GoatTribal's Boros Goats
Catch me live at Twitch.tv/GoatTribal
Copy Pasta From My Reddit Post:
Intro
Welcome bah-ah-ack to some more Modern Goat action! We didn't post an update last week because it was WOTC hype week and I decided i'd rather do a bigger update the week after. Today we are going to look at, in my opinion, one of the best renditions of the deck to date. Why is this version the best? Well...its just more fun and still is holding up well. There is a lot of room for growth still but I'm working on more playtesting every day!The Deck: Goldfish Link: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/679332#paperTappedOut Link: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/boros-goats-2/The Cost: Paper - $423 (According to MGTGoldfish) Online - ~$158 give or take
Design Changes
We went through MANY MANY MANY renditions and tons of playtesting to get ready for Sundays MTGO PTQ and honestly, I burnt out a bit on the deck. The deck was becoming less of a "Goats Matter" deck and more of a crappy white devotion deck.So I looked back at my old posts and I was looking for things that worked that can add some reach and make the goats a legitimate combo force! Due to this, I returned to my roots and decided to try and make Banefire goats a thing again! But I am planning to try every 2 color Goat Combination possible. B/W Goats looks promising but we are on R/W goats today!So we stripped away Elesh Norn and our planeswalker in conditions for some new weird win cons and Banefire. Banefire gives us a real sense of "inevitability." And it gives us a clear progression of, make goats, eat goats, kill enemies!Here is the deck breakdown as it stands now. Keep in mind it's always in flux. You can keep an eye on the MTGGoldfish listing for the deck and i'll adjust it as it updates, or you can catch the stream for live updates!Boros Goats Mainboard
Creatures
Thraben Inspector 4x - Adds a chroma and is a draw source. It also combo's with Flickerwisp for extra cards. Its good all around and its a viable chump blocker. Much needed in a deck with no real card draw anymore.
Weathered Wayfarer 1x - We dropped down to 1 as having 3 or 4 was way to much. He is also only useful on the draw so having 3 meant we had 3 50/50 useful cards.
Auriok Champion 4x - This card is a house in this deck and the current meta. She can hold up deaths shadow, survive burn decks, and heal us a lot. Plus she is 2 chroma that just sticks on the board. She's been a valuable piece and I'm glad I finally mainboarded her + got 2 more. My wallet was not happy however.
Knight of the White Orchid 3x - I've come to the realization that this guy is just required in all versions of the deck. I've taken him out a few times but he always comes back in. He thins the deck, he protects us a bit from land hate decks, and he adds 2 chroma. Hes all in all solid.
Flickerwisp 2x - I know a lot of you will be cheering to see this. The weird birdthingy made it back into the deck and it has been great. It combo's with our Thraben, Knight, Shep, and Rise of the Hobgoblins. It gives air pressure and it can save us from annoying pieces for a turn. It's also been useful to reset an enemy planeswalkers Loyalty in a pinch.
Springjack Shepherd 4x - I mean, its Shep, we can't not run Shep. He's got to save the galaxy from the Geth and the Reapers...wait...I mean from the Eldrazi and the Deaths Shadow.
Oversoul of Dusk
3x - This is a meta call but it's been working very well. This card has "Protection from current meta" written on it and it has a solid body, plus it has 5 White mana symbols. You could easily swap this out for any of the other 5 White Avatars from the block and get great yields depending on your meta. Nobolis of War is also a great place here and so is Gohead of Awe. But again, Oversoul just works best in this meta atm.
Spells
Path to Exile 4x - A required card imo. It does what it does and we have the added luxury of using Knight to catch back up, so the land differential doesn't hurt us much.
Lightning Bolt 2x - Just some extra interaction. We can hit face, we can pick off weak combo pieces, and we can poke Planeswalkers. Someone will suggest Lightning Helix but I find the 1 mana cost to make this easier to use overall. The 3 life won't make a huge difference in the end when we are gaining 20-30 life from Auriok Champion anyways.
Banefire 2x - This is our "Inevitability" and works as our main win condition. With banefire and our goats, plus our devotion, its not hard to hit 14-15 mana on turn 5 and finish off the enemy. The uncounterable, unpreventable, gets around control decks which have been our worst matchups historically.
Aurelia's Fury 1x - Really an experimental card but its doing work. Its a backup win condition but it helps us against control decks and against Storm specifically. The instant speed also lets us cast this with Nykthos on the enemy EoT for about 8 or 9, then take our turn and banefire for 11+ to combo for the win. It has the added benefit of Hosing Storm and other non-creature combo decks if you cast it for 1 on their upkeep.
Enchantments
Runed Halo 2x - We aren't a pillow fort, but Runed Halo stops quite a few threats in this meta. It also adds 2 chroma and it lets us sit back. Keep in mind that we don't like to chump block with our White creatures because we need their chroma, so we can just take our beats once we get Halo out. It also works as a pseudo Leyline against certain threats if you need it to.
Quarantine Field 1x - I find having 1 copy is all I need. It means I always have an answer for almost anything in my deck at all times. It's versatile and we can often cast it for X=6 or more if needed. Another fun thing to do with it is Cast it for big and exile a few of your own creatures as well with ETB abilities. Then if the enemy kills it, you aren't totally hosed. But thats a VERY situational useage.
Rise of the Hobgoblins
2x - One of our backup win conditions and a fun card nobody expects. It makes our weenie chump blockers much stronger by giving first strike and it makes guys. Plus its an ETB effect so you could play it turn 2 for 0. Then once you've chroma'd up more, Flickerwisp it and pay 10-15 when it comes back in. Its a good card in this deck and nobody expects it.
Genju of the Fields
2x - Now people are going to scratch their heads at this one. "Why make your land a creature when you want lands so you can X out a Banefire for bigger?" Good question. Short Answer: We don't make it a creature. Its 1 chroma for 1 that provides emergency backup protection and beatdown. It also has lifegain (But its bugged on MTGO currently). Genju's lifegain is also no joke. As per gatherer, you can repeatedly cast its 2 cost ability and each activation gives it a copy of "When this creature deals damage, its controller gains that much life." So if you use it three times, youll deal 2 damage but heal 6! With our devotion we can heal MASSIVE numbers (if it wasn't bugged on MTGO). Its also adorable and people get really confused when you cast it.
Lands
Clifftop Retreat 4x - We need red sources but don't want to sacrifice White mana, so this was a no brainer. I'm also to dumb to buy fetchlands for unknown reasons.
Sacred Foundry 4x - Same as above but has the added benefit of activating the above land, being fetchable by Knight, and being a target for Genju.
Springjack Pasture 3x - This is our massive mana and our 3rd source of Red Mana. Its one of our win conditions but I found having 4 meant we hit too much colorless mana and it was counter productive.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 3x - We dropped it to 3 for the same reasons as above. Otherwise this card is just amazing.
Plains 9x - Obviously we only run Foiled Lorwyn Lands. Anything else would be heresy. We are also at 23 lands now, up from 22 and the extra 1 land has made a noticeable difference.
Sideboard
Sideboards are always meta dependent but this is what we are running for MTGO play. I like where the sideboard is at but we are currently weak to AdNauseum, so we need a solution for that.Pithing Needle 2x - For Eldrazi Tron and CoCo mostly. It lets us shut down annoying planeswalkers and Celestial Colonnade as well. Tons of utility here for just 1 mana! We can also flickerwisp it and change targets when we need to.
Rest in Peace 2x - We are running white, so we run RIP in our sideboard. This hoses dredge and hurts anyone who relies on Snappy. We don't have any recursion so this will never negatively effect us.
Stony Silence 2x - A sideboard staple, we need it for affinity, Tron, and other decks that need artifacts. It hits our Clues but thats an easy sacrifice to turn off an Aether Vial.
Leyline of Sanctity 3x - Moved to the sideboard. Its for beating Burn and anyone who is packing way to much handhate.
Anger of the Gods 2x - This is for turning off the gas on Aggro decks. Our Auriok Champion and Overbeing ignore all the damage from this so a lot of our field can stay alive through it. It also kills Dredge, which is an added plus. We are currently testing Blasphemous Act in place of this, but i think Anger will reign supreme because of its use against Dredge
Shatterstorm 2x - We splashed red and we had to add this. Its Affinity-Be-Gone and its amazing. Affinity use to be one of our hardest matchups, we now have a good pairing if we can get our hate on for game 2.
Wear / Tear 2x - Not sure if the fetcher will find this. But it destroys an artifact or an enchantment on the cheap. All-in-all useful since we are weak on Enchantment hate.
Putting it All Together
So we now have a more stable gameplan. Its get goats, burn face, but we now have more answers. We no longer try to "blow our load" and get as much mana as possible as fast as possible to rush in an Elesh Norn. Now we try and slowly build, do some light damage with our 1/2's and maybe Genju, and then we burn for a modest 15 or so. We try to control the enemy combo pieces by Pathing Them or bolting them. We try and disable aggro beaters with Runed Halo or chumps from Rise of the Hobgoblins, and we block enemy fliers with...nothing? Flickerwisp? Eh...we are weak to fliers. Luckily this meta isn't flier heavy. If that changes, we may want to swap in Godhead of Awe over Overbeing.
What would I like from the deck next: I want to improve our matchup against Eldrazi Tron. I think we solve this entirely by adding Eight In a Half Tales, but only time will tell. I'd also like maybe 1 more win condition, 1 copy of Honor of the Pure never seems good enough, maybe 1 copy of Godhead of Awe so our goats become 1/1s?Stats and Performance and all the In Between
Between Version 5 and This we went through a lot of renditions. We dropped the blue and went mono-white. We started hitting Comp Leagues only for true testing and we were ranging an average of 2-3 or 3-2. Not great, then we tweeked some more rushing to prepare for the PTQ and we were going 1-4. Everything started to crumble down!Then came the PTQ. We crushed match 1 vs burn, then got crushed by Tron game 2. Then we matched against burn again and we lost the match due to the Genju of the Fields bug. We got reimbursed for the event but placement couldn't get fixed. We then fought CoCo and lost making us have an official 1-3, at that point I left the event because I was demoralized and sad we weren't 2-2 due to the Genju bug. So we didn't do great. This resulted in me going back to the drawing board.
We then decided to go with a creature heavy build. Boros Reckoner, Wavy Manes Cat Kings, Gideons, Thalia's Lancers, Thalia herself, a ton of White Weenie shit. It worked okay, averaging 3-2 but we only tested it twice. I hated it however as it SUCKED against Eldrazi Tron and Control Decks. And I hate losing to those decks.So we moved to Banefire goats again, to focus on some meta hate and some more reach. We have done 2 comp leagues so far and are in the middle of one atm. We went 3-2 in both leagues (We punted to amulet titan when we should of won by dropping Runed Halo and calling....runed halo), so we almost went 4-1 for the first time ever. We've been having trouble against Eldrazi Tron still but I always feel like we have a fighting chance, which is a first. I might add Eight In a Half Tails in place of Genju as it works well against Eldrazi Tron. We are in our 3rd league now and we are only 1-2 so far. So we have to win all of our matches to keep up our 3-2 average.Please Note that all testing is done in Competitive MTGO Leagues!
Matchups
Deaths Shadow (All Variants - Awesome. Our mainboard crushes Shadow. We have enough chumps, they burn themselves down, and we have Pro-Black/Red on 7 cards!
Dredge We haven't bumped into it yet, but we should, in theory, do okay. Match 1 will likely be a loss unless they miss somehow. But match 2 should be easy if we can get in RIP or get an Anger of the Gods in our hand.CoCo Fair. We have okay interaction and ways to disrupt the combo. Our odds of winning go up a bit in Game 2 due to wipes and Pithing Needle hitting the combo pieces.
Jeskai Control Fair - We've bumped into it 2x now and we won each time. Overbeing of Dusk does well here if you can resolve it. This is where banefire shines.
Amulet Titan Fair - It depends on how good their hand is really. Historically the deck has never beaten Amulet Titan or even gotten close. But the new version has more hate for the combo pieces so we come out better.Storm I want to say not good, but we haven't lost to storm yet? Its really weird. We've seen it 3x, once in the league and 2x in Practice. It usually comes down to Anger of the Gods winning the game. Storm always sides in Empty the Warrens against White decks since they expect Leyline to come in. So once they go off and we Anger their gobbos, they usually scoop-a-loop.
AdNauseum Terrible - We don't have good ways to deal with this. If Banefire was an instant we could be in business but its not. We could maybe get around it by running another instant speed burn and getting the cool land that makes your Instants uncounterable. But then we run low on White mana sources.
Hatebears Good. We do well against hatebears as they aren't fast enough to get through us and we run enough creatures for Thalia to not hose us. Land destruction isn't great but Knight and Wayfarer help us catch back up. We also have a lot of answers for Aether Vial.
Turbo Turns Unknown. Theoretically we could do well here if we get Aurelia's and we can stop them the turn before they go off by poking them for a few during the upkeep. But I am concerned about this matchup overall. We do have good hate for their Howling Mines though.
Eldrazi Tron Eh...okay? This could be better. We got destroyed last night against Tron in Hand matchups. Turn 2 we killed his Ex-Map and then he dropped his 3rd tron land anyways. Bam, we lost. Eight in a Half Tales might help a lot here.
Burn Great. Our mainboard is decent here, since we gain a good amount of life and runed halo can stall out. Our sideboard is even better as Leyline pretty much shuts the game down.
Skred Great - Bloodmoon doesn't hit us as hard as it use to and we have answers for Planeswalkers now. Plus we sideboard well into it. Also we mainboard Pro-Red so that's great.
We obviously didn't cover everything but these are the decks I bump into most frequently. I'll be keeping an eye on our pairings in the future to have a more accurate representation next time.
As always, you can watch the goat deck live at Twitch.tv/GoatTribalI stream 6 days a week (8PM EST - 11PMEST Sunday-Thursday. Then Saturday Mornings) but its not always goats. I also stream other weird brews and like to be challenged by my viewers. Come and hang out!You can also follow on Twitter @GoatTribal
