediocre as a creature pumper (though there are colors that have nothing better available).

This all holds true until you get some decent mana acceleration into your deck, so it obviouls rises in value with power and Workshops.
Also note that the decklist Smmenen posted the link to has four Trisks, maximizing the Sword's effect.

I haven't played Hulk ever, so don't lynch me for saying something wrong, but I imagine a Tog mirror can be quite annoying, with all that beef on both sides, so despite its horrendous cost, Fire and Ice may be a good solution. However, isn't there a better option?
The Sword is very powerful once it's equipping a Tog, but won't some cheap unblockability and/or creature removal do the job? (Though I can't think of anything playable granting evasion, except Fire/Ice for the four-colored version.)

Yeah, Fire/Ice would be good in a aggro mategame, killing up to two weenies and shutting down big Madness and TnT blockers. But as I said before, I think regular Goblins would do better in such a meta, or, better still, FCG.
Also, Fire/Ice is really versatile but suboptimal at what Sligh wants to do: damage efficiently. Tapping a big blocker, even for a card, isn't as good as having an actual finisher.

What prevents you from doing that with Curiosity? Also, when do you actually want to pla Still on turn two (barring Mox and double Lackey)?
Furthermore, you never have real control with Sligh. You have threats and finishers, and that's about it. The only control element is mana denial and post-sideboarding Blasts.


Actually, there is a very good reason not to run four (+ Ancestral), namely the speed of the deck. Refilling the hand after completely depleting it is great, sure, but how many Standstills do you want in your starting hand? Is it even one? It's a tempo loss not to be underestimated, for which you might not even get the cards early enough to race him, especially considering that speed is Goblin Sligh's best weapon.
Ancestral, against experienced opponents, is nothing more than a cheaper, more reliable Standstill and should be treated accordingly until more Misdirections show up.


Choice cards are either very powerful or utterly unplayable. This card is three cards when you need five damage (you may have to wait for a turn before casting the draw burn) and five damage when you need cards, which buys your opponent time. Furthermore, if your opponent needs the mana, it may well become a welcome Drain target. Even if it was unconditional burn (five for three) other cards are just better, especially when playing with Goblins.

Cloud of Fairies is only useful against weenie aggro, which is an easier matchup without the blue splash. Also, it signals the opponent you might be playing Standstill and is suboptimal against creature-light decks. Even with Curiosity, it's just too puny. You must remember that Fish and Gay/r are decks with a completely different deck philosophy than Goblins. Fish lays a few threats and plays Standstill, preferably turn two, always with some cards still in hand, trying to subsequently control the game. Also, it can lay threats afterwards, which GoblinStill can't - unless you squeeze four Factories into a mana-light two-color deck that desperately needs Wastes and the Strip.
Razorfin Hunter is nothing to consider. Even Sparksmith would be better, and can have as much burn as you can possibly wish for.

Also, I would strongly recommend cutting all Siege-gangs from a build with Standstill. They work just fine with Curiosity, though.



Now don't get me wrong here. I think incorporating Standstill into Goblins is a great idea. I'm just reporting what I found playtesting on Apprentice. I don't think Curiosity is that much better than Standstill, either. It's just that Curiosity very often at least cantrips the turn it comes into play, while your opponent may pop Standstill with Chalice for one, Trinisphere, Tangle Wire, Void, TnT fatties, CoP:Red, or, worse, a non-interactive combo, or even occasionally cycle a fun Decree for a few tokens. What I'm saying is that with Curiosity, you know pretty much what's gonna happen, which is very important in straightforward, non-utility aggro.



Btw, is it really necessary to just incorporate Standstill into something? How about you abandon Goblins, but Ankhs as well. Black Vise would still be a fine choice, and so would Grim L. (plus fetchlands), Firewalker (a real clock under Still, and does not need goblins to run), and other typical Ank-weenies. Mox Monkeys, of course. Perhaps something to use cards drawn under Standstill for, though nothing efficient comes to mind.[/quote]

Come to think of it, why not use Skullclamp? It can pump anything bigger than a X/1, grants "protection" from Edicts, board sweepers and so forth, doesn't require another color, digs in just about when your creatures become suboptimal and what you want is dd, and it's cost is adjustable. Could be fun with Shrapnel Blast and has some synergy with Grenade, Siege-gang and Warchief, too. Yet it falls to Null Rod. Well, have to think that over.

Well, this is something numerous people have thought of before, including myself. I chose Goblin Sligh for playtesting, simply because it's more explosive and has Lackeys. It also has Warchiefs, which make it easy to play Standstill along with one or two Gobbos on turn three (with Mox or Lackey) or turn four.
One of the problems ist Standstill itself. It can draw into burn, but you can't play burn efficiently from underneath it. Therefore, you want to play it only if your hand is empty. Thus, you have to clean up the board position and empty your hand before playing Still. This means that the correct number of Standstills would be around three imo. Ancestral replaces one, so it would be two, and still - they're slowing down the deck and I don't know if six damage in one or two turns is better than three now.

Standstill is also only good in control-matchups, they are unreliable in weenie and combo matchups, and utter crap against O.Stompy, TnT and the like. Thus, they can be played only in control-oriented metagames. I believe that Curiosity is superior in a RU Sligh, because it has great synergy with burn spells, is cheaper and does not give your opponent so many choices, yet also exploits one of controls weaknesses. It can be killed along with the creature just as Standstill can backfire or be countered.

Put simply, a T1 deck must be either blazingly fast or able to compete against decks that are blazingly fast.

Budget-aggro is usually on the weaker side of blazingly fast, having nothing but mana curve, efficiency and, well, speed. They are very easily hated out (barring budget-Madness). They do have a lot in the being-able-to-compete category. Practically all of them (at least in a powered metagame) have a way to get rid of nonbasic lands and Mox's. This should be regarded as a control component, since it's used to slow the opponent down. From this perspective, no deck is purely aggro.

Long and old-school Academy would be the blazingly fast category. Winning turn 1 or 2 eighty or ninety percent does count as blazingly fast and it's fast enough to circumvent control-spells most of the time. Combo decks like that are easily hated, but can duck under the hate. Also, like aggro, they use control elements to bring the combo through. (Combo fills the slots that aggro would fill with pure damage and a minimum of utility with disruption, draw/search and combo pieces.)

Control tries to control the game. Often it's said that control decks are slow, compared to the other archetypes. That, of cours, is bullshit. Control takes its sweet time to win, sure, but it has to be able to control the game as soon as or preferably sooner than a good opponent can win it. That's pretty fast. The best way to duck under control's counter-shield is to not rely on single cards that can be eliminated easily and to generate card-advantage (be it virtual advantage).

As I hinted at before, no deck is purely aggro, combo, or control. A pure control deck would have no win condition. A pure aggro deck would be most easily killed by combo (imagine Sligh without Mox-hate against a full-powered Dragon or whatever). Pure combo would be very vulnerable to any kind of utility.
(Note that all those descriptions are only valid in an environment where balance is artificially maintained by following the b/r-lists.)
All this means that a good T1 deck mustn't follow the idealistic pictures of damage efficiency. Just consider Dragon without Xantids, FoW and Duress. Or see the exmple above (the one with Sligh without Mox Monkeys.)

All this means that not only are the three major deck superypes just descriptive words, but also that the metagame says a lot about whether your deck is good. (No, the other way round. Wait ... I just spilled all of my left-over Amaretto over my bed, my William Gibson book and my mobile phone. Cursed alcohol ...) A deck can be pretty bad, and still thrive in a certain metagame. This means that net-decking is generally a bad idea. You'll just have to go and see what you can do by yourself. (Nothing prevents you from sighting other decks on the net as inspiration or reference, of course.)
What I'm trying to say is that the only thing you need to know how the cards in your deck act together (all of them). You don't need a deck-guide, you need a knowledge of the T1 cardpool, what's efficient and effective and what tricks you can pull off with what combined with what. Once your deck is ready, it will most probably fit one of the descriptions: aggro, combo, and control, which doesn't mean they are anything mor than just that, descriptions.
You will find (or have found) that's it's not that easy, though, partly because of the metagame, partly because of all the math.

Another term I often use is consistency. This is very important. Long wasn't only able to pull off fast kills, it also did it regurarly. Dragon can also win on turn one, but does so way less often.
Consistency means that if you win, you're not lucky, but what you expected to happen happened. Sligh desn't die because you draw no combo-piece. Draw (and search) is there to smooth out consistency, and pays off only if the card you get is a silver bulllet or (meaning the same thing) a combo-piece you need (or disruption to protect it).

As a summary: what you need is not to know, how a certain deck type is constructed, but how it is supposed to play. This includes consistency, speed, efficiency, hate cards, and the metagame. Also card tricks, matchups, etc.


Sorry if this seems a bit confused and/or incoherent. After all, I didn't sleep all night and also I'm drunk, but I just can't sleep, I'm listening to The Chips' Rubber Biscuit over and over again and have nothing else to do except wait for the Magic Corner to open.
Questions and corrections would be appreciated. Hell, yeah, even flames. I like flames. I'm good at flaming back.