Modern Musings: Modern Guild Brews

Hey everyone! Welcome to another Modern Musings!  Today I’m going to talk about some Guilds of Ravnica Modern brews.  More specifically something I’m calling G/R Rabble.  I’m interested in this deck because we got a new card called Legion Warboss that does a very good impression of Goblin Rabblemaster.  Though he can’t trade up like Rabblemaster can, he still goes wide just as well.  This means that we can have an effective eight Rabblemasters in the same deck.  Let’s take a look at what we would need to make a deck like this work.

Important Pieces

If we plan on making a more midrange based Goblins deck, then we are going to need the mana acceleration to do so.

While Simian Spirit Guide isn’t a goblin, it allows us to get a turn-2 Rabblemaster and pairs well with Warren Instigator, which gives it the ability to be played on turn 1.  Then we have Birds of Paradise, which is just a nice turn-1 mana accelerant.  What are some of the payoffs that we can reap from this fast mana?

With only 8 total non-creature cards in our deck (including himself), Domri should draw us a card a respectable amount of the time, and Collected Company should always hit.  Goblin Chieftain is a nice lord that makes our goblins bigger and hasty, While Chainwhirler is a big first-striker that deals nicely with 1 toughness creatures.

Utility Goblins

First up on our list of utility goblins, we have Goblin Cratermaker, and while I’ve talked about him at length before, he helps us kill problematic creatures and artifacts that might otherwise give us trouble.

Legion Loyalist is definitely one of my all-time favorite aggressive cards and works very well with Goblin Rabblemaster.  Not only does Rabblemaster basically automatically trigger battalion for Loyalist, but the trigger helps mitigate the “other Goblins must attack” clause he has by giving all your creatures first strike.

As mentioned earlier, Warren Instigator basically functions as a Goblin Lackey in our deck, allowing us to empty our hand onto the board with a single swing.  Then when we have lords he turns into a sizable and scary beater.

Foundry Street Denizen profits handsomely from all the Goblin tokens that we are putting into play.  When he’s alongside Legion Loyalist he can attack with impunity, though even at his worst this guy tends to trade up.

Ultimately, while I like the list, it feels as though I didn’t really get to put in a lot of the cards I wanted to.  I realized that I wanted to go bigger and include cards like Siege-Gang Commander. I feel like I was too limited by Collected Company when building this, so I decided to build a different deck utilizing the new Goblin that gets to run some of the higher CMC Goblins.

This deck is probably not quite as competitive as the previous list, but I do get to run some sweet cards like Goblin King and Boggart Mob, cards I love, but haven’t had the chance to play in years.  I think one of the prime takeaways from this experience is that Modern Goblins can be built a variety of ways. There is probably a version that takes advantage of the reprinted Goblin Warchief, and there are numerous versions of Goblins that take advantage of Skirk Prospector.  For example, you can combine Prospector and Fecundity, along with various other Goblins, to draw your deck and then Grapeshot  your opponents to death.  Or you can just use it alongside Metallic Mimic and Murderous Redcap to deal infinite damage and gain infinite mana.

Anyway, that’s all for this week. What do you guys think? What’s your take on Goblins? Be sure to let me know in the comments!  I’ll see you guys next week for more exciting Guilds of Ravnica brews!