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This is not your run of the mill Goblin Aggro Deck.
In fact, it is not meant to attack at all. This deck is meant to blow up in your opponent's face 5+ damage at a time, starting on turn 2.
I have a Standard Goblin deck that will be rotating out soon and I've been interested in finding a way to convert it to Modern to keep it going. However, what I found uses absolutely none of the same cards, lol. Turns out Lorwyn was a great block for Goblins (among many other things) and a revisit in an upcoming block would make me soooooo happy...
Anyways...
The idea is simple: Play cheap Goblins and blow them up with Goblin Grenade for easy face damage. Do this, or course, on your second main phase if you are able to freely attack. You can also blow them up with
Fodder Launch
for 5 damage to the face, and also take out a sizable creature at the same time, up to a 6/6.
Frogtosser Banneret
makes Fodder Launch more affordable for the early game too, which is nice.
The third option for face damage is a little more complicated as it requires
Goblin Kaboomist
to make some Land Mines. These Land Mines could be used as advertised to do 2 damage to an attacking creature that doesn't fly... or, you can use
Shrapnel Blast
to blow it up for 5 damage to any creature. It would probably be a better idea to just hit your opponent in the face, though. The mines can also be used to activate
Kuldotha Rebirth
for 3 tokens which gives you more fodder to explode in your opponents face. The flavorful "Coin Toss" to see if your Kaboomist survives each Mine token adds to the fun of the deck, and at least if he dies while Shenanigans is on the table you get a jab in. You also get to keep the mine, so it's not a total waste. Four in the deck plus being able to bring him back with Birth Rite make it a viable means of damage. It isn't a bad idea to wait and play him until you have at least a
Shrapnel Blast
, but you can always just leave the Mines on the table until you do.
Between these 3 different spells there are 60 points on damage on the table, 80 if you count being able to bring back
Fodder Launch
with
Boggart Birth Rite
. That's not including the extra damage from
Goblin Arsonist
and
Boggart Shenanigans
, which would add up to 20 more. It only takes 3-4 of these spells to kill someone which can happen pretty damn quickly. The awesome part is that if you can flood the board with enough actual goblins or tokens and have a
Boggart Shenanigans
on the table, you can just swing out and win short of mass board exile. My favorite play is to have someone down to a certain life total that matches the number of goblins I have, say 6. I can swing out and declare "checkmate" because if they can't/don't block, they are dead. If they do block and my creatures die, they're dead. It's a nice turn of events if you run out of ammunition. Also, the Land Mine's can really build up fast and deter your opponent from being able to attack you on the ground. It's awesome how you can either stack up the damage or spread it out as long as you have red mana open. It's even better than I thought it was.
The sideboard has some fun options as well as practical ones, such as
Boggart Harbinger
to dig for almost anything in the deck. Earwig Squad can be used to literally remove your opponents win conditions. It's a fun concept to be able to drop a Squad on the board, sacrifice it to Grenade, bring it back with Birth Rite, then drop it again and now you've removed 6 specific cards from your opponents deck in one turn (assuming you've dealt combat damage first and have 6-8 mana). Goblin Assault, Goblinslide, and
Voracious Dragon
seem like a fun alternate win condition that fits well with the theme by having the dragon eat a ton of goblins and tokens to deal double the face damage. If it's not enough to win at least you'll have a gigantic dragon.
Barrage of Expendables
is a nice cheap option to continuously blow up those tokens if you run out of bigger bombs or just need to pick off some creatures. As a 1 drop, it's a nice way to start the game if you managed to not draw any other options. The cool thing in both scenarios is that
Boggart Shenanigans
is triggered by both cards when they even kill tokens because they don't cease to exist until they enter the graveyard first, so the Expendables could do 1 to a creature and 1 to a player or just 2 to a player and the dragon will actually be 3x the number of goblins devoured. If you managed to have all 4 Shenanigans out and drop a dragon, you only need to eat 4 goblins to kill someone in one shot because 4x4=16 from the Shenanigans and then another 4x2=8 from the dragon for 24 damage all at once. Even just 3 would be 18 and probably enough. But whose ever going to have all 4 on the table at the same time... Finally,
Goblin Charbelcher
is an incredibly fun card that could win the game in an instant on turn 5 if you don't reveal a land for several flips and a mountain comes up to deal double the face damage. It's like a goblin version of
Sphinx's Tutelage
except way more fun.
An interesting idea for game 2 with the sideboard if the Kaboomist really dominated the board and your opponent is likely to add in ways to deal with it: Remove all 4 Kaboomist, all 4 Shrapnel Blasts, all 4 Kuldotha Rebirths, 2 Shenanigans, and 2 Fodder Launch and then add in the entire sideboard. It'll be like playing against an entirely different deck. SHENANIGANS!?!?!?
And that's it. My version of a Modern Goblin deck that doesn't use any of the big scary Goblins or utilize an aggro strategy at all. For $50 this is an extremely budget Modern deck that is very fun to play and very unexpected. Of course you can save even more by using a different dual land or even just swapping them out for regular mountains and swamps.
Thanks for reading, be sure to let me know what you think in the comments and don't forget to vote :)
