The primary reason not to use food chain is that it forces the deck out of a disruption aggro role and into a combo aggro role.

FCG's combo role isn't what it used to be either.  Flash is infinitely more fast and resiliant, and the shop decks have evolved as to not be such low hanging fruit.  Overall I think FCG's combo mode just isn't worth the sacrifice in utility.

I think street wraith is a terrible choice in this deck.  Brainstorm or curiosity would be far better.  Sure wraith cycles for free, making your deck 56 cards.   But honestly what else does it contribute to the game plan of this deck. As an aggro control deck, the minor draw that street wraith can provide are totally eclipsed by the fact that counter goblins is a slower flavor of goblins, and not a combo deck.  I think the deck should be focusing more on solid disruption and fast efficient beats. Things that goblins have always done well. In the disruption category you can easily run the following:

mana leak - all around ok, can lose its potency over time
delay - the new mana leak, giving you a 3 turn head start on any really dangerous spell should give you ample time to deal with it, however eventually the spell will resolve which can be a big problem.
disrupt - cantriping daze, pretty hot in legacy right now and could be effective in vintage as well, but easily played around.
remand - I don't know how effective this would be as your kill isn't always going to come through the before the enemy gets another turn.
daze - see disrupt but add free as in beer, for card drawing.

I feel that null rod will be essential to a counter goblins strategy.  Other solid disruptive cards could be in the eye of chaos, blood moon, pyrostatic pillar.  All are slightly meta game dependant.

I would suggest a list along these lines.

4 goblin lackey
4 goblin piledriver
4 goblin warchief
1 goblin sharpshooter
1 siege-gang commander
1 kiki-jiki, mirror breaker
4 goblin matron

4 force of will
4 daze / mana leak
4 curiosity / brainstorm
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 chain of vapor

2 blood moon 
3 null rod

1 black lotus
1 mox ruby
1 mox sapphire

4 volcanic islands
1 island
3 mountain
4 wasteland
1 stripmine
2 polluted delta
3 wooded foothills

I think a list similar to this runs a better balance of threats and counters without many of the dead cards like street wraith and simian spirit guide.

I personally would think that harlequin's list is more in line with something you would want to continue playing.  As someone who played alot of FCG back in the day, food chain is probably one of the weakest cards in the whole deck.  I think in the current meta that bloodmoon and null rod, (especiall null rod) are far better options.  I say null rod is the most important factor as how many games have we all seen fish win because of null rod?  I have personally seen quite a few. 

I also think that FCG goblins suffers from some of the same problems that bomberman can.  The combo part of the deck is slower than your opponent most of the time.  Trying to race a combo deck with a slower combo simply won't work.  You either need to incorporate disruption or find an alternative way of winning.  With the resurgence of fish (at least in toronto) it seems like goblins are poised to make a impact on the meta.  I was personally thinking of testing a u/R goblins.  Using null rod, In the eye of chaos/blood moon, and perhaps mana leak / delay as disruption.  Complemented by the usual assortment of goblins and land destruction I think it might not be half bad.

I'd also have to agree that it isn't representational in any way. From what little I know of christopher rush, it looks like he paints in acrylic.  And there is a technique that involves plastic wrap, wet paint, and a blow dryer that gives a final result that looks very much like the background of the lotus.

I don't think there is a way you can prove that strip mine enables anything in CS.  It has some synergy with crucible of worlds, which is useful in wasteland heavy metas.  However, crucible is useful in a number of situations.  I've found that strip mine can be a win more card, or it serves to solidify an already steep advantage.  If you are behind in the game ripping a strip mine will often not help you, unless you can remove a critical land like bazaar, opposing library, or academy.  If the choice is between library and strip mine and library, I would choose library.

With the early game tinker for jar you mention Cr0v4x, how would tinkering for titan be a different and possibly more useful play?

Memory jar increases your card advantage, and inturn increases your board presence and power by drawing more threats. Titan on the other hand can really put you in control of the board situation, by removing enemy resources and applying large amounts of pressure.  Furthemore, it puts the onus on your opponent to deal with your threat, and try to escape your control of the game. 

I don't think the discussion is limited to whether or not jar is better than fact.  But also whether jar is a better blind tinker than something like titan. As both fact and jar can be crazy-good.

Just a little problem with your deck list.  You have 5 null rods.  So I'm assuming that there are 3 main, and one in the side.  I think this deck is a little unfocused.  It seems like it plays a lot of metagame cards, like choke, and chains.  Which are house against slaver/gifts but are kind of chaff against shop decks.  So I think something like this deck needs to be heavily metagamed, as if you run the wrong hate you'll be screwed. 

Depending on what your meta looks like I would be switching out your rancor, choke, chains, for a single option.  Which will increase your chances of finding it when you need them.

I don't think that you need to run land grant.  Revealing your hand can be very disadvantageous in many circumstances.  It lets your opponent know exactly what you are going to play.  Unless you can always follow a grant up with a therapy or duress. 

Personally I think that red or white will give you better options than green will.  red gives you good artifact destruction, as does white.  Improving the shop matchup.  Something a deck like this usually needs.  White gives you good weenies like true believer.

I think in a deck like this shortfang is generally stronger than the rack.  Although shortfang seems janky, he has a lot more utility than the rack.  He can force discards until he flips, and becomes the rack basically.  Furthermore, he can beat if you are tight on mana or he becomes stabwhisker. 

A deck similar to this did well in a small tournament in toronto recently.  The field was almost entirely filled with drain decks and a few combo decks.  The chains/rod and discard spells are hard to get around.  As for dealing with darksteel colossus, ensnaring bridge still works.  More edicts are a decent solution as well.  I did notice that this deck does terribly against anything powered by shops.

I can guarantee that there will be some strange decks being piloted by Canadians as well.

Is haste really a problem?  I know that oath wants to prevent the opponent from getting any chance to remove its beaters.  I would think that the swallower's unhateable nature makes up for the lack of haste. 

If haste really is the deal breaker for the swallower, couldn't dragon's breath be used?  It does weaken the deck a fair bit, but gives the swallower haste (I think, as it doesn't target).  I don't think that the akroma/razia should be removed from the maindeck, as they are still the fastest win condition that oath can run.  However, a pair or triplet of simic beasts is the most resiliant and hate proof.

tidespout seems like he'd be a lot stronger in the mirror, rather than the hate match ups.  Where I think the sky swallowers beat down ability is just house.

Goblins and shattering spree should be best friends.  Goblins mono/almost mono red mana base allows shattering spree to be just plain silly.  furthermore, it gets by chalice, and can easily trade 3-1.  I don't know if it it is better than AM in the stax matchup.  But in any other matchup where you need artifact destruction shattering spree would be awsome.

Massacre isn't used as board control, it is an answer to all the meddling mages and annoying little men a fish player can drop.  Furthermore, against a deck with white in it, It acts as a free spell.  From watching paul play this, massacre can be pretty gruesome against fish/welders. Espescially with meddling mage set on tendrils.

I don't think that bargain fits this deck either.  It costs too much and the life loss from all the draw 4s leaves you with little room to bargain with.  necro comes down faster, and uses less acceleration to get down.  In any instance where you had the option of necro or bargain first turn, you are far more likely to be able to drop necro due to lower mana requirements.

Chalice for 1 is a problem this deck would have as it became more easily recognized.  I think if you surprise a meta with a combo deck they've never seen you are going to get a lot of misplays. Like people dropping chalice for 0 instead of 1.  But there could always be answer main or in the board that could help.  Seeds of innocence comes to mind as something that won't get chaliced out, and doesn't require retooling the mana base.  I'm sure there are other answers as well.

I think the article was really good, I found the information to be helpful.  I'm slowly learning how to play drain decks better, but one thing I always forget to do is move to second main phase.  That's a habit I have to get into.

Also I found the ideas concerning how to play brainstorm helpful too.  I too have been finding that early brainstorms set up a dissapointment, if you don't hit something you need.  Often it is best to wait, but again that takes practice.  Are there any situations where making the a standard play is the best choice?  Basically are there any situations that would make you play brainstorm differently than normally?  Also do you think that brainstorm serves different/more functions in a deck like drain-oath?

I don't know if jitte and vial are as strong a plan as rod/chalice in fish anymore.  From what I've seen of the canadian OFM fish decks.  They play far more like prison with dudes, than beatdown with little gay men.  The vial jitte plan always seemed really slow to me.  In that vial takes a turn to get up and running.  Furthermore, Jitte is a huge tempo loss.  Where vial fish is equipping jitte, OFM is dropping seals or old man. 

It is also worthy of noting that OFM/rod fish destroys vial fish in the mirror.  I think the main difference is that vial fish uses cards to speed up its men, and is left with little left to disrupt the opponent.  Whereas rod fish is all about tearing up the opponents plan and beating with annoying men at the same time.

That auction page looks semi-sketch.  The whole line about if you are a player and not a collector sent up red flags for me.  I've seen a lot of auctions that are for players, but not collectors, and generally were for proxies.  In any case I hope you get this resolved and get your cash back. Getting served on ebay happens sometimes and is never pleasant.

I'm pretty sure that wu-tang refers to wu-tang fish.  Jason Zheng (I think that is his name) built it and won a waterbury. It centres around fish carrying big swords and ninja.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=22927.0

unfortunately it has nothing to do with ODB.

edit:took me a bit to find that link

Have the thawing glaciers been dropped because they are too slow?  I haven't been keeping up with solidarity in legacy but I thought one of the strengths of glacier was its ability to get multiple lands with the deck's untap effects?  Or is coming into play make them too slow. 

Also a deck with so much blue mana really should be using mind's desire, and or time spiral.  Timespiral for the huge untap effect that goes broken with high tide, and both because they draw a lot of cards.  Furthermore, they just seem too broken not to be played. I know that being sorceries they don't work well with reset.  But I think they're strong enough to warrant inclusion.  Furthermore, the combined effect of time spiral is stronger than a single reset, I would think at least.

One of the reasons that chalice is such a tempo card in fish is because of what it stops when it is set with low charge counters.  Without moxen to be stopped chalice is highly ineffective in gaining tempo.  Play chalice in an unpowered environment and it becomes wholely unimpressive.  I'm not trying to say that chalice isn't important, becuase it does create some balance against power, but I don't feel that it has enough inherent power of its own.  Especially when compared to cards like drain, shop, and ritual, which define the format due to their raw power.

UPS might be alright for cards but they are satan incarnate for any parcels.  I've taken it in the brown by them a couple times, and so have people I know. Their usual gig includes nailing you for a $30.00 brokerage fee just to get the parcel across the border.  And then there is duty on top of that charge, and if you disagree with paying the brokerage fee they won't release your package.  I have been nothing but displeased with UPS, and their parcel services.

I don't know if mono-coloured decks being sub-optimal is true at all.  Uba stax is pretty mono, and it handles itself quite well.  Furthermore, monoU was quite the deck back in the day. 

I don't think that chalice deserves to be on the list of format defining cards.  Sure it is important.  But it is almost nothing without the moxen and fast mana that the other cards (drain. shop) create.  Hence its non-existence in any other format.  Chalice is only important because the other cards are important.  Removing chalice doesn't make the other cards less powerfull, but remove the accelerants and chalice ceases to be important or defining at all.

Canadian customs are really strange.  Sometimes they nail you sometimes they don't.  I once had 2 drains shipped to me via registered mail, with full value declared (155 USD) on the bubble mailer, and didn't get charged a dime for it.  However, the singular occasion where I had to pay duty was on a foil necropotence!? worth a grand total of $7.

If you want it to get there safely you can either use registered mail, FedEx is another option as well.  Both are pricey but allow you to request signatures indicating safe and timely delivery.

With no way to draw non-goblin cards, other than to rip like a champ.  Is the lone StP, and weakened mana base worth it?



I found that the polar opposite is true.  Why would you waste a counter on a card that is highly unusable if you stop the threats that enable it.  If you knew that both a recruiter and a food chain were coming down in the same turn and you only had one counter, which spell would you counter?  If you counter the food chain you lose, to a short stack of lackey, ringleader 4x piledriver.  If you counter the recruiter, they have a powerful mana ability that weakens their team each time it is used.  I always found myself using food chain as a bait spell for bad control players.  Even if you resolve food chain there is no guarantee that you will resolve the recruiter and be able to win.  With a recruiter, at the very least you can always super matron for a few goblins.

Oracle text for Berserk is:

Play Berserk only before the combat damage step.
Target creature gains trample and gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is its power. At end of turn, destroy that creature if it attacked this turn.

Berserk needs to be plaed before combat damage step.  So if can be done after the piledriver gets his goblin-team-face-smashing bonus.

While I was playing goblins, I dreaded being paired up against oath.  It is an extremely hard matchup.  Their men are huge, and if they know the matchup they counter the key goblins, puke out an oath, and sexy lady and beat you with it.  There is little to nothing you can do.  naturalize gets countered and your win conditions made them win faster.

Test it.  Goblins can't beat oath, not with any regularity.  Its so hard it's not even worth it.  Even without a first turn oath it is an uphill struggle.   If they counter your lackeys, ringleaders, and recruiters.  They not only shut you off your draw engine and combo engine, they also cut a huge swath through you mana production (lackey).  Furthermore, while they are draining/leaking your men, they are using their turns to dig closer to an oath.  With all the tutors and dig effects they will find one, and you won't be able to stop it.  The worst thing is they don't even need to find an orchard.  You have to play men to win.

As for why kiki-jiki gets played he is one of the most randomly broken cards in the deck.  Hmmm, what's better than one ringleader.  Oooh, how about a free one every turn, and I get to draw 4 cards each turn!.  Or siege-gang's bringing their friends along! Remember the only thing better than one goblin is 2. That's why he's played.

I've been finding legacy goblins far more consistent than FCG can be. However, vial goblins have no combo finisher outside of pyromancer, which lessens the deck's impact I think.  However, in a largely scrubby field, vial goblins could do extremely well.

I think brainstorm is totally key to the deck, it works well in optimizing your hand, and although it seems like you will draw a ton of cards off standstill, you won't.  I think standstill is something that many people have learned to play around, forcing you to discard.  Furthermore, it is only useful when you are already winning. 

Personally, I've always found landstill to be an underwhelming deck.  It has no broken ways of winning.  Even FCG is more broken then it.  With that said I think your build is very good, your meta doesn't really warrant misdirection which I've found is good in control heavy metas to up your number of free counters.  I don't know if 3 stifles is necessary, but they can be useful against TPS which you listed as a key player in your meta.  As for chalice, I don't think it will work that well if you are disking with any regularity, it could be useful in the sideboard as a way to fight combo, but they always manage to dispose of chalices when they feel ready.

I do have drains so I fully plan on using them.  Doesn't disk run the risk of blowing up your board as well.

Impulse and divining top sound interesting though.  They would definately filter through the deck quickly.  Today I did testing with chalices and pithing needles as artifacts to pitch.  Although I normally didn't mind pitching the chalices I always wanted to hold on to the needles as they are very useful in a few matches slaver, fishy decks, and stax.  During my testing today the chalices were great against powered decks, especially on the play.  However they were the first cards I would side out in a random aggro matchup.  Lastly, I've been told that I might be underestimating the amount of power in my meta.

In any case are there any other useful draw engines that could be utilized in oath.  So far there is intuition/AK, thirst/artifacts, impulse/top.

Does chalice have a place in unpowered oath, in a mostly unpowered meta?
If chalice for 0 has no effect in the many of the matches you expect to encounter, is chalice powerful enough to be maindecked in oath.  Is the effect chalice has when set at 1 powerful enough to warrant its inclusion?  I ask this, because without chalice and moxen oath is forced away from the thirst engine. Depsite thirst's strengths it almost seems unsustainable without power.  Furthermore, chalice's ability to slow down the opponent is vastly decreased. Making thirst even more unsupportable.  Or is there something I'm missing?  Are chalices that pivotal to how oath works today?  Or can they be replace by other disruption like pithing needles?

If someone was really interested in making really good proxies they could.  Any offset litho press can do it.  Problem is that it is far more profitable to print fake money. 

With that said, I don't think that it is a good idea, to print proxies that can pass all the claimed tests, especially because they are only for 'playtesting' or unsleeved play (who the hell does that?)  The foil ones I think are safer, due to them being foil, and therefore completely recognizable.  I feel sorry for the sucker who pays $100 for fake non-legal proxy power though.  Seems a bit crazy to pay that kind of money for proxies though, they are just ink/colour laser outputs most of the time.  If you were really hard up you could do them at kinko's for 2.99 a page

I don't post very often, but I lurk like a fiend, and I would like to thank steve on behalf of many of the other lurkers that come to this site regularily.  Many thanks to you for running a place for people like me to barn ideas, tech, and general information off.

I think pete will do a great job, the ad banner is a bummer, but things change and servers/bandwidth need to be paid for.



This is one of the most horrible Ideas for a site design.  Interfaces need to be predictable, and although your suggestion gives a colour coded structure to the site, it breaks the unity the site needs to function.  Instead of something that appears to exist as one entity, you have a multicoloured wierd pile of pages.  Imagine if windows in your operating system all changed colour based on how deep into the program they were.  That would screw you up so bad..