Ib Halfheart, Goblin Sac-tician [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Liquidbeaver

SCORE: 704 | 404 COMMENTS | 62717 VIEWS | IN 266 FOLDERS


Ib's Newest Milestone —April 26, 2017

If Ib stacked all the bodies of his Goblin supporters on top of each other, that pile would now reach more than a mile high! This pleases Ib a great deal.

Jokes aside, it makes me really happy that I get to share this deck with people that enjoy it as much as I do. Keep the comments and support coming because I am going to continue to work on and tweak this deck until Ib takes his rightful spot on the throne (which throne we can't be sure).

Recent Changes:

  • Kyren Negotiations - Out for Goblin Warchief. I realized that I was running Kyren to get some benefit out of creatures with summoning sickness. Being able to deal damage through a Propaganda effect was just secondary. I get a lot more use out of more haste, and getting the cost reduction to Goblins back is definitely welcome too.

  • Treasonous Ogre - Suggested by the lovely people at /cEDH as another good form of ramp. Going to test it out to see how much I like it in a 75% deck setting.

  • Ensnaring Bridge/Crawlspace - Out for Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs. I actually found this guy by accident when I was looking for red spells that made tokens, and I forgot to specify Goblin tokens. Kazuul is definitely more my style of defense, and plays into the sac outlets of the rest of the deck very well. Being a non-Goblin doesn't hurt it much (can still be Bombarded!) at all, and even fits the Mountain theme. Can even "counter" infinite token strategies, as long as they aren't flying.

  • Mana Web - Out for War's Toll. While a little bit more risky, it has a wider effect that Mana Web, and it plays into Kazuul very well.

  • Lightning Crafter - Finally found his way in! I'm more comfortable with his combo with Kiki-Jiki than I am with running Zealous Conscripts, even though it takes an extra card to go infinite. Can also be tutored much easier in this deck.

  • Chancellor of the Forge - Brought him back in. I felt like I cut too many of the hail mary spells, so I wanted to bring back a few. This was one of the easier one's to do so, even with the higher cost. Kiki can copy him, plus he makes hasty Goblins per the number of creatures you have, so the Kazuul ogres too!

  • Cathartic Reunion/Magmatic Insight - Still need more draw, so I felt like these were the best for now. Realistically I will still probably need more, which would probably mean Faithless Looting or Tormenting Voice. Right now I don't want to do any more wheels (Reforge the Soul/Memory Jar) until I get a better feel for how the deck is playing.

  • Shattering Spree - More redundancy for the artifact hate package.

  • Sensei's Divining Top/Scroll Rack - Added for top deck manipulation. Really loving these two, and finally understanding why they are such staples.

  • Scrying Sheets - Out. With the number of ways to get land out of my deck, the chances that I could scry a land with this approached 30% as soon as turn 2, which isn't good, even with Top.

  • Great Furnace - Added for Goblin Welder and Mox Opal synergy, as well as a potential future sac outlet for Kuldotha Rebirth if I decide to run it.

I'd still like to find a place to fit in most of the cards from my sideboard, but I am having a harder and harder time finding weak cards that I want to remove.

As always, if you have any critiques or criticisms, feel free to comment!

Long Live Ib!!!

Alkadron says... #1

Really well done! I like this a lot. I also run a Ib Halfheart deck, which is super fun. Mine's more... suicide-y? No crucible, I just sac every last one of my lands, drop a haste enabler and a Goblin Pyromancer, and hope no-one Fogs. Yours looks a lot more thought-through.

I have to disagree with your description on two points:

Anyways, good work!

April 14, 2017 1:21 p.m.

Alkadron says... #2

Sorry for the double-comment, but I've been doing a lot of edits to my Ib deck and looking at your list (and description) a lot.

I just wanted to mention that the interaction between Repercussion and Insult//Injury is actually way better than you give it credit for. Casting both in the same turn won't do 8 damage to a player, it'll do 12: The 2 to a player gets doubled to 4, the 2 to a creature gets doubled to 4, then the 4 from Repercussion gets doubled again into 8. It's pretty absurd.

That also means that if you have Repercussion, Injury (or any other damage doubler), Nemesis Mask, and Ib; the defending player will take 16 damage per blocker.

Fun times.

April 15, 2017 5:48 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #3

Alkadron: Thanks for all the commenting!

Good catch on the Goblin Assassin, I changed the wording in the primer to show that it affects everyone equally.

My problem with Goblin Pyromancer is more often than not I can get a stronger and permanent effect out of Shared Animosity, for a cheaper casting cost, and I don't have to worry about losing all my Goblins if someone takes out my sac outlet(s) with targeted removal, and I can't remove the Pyromancer before the end of turn. I can see running it for the humor and chaos though.

Again, nice catch on Insult/Injury, I didn't think about doubling the Repercussion damage as well. That's going to be a great combo! I can't wait to try it.

April 16, 2017 12:44 p.m.

Alkadron says... #4

I almost prefer the Pyromancer over the Shared Animosity, for my deck at any rate. I mean, I definitely run both, but I get more use out of the Pyromancer. It can get Moggcatchered, Goblin Matroned, and Goblin Recruitered, and it can get sacrificed. Animosity can't.

Even when I can't sacrifice the Pyromancer, I usually just let all my goblins die. Stalking Vengeance is silly. Again, though, my version of the deck is much more suicide-y; I'm in it strictly for catastrophic explosions and chuckles, not to have a board presence or win games or anything. I agree with you that the Pyromancer doesn't really have a place in a good deck.

April 16, 2017 1 p.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #5

Made some more changes. Trying to find a balance between the very linear Competitive version and the flexible deck that I want. The price of the deck isn't accurate anymore, as some of the promo cards show up as 2x their actual cost (Imperial Recruiter for one). This deck is probably still sub $1k realistically.

Added more tutors, more and better draw spells, as well as fixing some effect redundancy that I was missing. Dropped the CMC even more (I miss you Chancellor of the Forge!).

Trying out Storm Cauldron again. It is less group-huggy than Ghirapur Orrery, but still allows me to work around some Stax effects. This deck excels with extra land effects, but there aren't that many that MonoRed has access to that are actually good. If anyone has solid suggestions on how to get more land on the battlefield let me know.

Finding the right balance of Stax effects is taking a lot of fine tuning, and moving cards in and out. I've commited to MLD and resource denial, as even with the symmetrical effects Ib can work around quite a bit of it.

I'm really feeling confident in the current build. It can really hold his own, and definitely performs a lot better than the Tier 4 or worse that he is normally ranked at.

As always, if you have comments or criticisms (or praise for Our Glorious Leader!), let me know!

April 20, 2017 2:56 p.m.

this deck is almost perfect but there are a couple cards you could add:

Caged Sun: creatures the color of your choice (cough cough Red) get +1/+1 and lands that provide said color produce an extra mana of that color.

Metallic Mimic: creature types your choice (cough cough Goblin) come into play with a +1/+1 counter and Metallic Mimic itself counts as a goblin.

Quest for the Goblin Lord: an easy way to give all your creatures +2/+0

Goblin Caves: the other side of the coin to Quest for the Goblin Lord

Squee, Goblin Nabob: he just wont go away. so in a way he is reusable for sacking.

April 22, 2017 4:23 a.m.

KamenRiderVys says... #7

If I may make one single suggestion: mana echoes. This card allows you to turn your mountains into copious amounts of colourless mana with ib.

Keep in mind,mana echoes doesn't check amount of goblins to resolution. So, you can respond to the mana echoes trigger by making goblins.which trigger echoes.which you can respond to by sacing mountains.

It leads to very do or die gamble moments, but I found that half the fun.

But it also may be too risky. Figured I would offer it as a suggestion. (Also, approve of you using repercussions.ran that in my it and worked crazy well)

April 24, 2017 9:47 a.m.

Liquidbeaver says... #8

ticked-off-squirrel: Thanks for commenting!

Caged Sun - The deck is getting to the point where I don't really have a problem with mana, but I have a really bad problem with having enough cards in hand to actually spend mana on. I may end up adding one of these in the future depending on how the deck settles out, but I'm not sure which yet out of Caged Sun/Gauntlet of Power/Gauntlet of Might.

Metallic Mimic - I run this in all my other tribal decks, but I'm not sure it fits as well in here. Raid Bombardment does a lot of work in this deck, to the point that if I have both of my Anthem Goblins out I will sac one so that Raid Bombardment can still proc on the tokens. Since the tokens tend to get sacrificed or blow up, their actual power doesn't become that significant. In much the same tone Shared Animosity is only still in because it has virtually no drawback, and I can just set it down and ignore it.

Quest for the Goblin Lord - Same as above.

Goblin Caves - Now this is a card that I haven't thought about in a long time. This could really help all the Goblins soak up removal. The only drawback I can think of is I can't bounce around a Skullclamp, but if it was really important I could just sac the land the enchantment is on. Going to sideboard this because I really want to test it out.

Squee, Goblin Nabob - I like Squee a lot, but the only thing he really benefits me with in this deck is the discard that is tied to Tormenting Voice and Faithless Looting. I am considering putting Daretti, Scrap Savant back in, in which case it may be starting to be worth the include, but I can't see myself ever actually casting him, as 3 mana for something to sac is just too high. That means I would just hold Squee in my hand until a discard prompt came up.

KamenRiderVys: I actually ran Mana Echoes in the deck for a long time, and on average it would net me 100+ mana in any given phase. The problem was that I never actually had anything to spend it on, and it would just fizzle at the end of the phase. I don't have anything with flash, I have very, very few instants, and even when I was making 250 colorless mana on my own turn during my first main phase, I had like 3 cards in hand that had a total CMC of like 5. I eventually took it out a few iterations ago, and haven't really missed it. I moved it over to my Zada deck, that has a lot more opportunities to actually use it.

I really love Repercussion. I've knocked several people out on a turn where I would cast it and wait to see if it would be countered, and then if it wasn't I would immediately follow it up with a Blasphemous Act (with Boseiju if I need). Sac my own creatures in response and I take no damage but the rest of the table blows up. I used to use it as a finisher, but have started putting it down earlier and earlier because of all the damage sources that will whittle my opponents down, and I can choose whether I care about taking the damage or not. At worst it speeds up a game I would probably lose anyway, at best I win on that turn. People are already afraid to block tokens when Ib is out, now they let through 20 because they don't want to take 80. Works me me, haha.

April 24, 2017 3:16 p.m.