[Archetype]Vial Goblins

[Mantis]

EDIT: This deck is terrible, don't spend your money or time on it. I was hoping to make it work but failed.

As of late I usually play Legacy and play one of my favorite decks there; Goblins. Next month there's a T1 tourney coming up however and I decided to play there. My deckchoice was obviously Vial Goblins, I love the deck and I think it's actually quite a decent choice. My decklist includes lots of controversial choices as I tried to think out of the box to actually improve Goblins. I designed this deck to beat Workshop and Fish while having a decent game against control. The combo matchup is pretty awful, but can be won. While Goblins might not be the most powerful deck I have played the deck so often that I think I'm much better with this deck than with others. I also think that Goblins gets little credit due to people mostly designing and playing the deck pretty awful, the better players and designers usually chose other decks to play.

Here is the list:

4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Goblin Piledriver
3 Earwig Squad
4 Goblin Matron
1 Warren Weirding
1 Mad Auntie
3 Goblin Tinkerer
3 Mogg Fanatic
1 Stingscourger
1 Siege Gang Commander

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Aether Vial
 
4 Badlands
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Mountain
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring

Ok let's start off with the obvious choices. The manabase includes 22 manasources, the other choice would be 21 as Lackey gets to beat relatively often in T1 (not a lot of blockers). However I like land as it allows me to cast my spells, I'm not really afraid of flood thanks to Ringleader. The other obvious choices are Warchief, Ringleader, Lackey, Vial and Matron, I will not discuss those in this opening post as I think those are quite self explanatory.

Mogg Fanatic is also semi obvious, but is a Goblin that can be cut. I think he deserves inclusion though as he can singlehandedly take care of Ichorid, destroys Welders and is very good against aggro deck and Fish decks.

The non-obvious choices:
Singleton Piledriver, I needed to cut down some numbers if I wanted to play everything I want to play. Piledriver just beats down and does not disrupt. Even though he's the fastest Goblin he's too slow for T1 standards. The way to keep up with your opponent for Goblins is not to race them but to disrupt them and apply steady pressure. That's why I choice for Goblins that disrupt, I could have cut Warchief or Ringleader instead but I feel like those are needed to excecute your plan.

Chalice of the Void: necessary to keep up with combo, disrupts decks that rely on artifact mana in general, buying you time to beat down. Excellent in combination with Waste/Strip. I chose this over Null Rod as I want to be tapping out to play Goblins, this way I can play several spells a turn. We lack FoW so I think Chalice is the way to go.

Earwig Squad: Both Jesters Cap and Juggernaut have been staples in T1, this card is a combination of the two, how can I pass that up?

Mad Auntie: This is a weird choice, I run this because it's awesome with Tinkerer. Still I'm uncertain this deserves inclusion, he's pretty awesome against other aggro and aggro control decks as well.

Warren Weirding: could only make room for one, I'm hoping to get away with running just one. Now that control decks are running Tezzeret as wincon and combo not running any creatures I don't want to be caught holding several copies of this.

Singleton Siege-Gang Commanders: He's awesome with Lackey but if you don't have Lackey he is too slow I'm afraid. It's a true bomb against aggro decks so I run a singleton to fetch up with Matron.

SB:
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Goblin Piledriver
2 Warren Weirding
1 Sharpshooter
4 Thoughtseize/Cabal Therapy
1 Goblin Tinkerer


I haven't finalized my boarding plans yet, but I think this sideboard is pretty close to what I would run.

EDIT: Mods, if this thread is good enough to deserve discussion in the Open Forum please move it. I wasn't sure since Goblins hasn't really performed much lately, so I figured I better post it here.

EDIT 2: Apparantly I'm a moron and the list only had 56 cards. Changed this post.

[kicks_422]

I have also been testing Goblins in MWS. It's not really reliable, but it's a start to get to feel how the deck operates in Vintage. To add to the discussion, here are the things I knock myself over.

1. Aside from Turn 1 Lackey and Turn 2 Earwig, the deck really needs a powerful Turn 1-2 play to keep in step. What's the best one: Chalice, Null Rod, Thorn of Amethyst, or something else?
2. Vial goes with the mana denial aspect, since you'll be sacrificing those Wastes/Strip. However, sometimes sacrificing lands slow you down more, especially when Vial isn't in play. Is it worth it?
3. Oath has always been one of the biggest problems of Goblins. Is splashing green for SB Krosan Grips needed? Keep with RB and rely on Weirdings/Squads? Or just suck it up?

Mants, I'm iffy over the Mad Auntie and SGC as well. Aggro and aggro-control aren't really the decks which you should have problems with, so I would suggest dropping those in favor of the 4th Squad and, uh... A 2nd Piledriver?

[Mantis]

Yeah you are right, Mad Auntie is quite bad. Siege-Gang is a beating, remember they play Ethersworn Cannonist a lot nowadays so you can't chain Goblins as easily anymore therefore you need to play a few powerful guys.

4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Ringleader
3 Goblin Piledriver
4 Earwig Squad
4 Goblin Matron
1 Warren Weirding
1 Goblin Tinkerer
2 Mogg Fanatic
1 Siege Gang Commander

3 Thoughtseize
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Aether Vial
 
4 Badlands
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Mountain
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring

Changes are bold. Moved the Piledrivers back in, they are just too insane especially when everyone plays blue as their maincolor.

Against Oath the plan is to get down Earwig Squad and remove their win cons or Thoughtseize the Oath out. But seriously though, Oath isn't played nearly as much as it used to. I don't think the matchup is nearly as bad as you would think it is, though still not favorable by any means.

I considered my disruption suite as well and it's pretty darn hard to figure out. After testing on MWS I found that I wanted Thoughtseize in nearly every game. Also, I didn't want to get stuck with 2 Chalices or 2 Vials in hand so I figured I could safely remove one of each. The strategy gets a little more unfocused but Seize is so powerful I actually considered just playing 6 Duress effects and just remove Chalice. Thoughtseize has very good synergy with the deck as it allows you to formulate your gameplan pretty accurately. Also, it works nicely with Chalice to let you know if you should set your Chalice at 0 or at 1.
Another option would be to cut Chalice and Vial and play Null Rod + additional land in the form of Rishadan Port.

Two cards I have tried and I felt really sucked were Thorn of Amethyst and Cabal Therapy. Thorn suffers from perhaps the same thing Null Rod will suffer from, you want to play Goblins and at the same time disrupt them. With Thorn or Rod you will have to chose between either playing that card or casting Goblins. This invalidates your strategy and gives your opponent time to deal with the disruption you presented. This is especially true for Null Rod as you really can't play it in the same deck with Vial. The same reasoning could apply to Thoughtseize, but testing should tell me more about that. I found Thorn of Amethyst to be uneffective as creature decks don't care, Workshop has one mana to spare and combo just bounces your Thorn and then goes off anyway.

Cabal Therapy sucked because there are too many restricted cards, while it might keep up with Duress, Thoughtseize is definately a LOT better. I used to think Therapy was quite good but after I saw the power of Thoughtseize I just can't deny that it sucks by comparison.

I personally think the best tool for disruption is Chalice as it's a free spell and works nicely with Wasteland. Turn one Chalice for 0 + Lackey/Vial is just awesome on the play.

[kicks_422]

I see the merits of Thoughtseize, but I disagree about cutting down Vial and Chalice to 3. Either you play 4 of those or none at all.

Vial goes well with the mana denial package of Waste/Strip, and dances around countermagic, and helps you reach the higher curve of Goblins (3CC and up). Because of this high curve, I think Chalice can be best utilized. Whenever I play it, I am not worried about plopping down a Chalice for 1 and/or 2, because I know that it would hurt them more than me.

[Mantis]

Agreed on Chalice, I drop it for 1 or 2 quite often and not only if it's my second copy. Thoughtseize and Chalice play so nice together, if you see hand full of CC = 1 you drop it at 1.

I don't think Vial should always be 4 or nothing. While I'm not sure 3 is the right number it's not a number that's out of consideration. I personally don't shy away from odd numbers if they just prove to be better. I mean, with all the artifact acceleration available it's not that big of a deal to not start the game with Vial or Lackey, so it's not such a weird idea. My thoughts were that you wanted to have disruption but still have a high Goblin count for Ringleader and such, therefore I didn't want to cut a Goblin but I think it would be okay to cut a Thoughtseize and replace that with Vial.

By the way, from your post I get that you suggest to not run Thoughtseize or am I wrong?

[Soon-Man]

I know this thread is kinda old, but I think a new thread about goblins would be kinda redundant. Before I start trying to do anything I want to know if Goblins is still a competitive deck, or a waste of time to try to build?

[Troy_Costisick]

IMHO, Goblins is always competitive until your metta adjusts for it.  If your meta is currently a lot of TPS, Oath, and Slaver, then Gob-Lines is probably a good choice.  If it's more R/G Beats, Ichorid, and Fish, then it probably isn't.

[Soon-Man]

Sounds fair. I guess the next step is to figure out if Goblins is the best way to go with Red. Or if this archetype needs to be updated with Cards like Magus of the Moon, Lightning Bolt, Vexing Shusher, REB, ect.?
I would make a sample deck list, but I think posting an untested list that is based on what are currently vague concepts is considered spam.

[LordHomerCat]

IMHO, Goblins is always competitive until your metta adjusts for it.  If your meta is currently a lot of TPS, Oath, and Slaver, then Gob-Lines is probably a good choice.  If it's more R/G Beats, Ichorid, and Fish, then it probably isn't.

Wait... what?  Goblins annihilates Fish, crushes Ichorid because of Mogg Fanatic, and just outdraws and out creatures other aggro decks with Ringleader.  Your suggestion is the complete opposite of where I would play a goblins deck.

[Mantis]

Goblins is terrible, don't try them. I've spent way too much time on this deck, I hope that I haven't seduced anyone to waste his time or money on this deck with my thread. I couldn't win a single match in like 10 matches on MWS, now that is just awful.

The problem is that you have to run a lot of support creatures that are very weak on their own and do not influence the board at all: I'm talking about Piledriver, Warchief, Goblin Matron, Goblin Lackey and Mogg Fanatic here. The other creatures such as Siege Gang Commander, Earwig Squad and Goblin Ringleader do influence the board and are very strong but require your weak support creatures. So in order to play a good card you have to play bad ones first. TPS, CS, Shop Aggro, Tezzeret etc. just play strong cards, they don't play weak supporting cards at all. With the exception of a few cards they only play strong cards. I'd rather just be playing those Shops, Drains, Rituals or Bazaars myself instead and I advise anyone who is considering Goblins to do the same thing.

Hands like this one frequently occured:
3 Manasources, 2 Chalice, Goblin Lackey and Warchief. And that is supposed to be a good hand but how does it beat any deck at all? You can stop their Moxen and then hope you can win with your 5-7 turn clock... Think about it, what does this hand beat? If you answer this correctly you know why you never want to play Goblins in a tournament.

[chief]

No offense mantis, but you don't seem to be going about goblins correctly.  When rocking the gobs in vintage, disruption that isn't also a threat is not your friend in high volumes.  Play thorn if you want, that can be ok, but for the most part it's just GO GO GO until you get there or land a squad.  just play RBG gobs, back off the wastes some, and get there.  Scared of canonist?  Well, for one, the decks with canonist aren't scary for you.  For two, you've got vial to cheat it and tin street to beat it.  Goblins can be completely viable in vintage, and I've come out with hundreds of dollars in prize with them on multiple occasions.  Build the deck right and play it well, and you'll do just fine with goblins.  Your build needs to be structured for consistency, not utility.

[Mantis]

I'm glad it's been working out for you, I would be interested to see your build. And while I do think it's very possible to T8 with Goblins (I have done so the only time I took it to a tourney), it took a great deal of determination, skill and screw ups from my opponents to get there. From what I've been reading and hearing on TMD you are a good player, so that might just explain why you perform with the deck.

But again, I am very interested in your list if it's performing well so perhaps you could post it? If you don't have a list some general guidelines would be nice, because my approach wasn't working at all.

[chief]

If I were to play goblins at a tournament right now in my (largely ritual-less) meta, I might play something along these lines.

4x aether vial
4x mog fanatic
4x goblin lackey
4x warchief
4x piledriver
4x ringleader
3x squad
4x matron
4x tin street
2x stingscourger
1x vexing shusher
1x mana crypt
3x moxen
2x badlands
3x taiga
1x black lotus
6x fetchlands
3x mountain
1x strip mine
2x wasteland

It's been a couple of months since I last picked up the goblins (I've been out of the tournament scene for the most part for a little while, and I played my RGW beats at the one I did attend) so the mana may want some adjustment.  Also, I've never actually tested the shusher in goblins in a tournament setting. I've been known to go without waste effects entirely if I think I need to strengthen the mana base, but I don't think you'd find many people who would get behind me on that.  Other cards I've played in the main in the past include sharpshooter and incinerater.  22 mana sources may be one too many- test it out.  I wouldn't take that straight list to a tourney without some serious testing and tweaking, but take it for a spin and see if it feels any smoother.