Last time, I spoke at length about two of the most prevalent Goblin decks over the course of MTG history – Legacy Goblins and Extended Goblin Bidding – and went into the nuts and bolts of how each deck functioned at a structural level, and what pieces might be applicable looking forward to the coming of Goblin Ringleader. The key takeaway from examining previous Goblin decks is that cheating on mana is good. So good in fact that there are whole hosts of decks over the course of history that are built to cheat mana in some way, either directly like Show and Tell or indirectly like Tarmogoyf. It is a topic that is rarely talked about, but all good decks cheat on mana in some way, whether it’s a mechanic or just an under-costed fatty. Goblins is much the same. The core of any Modern Goblin deck is going to be ways to cheat mana, ways to give haste, and using Goblin Matron to find game winning goblins. In Modern there are a lot of options for how to cheat on mana: Aether Vial, Skirk Prospector, Warren Instigator, Frogtosser Banneret, and Goblin Warchief. Which is best and what do each look like? Let’s talk.

I want to start with one mana plays. Aether Vial is almost certainly correct, being proven in both Legacy and other Modern decks. I suspect the Extended decks would have also played it, had it not been banned. Vial does everything goblins wants: it cheats on mana, it makes goblins uncounterable, it gives them flash, it’s a one drop in a deck that has a severe lack of one drops (no, Goblin Guide doesn’t count). The only other one drop that generates mana is Skirk Prospector, either by himself or in conjunction with Mogg War Marshal. He also has the benefit of being great at combating Bridge from Below strategies, which is a remarkable trait to have right now. Based upon the successful Goblin tenets I discussed last time, I believe these to be the only playable one mana cards. There are some significantly weaker one mana cards to discuss as they relate to Warren Instigator, but that bridge can be crossed when we get there. Aether Vial and Skirk Prospector are the only ones I advocate for playing.

So, here is the rub. There are a lot of two drop goblins that have solid arguments for seeing play in Modern. All of these on the left you could convince me to play in some number. However, that doesn’t mean that all of them function the same or that they are equal in deck building consideration. The first of these I want to talk bout are the interactive ones: Goblin Cratermaker, Munitions Expert, and Stingscourger.

Sadly, none of these cards are as good as Gempalm Incinerator. The uncounterable Terminate plus draw is unrivaled as far as goblin specific removal goes. Its closest analogy is Munitions Expert, who is a Terminate/Dreadbore plus a 1/1 body which, while not bad per se, does fail to live up to his predecessor’s abilities. That said, Munitions Expert is likely going to be the best generic option to bring. However, the ability of Cratermaker’s and Stingscourger’s to punish colorless cards or Gurmag Angler/Thing in the Ice style cards should not be underestimated, should the Modern meta shift heavily into those strategies again.

Mogg War Marshal, on the other hand, is a Swiss army knife. It will always do something good, should your deck be built to utilize him. Which it should. At his absolute worst, Marshal is two bodies for two mana, which is fair, but that is really the tip of the iceberg as far as what this card can actually do. The next step up is two bodies and gain however much life the Marshal himself blocks. Bodies on the board turns into damage very quickly with Sling Gang Lieutenant, Krenko, Munitions Expert, Goblin Piledriver or Goblin Chieftain. Factor in Skirk Prospector and Marshal becomes a Pyretic Ritual. Skirk Prospector and a way to reduce costs, such as Frogtosser or Warchief? You’ve built yourself a Dark Ritual. The ceiling on this card is so high, that not playing it is almost certainly wrong.

Let’s talk about Warren Instigator. This card is not Goblin Lackey. For double the cost, you get to cheat in double the goblins, which doesn’t seem that bad. The issue arises when you start thinking about windows of opportunity. What I mean by windows of opportunity is the space in any given game of Magic where any certain card is operating most effectively. Each competitively playable card has a different window of opportunity, and not all windows are equal in size or impact. For example, playing Tarmogoyf on turn two as a 3/4 is a good window for Tarmogoyf to operate and succeed at either controlling the board defensively or attacking your opponent aggressively because he outclasses other threats in the same window. Tarmogoyf’s window of opportunity closes when the other player plays a Primeval Titan. At this point, Tarmogoyf no longer has the opportunities to attack or defend that he had previously, as he becomes irrelevant to the evolving board state. Tarmogoyf is effective until Primeval Titan is played. Afterwards, he is not.

What makes Lackey, and by extension Instigator, powerful is their shared ability to cheat on mana. While Instigator has the potential to cheat on more mana, his window of opportunity is much smaller when compared to Lackey’s, because Lackey can begin attacking a whole turn earlier and the opposition Lackey encounters is much more pliable than that of Warren Instigator, as there are less one mana creatures are interested in blocking in Legacy, especially during 2011-2012 where Goblins was at its peak. In contrast, there are a lot more creatures interested in blocking on turn two and especially turn three in Modern. Because Instigator on his own cannot attack until the third turn and Instigator is operating within the confines of the Modern format, his window of opportunity is almost explicitly limited to turn three. Make no mistake, this is slow. All magic is contextual and this is really really slow in the context of Modern. There are scenarios where this window is open, such as against Tron, UW Control, Valakut, and lesser played decks like Storm. Those situations are great, collect your free mana. However, there are many decks where Instigator’s window is never open, such as against Humans or Hogaak. There are certain one mana goblins you can play to extend Instigator’s window, such as Torch Courier or Goblin Motivator. However, playing bad cards to make medium cards good, is bad. This card feasts and this card famines, no matter how you look at it.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Frogtosser Banneret. Where Warren Instigator will sometimes create a lot of mana and sometimes create zero mana, this card will always make mana provided you have cards to play (a caveat that also accompanies Instigator). Frogtosser’s window of opportunity is much bigger than his red mana counterpart, because it is not hinged upon needing a clear battlefield and will always reduce the cost of goblins. He is consistent. Consistency matters. I spoke at length last time about how this card creates bursts of mana and how Extended Goblin decks leveraged this into heavily favorable or game winning board states in my last article. What is especially noteworthy is how well the bursts of mana that this card generates works in conjunction with Aether Vial. Aether Vial’s largest window comes on turns three and four, when it can cast two and three mana creatures. There is a reason that the dominant strategy for Aether Vial decks is to alpha strike on those turns to seal a game. Merfolk does it, Humans does it, Taxes does it, old school Ravager Affinity did it, etc. Those turns are when Aether Vial is the strongest, so Aether Vial decks naturally aim to leverage that window into a victory. Frogtosser shares that window. Compounding advantages is how games are won. Overlapping windows of opportunity is a compound advantage. Having Frogtosser and Aether Vial on turn three should enable you to play every card in your hand, provided your deck is structured to do so. That is powerful.

Which leads us to the last of the power two drops, the legend himself, Goblin Piledriver. There is a certain hesitancy in goblin communities to discuss this card, and I don’t understand why. This card does everything any goblin deck wants to do. It turns your swarm of creatures into more damage than they would be otherwise. It ends games on opponents who aren’t looking to interact with you. It trades into things that are bigger than X/1. Piledriver is great at converting haste into damage. It is unblockable in some matches. Between Bloodghast, Narcomoeba, and Prized Amalgam, how is Dredge going to block this card? Thopter Foundry tokens? Drives right through them. Snapcasters? Colonnades? Jaces? Teferis? Awoken Horrors? Stand aside. It proudly gives the middle finger to the Merfolk players; their tribe got replaced by Humans, and Humans are boring. I can walk out of my House and see humans every where, what now Merfolk players?!

Sorry, I got carried away.

Embellishment aside, the window of opportunity on Piledriver almost never diminishes because of his ability to become much larger than his mana cost suggests, his effectiveness with haste to surprise opponents with large amounts of damage, and create situations that are win-win for Goblin players. For instance, attacking with just two other goblins and Piledriver into a Gurmag Angler creates the choice for the Angler player; take the Piledriver damage or lose your big fish. Piledriver is worst when he is alone on the board, but if you are winning, that should never be the case.

While there are certain Modern Goblin decks that may not want or shy away from Piledriver, he is just as good in 2019 in decks that capitalize on his advantages as he was in 2003 when Wolfgang Eder took him to 6th place finish at the world championships.

1722 words later, let’s talk about deck lists shall we?

The start of any good Goblin deck begins with Matron, Ringleader, and Warchief. This is the engine. Your Affinity for Artifacts. At the very worst, Matron finds Ringleader to find more goblins and Warchief makes them all into immediate threats. Decks that neglect these cards fight against the lessons of history. History almost always wins.

Disclaimer: These decks are not first draft decks. I have played these decks. I am not an expert deck building genius. The numbers might be wrong. The lands might be wrong. These decks are meant to illustrate a theory.

This is the first deck I want to discuss. This is not how I believe Modern Goblins should be built, as it doesn’t adhere to the lessons we’ve learned between part one and part two of this series, especially the proactive tutor targets lesson, but it does provide some uniqueness in comparison to the other two decks I have prepared. The purpose of this deck is to elongate Warren Instigator’s window of opportunity, either by giving him haste with Torch Courier or by clearing a path with Tarfire. I chose Torch Courier because the sacrifice is relevant in the Bridge from Below meta. All Magic is contextual. I chose Tarfire because it is a hit off of Goblin Ringleader. Tarfire may be incorrect, and can easily be substituted for Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Thoughtseize, whatever you’d like. The purpose is to have five cards that allow Instigator a larger window with which to create free mana. The rest of the deck is designed to showcase the value of free mana. Goblin Chainwhirler and Siege Gang Commander being played for free is big game. The downside of this approach is that Instigator incentivizes you to play a higher mana curve to be more rewarded when he works. This can lead to hands where you have four and five mana cards you do not get to cast before the game ends.

Instigator has a unique interaction with Goblin Matron that is especially noteworthy. Because of how double strike damage works, you are allowed to cheat a goblin twice, but the cheating doesn’t happen simultaneously because there are two damage steps. Knowing this, you can use Instigator to drop Matron into play with the first Instigator trigger, search out a tutor a target from the deck with Matron, then put the tutored goblin into play with the second Instigator trigger. In this deck, this interaction can lead to turn three kills. Consider the following sequence:

T1 Torch Courier
T2 Warren Instigator > Sacrifice Torch Courier for haste > Swing with Instigator > Put Matron into play > Matron finds Kiki-Jiki. On your opponent’s end step, copy Matron with Kiki-Jiki finding Sling Gang Lieutenant.
T3 Swing with Instigator > Put Sling Gang Lieutenant into play > Copy Matron with Kiki-Jiki finding Pashalik Mons > Put Pashalik Mons into play. Sacrifice the two Matron copies, the original Matron, Instigator, Sling Gang’s tokens, Kiki-Jiki, Pashlik Mons, and Sling Gang Lieutenant for 16 damage. Along with the 4 damage from the two Instigator hits, this is lethal.

While that fancy line of play does sound great; needing only two lands, Torch Courier, Matron, and Instigator to kill your opponent, it really highlights the need for Instigator to connect for these style of decks to function, because the back up plan is to cast three, four, and five mana cards for three, four, and five mana which is unlikely to be good enough in Modern.

Whereas the first deck is centered around Instigator, this deck utilizes him as a value card. If he connects, great! Enjoy your free mana! If he doesn’t, the deck is more robust because it comes along with other ways to cheat on mana, specifically the Skirk Prospector/Mogg War Marshal synergy and an increased number of Goblin Warchiefs to power out and give haste to real threats like Piledriver and Krenko. The tutor targets in this deck are much more refined than the previous deck, which aimed to get as much free mana as possible. Krenko and Sling Gang both end the game, with the first serving as an alpha strike and the second masquerading as Goblin Sharpshooter. This deck also features a combo kill in which Instigator only connects once, albeit a turn slower, in the following sequence:

T1 Skirk Prospector
T2 Warren Instigator
T3 Swing Warren Instigator > Put Matron into play > Matron finds Kiki-Jiki > Put Kiki-Jiki into play > Copy Matron with Kiki Jiki on your opponents end step finding Lightning Crafter
T4 > Sacrifice Instigator and the Matron Copy for red mana, tap your two lands to play Lightning Crafter championing Matron > Kiki copies Lightning Crafter championing Kiki-Jiki > Shoot your opponent for 3 damage > Sacrifice the copy of Lightning Crafter to Prospector > Kiki Jiki comes back and copies the original Lightning Crafter. Repeat.

While this deck is what I would call “fine” it still does not adhere to the theories we’ve discussed completely. Which leads us to the Goblin deck I advocate for –

Finally, a Goblin deck without 10 tutor targets! Finally, a Goblin deck that adheres to the logic and reasoning of decks past!

Shut up, I’m not biased.

This deck checks all the boxes. Cheat on mana? Check. Have proactive tutor targets? Check. Be aggressive? Check. Use overlapping windows of opportunity to create large advantages? Check. Benefit from their being less turns in a game? Check. Give the finger to Merfolk?! Check!

Six out of five ain’t bad.

This deck foregoes Warren Instigator entirely, choosing instead to run Frogtosser Banneret alongside the Skirk Prospector/Mogg War Marshal package and the full suite of Goblin Warchiefs to maximize the frequency that it can cheat on mana. There are six creatures that grant haste to all goblins for Krenko and Piledriver to capitalize on. The tutor targets are limited and game ending, Krenko and Sling being the premier closers. Where other decks are trying to extract value from Instigator’s narrow window of opportunity, this deck utilizes the overlapping windows of Froggy and Aether Vial to do what Goblins does best, turn sideways.

And really, what more is there to ask?



Addendum: In case it isn’t clear, I do not support running both Frogtosser and Instigator, because while cheating all of the mana is good, filling your deck with two mana 1/1’s is not.

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

A special thanks to Millo90 and Master Neo from the Goblins discord for giving me a ton of insight.

All images are owned by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast.