Core
Core (28)
4x Foundry Street Denizen, 4x Goblin Bushwhacker, 4x Goblin Grenade, 4x Goblin Guide, 4x Legion Loyalist, 4x Lightning Bolt, 4x Reckless Bushwhacker
The cards here are absolutely essential to deck as it is. It only functions off the back of these cards and I would not change them at all until you have a very good understanding of the deck and even then you should have an extremely good reason to do so. I will provide a brief explanation of what makes each of these cards so good.
- Foundry Street Denizen: when you are casting so many little red creatures this guy can consistently get to 4+ power. For a one mana card that is some incredible value.
- Legion Loyalist: 99% of the time it will be no issue triggering battalion so giving all your creatures first strike and trample is incredible and the cannot be blocked by tokens clause comes up alot as well. On top of all of this he is a 1 mana goblin with haste.
- Goblin Guide: A modern staple ever since he has come out. Being a 1 mana 2/2 with haste is more than worth it for the drawback and he is a goblin to boot. However, as more viable 1 drop goblins come out it is becoming reasonable to cut this card. With that being said you still need a very good reason to cut it.
- Lightning Bolt: excellent removal and can be aimed at face for lethal.
- Goblin Grenade: This card is almost reason enough to be playing goblins. For 1 mana you can do 1/4 of your opponents life total.
- Goblin Bushwhacker & Reckless Bushwhacker: The namesake of the deck. Ties everything together to give your creatures a buff and haste. These guys are the reason the deck can exist. Without them the deck would be far too vulnerable to spot removal, but because these guys are not lords there is no one creature that is a lynchpin to our plan.
Lands
Now that we have 28/60 cards decided we need to choose 17-20 lands for our mana base. If you are running all 1 drops and 4xBurning-Tree Emissary you can probably get away with 17 lands but otherwise you will be running 18-19 land most of the time and 20 lands only if your mana curve is pretty steep. We have a few options but first we have to decide if we are going to stay mono red or a splash a color for sideboard options. Usually unless there is a compelling reason in the meta to splash for either green or white I will stick with mono red.
mono red land
Castle Embereth: This card exactly fits into our gameplan and is a great option. It is not my favorite option though because oftentimes I feel like whenever I use it I would have been able to win without it.
Sunbaked Canyon: This is a perfectly good option to draw a card once you've run out of gas. Nothing flashy here but it can make the difference when you need it. It is kindof annoying to take a damage from it every time you tap it so I recommend not running too many copies.
Ramunap Ruins: this is my favorite of the bunch. It gives you that little bit of reach that you might need and it wont always be doing damage to you when you tap it
Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance: in mono red there is very little reason not to run this as a one of. It wont do anything 99.9% of the the time but theres no real drawback to running it and it is nice in the .01% of the time
Den of the Bugbear: This is the newest of the enters untapped red lands with an upside. I’d say this one has potential to be my favorite as it helps allot for when matches go long but I will need to do more testing
splash lands
I wont go into depth explaining these at all but if you want to splash either green or white or both these are the lands that will do that for you.Stomping Ground, Sacred Foundry, Wooded Foothills, Copperline Gorge, Inspiring Vantage.
Card Advantage
In my opinion the number 1 flaw of this deck is that it is too vulnerable to running out of stream. For this reason I find it absolutely essential to include 2-6 card advantage cards. These are your options.
- Bomat Courier: this used to be one of the best options available but these days I believe it is eclipsed by better options unless you are running that artifact variant of the deck which I am not covering in this primer.
- The Flame of Keld: This used to be another one of the best options and it is still alright. It can absolutely win you games but drawing multiples is pretty bad.
- Risk Factor: This one is pretty nice especially since you can get rid of a dead land draw late game with the jump start.
- Light Up the Stage: This is probably the safest choice but least flashy. You trade speed for consistency here.
- Conspicuous Snoop: This is one of the newest cards and can be absolutely incredible. It is a goblin and cares about goblins so thats some high synergy there. The main drawback is that your opponent gains some information as well but that is absolutely worth it. This can win you so many games. It is unfortunately a removal magnet.
- Rundvelt Hordemaster: This is the newest card but I think it will be the revival of 8 whack. to start off is a 2 mana lord which is a low mana investment for a very valuable effect. On top of that it makes your opponents spot removal much worse and it make your goblins that die in combat more easy to replace themselves or to get ride of dead draws off the top of your library.
- Moria Marauder: the newest option in our arsenal. Needs more testing to determine whether or not it is good but the timing is awkward so I am cautiously optimistic.
Flex Slots
Assuming you have 18 lands and our 28 core cards and 4 card advantage cards you have 50/60 of your cards filled. This means you have 10 flex slots to complete your deck. The full List of the flex slot cards is in the card list so I will only explain the best of the best stand out cards here.
- Fanatical Firebrand & Mogg Fanatic: The fanatics. These guys are stand out cards in metas filled with strong x/1's. There is eternally a debate over which one is better. In my opinion why not run both?
- Grim Lavamancer: Not a goblin but is fantastic in grindy metas where you will have to continually take down small creatures and where your creatures will continually hit the graveyard./li>
- Skirk Prospector: This guy is an ALL STAR. He is my absolute favorite card and unlocks a whole new way to play this deck. I don't even know where to begin with this card and I will likely have to make a whole section devoted to it. In my opinion it is the number 1 slept on card
- Goblin Cratermaker & Goblin Trashmaster & Tin Street Hooligan: these are the artifact hate goblins. I would not really consider putting any of them in the mainboard other than maybe Goblin Cratermaker.
- Frenzied Goblin & Goblin Heelcutter & Intimidator Initiate: These are the goblins you want to be playing if you expect to be going up against big blockers. They can all be played in the mainboard, the sideboard, or completely omitted depending on how relevant you feel they will be.
- Battle Cry Goblin: A card that has been gaining popularity lately. I have little experience with it but I believe it works well for the same reason that the bushwhackers do.
- Burning-Tree Emissary: This is another all star card. Although it is not a goblin it can enable some of the fastest kills the deck can possibly do.
- Goblin Piledriver: High risk high reward. It is an incredibly strong card especially in conjunction with Legion Loyalist but is very susceptible to spot removal.
- Mogg War Marshal: This is another all star card. If you are having trouble deciding what to put in just put this in and thank me later. It is some of the highest possible value you can get and has tons of internal synergy.
- Devastating Summons: Much like Goblin Grenade this is a go for broke big damage card.
