Constantly tweaking a Grenzo (mostly) Goblin Tribal deck.
HOW GRENZO WORKS
So Grenzo is all about running your deck upside down. Aside from being able to dump mana into his X to have him come out as big as you have mana, it's his second ability that makes him unique.
For you put the bottom card of your library in your graveyard, if that creature has a power less than or equal to Grenzo, it has been freed from the dungeon to cause mayhem and mischief. So naturally this deck is all about getting creatures to the bottom of our library to churn out gobbos and their friends on the cheap.
BRINGING OUT GRENZO
Just about every creature in this deck will meet the abilities power requirement without even adding any counters to Grenzo. This allows you to get him out on turn 2 and ready to start shenanigans. The deck does have a pair goblins that are power 3, Krenko, Mob Boss and Wort, Bogart Auntie. There are three goblin lords in the deck and a Metallic Mimic that will help to make Grenzo big enough to get these legendary goblins out of their cells. Depending on my hand I will sometimes just wait until turn 3 to drop Grenzo with the extra counter he needs.
GETTING CREATURES TO THE BOTTOM
While you will certainly find yourself activating Grenzo "blind", not knowing what he may dump into your graveyard, there are a number of cards in the deck that are there to help out. Crystal Ball and
Darksteel Pendant
are going to be your recurring Scry options, with Read the Bones as a one-shot. Peek at the top cards, put the creatures on the bottom and TA DA!. You also have non-spell resources such as Spinerock Knoll and
Howltooth Hollow
that will allow you to move creatures to the bottom. Finally, you also have Clone Shell that can throw some creatures in the dungeon while also potentially stashing one away in case of a board wipe (works great with
Goblin Welder
and either
Spine of Ish Sah
or Solemn Simulacrum.
But wait, what do you do if someone kills off your newly escaped creatures? Fear not! With some normally fringe cards like
Soldevi Digger
, Reito Lantern,
Junktroller
and
Canal Dredger
you can take those dead goblins, pop them back into the dungeon and release them again to raise havoc!
Finally, we have
Tel-Jilad Stylus
. Personally this is one of my favorite cards in the deck. You can use it to save creatures in play by tucking them on the bottom of your library, or just to recycle creatures with cool ETB effects.
Sometimes you'll end up with some of your higher casting cost creatures in hand. Scroll Rack will allow you to put those cards back on top of your library (hopefully to be scryed to the bottom) and Teferi's Puzzle Box will allow you to put them directly on the bottom during your draw phase and fill your hand up with new cards.
HOW DO YOU WIN?
So you've got goblins running all over the dungeon now, but how do you use that to win? We have a number of ways to get that done.
One of my most common win conditions is an infinite combo of Metallic Mimic (set to Goblin) + Murderous Redcap + any sac outlet. Sac the Redcap to whatever your outlet is, when he dies his Persist will activate and bring him back into play with a -1/-1 counter. At the same time the Mimic will see a goblin enter the battlefield and his programming will add a +1/+1 counter to him. These counters will cancel each other out. Redcap will shoot someone/something for 2 damage. Rinse. Repeat until everyone is dead.
Alternatively, sometimes your opponents will make the mistake of allowing you to get Mana Echoes on the field. As Jack Slater would say, this is a Big Mistake. With the Echoes out, every time a creature comes into play (not just yours) you check it's creature type and gain for each creature you have that shares a type with it. So if you have three goblins on the field and you cast (or release) a goblin into play, you will get (yes, they see themselves). This gets even crazier when you get out cards like Siege-Gang Commander,
Beetleback Chief
or Krenko, Mob Boss. Once you get the mana flowing it just takes a few lucky pulls with Grenzo to generate enough mana to dump out as many goblins from the bottom of your deck as you need to win.
There will also be times, mostly in smaller games, when you are just able to swarm your opponents will a ton of quick goblins.
Goblin Lackey
and Warren Instigator help with this as they let you get your gobbos down absurdly fast.
Other times you will be able to street sweeper your opponents with a Goblin Sharpshooter if you can generate a degenerate amount of tokens.
