Most of the strongest archetipes abuses graveyard:
Gift
TPS
Stax
Dragon
control slaver
grim long
psychatog

We can also add the recent Friggorid

on the countrary we have some decks that don't abuse grave recursion:
Fish and wu-tang
Oath
Aggro in general

A consideration that comes to my mind is that, as we make a line beetween archetipes, we can see that ALL the most succesfull archetipes USES graveyard recursion.

As most of the decks uses grave-recursion the question is... why don't we use maindeck hate?

I think that the best example comes from "the mountain wins again" that locks down the opponent with a combination of artifact-graveyard hate. The new point is the use of 4 maindeck tormod's crypt that really proved to be strong.

So, first question is, grave-hate maindeck: good choice?
Second question is: kind of hate (tormod's? coffin? leyline?...) and decks that can support it.

Another good question is "could the addition of grave-hate make fish stronger?"
This seem an important question as fish is probably the most common budget deck and is having a really bad period.
As fish is usually played by a large % of players every successfull improvement can have a large impact on t1 community.

Piertoni

I know that orchard can be used at EoT, We can say skullclamp can give you just one turn ES:

Oath player:
Orchard, mox, oath, pass

FcG player:
land, mox, skullclamp, equip spirit, 2 card

Or simply your opponent plays Oath without orchard and you sac your creatures to skullclamp if you don't want him to take a big man.

Food Chain itself can block your opponent 20 turns taking one damage every EoT.

Ensaring Brige is not so Slow, you can cast it when you have 2 life point and it will Stop your opponent, 3 colorless mana is not so much IMO

Piertoni

 

As we are talking about FCG and Goblin in general I am going to ask your feelings about some cards I use in my FCG deck.

First of al:l 2 skullclamp proved to give a really good card advantage in a deck where most of the cards are 1-const creatures.
Incidentally Skullclamp (and better food chain itself) may be a 2-3 turn answer to a Oath-orchard drop where you sac creatures for cards or mana (obviously taking damage but not allowing your opponent to take a big man).

Second: a single copy of goblin welder to deal with colossus and to hate up your opponent.

Third: I want to spend a little time talking about what seems the worst machup: "Oath"
I have found Ensnaring Bridge a good card to stop my opponent and wait until I can attack with a big horde of goblins.
Usually Oath doesn't care much about artifacts compared to other decks as it can win simply comboing out.
Sure, Bridge can be countered, but if it stays bridge can really block Oath and give the FCG the tempo opportunity to win.



Piertoni