[OGW] Goblin Dark-Dwellers

[Chubby Rain]

You could also flash back timewalk with Snapcaster, a card that does see play and is in the same color, or play eternal witness and have more versatility in selection. Or regrowth. This is way overcosted to do just that.

...
...
...

Do I really have to go through the Goblins list I linked to and explain to you how the synergies in this deck make it superior to the cards you posted in this archetype?

[Protoaddict]

A superior interaction in a list that is in almost every other way substandard does not make for a good strategy. I can think of plenty of reanimator targets that work in Living end as well, it does not make living end a playable deck in Vintage.

The goblins have a better interaction than snapcaster in Oath too, but no one is playing snapcaster in oath and for a good reason. Putting it on a 4/4 body for 5 does not do much to change that. There are plenty of merfolk with awesome abilities that see no play in vintage fish deck (when they do crop up) for the same reason, and at least merfolk is a deck that gets some play every so often as a spoiler or pseudo budget strategy.

[Chubby Rain]

A superior interaction in a list that is in almost every other way substandard does not make for a good strategy. I can think of plenty of reanimator targets that work in Living end as well, it does not make living end a playable deck in Vintage.

Living End put up results on Magic Online in at least two daily events (as only half the events are reported)? Seriously, I provide a link to an actual Vintage deck the performed in a competitive environment and you write it off, while at the same time starting a thread for some awful land and using a Modern Amulet deck as your justification. Come on, man...

The goblins have a better interaction than snapcaster in Oath too, but no one is playing snapcaster in oath and for a good reason. Putting it on a 4/4 body for 5 does not do much to change that. There are plenty of merfolk with awesome abilities that see no play in vintage fish deck (when they do crop up) for the same reason, and at least merfolk is a deck that gets some play every so often as a spoiler or pseudo budget strategy.

Brian Kelly played Snapcaster in some of his early Oath variants, but then again Brian took the time to develop and understand his "substandard" Oath list, refining it and adjusting it to the expected metagame at Champs, and....what was the ending to that story? Oh, and he cut it along with Yawgmoth's Will and Demonic Tutor as those cards were bad in an anticipated heavy Shops metagame, but I'm sure you went above your usual "Anticipate - This seems like it could be the real deal" level of analysis this time and actually elucidated the reason on your own.

[MaximumCDawg]

Lets play nice, everyone.

It's true that Goblins has not been a major force in Vintage for awhile, a few results notwithstanding, and that it remains to be seen whether that can change.  It's also true that the prevalence of creatures and thus of creature removal makes this a challenging time to be creature deck.

However, it's also true that Goblins are not unheard of in Vintage, and the existence of Lackey and Prowl gives Goblins an ENORMOUS tribal advantage that gets leveraged harder when the print Vintage-relevant Goblins.  Unlike Elves, Goblins does not have to over-commit to the board to overwhelm an opponent and uses very powerful toolbox creatures.  Unlike Merfolk, Goblins' Lords speed up the deck while continuing the tribal synergies.

So, I mean, let's see what happens.

I find it really exciting when we get expensive and powerful Goblins just because of Lackey and Instigator.  You know how Show and Tell was borderline at best in Legacy for years, and suddenly shot up in prominence since 2010 or so?  Remember why that was?  Because we got creatures that just flat-out ended the game when they arrived.  Goblins (and Minotaurs!) have old cards that give you this same ability to cheat costs, they just have to be tribal.  I think this has prevented WotC from printing singularly powerful members of either tribe in a long time.  They even chickened out on Minotaurs in Theros. 

If Dark-Dwellers had been just a Goblin Emrakul, I think it would clearly make Goblins a legitimate thing.  If it was just a vanilla 4/4, it would just as clearly do nothing.  Somewhere in between is where a Goblin is powerful enough to break into the mainstream, and it's not obvious at all to me whether this is that card or not.

[Aaron Patten]

Here is a list of magical cards:
Ancestral Vision***
Time Walk*** (Exhaustion could also be decent)
Living End***
Hypergenesis**
Manamorphose**
Price of Progress**
Demonic Tutor*
Vindicate*
Hymn to Tourach*
Thoughtseize*
Yawgmoth's Will*
Inquisition of Kozilek
Smash to Smithereens
Abrupt Decay
Grim Discovery
Songs of the Damned
Seething Song
Wheel of Fortune
Swords to Plowshares
Red Elemental Blast
Culling the Weak
Cabal Ritual
Pyroblast
Maelstrom Pulse
Burning Wish
Lightning Bolt
Timetwister
Dark Ritual
Balance

Edit: Cropped out some of the obvious misses and added two of the most obvious hits with this new goblin.
Also, what if this card were used in black red goblins deck, similar to those of yesteryear, without heavy blue?  You could play Bazaar of Baghdad and Reanimate/Exhume in the event that you don't have a Goblin Lackey and/or Warren Instigator.  Reanimate can also help ensure one of those two stick.  The goal of the deck could be to hit an Ancestral Vision, Hypergenesis, or Living End off Goblin Darkdwellers depending on what is appropriate for the situation.  Assuming you're not facing Grafdigger's Cage or Containment Priest in game 1 you can side out this plan in game 2 and just run aggro all over their dead sideboard slots.  Side out the Goblin Darkdwellers against cage and the Goblin Lackeys and Warren Instigators against priest in favor of more ways to abuse Living End since it gets around both of those cards.  This guy could replace some of the other 5 drop goblins in the main deck.  The main issue I can see with this is that when you are running mostly goblins this will have less targets so it will have to be a careful balance of creatures and non creatures if Living End or Hypergenesis are the appropriate lines.  Alternatively you could just play 4 Ancestral Visions in your goblin deck and that might be enough to put you ahead with your 4/4 menace off Goblin Lackey et al.  Since it requires you to play more non-goblin spells it's in contention with Goblin Ringleader but maybe this card is just better.  Not to mention:

[desolutionist]

I 3-1ed Vintage Dailies multiple times with budget Goblins (4x Cavern of Souls, 0 Wastelands).  The lists have since cycled out of MTGoldfish's database.  It's a fine deck except for that it sucks when you take a reality check or get a real check from your place of work and buy some real cards. 

The Dark-Dwellers does nothing to fix tribal Goblins as a competitor; the strength of the deck is redundancy of creatures so going in the opposite direction will just yield a pile of 3 mana 2/2s and some instants and sorceries that won't do enough even if they resolve.  

I think the Dwellers will peak as a fringe combo enabler like his cousin, Kiki-Jiki.

Also, Patriarch's Bidding is probably just better than Dweller/Living End in a Goblin deck.

[Chubby Rain]

Snip

I had looked for your list but yeah, they disappeared from MTGGoldfish and I am not going to try to find it in Wizards' pathetic excuse for a website. They way you built your list was very different from how _Shadowmagic_ built his list as I remember - running a budget version of an archetype makes it very hard to evaluate that actual strength of that archetype. There could be very competitive version of R/u Goblins out there, fully Powered, that could utilize the Snapcaster ability, Goblin creature type, and sizeable body to good effect. As far as I know, _Shadowmagic_ is the only one who tried anything like this and I think you could easily sub in 1 Dark-Dwellers for 1 Siege-Gang into his most recent build.

@Aaron, I think you a going a bit too deep...Dragon is better if you are going the Bazaar, Reanimate line as the combo is more compact, resilient, and consistent. Hardcore Combo Goblins would benefit more from Patriarch's Bidding or even Living Death (the good old days of Goblins in Standard ). In my opinion, Dark-Dwellers is a role-player, not a build-around card.

@MaximumCDawg, I play nice when people don't lazily misread my posts and respond both hypocritically and with inane logic. Apparently, the moderators do not disapprove as I have not received any warnings yet (at least to my knowledge). As for the rest of your post, I agree with you - cards like Goblin Lackey and Show and Tell circumvent the typical mana cost of spells. It's Lackey that makes this card a consideration (5 mana to recast Time Walk and Ancestral Recall with a 4/4 body attached is not on par for Vintage; doing it for ZERO mana is absolutely broken). The argument that "X has not been a major force in Vintage" is uncompelling to me it can just as often mean no one has tried it and optimized it. Brian Kelly's Oath deck is an example of this.

[wappla]

Perhaps something with considerably fewer Goblins

4 Goblin Lackey
3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
1 Restoration Angel
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Monastery Mentor
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Gush
1 Flusterstorm
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Pyroblast
2 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
1 Ponder
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Dig Through Time
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Repeal
1 Dack Fayden
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Tundra
4 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria


Probably either too fair to work as a combo-control deck and too broken to work as a fair deck, but Goblin Lackey is scary here and lets you punish people for not having many ways to deal with creatures in a potentially more powerful way than DRS or Delver of Secrets. If they spend a Misstep or a card or a turn dealing with T1 Lackey, you just win the game with Jace. Kiki combos with Mentor, Snapcaster, Dark-Dwellers and, of course, wins the game directly alongside Restoration Angel. Building off Lackey opens up some interesting sideboard options against Workshops.

[xouman]

I wasn't aware of the synergy between kiki jiki and restoration angel, nice! Your list is really interesting, but playing 4 lackeys for so few goblins feels awkward. However I have to admit that I don't have better alternatives.

[Aaron Patten]

Snip

@Aaron, I think you a going a bit too deep...Dragon is better if you are going the Bazaar, Reanimate line as the combo is more compact, resilient, and consistent. Hardcore Combo Goblins would benefit more from Patriarch's Bidding or even Living Death (the good old days of Goblins in Standard ). In my opinion, Dark-Dwellers is a role-player, not a build-around card.

I agree that the bazaar reanimate route is excessive but actually having to cast Living End might be cumbersome in the early game.  With a bazaar you can discard it along with two goblins to cast it immediately off a Goblin Lackey trigger into Goblin Darkdwellers and get back the goblins you discarded.  Maybe there is something better than Bazaar of Baghadad at doing this in Goblins.  Bidding doesn't get around Grafdigger's Cage or Caintainment Priest but Living Death does and so does Living End because it was based on Living Death.  It's that standard season that makes me wonder if this could be a viable strategy.  An aggro goblins deck with 4 Mental Misstep and some hand disruption seems like it could be in a position to win some games, especially in a creature heavy meta.