The Mountains Win Again

[Nastaboi]

If Supression field gains popularity, it might be wiser to stay on Disenchants.

I instantly cutted Lava Darts for 4th Genju and 4th Disenchant. You have plenty of Welder removal already. Genju is so good that I want always see one and beat face with it, and if they counter your only Genju your clock suddenly becomes much slower. Running four guarantees that you will find another to finish them of if the first one becomes countered. Disenchant is a meta choise.

Anyways, the deck looks great and I look forward playing it on the next event here.

[Disburden]

If Supression field gains popularity, it might be wiser to stay on Disenchants.

I think this is a matter of when it becomes popular, not if.

[Bulls on Parade]

I've been following this thread the whole time, and I just can't understand how you guys are beating combo. Sure you've got hate post-SB, but it just seems like every combo matchup is going to go

game 1 loss, game 2 loss because you don't have hate out fast enough,
or
 game 1 loss, game 2 win because the hate was there, game 3 loss because combo went first.

I'm really interested in the deck though, and have been testing something more along the lines of old Ankh-Sligh.

My list is:

3 Null Rod
3 Blood Moon
4 Ankh of Mishra
3 Price of Progress
4 Gorilla Shaman
3 Hearth Kami
4 Genju of the Spires
2 Viashino Heretic
4 Jackal Pup
3 Fireblast
2 Shrapnel Blast
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Ancient Tomb
12 Mountain

I don't want to be spamming your thread with lists, but my purpose is to ask if you ever tested something like this? It maindecks like 25 hate cards, and is itself pretty resilient to hate. A few selections might seem random, but they're the way they are to dodge Chalice. Here's a breakdown of what Chalice does to my build:

Set at 1 stops you from playing:
Gorilla Shaman
Genju of the Spires
Jackal Pup

12 cards total

So most of the offensive cards/beats.

Set at 2 stops you from playing:
Null Rod
Ankh
PoP
Kami
Shrapnel Blast

15 cards total

Staring down Chalices for 1 and 2 simultaneously is rough, but hopefully you've dropped a Genju or at least got in some damage by then. For this stage of the game you've got Fireblast and Heretic.

But that's enough about my deck- I've got some weird card choices and my deck plays more like a Medium Red deck from T2 than Sligh, and if you have any questions let me know and I'd be glad to share my thoughts.

Back to your build and comparisons

STP and Disenchant are good, and I'm not going to argue them as their inclusion is what makes our decks play so differently. However, I would like to discuss the merit of a list almost completely focused on mana denial. Principally, it seems like a sound idea to me because resolving one of the pieces can slow down or seriously mess with a deck's game plan even if they're about to go off (for example, Ankh vs. Dragon, Blood Moon vs. Most decks) and Null Rod is a good first turn play pretty much all the time. So what do you think about playing the deck like this?

[TopSecret]

     Suppression field is shaping up to be used in a of couple decks, such as stax, at least in the sideboard. This looks to be problematic, as the card renders many of the deck’s disruption ineffective. Wastelands, fetches, factories, genjus, and the entourage of utility creatures would be far too costly to use effectively under an early Suppression Field.

     Disenchant is the only answer in the deck to this card, which will not always be drawn before a well placed Suppression Field has done its damage. Will the deck be retooled or changed when Suppression Field sees play? If so, how?

[orgcandman]

Wow, a lot to digest.

As far as your list goes, it's solid, but actually looks very close (apart from the null rods and bloodmoons) to the original list we started with. What we found was that we'd tap out early and then get owned by echoing truth, rushing river, or even worse, the random annul. By dropping them completely, and just running more artifact hate in it's place, we can take out problem artifacts...be they moxen, triskelion, pentavus, titan, or even pithing needle. Another advantage is that null rod doesn't stop thirst dumping titan/pentavus/trike and weld. Instant speed artifact hate does.

As for blood moon, obviously with strips, duals, fetches, and factories we can't support it. We don't really feel like it's that big of a deal though. Most decks have a heavy primary color (blue) that takes up ~30-40 slots. Then they have 1-2 secondary colors that take up 5 or 6 slots total. Color screwing isn't gonna work. What IS gonna work is stopping them from ramping up on quantity of mana. I firmly believe that the key to winning in Type 1 is winning the mana race by A) broken acceleration early, and B) matching or exceeding the number of land drops your opponent makes.

For the combo matchup, you're correct. It's brutal. No, worse than that. Keep going. It's terrible. The ONLY saving grace is that pyroblast can stop the bleeding slightly (goodbye twister / ancestral / illusions of grandeur) and crypt can keep them off will. Game 2 we hopefully get out one of the hate pieces, and game 3 (if we get there) we hopefully do the same. Combo is by far the WORST (BUT not unwinnable) matchup. Probably re-tooling the maindeck slightly, and the SB to accomodate a little extra acceleration and rule of law would be best. Then again, if you're retooling the deck because you're in a combo heavy metagame, you may just want to switch decks to something that beats combo a lot more.

As for Suppression Field, there may be some re-tooling needed. We also may already have an answer for it I guess we'll just have to wait for possibly Day 2.

[Arvid]

@LouGodKingofDustBunnys:
Yes, the Weather Wayfarers actually seemed to slow, after some more testing. This deck is more aggro than WU so they were cut for Kataki, which could be Null Rods.

My decklist differs:

-3 Disenchant
-2 Lava Dart
-3 Genju of the Spires
-1 Mox Pearl

+3 Kataki, War's Wage
+4 Kami of Ancient Law
+2 Seal of Cleansing

I think Lava Dart are overkill (in my meta), I still got 12 spells that kill welders. I think Kamis are better than Disenchant, sure they're sometimes dead, but not more dead than a red Kami without a target, they're bears and thats ok in an aggro deck. I play Seals because I have space, they could swith to more Crypts. Katakis are good but maybe it's better to just play Null Rod or Gorilla Shaman, please tell me what you think?

As for the Genjus I don't have any good argument really, I guess I just don't consider them good Vintage material, I rather play small hosers instead of a big beater.

[warble]

I disagree with any cutting of Genju.  The idea is to get threats through before your opponent can out-counter and out-draw you.  Genju is one cost, happens to be an extremely fast clock (will race CS easily) and without it the clock is just too slow to race a decent deck.  Whichever deck has a faster clock wins, TMWA slows down the opponent's clock but it can't just do that, it needs to have a decently fast clock itself or decks like oath and CS that do get to a slow start, but can start pounding threats down later en masse will have no trouble at all beating it.  The loss of disenchant is also a key utility piece that takes down CS and oath with ease, I'm not sure why you would consider loss of utility and slowing down your clock while speeding your opponent's clock up an "improvement" on the deck (and you cut a mox?!?!)  Again, artifact hate = good in New England.  Having a billion answers to CS maindeck and even more SB when that is your matchup for 4 out of 6 rounds of swiss?  Priceless.

[LouGodKingofDustBunnys]

@ Arvid
Kataki isn't bad, unless you draw more then one...so it's not a bad idea other then the fact that you don't want to be tapping a mana to protect you moxen or Tormod. It doesn't slow you down much, but if you pullling Genju, you have no real clock By taking out the Genju's your slowing your kill down by 2-3 turns at least, which isn't good. With this deck you HAVE to keep pressuring your opponent, i mean, this is Vintage. You give your opponent one turn, often times that's all it takes and then boom...your roadkill. On the seals, we agreed in a previous post...but Kami, even if it is a bear, it's a limp-wristed-sally-swinging bear.. Seal/Disencant will take care of enchantments if you can find any to target...there really are very few you have to worry about in Vintage

Btw, warble's right, especially about cutting the Pearl...Arvid your White spell count is +6 from Durney's list, making the Pearl even more important to have, and you cut it, you just really can't do that and expect to cast additional white spells early. On the Lava Darts...Like Dan said in his post in the beginning of the thread, they were a meta call by Durney...play them or not, it's your choice. If you really want the Kami or Kataki, just -2 Darts +2 of either of them you want. Just test them out a few Dozen times and let us know. In the New England Meta, I would run the Darts, but in the Chi-town/Virgina meta's then Kataki or Kami might be a good addition.

[Arvid]

Wow, much ado about noth... a Mox Pearl. I'll put it back into the list immidiently. (As a sidenote, when I cut the mox I at the same time cut a land for a Lotus Petal.)

The bad thing about Kataki (and Vandal and Shaman) is that combo only needs to drop and use its moxen once. This makes me consider Null Rod (obviously cutting the Crypts in the process). What do you think? I mean, I don't see any Jittes here anyway. As for "Null Rod can be owned by Echoing Truth" imo is like saying I shouldn't play creatures because of creature removal. If my opponent drops a lot of moxen with a Null Rod in play, and I am afraid of a bounce spells coming, I could start eating moxen with Vandal even though they for the moment are nullified.

This is my theoretical swithes:

-3 Kataki
-2 Tormod's Crypt
+4 Null Rod
+1 Mox Pearl

which (since Null Rod takes a lot of artifacts) also may lead to:

-2 Seal of Cleansing
+2 Cards


(My switches just made the Mox Pearl a lot worse now, cutting a lot of white cards and using Null Rod. Anyway, a 1st turn white Kami against Oath is nice, or a 2nd turn with Pyroblast backup if you rather want to).

[Myriad Games]

     Suppression field is shaping up to be used in a of couple decks, such as stax, at least in the sideboard. This looks to be problematic, as the card renders many of the deck’s disruption ineffective. Wastelands, fetches, factories, genjus, and the entourage of utility creatures would be far too costly to use effectively under an early Suppression Field.

Will the deck be retooled or changed when Suppression Field sees play? If so, how?

The deck will indeed change post-Ravnica to accommodate the new metagame. As to how, we haven't entirely decided since it warrants more testing in a post-Ravnica environment. Suffice it to say that we have a lot of options for adjustment.

Thanks again to everyone for the comments and suggestions. I've been very busy with work and preparing for Waterbury, so I won't always have time to respond to everything, but keep the conversation going.

[orgcandman]

My decklist differs:

-3 Disenchant
-2 Lava Dart
-3 Genju of the Spires
-1 Mox Pearl

+3 Kataki, War's Wage
+4 Kami of Ancient Law
+2 Seal of Cleansing

I think Lava Dart are overkill (in my meta), I still got 12 spells that kill welders. I think Kamis are better than Disenchant, sure they're sometimes dead, but not more dead than a red Kami without a target, they're bears and thats ok in an aggro deck. I play Seals because I have space, they could swith to more Crypts. Katakis are good but maybe it's better to just play Null Rod or Gorilla Shaman, please tell me what you think?

As for the Genjus I don't have any good argument really, I guess I just don't consider them good Vintage material, I rather play small hosers instead of a big beater.

And then

The bad thing about Kataki (and Vandal and Shaman) is that combo only needs to drop and use its moxen once. This makes me consider Null Rod (obviously cutting the Crypts in the process). What do you think? I mean, I don't see any Jittes here anyway. As for "Null Rod can be owned by Echoing Truth" imo is like saying I shouldn't play creatures because of creature removal. If my opponent drops a lot of moxen with a Null Rod in play, and I am afraid of a bounce spells coming, I could start eating moxen with Vandal even though they for the moment are nullified.

This is my theoretical swithes:

-3 Kataki
-2 Tormod's Crypt
+4 Null Rod
+1 Mox Pearl

which (since Null Rod takes a lot of artifacts) also may lead to:

-2 Seal of Cleansing
+2 Cards


(My switches just made the Mox Pearl a lot worse now, cutting a lot of white cards and using Null Rod. Anyway, a 1st turn white Kami against Oath is nice, or a 2nd turn with Pyroblast backup if you rather want to).

I think you're missing the point of the deck. It's not a bunch of solutions that are just packed together. You've cut Genu's and the mox for a strictly worse disenchant. Sure it beats, but you basically added a white grizzly bear: it's ability is only relevent in a matchup that you have game against anyway (unless enchantress is showing up in your area).

You then cut lava darts, disenchants, and tormod's crypts so you could run Seal of Cleansing (which is decent, I'll give you that) and Null Rod. Are you kidding me?! Null Rod don't stop combo from going off as you'd like to believe. Just like Chalice -> 0 is something combo should win through, Null Rod is also something combo wins through. Null Rod doesn't give you game vs. combo.

And cutting Tormod's Crypt, are you nutso? That's how you beat anything running yawgmoth's will (which is good I hear). It also lets you screw up Oath game 1 if they have to put too much of their deck into the yard. Just crypt away in response to the blessing trigger. It's not dead in ANY matchups, whereas Null Rod can be (in the mirror for instance).

I fail to see how your changes helped the deck against it's problem matchups (Combo, non-u control, and fast heavy aggro).

[Arvid]

@orgcandman:
Since you seem to follow me and my posts I'll summarize it for you:

-3 Disenchant
-2 Lava Dart
-1 Genju of the Spires
-2 Tormod's Crypt
-1 land

+4 Null Rod
+4 Kami of Ancient Law
+1 Lotus Petal

..meaning I only sprung through the Katakis and Seals, I only cut the mox for a blink of a second, and the 2 "cards" eventually got to be Genjus, so I havn't cut it, just lowered it to 2 (for the moment).

What it comes down to is:

Kami of Ancient Law vs. Disenchant/Seal of Cleansing
Null Rod vs. Tormod's Crypt


I can agree that Kami is a narrow card but please can you specify "it's ability is only relevent in a matchup that you have game against anyway (unless enchantress is showing up in your area)." I don't know what matchup you are refering to. If it's Oath I'm surprised it's considered an easy matchup, please let me know. I know a bear isn't very exciting but I fear cutting so many creatures leaving the deck with only a few win conditions and very many Disenchant/Shatter-effects.

As for Null Rod, I never stated that it meant game vs. combo. I simply said that the other artefact destruction spells/creatures are somewhat irrelevant to combo since it can drop the moxen the same turn it draws ~lots of card from Yawgmoth's Bargain or does something like it. Ofcourse, Null Rod can be bounced (and chances are big they draw into bounce if the draw that many cards), but the fact that Null Rod actually is better than Goblin Vandal/Hearth Kami against combo, can you argument against it?
 

[orgcandman]

As for the Kami comment, I wasn't saying that oath is an easy matchup, but I WAS saying that disenchant helps more vs. oath than kami does. Kami can help trigger the oath. Disenchant will not. Kami requires that you tap out in your mainphase, disenchant does not. The deck has a decent matchup, and a reasonably intelligent player shouldn't find oath to be a super difficult or super easy matchup. In fact, Oath was the deck that this beat out to win the finals at the Myriad tournament.

As for Null Rod, I never stated that it meant game vs. combo. I simply said that the other artefact destruction spells/creatures are somewhat irrelevant to combo since it can drop the moxen the same turn it draws ~lots of card from Yawgmoth's Bargain or does something like it.

In the case where they've resolved a bargain, most likely they can just play their moxen, build up storm and then play a tendrils. Who cares if they use them? Really null rod requires that you tap 2, and not drop a card that beats combo. And sure, vandal and hearth kami suck vs. combo. But tormod's crypt doesn't since it breaks their will. I'd argue that crypt is better than null rod in more cases than null rod is better than crypt. Trying to mux the deck to beat combo is a waste of time, IMHO. Combo loses to specific cards, not specific strategies. If you really feel like taking this to a combo-filled metagame, at least run cards that win like Pyrostatic Pillar, and Arcane Lab / Rule of Law.

[Arvid]

If they resolve a Bargain they've won, right. But their chances to play Bargain are reduced by Null Rod. I guess they're reduced by Crypt aswell, since they can break off a massive Will, Rituals, replay a Tutor and hardcast Bargain, but Crypt hoses one card, Rod hoses 8 cards, maybe more. Yes, I know Will is not only one card, it's the card. Anyway, I think you've got a point, but I still think I've got one aswell, especially since Null Rods also are some good against CS, Stax and Fish, every deck with power, and also other, more random, stuff like Affinity, Skullclamp and Illusionary Mask. I have to playtest, I guess.

Anyway, I actually could consider playing Pyrostatic Pillar maindeck. But what does it do in the non combo matchup? I guess taking lots of damage yourself doesn't matter against control either. So it's a good card except against aggro, or?

[Nastaboi]

I just came to thought Sphere of Resistance as a potential SB card, especially against combo. It might be better than Rule of Law, because it's easier to cast and easier to protect. If you play threat on your turn with Rule of Law on the table, they can just bounce it on your EOT and you cannot counter back. It might be better against Belcher, too. Any thoughts?

[orgcandman]

I just came to thought Sphere of Resistance as a potential SB card, especially against combo. It might be better than Rule of Law, because it's easier to cast and easier to protect. If you play threat on your turn with Rule of Law on the table, they can just bounce it on your EOT and you cannot counter back. It might be better against Belcher, too. Any thoughts?

If you notice, in the original board is Pyrostatic Pillar. For combo-beating goodness dripping with syrup.

[Nastaboi]

Yeah, Pillar is Better, but I was thinking Spheres in addition to Pillars. After 4 REBs, the rest of the SB can be completely metagamed. If it seems that no Workshops, Oath or FCG is present, I can load my remaining SB full of combo hate. If there is just some Oath and FCG, I can put in couple of Bombardments and have seven slots for combo hate and so on. It is not that I cannot stand losing to combo, it is just that it is the only matchup I really need to SB for.

Other than that, do you already know if this will change post Ravnica ? Or will you tell us just after Waterbury?

[orgcandman]

This is DEFINATELY changing tomorrow.

The big culprit: Suppression Field.

S-Field turns out to be best utilized in Oath. It doesn't mess with the oath, NOR does it mess with the orchard. Other activated abilities don't exist in oath (unless people run that new angel). The maindeck will probably not have too many changes, but definately the board will have a lot more field hate.

We have a lot of cards tested, and will work on an actual primer once we win a big event. For reference, the Team Myriad / The Tick-Spoon members who piloted this took 20th and 22nd place at Waterbury this past weekend.

We also saw a lot of players piloting what seemed like suboptimal lists.

My question to people running lists that deviate from the one posted: What card changes did you make, and why did you make them? What matchups were they more useful in? More importantly, where were they completely dead?

[Goatman]

I ran it at waterbury, but it was skewed quite a bit from the original list. I dropped lavamancers, crypts, darts, and factories. I put in 4 samurai of the pale curtain, 3 kataki, and 4 incinerates. It felt really good, it just couldn't kill fast enough. The updated version in the test pits right now kills much faster while still keeping much of the disruptive elements and less garbage. Samurai was great against dragon and would have been gold against landstill when it got crucible/waste going. Kataki was pretty hot, if anything just stunting mana development. He acted more like a resource lite mox monkey than the usual goal of energy flux. Factories just seemed bleh, and I wanted WW for samurai, which is coming out. He really wasn't worth the commitment.

[Dante]

...

Other activated abilities don't exist in oath (unless people run that new angel)....

A lot of Oath builds have a full set of Strip/Wastelands (or almost full).

Just FYI.

[SpyWare]

Why play factory?

[Zomar]

I played this deck for a little while and one thing I noticed was the lack of colored mana. With the factories, strip, and wastes you often only end up with only 1 colored source. This is really bad for this deck when it is trying to keep red mana open for REBs, EOT effects (burn, disenchant, etc), and vandal while continuing to play and activate threats. 

Factory activations also stop you from keeping mana open, so often they sit their useless, and maybe wishing they were mountains. With the lessened playing of Oath, it's probably posable to cut all, or at least some of the factories.

[Jiggy]

Why play factory?

Are you kidding? Mishra's Factories won me a third of my games. Against control its an uncounterable threat and against aggro it's a great blocker.

I played the deck the deck to a 26st (out of 188)  place at the Open Dutch Vintage Championship with a 5-3 record. With that i placed 4th on the unpowered ranking, netting me a badlands and 12 Ravnica boosters. The unpowered decks above me were FCG, another Goblin deck and Fish. The only changes i made to the deck, were to replace the moxes and the lotus for a lotus petal, a mountain and a chrome mox (making me unpowered), and i replaced 1 goblin vandal for a gorilla shaman. This was all done because i didn't have the others (not 4 Vandals, shame on me). I must say, this deck is a blast to play and can beat a lot of the decks out there. I played against:

R1: Janky metagamed Stasis-deck, with Birds/Instill Energy, win
R2: Bad Goblins, with only land and Goblins, win
R3: Fully powered Uba Stax, loss
      This guy totally blasted me away both games
R4: Fish, win
R5: Fully powered Ravager, loss
      3rd game he mised a trinisphere of the top, otherwise i would've won with the vandal in my hand
R6: Fully powered Gifts, win
      He was the wrong guy, so technically he was over 10 mins late at his table, which cost him a matchloss. I got a warning for playing wrong opponent . Nevertheless, we finished a game and i won
R7: Fully powered TPS, loss
      Baaaaaaaad matchup. Maybe if you draw insane and they don't, you have slim chance, but after our match (±5 minutes), we played another couple of games and i lost all. Even    when i had turn 2 Pillar with REB backup he just won on his first turn (well, second, because of Time Walk)
R8: Semi powered Bird Sh*t, win

All in all, i wouldn't change anything to the original decklist. Every card in the deck has its place and is important. Chrome mox and Lotus Petal weren't stellar as replacement, so i might change them to land/mox diamond, or only the chrome to a land. If you cut white from your deck, you will lose. Especially the STP's won me a lot of games i otherwise wouldn't've won. Genju's were great, although sometimes i didn't draw them enough, and sometimes i had all three, but those things happen.
As for the sideboard, the only thing i didn't like were the pithing needles, not doing enough. Maybe Fault line against FCG and random Nimble Mongooses (Mongeese?), and to a lesser extent Fish (Factories, M.Mage, Lavamancer, Old Man, etc. no flying though). Maybe Balance isn't such a bad idea after all (i've seen it mentioned here). Against random decks it's probably as good as Needle, but i might be completely off here.

To everyone ho tries to take white out for anything else, don't. Or play a different deck.
To the creators of the deck, thanks for sharing the fun.

Joeri

[Nastaboi]

The original list is near perfect. However, I can see no reasons to run Lava Dart, at least in my meta. I want my mountains to stay around to turn up 6/1 beaters, over and over again. I have gone from -2 Lava Dart, -1 Kami to +1 Crypt, +2 Kataki, War's Wage. Kataki and Kami does kinda same, expect you don't have to sacrifice Kataki to neutralize a Mox.

I own Pearl as my only piece of power and have replaced the rest with a Mountain and a fetchland. I think this deck cannot afford card disadvantage those power replacements of yours produce. There are not so desperate need for acceleration, and with no real draw you have to push every card in your deck to its max.

And never worry about those mongeese, just block with a factory but bevare stifling your bump for it.

[Fall-Titan]

I dont want to sound like the newb here because i most certainly am not but has anyone tried mogg fanatic in place of the lava darts? He has some beat down ability, he can kill off welders and the like, and he can target players in a rough situation. I realize he is more of a cut and dry card than say kataki but he has his advantages. Anyway this is just a thought and maybe someone has tried him out to victory.

[Jiggy]

The original list is near perfect. However, I can see no reasons to run Lava Dart, at least in my meta. I want my mountains to stay around to turn up 6/1 beaters, over and over again. I have gone from -2 Lava Dart, -1 Kami to +1 Crypt, +2 Kataki, War's Wage. Kataki and Kami does kinda same, expect you don't have to sacrifice Kataki to neutralize a Mox.

I own Pearl as my only piece of power and have replaced the rest with a Mountain and a fetchland. I think this deck cannot afford card disadvantage those power replacements of yours produce. There are not so desperate need for acceleration, and with no real draw you have to push every card in your deck to its max.

And never worry about those mongeese, just block with a factory but bevare stifling your bump for it.

You're probably right about the 'cheap' moxes and petal, but i put them in to still get some accelleration. Although with the chrome mox it's hard to take out a buisiness spell, the tempo often makes up for it. That said, i'd rather not play it for the same reason you give. There were a lot of situations the Mox did nothing, but there were also a lot of situations i would've liked a mox but didn't have it. Mostly this was against control and combo. I'm still not sure about it, though i'll probably cut them.

The Dart was great for me, all day long. I was even thinking about going up 1. That's metagame for ya...

Kataki sounds great, i'll try them out.

[orgcandman]

The original list is near perfect. However, I can see no reasons to run Lava Dart, at least in my meta. I want my mountains to stay around to turn up 6/1 beaters, over and over again. I have gone from -2 Lava Dart, -1 Kami to +1 Crypt, +2 Kataki, War's Wage. Kataki and Kami does kinda same, expect you don't have to sacrifice Kataki to neutralize a Mox.

I own Pearl as my only piece of power and have replaced the rest with a Mountain and a fetchland. I think this deck cannot afford card disadvantage those power replacements of yours produce. There are not so desperate need for acceleration, and with no real draw you have to push every card in your deck to its max.

And never worry about those mongeese, just block with a factory but bevare stifling your bump for it.

Those are good replacements to make. We're off and on about Kataki. I think some of us like it more than others. Kami is still useful enough, and I'm glad you've recognized that enough to not take them out completely. Indeed Lava Darts are not super hot, but they're not completely terrible either. If I were going to any metagame where there was CS/fish infestation, I'd really want them more than I'd want a Kataki.

I played the deck the deck to a 26st (out of 188) place at the Open Dutch Vintage Championship with a 5-3 record. With that i placed 4th on the unpowered ranking, netting me a badlands and 12 Ravnica boosters. The unpowered decks above me were FCG, another Goblin deck and Fish. The only changes i made to the deck, were to replace the moxes and the lotus for a lotus petal, a mountain and a chrome mox (making me unpowered), and i replaced 1 goblin vandal for a gorilla shaman. This was all done because i didn't have the others (not 4 Vandals, shame on me). I must say, this deck is a blast to play and can beat a lot of the decks out there. I played against:
==
All in all, i wouldn't change anything to the original decklist. Every card in the deck has its place and is important. Chrome mox and Lotus Petal weren't stellar as replacement, so i might change them to land/mox diamond, or only the chrome to a land. If you cut white from your deck, you will lose. Especially the STP's won me a lot of games i otherwise wouldn't've won. Genju's were great, although sometimes i didn't draw them enough, and sometimes i had all three, but those things happen.
As for the sideboard, the only thing i didn't like were the pithing needles, not doing enough. Maybe Fault line against FCG and random Nimble Mongooses (Mongeese?), and to a lesser extent Fish (Factories, M.Mage, Lavamancer, Old Man, etc. no flying though). Maybe Balance isn't such a bad idea after all (i've seen it mentioned here). Against random decks it's probably as good as Needle, but i might be completely off here.

Congrats on such a high finish. If you note, we also took the deck to 22nd and 24th places at waterbury.
I think you're spot on regarding the assessment of the replacements you made. If you were gonna cut power, you need to add things that help you out. Enlightened Tutor can fetch many of the things you need, albeit slowly and at a slight disadvantage. I don't know what you'd put in the other mox spot. Also note that we cut Black Lotus a while ago because unlike fish, where you could get the random turn 1 lotus, factory, timewalk standstill opening, we don't have ANY broken turn 1 plays. In fact, everytime we saw the lotus, we wished it were something else. Needle was cut from the board a while ago to make room for better cards. It's really not that great of a card to bring in against anyone. It would probably be in place of the lava darts in the maindeck, so that you have something to board out.

I dont want to sound like the newb here because i most certainly am not but has anyone tried mogg fanatic in place of the lava darts? He has some beat down ability, he can kill off welders and the like, and he can target players in a rough situation. I realize he is more of a cut and dry card than say kataki but he has his advantages. Anyway this is just a thought and maybe someone has tried him out to victory.

We have a test build together that uses him, and will be putting that through the gauntlet. He seems solid enough.

[Zomar]

What is the justification for kataki over gorilla shaman?

Kataki comes down for 2, and you never have to pay for him again, unless your own artifacts are being hampered.

Gorilla shaman comes down for one and costs one mana to kill each mox.

They both deal with artifacts similarly, but gorilla shaman removes them from play, stoping welder activations and permanents to sack to stax and tap to tanglewire. Since gorilla shaman costs one less and can come down before manadrain, he seems more useful to me.

Also I've noticed that while the genjus are amazing when they work, they often are too mana intensive. Whenever I have a red blast in my hand, I dont want to tap out. This means I need 4 mana sources to swing with Genju and still keep R open. With the five strip effects you play, getting to 4 mana takes a while. Just something to think about.

[orgcandman]

What is the justification for kataki over gorilla shaman?

Kataki comes down for 2, and you never have to pay for him again, unless your own artifacts are being hampered.

Gorilla shaman comes down for one and costs one mana to kill each mox.

They both deal with artifacts similarly, but gorilla shaman removes them from play, stoping welder activations and permanents to sack to stax and tap to tanglewire. Since gorilla shaman costs one less and can come down before manadrain, he seems more useful to me.

Actually, I advocate running a mix of them if your metagame is crazy infested with stax and control slaver. What's nice about the kataki is he makes those clutch situations where your opponent is working off just artifact mana really important (which happens every now and then in stax). Shaman also has merits, but you have to remember that this can't get the same kinds of 10+ mana cranking on turn 4 that other decks can, making shaman not as much of a wrecking ball (although he is good). Shaman is better against welder. Kataki is better against artifacts in general. If you see an overabundance of welder, and want more welder hate, shaman is hot. But if you're seeing Gifts, welder-less stax, and other decks (including fish) kataki is much better.

As for genju mana issues, I usually see genju as a finisher. When it goes active, there's usually not much your opponent can do, since that combined with the disruption that you've laid out turn 1-3 makes genju's path clear, usually. But if others are seeing that as a problem, cutting to 2 genju and running an enlightened tutor to fetch out moxen, genju, or crypt might be a better call. NOTE: running e-tutor also allows you to run a single null rod, if you so choose.

[Zomar]

Thanks for the insights  into kataki and shaman 

As for genju mana issues, I usually see genju as a finisher. When it goes active, there's usually not much your opponent can do, since that combined with the disruption that you've laid out turn 1-3 makes genju's path clear, usually. But if others are seeing that as a problem, cutting to 2 genju and running an enlightened tutor to fetch out moxen, genju, or crypt might be a better call. NOTE: running e-tutor also allows you to run a single null rod, if you so choose.

I like the idea of e-tutor instead of a genju a lot. I love genju late game but I hate seeing two genjus as they are almost always dead draws. I always love seeing crypt. I don't think null rod would be necessary but a seal of cleansing might be nice.