Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a brave new world! Modern Horizons has been legal for a few weeks now, and it shaped some decks depely, while creating brand new ones (looking at you Rhinos). Though our beloved boys got some serious hate in the set (Plague Engineer, and Wrenn and Six come to mind), we received lots of new toys that completely change how the boys are played. Today I’ll go through a few options here, so buckle up!

Classic Badboys

This badboy is a classic shell adjusted to use some of the more powerful cards we got in the set. The manabase is lacking Rishadan Port because you want a high Black count for your early spells, and in this meta, Volrath’s Stronghold and Karakas have been overperforming, which take the Port slots. Basic Swamp makes an appearance as well because you want to have B mana reliably against Wasteland decks or Back to Basics. Prismatic Vista is a new addition that helps finding it. The initial testing was done with two Vistas, but it just led to quite a few awkward situations where you need to fetch Badlands but can’t, so one was trimmed for another Red fetch, which is playing better. Still, having five ways to fetch your Basic is very valuable when needed.

Munition Expert makes a big appearance as a three of, but two or four are equally as correct. The card is extremely powerful. Now we have a 2drop removal to make Goblin Lackey past through pesky x/2s; We have an on curve removal for Vial when you Matron for it T3; We have an instant speed way of dealing with Planeswalkers and increasing our board at the same time. In multiple can kill very large Goyfs, Knights of the Reliquary, and I’ve even killed Griselbrand with it already. The downside is that RB can be somewhat awkward to cast sometimes, especially if you’re trying to cast multiple spells a turn. That is one of the reasons we still run Gempalm Incinerator. <>RRB is much easier to get than RBRB. Also, sometimes the 1/1 body and the extra damage can be somewhat irrelevant, and the card draw can be valuable, but I’m comfortable with the split so far.

Three Drops

The 3drop slot got quite an overhaul as well. The only new appearance is Pashalik Mons. The card is a pinger and a goblin making machine if you have enough mana. The fact that it doesn’t have to have haste to start pinging is very important, and comes up quite often. An interaction I really liked is vialing a Mogg War Marshal end of turn, then your Upkeep get vial up to 3 before the Echo trigger resolve, Vial in Pashalik and ping something. If you have 4 mana out you can even sac War Marshal to Pashaliks ability to get three fresh goblins instead of one. THE VALUE!

Note that any non-StP removal spell your opponent plays to kill one of your boys will create a ping. That means if you’re being Deluged with five Goblins in play, your opponent is taking a Goblin Grenade to the face. It also makes combat extremely favourable, specially if you have four mana available.

The massive change in this mana slot is the reduction of haste lords though. Both Goblin Warchief and Goblin Chieftain are pairing really badly against a big chunk of the format. Playing a 3 drop against any Izzet or Grixis deck, and hoping to untap, is a recipe for losing. Therefore I’m only on 2 now. The split is because they are both good in different situations, and you want to fetch them for different purposes. If Plague Engineer wasn’t a card I’d probably just play 2 Warchiefs because they pair better with Prospector/MWM/Piledriver, but Chieftain has its moments as well.

Four Drops

On the 4drops we have definitely my favourite card in the set. Sling-Gang Lieutenant. This card is straight up replacing Siege-Gang Commander (any similarities are definitely not intentional). Sige-Gang is extremely powerful in goblins, but the upsides it has over Sling-Gang (being a 2/2, adding an extra body and being able to hit Creatures and Planeswakers) are overweight against it’s five mana casting cost and it’s <>R Activation cost. The huge strengths of Sling Gang then are: Being a four drop. Vial can now sit at four for the rest of the game and always be useful. This also comes down a turn earlier; Not having to pay mana to use it’s activated ability. This means a few things. You pretty much always get to use him, even in response to removal. You can block and sacrifice a token without having to leave mana open, which means avoiding Jitte counters, Batterskull lifelink, draining and more. Also important, you can always get it into your graveyard in response to Swords to Plowshares, meaning you’ll have it for Volrath’s Stronghold eventually in grindy games; Gaining life. This is huge. A couple of life points can mean a whole turn, and against many decks that can determine a win or a loss. Gaining a turn against Delver, True-Name, Burn, and even against Depths is game changing. Also, against Storm they usually have to go to a higher storm count; Lastly, it allows not only to finish your opponent more swiftly, but it enables some combo kills out of nowhere. Paired with Pashalik, any War Marshal translate to 6 damage. Very often it just goes around board stalls by bypassing the need to attack. A few other considerations is that it can ignore former locks in Glacial Chasm and Energy Field, and makes a killing against an Elephant Grass or Ensnaring bridge much more feasible.

Sideboard

Running a heavy black manabase allows us to run Cabal Therapy, which is extremely good in a list with Mogg War Marshals. Therapy then make Surgical Extraction a more appealing card as well. The only new addition to the sideboard comes in the form of a card that is also really good against us. Plague Engineer. The card is nuts. Kills True-Name Nemesis, Elves, lots of Humans and has been very good against Izzet Delver as well. If you name Human it kills unflipped Delvers, Young Pyromancer, Snapcaster Mage and Grim Lavamancer. Naming Wizard gets Delver and Lavamancer, but also makes Dreadhorde Arcanist into a 0/2, which means it can’t flashback anything. Obviously you can also name Merfolk for True-Name Nemesis. Tricks with Vial make it a very scary card as well. You can Vial it in after Arcanist trigger, and they won’t be able to cast the spell on resolution because the target is now illegal. It makes attacking with dumb cards like Tamogoyf or Gurmag Angler very awkward, because what lots of people forget is that it has Deathtouch. Card has quite a few layers and makes combat a thing of beauty.

Lackeyless Boys

Even though we received some new toys, some of our cards pair very badly against some of the new cards and decks appearing in the metagame. As I mentioned before, haste lords pair very badly against Dreadhorde Arcanist for instance. Wrenn and Six makes Goblin Lackey very awkward sometimes. So does Plague Engineer. With that in mind, and revisiting a build without Lackeys I created with Eli and Stephen some months ago, this beauty was created:

Lackless Boys

(61 cards. Cut Whatever)

This list and those similar to it have 5-0d leagues by multiple pilots (including me=)). It tries to abuse Cabal Therapy with Mogg War Marshal, Pashalik with sacrifice outlets, and play multiple Sling-Gangs to reliably and often just throw everything at the opponent. The lack of Lackeys and haste lords have been justified already, but the reduced number of Ringleaders can look weird. The list runs a total of 27 goblins, which makes Ringleader much less reliable. It is still very valuable to just draw even 1 or 2 cards with it, and sometimes you can just lucksack, which justify the inclusion of one of them. The rest of the deck has is a thing of beauty. Thoughtseize is just an additional discard to have it early more often. Fanatic and Prospector are staples in lists that enhance their power, and Goblin Chirurgeon (aka Doc.Gob.) is a sweet sweet addition to that 1drop list. That 0/2 makes so that your non-Swords to Plowshares opponent can only kill the creatures YOU want to die. It protects your Pashalik, Sling-Gang or Krenko. Or even Plague Engineer! It is a sac outlet for Mons as well which can be very relevant.

Reanimate is card I started testing soon, but has won me quite a few games already. Not only it brings back all your goblins, but with discard spells and combat it can use your opponent graveyard against the quite often as well. And usually the life loss is not relevant.

The heavier B manabase makes Warren Weirding’s a playable card, and the lack of Ringleader, haste lords and more focus on combo-kills make Stingscourger be more lackluster.

I want to justify Krenko over here as well, because it looks odd without haste lords. However, he is much more reliable in this list because of all the discard and because of Doc.Gob. And he obviously synergises extremely well with the rest of the deck.

Moving to the Sideboard, you cannot use cards like Pyrokinesis because you don’t recoup the card disadvantage that easily. But you can play heavier cards like multiple Engineers, because the discard spells should buy you enough turns for you to be able to cast your better cards.

Magmatic Sinkhole is another weird one. It conflicts a bit with our Graveyard strategy, but it deals with problematic cards (Arcanist, Angler, Liliana, The Last Hope, Wrenn) quite swiftly.

The list is still, quite obviously, a work in progress, and as of now I’m testing multiple cards for it, including: Cabal Therapist, Unearth, Lightning Bolt, Kolaghan’s Command, Clickslither, Voracious Dragon, Putrid Goblin, more Doc.Gobs, and more.

Echoing Boys

This idea comes from the mind of Francesco Bettarini (Memories of the Time on Discord). It utilises Mana Echoes along with Grenzo, Dungeon Warden to create an overwhelming supply of goblins, that you can use to kill your opponent by either attacking, Saccing things to Prospector to trigger Pashalik, or just Sling-Gang them to death. Before playing the deck I did not realize the amount of mana it can actually generate. It’s absurd. This list deserves a special mention as well because Grenzo, Dungeon Warden just became much better with Modern Horizons. Being able to flip a Munitions Expert is insane. And the same goes for Pashalik and Sling-Gang.

Mana Echos Boys

Starting with the manabase again, we forfeit Wastelands here because we’re aiming to cast expensive cards as soon as possible. Ancient Tomb and Moxes help with that. My first version had a basic Swamp and it was extremely awkward trying to get to 2RR. It’s worth noting that Ancient Tomb is really good with Grenzo as well, often meaning 1 extra activation faster. It also plays well with Pashalik. Speaking of him, the tokens entering play activate Mana Echoes as well. If you have Pashalik, Prospector, Mana Echoes, and any other creature in play, you have infinite mana and damage.

The sideboard here is quite different because we use fast mana. That means we can more reliably cast [v]Chalice of the Void[/c] at 1, Sphere or Thorn turn 1, or Spyglass. This one is played instead of Pithing Needle not only because it’s awesome, but because of the lack of synergy with Chalice.

I’ve found the hardest part with this decklist is the actual sideboarding. The deck needs to maintain a number of creatures to be able to go off with Grenzo and Echoes, so cutting goblins for Sideboard cards it’s really tough. I’ll try to create a version with just goblins as Sideboard cards and see how that goes.

Hungry Boys

I have played with Food Chain over a decade ago, in a list that could T2 people by attacking with five 4/1 hasty Matron tokens, but that was clunky as hell. This new version is a courtesy of Ethan Richards (BossKrenko on Twitch and Discord), and feels very powerful. It aims to play Food Chain (dur) then Squee, the Immortal for nigh infinite mana, then play Sling-Gang and sacrifice Squee to kill your opponent.

Hungry Boys

Other then the aforementioned combo, Food Chain allows some more sweet synergies in the deck. The list play with seven 2drops that stick in the board (unlike Mogg War Marshal), because if you have a turn three Food Chain, you can attack your opponent with your 2drop, remove to Food Chain to cast a Matron, find Earwig Squad, then cast it using Matron for mana.

This list also plays multiple Whirlers because it can more reliably cast them because of Food Chain and the 18 R mana sources in the deck.

It’s also worth noting that Food Chain can just sometimes loop Ringleaders and find enough goblins to go for the kill, even without comboing.

Lastly be aware that Food Chain mana only lets you cast creature spells, so it’s no good for activating Pashalik Mons ability for instance. If you have a Prospector also along with the Squee and Food Chain you can use it to filter the mana. Or just sacrifice Squee over and over because you have Pashalik, so your opponent is dead already either way.

One thing I must tell you is DO NOT buy this one online. To kill and opponent at 20 life, after you have Food Chain and Squee and Sling Gang in play, it takes about 450 clicks in different places to perform the loop. That is A LOT of time, so knock yourself out if you want to, but it’s certainly not for me.

Afterword

I hope I could widen your perspective on how to build Goblins in Legacy. This are just a few of many, many options. If this is well received I can write about the Turbo Boys (with Chalice of the Void maindeck), Brown Boys (with Karn and Birthing Pod), Dazed Boys (Izzet Boys), Bog Boys (Mono Black boys that Ethan sometimes plays online) and more. So let me know what you think and see you next time!

Marcel Scatena

Marcelo is a Goblin aficionado living in London that has been playing with the deck since it came out. Loves the small things in life like having his full black boarded opponent have to read all his cards, to laugh at them, only to proceed to the concede step after 3 Tarfires to the face later.

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