Goblins are in a bad way in modern. With the huge amount of Rhinos, one of our worst matchups everywhere, and the prevalence of very interactive value decks leveraging the new Leyline of the Guildpact, it has been tough to have any success with the deck.
I have recently decided to start taking modern more seriously and traveling to competitive events more regularly. So obviously I have put down Goblins and picked up a T1 deck like Yawg, right?
WRONG
When the meta is against you, don’t fold and join in! You gotta brew your way out of that sticky situation! So I have been working on this new list that I am taking to the upcoming Mega Modern in London.
The key new card in the deck is Break Out, an RG sorcery from Murders at Karlov Mannor!
Break Out acts almost like a mini Collected Company, allowing you to look at the top 6 cards of your deck and select a creature card from among them. If that creature has a CMC 2 or less you may put it into play with haste, otherwise you put it into your hand.
So why does this matter for goblins? Traditionally the stock goblin list is Rakdos, although there are Jund lists that float around ( I love my Jund lists but they ain’t great ). Break Out here gives a very strong reason to go three colour. However, this does come at the cost of the lovely simple mana base that us goblin freaks have come to know and love.
So how does it play?
The normal fastest combo for the deck is Turn 2 Snoop, Turn 3 Harby. Break Out doesn’t actually accelerate the combo, but it does improve the consistency. I am not going to go into how I calculated the probabilities here (Look out for a full breakdown and the tools to do it yourself in the MTG stats and tools page SOON TM) but the traditional goblin list can hit the turn three combo around 17.4% of the time. Note: this doesn’t include the probability of having the correct lands or mulligans as I am still working on the tools. With Break Out that increases to 43.5%, a rough increase of 2.5 times.
So that’s great! Improving the chance that you can combo on T3 helps a lot vs decks like Hammer Time and Amtam where it’s really just a combo race. However, getting a snoop down isn’t the hard part about combing off it’s getting it to stick and not eat some efficient removal spell.
The other main value the card adds is its improvement to the chance of drawing any 2 drop. With breakout any 2 of 2 drops in the deck have a similar chance to be played on turn 2! This has made the deck feel amazingly consistent!
The second main bit of tech this opens up is Souless Jailer for Rhinos! I run 4 in the board breaking out into one is very nice, especially as a lot of their removal stumbles with the 4 toughness. And boi let me tell you, nothing is more satisfying than in response to a cascade spell activating Aether Vial and putting one in!
I am also playing my favorite sexy elf himbo Tyvar, Jubilant brawler. I’m not 100 percent on him but with this many 2 drops you almost never miss!
Here’s the list if you are interested! I highly recommend it :
Deck
4 Aether Vial
2 Arid Mesa
2 Battle Cry Goblin
3 Blood Crypt
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Boggart Harbinger
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
4 Break Out
3 Cavern of Souls
4 Conspicuous Snoop
1 Forest
2 Goblin Matron
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
2 Legion Loyalist
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Mogg Fanatic
2 Mogg War Marshal
1 Mountain
2 Munitions Expert
3 Rundvelt Hordemaster
2 Skirk Prospector
2 Sling-Gang Lieutenant
3 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
2 Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
Sideboard
1 Blood Moon
2 Bonecrusher Giant
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Magus of the Moon
1 Molten Collapse
2 Pick Your Poison
4 Soulless Jailer
1 Veil of Summer
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