Ib Halfheart, Goblin Sac-tician [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Liquidbeaver

SCORE: 704 | 405 COMMENTS | 63002 VIEWS | IN 231 FOLDERS


Ib Halfheart - Now with increased Funitivity™! —Aug. 16, 2018

So Ib, being the omniscient (means good at science) and omnipotent (means very potent - strength, oration, smell, etc...) leader that he is, decided to get rid of some of the inordinately expensive cards that didn't contribute to the fun he was having, and to increase the appeal of joining his army. He wouldn't make fun of you for running them if you wanted, but if you do, don't mistake his very obvious sneezes for snickering. He has "the Flu?".

To crank the fun up to eleventeen, we are bringing in Stolen Strategy. Not that Ib would ever steal, but if he did, he would be really good at it. But he wouldn't do it. But if he did he would never get caught. It is an Insult / Injury to suggest otherwise. If you keep at it, we might have to take you down to the Anvil of Bogardan to be the School of Goblin Dentistry's new practice dummy.

If you want to read Ib's notes on what to use to upgrade this deck, just check the "U-P-G-R-A-Y-E-D-D" section near the bottom!

Jokes aside, playing this deck at FNM was nerve-racking because of the cost, and I had made so many changes for the sake of absolute efficiency that I lost sight of the real reason I made this deck in the first place - to have fun playing EDH with a seemingly silly deck that could surprise people with wins out of nowhere. I took out the fetches, the more expensive mana rocks (I couldn't bring myself to get rid of the Mana Crypt, it's so ugly it is beautiful!), and Phyrexian Altar because of the price. These are all great cards, I just couldn't justify them anymore. I hope the changes make the deck more appealing to people that are considering building it. - Liquidbeaver

Liquidbeaver says... #1

Spine of Ish Sah out for Haphazard Bombardment: I like Haphazard Bombardment/Scour from Existence as a pair better than Spine of Ish Sah/Scour from Existence.

The craziest part of this enchantment is that, per the Gatherer page, you can choose an indestructible permanent as one of the 4 targets, and then you can remove chance from the equation and guarantee that you will remove the other 3 targets.

April 27, 2018 11:50 a.m.

Liquidbeaver, This deck looks friggin hilarious! Would you mind me sharing this with the playgroup I'm in?

April 27, 2018 3:39 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #3

captain_Pugsley: Please do! Even better, proxy it up and have someone playtest it!

April 27, 2018 3:44 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #4

After a long hiatus, Daretti, Scrap Savant has returned to the battlefield!

Took out Crystal Ball because I added Scrying Sheets back in per the recommendation of BasedTurtleHD, and it has worked fantastic! Also, having my land slot fill that purpose instead is much easier to work around.

May 13, 2018 5:25 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #8

Bad news about Kusari-Gama, apparently although it works in MTGO and Forge, I've had several L2+ judges confirm that it doesn't.

That really sucks. Going to put Horn of Greed back until I can find a suitable replacement.

May 28, 2018 12:08 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #10

Changing it up a bit!

Fervor out for for Hammer of Purphoros. Needed a higher artifact count.

Meekstone out for Ensnaring Bridge. Was considering bringing Crawlspace back in, but I think this is a better combo, especially with haste from the Hammer.

Horn of Greed out for Quest for Pure Flame. This may end up being Insult // Injury after playtesting.

Urabrask the Hidden out. The Hammer and Ensnaring Bridge is a better combo I think.

Ashnod's Altar in. I've felt like I needed another sac outlet for a while, might as well try one that worked for me before. If I find I don't need the ramp at all, this may become Mogg Raider

May 31, 2018 11:41 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #11

Really want to test out Mindmoil for digging through my deck, but I'm not sure where to fit it in just yet. It's a weird effect, but this is a weird deck, so it will probably be great!

June 1, 2018 11:25 a.m.

this is a beautiful goblin deck. not sure how helpful my suggestion will be but here is what i suggest:

Hazoret's Monument: making ALL your red creatures costing 1 less and able to cycle cards if needed.

Outpost Siege: so when your tokens get sacked they do collateral damage to players.

Tamiyo's Journal while yes a bit high with a CMC of 5, it provides continuous card draw and a tutor.

June 9, 2018 2:25 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #13

M19 is bring us Dark-Dweller Oracle:

Dark-Dweller Oracle

This is a fantastic new card! Not only is it pseudo-draw or thinning, it also doesn't tap to activate, and it's a sac outlet. Note that it says "play", so it can be used to play lands you exile as well!

This will immediately take the place of Ashnod's Altar.

June 18, 2018 12:07 p.m.

crowned says... #14

I really dislike Mindmoil in a deck like this, since you have no real way of refilling your cards and dig deep- not even speaking of multiple great cards you get through mindmoil, but you can only play one of them. :( hurts

I haven't given up on Wheel of Fortune and Reforge the Soul - especially the latter one has Top and Rack Synergy.

How about copying a little from Skred and add in a Koth of the Hammer? With your neat little Nemesis Mask and a Moon-effect in play you can force your opponent to block with lands. It's super janky, will probably not work ever, but I love it.

June 19, 2018 9:49 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #15

ticked-off-squirrel: Thanks for the compliment! I am very proud of how it has turned out. As for the card suggestions, here are my comments.

Hazoret's Monument: Originally I shied away from Hazoret's because early on I only had like 19 creatures or so, and didn't end up casting them that often. Now that I technically have 25 of them, I think it appeals to me a lot more. I am going to get one and test it out.

Outpost Siege: My experience with Outpost Siege is I only ever declared Khans because I was always hurting for draw, but by the time I got to use it it was Turn 5, and I draw an extra card before it gets destroyed, if I even get to that point. I think if Dragons said "each opponent" instead it would be a completely different story, and an autoinclude for me, but unfortunately it's the same reason I don't run Boggart Shenanigans, the damage is just too narrow.

Tamiyo's Journal: Similar problem with this one, in my meta, even though we aren't playing cEDH decks, we are all at a minimum playing 75%, and having something really come online on T6 or so isn't fast enough to be useful, which is why I've leaned more towards the harder hitting draw spells like Commune with Lava, Memory Jar, or Mindmoil if that one works out. I think Tamiyo's is really interesting as an effect, I just think they dropped the ball on Clues and making them too heavily costed.

Thanks for commenting!

June 19, 2018 12:21 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #16

crowned: I haven't drawn it yet, so I don't know how it works in an actual game, but I think I can still work around it to a good effect. I know it is going to be quite the adjustment for me when it is it though. The hope would be that I can dig just enough to turn a win over two turns into an alpha strike on that turn instead. The chance of drawing more than one good card a time is very real, and having to put them on the bottom of the library would suck, but with cracking fetchlands, the few tutors I have, and other shuffling effects it doesn't hurt as much. I'm more curious about it than I am confident it will be great though.

I had Wheel of Fortune for a long time, and Reforge the Soul for a little bit, and never ended up being happy with them. The discard was easily the worst part, as I only have like 3 ways of recurring anything in the deck, and all of them have pretty narrow uses. On top of that, I found myself holding onto it for multiple turns, or not casting it at all, either because my hand was good enough to keep, or I knew my opponents hands weren't great, and I didn't want to risk improving their hand. I realize it is just statistics, but I ended up handing my opponents the game with it more often than I was comfortable with. I switched Wheel out for Memory Jar and was much, much happier with the overall effect. I get the benefit of the wheel, I don't discard my initial hand, I get to dig, and my opponents only get to capitalize on instants they draw, and only until the end of my turn.

Koth of the Hammer is something I am going to have to look into again. I think the emblem is actually the most appealing part of it, because probably 75% of the time I sac all or most of my mountains to Ib, I just float the mana and don't do anything with it. Adding a bunch of damage to players or creatures instead sounds much better.

June 19, 2018 12:54 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #17

Another great new M19 card with:

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Not only is it a lord, but also has a non-tap sacrifice ability, but it can also get rid of itself to get tokens back under the threshold for Shared Animosity, and it is recurrable. Just a really solid card.

This will be taking place of Shattering Spree in my deck.

June 20, 2018 12:06 p.m.

crowned says... #18

M19 has brought us the 2nd great goblin! All hail wotc!

I haven't understood the part where you mention a threshold of Animosity which you want to dodge - could you elaborate?

Any chance of seing the deck in action, do you have the possibility of filming a few games IRL or on an MTGO-equivalent?

June 20, 2018 1:49 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #19

Good catch, I definitely meant Raid Bombardment and not Shared Animosity.

They tie closely together because they go on the stack at the same time, so as long as a Goblin is a 2/2 or less before attackers are declared, it doesn't matter if you attack with 20 Goblins and each one is a 21/2 because of Shared Animosity, Raid Bombardment still procs as well because at the time the trigger resolves Shared Animosity hadn't. To make sure I hit the hardest I can, I have sometimes sacrificed a Goblin Chieftain or a Goblin King to make sure Bombardment gets to proc. Even if I get chump blocked or fogged I still get a lot of damage through. The fact that we get another lord, and he can sacrifice himself to himself to make sure I get under the threshold for Raid Bombardment is fantastic. I still can't get over how good these two new Goblins are!

Unfortunately I don't have any recordings of this in action, although I've always wanted to get it going on MTGO. I do have a GoPro though, so maybe I can convince some of my friends to play a game with me.

June 20, 2018 2:16 p.m.

keatonsmask says... #20

I love this Goblin deck it's really really creative where it struggles is enchantment removal I'd suggest maybe running steel helkite/ oblivion stone as both are fetchable with daretti/welder... I love the deck again it's amazing and I'd love to hear your opinion on what u think would be good for enchantment removal I feel like hellkite might be better because most enchantments we care about are 4 or less

July 12, 2018 4:08 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #21

keatonsmask: Thanks for commenting! I agree, enchantments is the biggest thing this deck has a problem with, but that is one of mono-red's biggest weaknesses in general.

I like the Hellkite, and run it in other decks, but in this deck it just affects the table too late (or not at all if it is removed before attacking). It comes out on T6 at the latest, then you wait till T7 to attack, and then that attack has to get through without being blocked or fogged. It is probably something I would suggest running in the budget version of this deck, but once something gets above 4 CMC it becomes really hard to justify in my main one. It's the same reason I don't run Hoarding Dragon, even though there are a lot of important cards I could tutor with it.

Oblivion Stone is basically like running Nevinyrral's Disk in this deck, which is just too hard to recover from, even if it means the same for everyone else.

I used to run Scour from Existence and Spine of Ish Sah, which I think are the best removal options red has that can hit enchantments, but even the fact that I could sometimes cast Spine multiple times a game, it was still too high of a cost and ended up being a dead card.

Instead, I've chosen to go the route of Fork and Reverberate (or alternatively Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast if your meta is heavy blue) to protect my big sorceries and key creatures from counterspells, or to just copy effects that I like. It isn't the same as being able to remove a devastating Oblivion Ring on my commander, but as a mainboard card I get to utilize them more often than I would the more fringe case of being shut down by an enchantment. There would also be rare occasions where I could copy removal that can hit enchantments and use it to remove the one bothering me too! I've worked to put as much redundancy in the deck as I can to give me the best chance of not being dead in the water after a particularly bad piece of removal or control, but sometimes it still happens.

July 12, 2018 4:19 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #22

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle out for Darksteel Citadel. I really, really wanted Valakut to be impactful, but honestly entering the battlefield tapped hurt me more often than the damage I could do with it helped, which was just too rare to justify it.

I don't know of any land that taps for red that is a better fit, but if I can find a better colorless land I may switch the Citadel out for it. This one at least gets me sac targets for Goblin Welder and Daretti, Scrap Savant, as well as buffing my artifact count for Mox Opal, plus the bonus Indestructible.

July 12, 2018 4:45 p.m.

keatonsmask says... #23

Yeah 5 Mana is alot for possible removal really wish we had some decent options. also you might want to take a look at Karn scion of Urza for some possible card draw? He is not too costly at 4 Mana and Drawing cards for 4 colorless Mana seems good in mono red. and Karn seems hard to remove like daretti starting at that beefy 5 loyalty. Plus he synergizes with your artifacts.

July 13, 2018 1:06 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #24

keatonsmask: I really like that idea! He is such a good draw engine. Definitely going to add it to the sideboard and find a spot for it.

July 13, 2018 11:32 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #25

Treasure Nabber

C18 brought us some new cards worth considering, but I think Treasure Nabber would be the best include. This card can turn into removal with Goblin Welder or Daretti, Scrap Savant, sacrificing stolen artifacts to get our own out of the GY.

Enchanter's Bane

Another interesting card, although I'm not sure it has enough impact. This is definitely what a red removal card is meant to look like when it sticks to the color wheel, and as far as I know is only the second mono-red removal that can hit enchantments (not counting the colorless removal at 7 cmc).

July 28, 2018 5:54 p.m.