Step 1: Come to accept that you are not playing real magic anymore. Come to accept that no one will play magic with you "for fun" anymore.
Step 2: It is crucial, and I mean absolutely crucial that all of your mountains are different artworks. This deck is meant to mess with people's minds.
Step 3: Win. But don't win genuinely. You can swing in big with goblin tokens, but don't do that. The most satisfying wins are when your opponent goes to do something on their turn and then concedes because they realize they can't do it. Win by locking them down.
Step 4: For sideboarding, put some cards in, shuffle up, and take the same cards out so your opponent thinks you sideboarded. Remember, you're playing mind games, not real magic.
If you choose to ignore my advice and not make your opponent concede, or maybe your opponent is too stubborn and wants to see a wincon, here are a couple ways to win in this deck:
Karn, the Great Creator
+
Mycosynth Lattice
to lock out your opponent's lands.
Karn, the Great Creator
+
Liquimetal Coating
to destroy noncreature permanents. this isn't a wincon, but if you have
Blood Moon
out, just target their basic lands(the ones that actually tap for their colour) and you basically get the same effect as the lattice lock. While we're on this topic, I might as well add
Liquimetal Coating
+
Abrade
as a fetchless
Assassin's Trophy
.
Ensnaring Bridge
+
Legion Warboss
to attack for way too much damage at once. just make sure that you don't have cards in your hand and build up a ton of goblins. once you do that to get enough goblins for lethal damage, keep the card that you draw in hand and move to combat so that you can attack with your goblins.
While on the topic of holding creatures back as you build them up,
Goblin Engineer
+
Servo Schematic
is a really nice combo to build up an offense while also having some blockers when you really need them. Sadly, since targets are chosen for activated abilities before costs (such as “Sacrifice an artifact”) are paid, Goblin Engineer's second ability can't target the artifact that will be sacrificed to pay its cost. The bright side, is that we have 2 Schematics in here and can just swap them back and forth to get 2 servos at a time.
Another thing that we can grab with
Goblin Engineer
is
Lotus Bloom
. I really like this card in this deck and it took me a while to actually end up deciding to put it in. Bloom can allow for explosive turns if its in your opening hand(while also emptying it out faster for
Ensnaring Bridge
. The amazing thing about this card that really made me end up putting it in here is that you can get it from your graveyard to the battlefield with
Goblin Engineer
. As a reminder: You are not casting it from your graveyard, so it comes straight in. No suspend.
If you have established a sufficient lock, you can use
Karn, the Great Creator
to fetch
Retributive Wand
to start combo-ing with
Goblin Engineer
for the dub.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
or
Chandra, Awakened Inferno
+
Ensnaring Bridge
to just.. you know... deal damage. there's not a whole lot to this. you have a planeswalker that cant be attacked, so you ultimate her.
Ensnaring Bridge
+
Bottled Cloister
to lock your opponent out of attacking while not harming your hand size. you will need a
Karn, the Great Creator
to pull the combo off, but he's not an actual part of the card interaction.
Things to keep in mind:
-
Legion Warboss
only makes them attack the first turn they're out unlike
Goblin Rabblemaster
. If you have
Ensnaring Bridge
out with no cards in hand, they don't have to attack that first turn. I run warboss over rabblemaster because its in here to wait until you can swing for lethal, so having rabblemaster's attack trigger is nowhere near as good as not having to attack with our goblins. Remember,
Goblin Engineer
would be affected by that.
-There is a
Darksteel Citadel
in the sideboard. It's there in case you need an extra land to either stay on top of things or to empty out your hand for
Ensnaring Bridge
. It also supplies fodder for
Goblin Engineer
.
-You can use
Goblin Engineer
to pull of a ton of different combos in this deck, but be careful of your opponent's removal once they see what you grab. Only grab a crucial artifact if you know for a fact that you'll be able to get it that game and not just let it sit in your graveyard(or exile ~>_<~).
-There are no rules against looking at your sideboard. You look at it at any time. If you do though, your opponent will probably know that you have Karn.
-You can use
Karn, the Great Creator
to turn
Retributive Wand
or
Servo Schematic
into chump blockers. Did someone say value?
-You won't always go for the lattice lock, and you shouldn't. Only use the lattice lock if you feel confident that you can deal with their board state and keep Karn alive. The lock is not in effect unless Karn is on the field, and it's unimportant if your opponent can win without using their lands.
-Even though
Karn, the Great Creator
can't blow up creatures that are turned into artifacts,
Abrade
can.
I'm sure that as new sets are released I'll find more cards and combos to add to suck the fun out of magic, but for now that's about it. Let me know below what you think, and what your least favorite artifact in modern is. Who knows, maybe that card might just happen to slip into my sideboard.
