My Commander deck 1: Wort's Goblin Horde

First of all, it turns out that being a new dad is considerably more time consuming that I had anticipated, so this is my first post for a good while (almost 6 weeks in fact). However, I think that things might be calming down now, and I will hopefully get chance to update this blog much more frequently again.

This post is the first in hopefully a series of posts about the Magic: the Gathering format, Commander. I am a huge fan of Commander, and it is my favourite way of playing Magic. I got into it when looking for a way to use a good portion of my collection in new ways. I have a collection that is wide in nature rather than deep, due to having been in and out of the game since the late 1990s. A format that allows me to build 100 card decks that have only one of each card in them sounds great to me. I dabbled with a few ideas of what to build for my first deck, but settled eventually on Goblins, as they are fun and fast to play, and I really felt like I would enjoy a Goblin Commander deck. I had a few problems building it, but here is the deck list as it stands currently:

General

Creature (30)

• 1x Archetype of Finality
• 1x Blackcleave Goblin
• 1x Caterwauling Boggart
• 1x Festering Goblin
• 1x Flamestick Courier
• 1x Foundry Street Denizen
• 1x Goblin Battle Jester
• 1x Goblin Chieftain
• 1x Goblin Gaveleer
• 1x Goblin Grappler
• 1x Goblin Piledriver
• 1x Goblin Shortcutter
• 1x Goblin Sledder
• 1x Goblin Turncoat
• 1x Goblin Warchief
• 1x Guttersnipe
• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1x Krenko's Enforcer
• 1x Mad Auntie
• 1x Mogg War Marshal
• 1x Reckless One
• 1x Rock Jockey
• 1x Rummaging Goblin
• 1x Siege-Gang Commander
• 1x Skirk Commando
• 1x Skirk Drill Sergeant
• 1x Spikeshot Goblin
• 1x Tsabo Tavoc
• 1x Wall of Fire
• 1x Warren Pilferers

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Act of Treason
• 1x Burn at the Stake
• 1x Cleaver Riot
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Fireball
• 1x Goblin Rally
• 1x Goblin War Strike
• 1x Krenko's Command
• 1x Pillar of Flame
• 1x Rupture
• 1x Sizzle
• 1x Survey the Wreckage
• 1x Vandalblast

Land (33)

• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Goblin Burrows
• 16x Mountain
• 1x Opal Palace
• 4x Swamp
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Malice
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse

Instant (5)

• 1x Dogpile
• 1x Dynacharge
• 1x Fling
• 1x Massive Raid
• 1x Titan's Strength

Artifact (12)

• 1x Akroma's Memorial
• 1x Bladed Pinions
• 1x Bonesplitter
• 1x Hall of Triumph
• 1x Mask of Avacyn
• 1x Ring of Three Wishes
• 1x Ring of Valkas
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Slagwurm Armor
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Barrage of Expendables
• 1x Five-Alarm Fire
• 1x Goblin War Paint
• 1x Goblinslide
• 1x Madcap Skills
• 1x War Cadence

 Building this deck gave me an immediate issue: who to chose as a Commander? I didn't actually have a Legendary Goblin, so actually settled initially on Tsabo Tavoc, as she gave me access to both red and black, and there are some interesting goblin cards in black. The second colour also gave me access to some really good spells, and some card draw, a weakness for red. With this in mind I searched my collection for suitable goblins, and quickly found I had far more than I could ever include in the deck, so that was a good thing. There were some auto-includes on that list (Siege-Gang Commander, Goblin Piledriver, and Goblin Warchief) plus some that I could see would be interesting to include. The first draft of the deck (which I no longer retain the list for, unfortunately) was a very fast, much more creature focused list, with few artifacts and only a handful of spells. I confidently took it along to Nebula Custom Gaming, and promptly lost badly! Later I tried it out with some friends and was convinced it wasn't good. So back to the drawing board.










 Development

So I needed a real goblin for a Commander, and that pointed me toward Wort, Boggart Auntie. She gave me access to my two colours still, and also allows me to bring back a dead goblin every turn for free. This is very useful, as goblins die very easily. Many folk kept telling me to use Krenko, Mob Boss, and this was tempting. However, he is mono-red, and that ruled out my black goblins, plus I can also make sure he stays on the table by pulling him out of my yard with Wort, so I decided on the Boggart Auntie.

Once I had my new Commander in place, I needed a strategy. In my first runs, the goblins came out of the gate fast, but very quickly became outclassed, and I was left with an empty hand. To further compound this, Wort kept on being removed due to her lack of protection, and this meant she couldn't get goblins back out. So first of all I needed some protection for her: Slagwurm Armor, Whispersilk Cloak, Swiftfoot Boots and Mask of Avacyn were selected to loan Wort some protection, and the inclusion of all four allows some redundancy. In addition, each had their own little advantage, so Whispersilk Cloak allowed for unblockable Commander damage, Slagwurm Armor is transferable should it need to be, and Mask of Avacyn allows for a small power boost. Due to the width of my collection, I had all of these cards in my collection and this meant I didn't need to buy them in. This is a heck of a boon!

So now my Commander was protected, I needed some win conditions in the deck. Here I wanted to give myself some variety. The usual goblin modus operandi of swarm isn't that great in Commander, so it needed something else. Here I added Blackcleave Goblin, to allow me to hit my opponent with Infect (10 points of Infect damage and the game is over for my opponent.). Wort allows me to pull this card out of the graveyard when it dies, and the addition of Whispersilk Cloak allows it to get in often... nasty.
Krenko, Mob Boss comes in for the next few conditions: swarm is made much better when you have potentially tens of new goblins each turn. These can then be used as ammunition for Siege-Gang Commander, and also for Barrage of Expendables to cause damage to my opponents directly for the cost of some replaceable tokens. Massive raid allows me to hit with a large amount of damage due to high creature numbers, as does Dogpile and Goblin War Strike. To make the swarm really useful I added in Akroma's Memorial: this artifact allows me to have have a swarm of flying, haste, first strike, trample and protection goblins. The other lord effects on some of the goblins (Mad Auntie, Goblin Chieftan) and Hall of Triumph add to the goblin's power which mean the weak horde all of a sudden looks much tougher.

Finally i looked at how I could solve my card draw problem. In a word: Skullclamp! Owning a wide selection of cards really helps when you realise one of the most broken cards ever is in your collection. This artifact allows me to kill off goblin tokens for 2 cards at the cost of one mana. If this card gets going, things get horrible very quickly. If I can tutor this up, then the deck really takes off. It is very vulnerable to removal, however,  and the deck hasn't got a way of recovering it.



Outcome

Once these changes were made, the deck got a whole lot more effective! When I don't get the chance to build up, then keeping Wort alive and using her to hit for Commander damage proves very effective. Allowing the goblin horde to grow gets really scary, as the card draw allowed by Skullclamp, and the tokens or Festering Goblin being the fuel for it mean that i can get ahead on card advantage very quickly, making the deck pretty scary. However it isn't so scary that you get ganged up on, and it certainly is fun to play.

Areas for Improvements

There are some obvious ways that this deck could be improved. First off, I think it could do with more card draw. I need to add some black card draw cards, perhaps Sign in Blood, or Read the Bones: Bitter Revelation may also help here as it could add goblins to the graveyard that Wort can pull out. Bloodgift Demon could help with the card draw as well as adding a large flyer, which is another area the deck is weak.

The deck lacks for mass removal, and therefor something like Mizzium Mortars or Drown in Sorrow might help on that front, but this may just remains a place this deck stays weak.

So that is my goblin deck. I am enjoying playing it, and I am now working on improving it and also foiling it out, for sheer bling value. The next article will look at a different deck completely, one that I built with a specific strategy in mind: Selesnya Tokens.