Food Chain Goblins Part Duex

[Vegeta2711]

Since this deck has made a sligh resurgance in Europe, I've decided to post my latest list and some modifications for certain metas / budget builds.

//NAME: FCG
// Mana
        7 Mountain
        4 Taiga
        4 Wooded Foothills
        4 Wasteland
        1 Strip Mine
        1 Chrome Mox
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Emerald
// Combo Card
        4 Food Chain
// Creatures
        1 Goblin Matron / Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker (Why Kiki-Jiki? Because the guy ruins stuff.)
        1 Goblin Sharpshooter
        2 Siege-Gang Commander
        4 Gempalm Incinerator
        4 Goblin Warchief
        4 Goblin Ringleader
        4 Goblin Recruiter
        4 Goblin Piledriver
        4 Goblin Lackey
        2 Skirk Prospector
// Sideboard
SB:  4 Tormod's Crypt
SB:  4 Naturalize / Pyrostatic Pillar (Which are you more worried about seeing, combo or Oath?)
SB:  4 Artifact Mutation
SB:  3 Pulverize / Blood Moon (MWS decks or Control?)

Changes for a metagame of mostly Stax (Dane/Swede Meta) or MWS decks (A lot of random places).
-1 Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker
-1 Goblin Sharpshooter
-1 Skirk Prospector

+3 Artifact Mutation

SB: -3 Artifact Mutation
+3 Oxidize
(Yes run Pulverize over Blood Moon)

Changes for a budget build.
-3 Power cards
-1 Mountain

+3 ESG
+1 Ancient Tomb

Anyways, now that the formalites are out of the way. Why would you ever play this deck? Good question. It's because you beat the ever-loving piss out of Stax. You know what the silly part is? Some of them don't run Balance which is one of the random ways they crush you. Oh and you have a generally good game vs. every shop deck, really.

Why is this?
1. You can combo them out easily, they have no way to stop you short of Crucible + Strip (real strip, not waste). Though Stax obviously has Smokestack itself, which is an annoyance.
2. You have 4 uncounterable, cantriptactular cheap ways to kill Welders.
3. Goblin Lackey combined with removal, does this really need more explanation?
4. Artifact Mutation MD or SB and Pulverize in the board.

So summing up. This deck smashes aggro. MWS and aggro-control (i.e. the ones that sadly have disappeared)

The decks you have problems with: Oath (Thank god for Lackey) and obviously faster combo of all kinds.

Oh well, basically this was just an excuse to post a newer list. :O

[JACO]

Besides just losing to an activated Mindslaver, what do you do against Control Slaver? Having played this deck for a while, and keeping it part of my testing gauntlet, I typically have Null Rod in the sideboard for this problematic matchup, as well as against Charbelcher.

[jCoKn]

IMO the main reason this deck performed well about a year ago, was the fact that people didn't know how to play against it. I myself played this near its birth early last year and took it to several top8's in NE, but the surprise factor is gone now. To expound on this, the deck found its way into every budget player's hands and now everyone knows the decklist inside and out.

On top of that, I don't think a competent MWS player will consistently lose to this. Smokestacks are bad news, and Tangle Wires are possibly worse. If perchance he goes first, and goes Trinisphere, you have no chance. He just triple Time-Walked. I'm not saying other decks have much better plays against it, but FoW helps.

And Oath is essentially auto-lose.

I'll repeat by saying that IMO now is not the time for its revival. If ever the old-school metagame comes back (Tog, Dragon, GAT, etc.) the meta might be ready for this, but until then I'll let my goblins hibernate in the binder.

[virtual]

If perchance he goes first, and goes Trinisphere, you have no chance. He just triple Time-Walked.

As far as having no chance.  This deck plays about as much anti stax stuff as one can play without MD-ing artifact removal, or playing forces.

The large number of basic lands, the ability to kill welders under a trinisphere with a 4x, and and 5x strips to put them under the same bind that you are in.  

I can't come up with a more-hateful deck versus a first turn trini that doesn't run force of will.  If this has no chance, then, that certainly is saying something.

[Vegeta2711]

Besides just losing to an activated Mindslaver, what do you do against Control Slaver? Having played this deck for a while, and keeping it part of my testing gauntlet, I typically have Null Rod in the sideboard for this problematic matchup, as well as against Charbelcher.

Well against CS the basic plan is just to play first turn Lackey. Barring that, I just bum rush and use Incinerators to frag Welders, because without them even with Mana Drain w/o Tinker they'll need to get up to 4 lands to cast Penti or Platy. Even with an activated Slaver, I've won some games if Food Chain wasn't resolved, because they couldn't do anything except tap me out and take a 10cc Time Walk.

I get 50/50 against Shay and I've smashed worse players on MWS easily, so take that as you will. I really don't think CS is a problem match for my deck, Null Rod in the board would indeed be a good choice if you were expecting a lot of CS and Belcher or needed the boost. But, as far as I know, these decks aren't really played except by a few people anyways.

On top of that, I don't think a competent MWS player will consistently lose to this. Smokestacks are bad news, and Tangle Wires are possibly worse. If perchance he goes first, and goes Trinisphere, you have no chance. He just triple Time-Walked. I'm not saying other decks have much better plays against it, but FoW helps.

...? I'd go so far to say as this is one of the best decks you could have against MWS decks. If he goes first with Trinisphere, you realize that's the exact same as against every single non-FoW packing deck right? I have 11 basics/fetches and 5 Strips, I have Welder removal which can be cast for 2 under Trinisphere and once I reach 3 mana I can cast AM, Pulverize or even just Lackey/Warchief. Hell you could even run ESG on Ancient Tomb on PURPOSE just to deal with them.

And if you do go first, the simple fact is you have one of the best shots against them as any deck does. and the board is one of the best possible. As Virtual said, "As far as having no chance. This deck plays about as much anti stax stuff as one can play without MD-ing artifact removal, or playing forces. " and even under that I still suggest playing MD Artifact Mutations in a heavy MWS meta.

[andrewpate]

I'd like to single out a few aspects of your decklist I find significant:

No basic Forest
I can't tell you how sick I get of seeing one of these in crappy FCG lists.  It's like people don't get that Back to Basics and Wasteland don't matter since you only need to make green mana one time.

Chrome Mox
I love this card in the deck, and I don't think enought people run it.  Many people seem to feel like if they have power, they don't want to run the bad Moxes outside of combo.  But this deck doesn't benefit at all from the off-color mox while it benefits immensely from being able to have a second Mox Ruby--even at the expense of a card.  I've been running this in my build for months.

Mana Crypt over Sol Ring
As the fastest aggro deck around, FCG does not need to worry about damage races.  If it comes down to who can turn the most guys sideways, FCG is going to win; it loses when something renders its strategy ineffective (Trinisphere+Smokestack+Crucible of Worlds+Strip Mine) or kills it in one go (Tendrils for 15 copies).  I had great luck earlier this year with the deck due to its great matchup against Fish for this reason.

Those things said, I'd like to say that I don't like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker in this deck.  He is cute, but that's all.  He isn't super powerful like he is in the Tooth and Nail decks that have Sundering Titan and Darksteel Colossus to copy with him.  At 2RRR, you will rarely cast him without Food Chain, and if you have Food Chain, you shouldn't need him in order to win.  If Food Chain is on the table, you would much rather topdeck that Goblin Matron to find Goblin Recruiter than draw a dork to get you extra Seige-Gang tokens or whatever.

Addressing the sideboard:  my current sideboard looks like this:

3 Artifact Mutation
3 Blood Moon
3 Naturalize
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Tormod's Crypt

My reasoning here is that there is very little Storm around where I live, so I can see your point of Pyrostatic Pillar.  I really like having REB around, though, because a lot of times it helps Food Chain resolve and can deal with a variety of decks.  I bring it in against 4cc, Monoblue, Oath, some types of Tog, and anything else that seems to rely heavily on Mana Drain mana or Intuition.

@jCoKn
Contrary to conventional wisdom (which states that Oath cannot lose to aggro), FCG does not have an unwinnable matchup there.  Consider the following scenario:

Oath:  Tropical Island, go.
FCG:  Taiga, Mana Crypt, Goblin Recruiter (Forced pitching Mana Drain), go.
Oath:  Island, go.
FCG:  Mountain, Goblin Ringleader (Drained), go.
Oath:  Drain into Intuition for 3xAccumulated Knowledge, go.
FCG:  Mountain, Goblin Matron for Goblin Recruiter, Goblin Recruiter, go.
Oath:  Oath up Akroma, AK for 3 cards, attack for 6, go.
FCG:  Food Chain, remove Recruiter, Ringleader.
Oath:  Scoop.

Note that even if the Oath player had not Drained the first Ringleader, the FCG player would still be at 1 life when he won.

The Oath matchup is not the most fun thing in the world, but it is winnable and gets much better after board if you have Naturalize and REB.  It is by no means a reason to shelf the deck.

In my testing, the most problematic matchup has been Storm.  As virtual said, the Stax matchup is quite winnable since you have Gempalm Incinerator and 5 Strip effects.  If you want to win, though, I would suggest testing the Stax and 5/3 matchups as much as you possibly can, because they are the most skill-intensive (Storm, while hard to win, consists mostly of both of you trying to do your trick first.  Sure, you might be able to do something with a timely Wasteland, but probably not.  They might be able to do something with a timely Duress, but probably not.  It is probably all about when Tendrils resolves in relation to Recruiter.).  If you learn where to spend your Artifact Mutations and Wastelands, you should be able to do decently.

[Cuandoman]

A few quick questions on yer SB cards:

Everyone auto-includes Tormod's Crypt. Is this worth boarding in against anything but Dragon? If so vs what and what do you remove for them (4?)

If you already have a bunch of artifact hate in your board, why play Naturalize over Emerald Charm? I can't see bringing in Artifact Mutation + Naturalize  + possibly Pulverize.

Blood Moon doesn't really seem to hod the usefullness it did when 4CC was king. REB would be beneficial against a wider range of decks IMO.

[Vegeta2711]

I don't use Tormod's Crypt in any match other than Dragon. I figure I may as well take advantage of the one winnable combo match I have. And it's always board out 4 Incinerator in those matches.

Emerald Charm is a good idea, it'll probably replace Naturalize.

Blood Moon and REB both honestly suck right now. I much rather run Pulverize.   :lol:

[manzo]

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