Warg! [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Aggro BR (Rakdos) Goblins

DavidBray

Creature (34)

• 1x Boggart Harbinger
• 1x Boggart Mob
• 1x Conspicuous Snoop
• 1x Dark-Dweller Oracle
• 1x Frogtosser Banneret
• 1x Goblin Chieftain
• 1x Goblin Guide
• 1x Goblin King
• 1x Goblin Lackey
• 1x Goblin Matron
• 1x Goblin Rabblemaster
• 1x Goblin Ringleader
• 1x Goblin Sharpshooter
• 1x Goblin Trashmaster
• 1x Goblin Warchief
• 1x Grenzo, Havoc Raiser
• 1x Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1x Knucklebone Witch
• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1x Lightning Crafter
• 1x Mad Auntie
• 1x Munitions Expert
• 1x Murderous Redcap
• 1x Muxus, Goblin Grandee
• 1x Pashalik Mons
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Sensation Gorger
• 1x Siege-Gang Commander
• 1x Skirk Prospector
• 1x Sling-Gang Lieutenant
• 1x Torbran, Thane of Red Fell
• 1x Warren Instigator

Land (34)

• 1x Auntie's Hovel
• 1x Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1x Blightstep Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Haunted Ridge
• 9x Mountain
• 1x Mutavault
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Secluded Courtyard
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Crippling Fear
• 1x Dreadbore
• 1x Fodder Launch
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Goblin Grenade
• 1x Kindred Charge
• 1x Patriarch's Bidding

Commander (1)

Artifact (8)

• 1x Herald's Horn
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Ruby Medallion
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Throne of the God-Pharaoh
• 1x Vanquisher's Banner

Instant (8)

• 1x Bedevil
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Dash Hopes
• 1x Deadly Rollick
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Thrilling Encore
• 1x Tibalt's Trickery

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Boggart Shenanigans
• 1x Fiery Emancipation
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Gratuitous Violence
• 1x Impact Tremors
• 1x Molten Echoes
• 1x Shared Animosity

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Maybeboard

Creature (5)

• 1x Boomstacker
• 1x Goblin Haberdasher
• 1x Legion Warboss
• 1x Marton Stromgald
• 1x Vial Smasher the Fierce

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Brazen Cannonade
• 1x Breath of Fury

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Chandra, Torch of Defiance

Land (1)

• 1x Cavern of Souls

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Minions' Murmurs

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Wort, Boggart Auntie goblin tribal deck looking to fill the board and not look back. Uses the cheapest goblin fodder available and a handful of damage multipliers to go wide as fast as possible.

Goblin Tribal

Making a quick start is crucial, and there is no more important accelerator for this than Goblin Lackey and - to a lesser extent - Warren Instigator. With no conditional CMCs, this means a Magical Cristmas Land with anything up to Muxus, Goblin Grandee as early as turn 2, and even when not a free build to the board presence. It certainly needs support, so Access Tunnel and Rogue's Passage are on hand to aid in getting combat damage through to the opponent.

Ensuring our hand stays full - so Goblin Lackey and Warren Instigator can keep putting goblins out - is the small but reliable Goblin Matron and the go big or go home Goblin Ringleader. Both keep the deck filled with gas and ticking along, and Goblin Ringleader can set up some windmill turns. Less reliable still, is Sensation Gorger which doesn't always fire as expected, but allows us to keep gas coming, especially if our hand is empty at the start of the turn. Boggart Harbinger lets us look, also, but as it doesn't put the card into our hand, we need the assistance of these other cards to make it shine, but it can be a great set-up tool.

But what are we hoping to find. Anything goblin, really, but lords are a pretty good catch, and we have lots of those. Each grants something different, be it speed (Goblin Chieftain), pseudo-unblockable (Goblin King), protection (Mad Auntie), solutions to problems (Goblin Trashmaster); or explosive finishers (Hobgoblin Bandit Lord). Usually the Haste from Goblin Chieftain is the most important, but triggaring Hobgoblin Bandit Lord after a huge token spawn from Krenko, Mob Boss can be a beautiful thing.

Similar pump comes from Vanquisher's Banner in artifact-form. Pretty much any pump artifacts work, here, but the speed of these two helps us keep our deck pushing on, at the cost of larger pumps.

Cheating goblins out, sadly, is not always possible, and for that reason we have Goblin Warchief, Frogtosser Banneret and Herald's Horn to reduce their casting costs and get the deck moving. Usually we only need 1, as goblins tend to only have a little colourless mana in their casting costs, so we don't want too many copies of this effect.

So, if we are reducing mana costs and cheating cards out, what are we curving up to? Goblins don't tend to do huge mana costs, but at the higher end we have Goblin Rabblemaster charging in, Krenko, Mob Boss making huge board states, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker typically copying lords, Siege-Gang Commander setting up some expensive pings, Sling-Gang Lieutenant sacrificing our entire field to kill our opponents, and Muxus, Goblin Grandee to fill the field and swing in with a silly +x/+x.

Lastly, a bunch of cards interact with us running goblins, most importantly Munitions Expert who, like Hobgoblin Bandit Lord, turns Krenko and Muxus plays into explosions and is the real reason for running black in the deck. Kindred Charge lets us play cautiously, swinging in with a ghost army without costing harming our creatures...but we're not blue, so let's just swing in for double. Shared Animosity turns every goblin into a Rabblemaster and, knowing that not every goblin will get through, allows so much as a token to be a powerhouse.

Card Advantage

In our last block, we covered many ways our cards can draw into goblins, such as Goblin Ringleader and Muxus, Goblin Grandee, or tutor up just what we need, like Goblin Matron and Boggart Harbinger.

On top of those tribal-focused cards, we have creatures like Imperial Recruiter and Dark-Dweller Oracle skimming for whatever we can find, but an aggro build needs lots more cards to keep the card pushing forward.

Luckily, our artifacts serve double duty both as buffs and draw with Vanquisher's Banner drawing every time we cast a goblin. As well as this, we have Skullclamp sacrificing our puny tokens to keep the supply of goblin cards coming and Gamble allows us to take a risk and hope for the perfect card...or something far from what we want ;(

Goblins Die

We can't get emotional about our goblin fodder. Timid goblins always lose. But keeping them alive, luckily, is not our primary concern. We are more of an aggro build than an aristocrats one, but we still have some cards to take advantage of when our goblin inevitably die.

Our commander, Wort, Boggart Auntie, allows us to restock, a little, but it's at a very slow rate. Better is Thrilling Encore, which allows us to bring back every non-token goblin we lose in a push as well as any enemy creatures we take with us.

But when the board is locked up, we need another way to get through, and goblins have never had a problem with being flung. Goblin Bombardment allows us to bypass our opponent's defences and, with the board presence that Krenko and Shared Animosity can set up, hit for a lethal amount of damage. Similar is the wonderful Sling-Gang Lieutenant, which has the same free effect with an added lifegain element, giving us some strong redundancy and allowing us to keep our life totals high. On top of this, it is tutorable with our goblins, which is great. Less easy is Siege-Gang Commander, which has more impactful sacrifices, but needing a mana investment, which is less than ideal in a deck hoping to push forward.

However, there are other ways to increase the strength of these sacrifices, so Boggart Shenanigans sits waiting in the hard to remove enchantment slot, adding to each of our pings as well as every lost minion. Even more potent is Pashalik Mons which pings and flings, sacrificing (for a expensive rate, to be fair) and creating more fodder for future kills. Also , his ability is a passive gain every time a goblin dies.

Finally, rounding it off is Patriarch's Bidding, bringing everything back for another spin. With a Goblin Bombardment out, that's another tonne of sacrifice, with Goblin Chieftain out, it's a hasty board ready to go. Does it backfire? Yes. But, as with all things goblin, it's a Gamble.

Damage Multipliers

We'd be foolish to expect every swing will hit, and even more foolish to think flinging a goblin for 1 damage is going to cut it when life totals are 40 to begin with. To work around this, we have a few damage increasers.

Now, goblins are hardly friendly with dwarves, but we have one helping us out: Torbran, Thane of Red Fell adds a small buff for not much mana, but turns all out 1/1s and 2/2s into 3/1s and 4/2s. On top of that, Goblin Bombardment and Boggart Shenanigans now ping for 3 instead of 1.

More than just +2 damage, we can now fully double our creature's attack damage with Gratuitous Violence. Sometimes this is more powerful, especially with lords out, but is limited to either combat buffs or figures like Munitions Expert, Sling-Gang Lieutenant, and Siege-Gang Commander.

Finally, we get to triple our damage with Fiery Emancipation, and it doesn't care whether the damage source is a creature or one of our red enchantments.

All told, we can turn a 1/1 into an 18/1 if we're lucky enough to get all 3 out and we can make our goblins have more impact than we could ever expect.

Top Ranked	Achieved #31 position overall 9 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Goblins 3 years ago
Date added	9 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 55 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.15
Tokens	Copy Clone, Goblin 1/1 R, Goblin Rogue 1/1 B
Folders	Tiny Leaders, Tiny Leaders, Tiny Leaders, TINY LEADERS, Other Folk's Cool Decks, Idea/inspiration, Cool Decks, Tiny Leaders, fun stuff that i havent sorted into folders yet, Tiny