Oh
no, all the speed has gone out of Magic and most of the new cards in Onslaught
have stupidly high Mana costs!!!
Well, actually no, because you can now have 8
mana on turn three (wow)… And with no Elves in sight. (double wow)
No Green….. Mmm, Could it be Black then?….
Well No!
It's Red ! What?! Yes it's true. But why has this happened? What made the R&D team decide to give Red, Mana acceleration like never before?…. Well I have no idea.
Here's how..
Turn one Mountain, Goblin.
Turn two Mountain, 2 Goblins (Obviously all 1cc, one needs to be a Goblin
Prospector)
Turn three Mountain, Brightstone Ritual, tap the other 2 Mountains and Sac.
the Goblins for 8
You may however just use the Ritual and Lands, and not Sac. the Goblins, and this would give you only enough Mana to cast a Reckless Charged Blistering Firecat and do a mere 10 trample!, I guess at a push I could live with that!! Also, name a deck that can deal with 13ish points of damage before it's played a third land? We'll see.
Blue, Blue, Blue
I was in love with you
Blue, Blue, Blue
R&D have F***ed with you
The Counters get worse and worse, the Card drawing is becoming Sorcery based…and still they refuse to bring back Morphling !! Damn it!
Anyway, here is a Red Goblin deck I've made and started to test (so far, so good!)
Charlie the Goblin
4 Raging Goblin
2 Goblin Raider
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Sparksmith
4 Goblin Prospector
4 Blistering Firecat
4 Rorix Bladewing
4 Brightstone Ritual
4 Violent Eruption
4 Reckless Charge
3 Goblin Burrows
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
2 Karplusan Forest
13 Mountains
Nothing too difficult here!, you play Goblins and you
attack and if you need to use the Sparksmith to clear the way for more attacks
then you do just that. The Ritual allows you to cast Bladewing and Cats quickly
to increase the damage, and the burn is to help finish them off.
Since testing this deck I have made some changes to strengthen it against
problematic match-ups and it currently looks like this..
Goblin' the Cat (thanks to Wayne for the name!)
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Goblin Prospector
4 Sparksmith
4 Goblin Pyromancer
2 Goblin Raider
3 Blistering Firecat
4 Rorix Bladewing
3 Reckless Charge
3 Violent Eruption
4 Brightstone Ritual
3 Burning Wish
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Forest
4 Karplusan Forest
2 Goblin Burrows
10 Mountains
SB
4 Shock
2 Naturalize
4 Anger
1 Blaze
1 Wake of Indifference
1 Tranquility
1 Hurricane
1 Reckless Charge
The first thing to note here is the lack of Raging
Goblin, he has been replaced with Goblin Sledder (for now anyway!) he gives
you the ability to sac Goblins to pump up other critters.
He also acts as an extra 4 ways to sac Goblins, on
top of the 4 Prospectors. This allows you to play the otherwise risky Goblin
Pyromancer, giving all the Goblins +3,+0 until the end of turn but then having
to sac all Goblins at the end of turn. You simply sac him to the Prospector
or Sledder to save all the other dudes.
The second obvious change is Burning Wish. The main
deck wishes allow you to get cards like Tranquillity even in game one. The
selection of Sorcery spells in the sideboard should reflect your local metagame.
They are "bombs" to help you out of problematic situations, cards
that you don't want main deck, but that are key to victory in certain situations.
In the land set up I now have 2 Forests and 4 Karplussan
Forest to help out with the Green sideboard cards whether wished for or not,
And the 4 Wooded Foothills to get whatever land I need and to also thin the
deck of unneeded extra land.
In the Sideboard I have 4 Anger, this is mainly for
Control Black. I found out at my own expense at the Bath National Qualifier
just how much Black Control hates Haste! They also add a forth creature type
to slightly weaken Engineered Plague. The Plague is not good for this deck,
you will need to Wish for a Tranquillity or draw a Boarded Naturalize as soon
as possible!
Since the changes the deck has got a lot better
and can beat anything in the current Standard bracket, however it can also
be really crap sometimes too! So this would be a risky deck to play but if
things go your way you could not lose a game all day.
There are a number of other Sligh builds around that
are more focused on weenie rushing, but I have used the acceleration elements
available to use Rorix Brokenwing as a Dragon beat stick, which is fun if
nothing else!
Have fun, and bring a friend!
Stuart