If a Goblin Burps in the Forest, Does It Kill You?
Modern
SCORE: 28 | 27 COMMENTS | 4207 VIEWS | IN 8 FOLDERS
First Run at an Event/Comment Sweep —May 19, 2016
So I got the last couple cards needed to put the deck together and piloted it at my local Wednesday Night Modern in a field of 31 players. I did not do very well in the event, although I had much more success in some pickup games while waiting for rounds to end. One thing to note is that every one of my rounds finished in under 20 minutes.
Match 1 vs Grishoalbrand
Game 1 I am on the play and land a turn 3 Goblin Charbelcher. With 5 lands out of the deck, I feel pretty good about it. He then reanimates a Griselbrand and a Boborygmos Enraged and throws some lands at me.
Sideboarding: I trimmed the Recross the Paths and two Sylvan Caratids for the two Relic of Progenitus and the Scavenging Ooze.
Game 2 he turn 3 Through the Breachs an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. I lose after losing my whole board.
Pickup matches vs G/R Tron
Game 1 he plays some Tron lands and has natural Tron. He casts a Wurmcoil Engine, and I belch for 42.
We didn't bother to sideboard since it was just for fun.
Game 2 he Through the Breachs an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn at me on turn 4. I proceed to lose. Against Tron or other decks that maindeck artifact removal, it is best to play Goblin Charbelcher as a seven mana sorcery that reads "Win the game". This slowed us down too much though against Through the Breach.
Game 3 I play a turn 3 Goblin Charbelcher with a backup in hand. He Karn Liberated's it, then I cast the second and belch him for 14. He minuses Karn again and takes care of my second one. I then play Assault Formation and kill him with my Wall of Roots.
Tron getting turn 3 Tron every game is a bit discouraging.
Match 2 vs G/W Relicblade (Quest for the Holy Relic and Argentum Armor with some hatebears creatures. Squadron Hawk MVP)
Game 1 he plays Quest for the Holy Relic. I go two Chancellor of the Tangle and Forest into Sakura-Tribe Elder and Caravan Vigil into Traverse the Ulvenwald. Turn 2 Goblin Charbelcher, turn 3 lots of damage.
Sideboarding: I trim the Recross the Paths, one Assault Formation, and two Sylvan Caryatid for three Nature's Claim and the Fracturing Gust. White has a lot of nasty ways of shutting down our belcher.
Game 2 he leads on three Leyline of Sanctity into a Quest for the Holy Relic. I grab a Forest then Nature's Claim the Quest. He then stumbles on lands and I kill him with Assault Formation and walls. The Pithing Needles he draws aren't relevant.
Pickup matches vs U/R Delver
Overall I go 8-1. 6 Belches and 2 Assault Formation kills. He gets me when he Remands my Goblin Charbelcher and then gets to Mana Leak it later on. I honestly don't remember all the details.
Match 3 vs Abzan Company
Game 1 I get a Goblin Charbelcher and activate, deal a measly four. He untaps and gains infinite life.
Sideboarding: Took out four Assault Formations and two Sylvan Caryatid. Added in two Firespouts, two Relic of Progenitus, one Scavenging Ooze, and the Fracturing Gust. I didn't know if he had any impressive artifact/enchantment hosers, but Fracturing Gust does it all. Abzan also gums up the board too much for my walls to beat down.
Game 2 he gets out a board of Birds of Paradise, Kitchen Finks, Fiend Hunter taking my Wall of Roots, Viscera Seer, and a Spike Feeder. I fire off my Firespouts and kill his board, getting back my wall. He scries a lot and leaves on top. Casts Collected Company hitting Anafenza, the Foremost and Eternal Witness. Witness gets back Viscera Seer and I lose to infinite life again.
Pickup match vs Zombie Dredge
Overall I go 3-2 in games. I win whenever I get a belcher, he wins when he gets nice dredges. Two ships passing in the night kind of stuff. The walls do great work against Prized Amalgam though.
Pickup match vs Boros Aggro/Burn
I go 2-0 in these games. Walls block attackers profitably. One game I belch him, the other I just beatdown with walls and Chancellor of the Tangle.
Match 4 vs U/B Mill
Mill has the unique property of making our Goblin Charbelcher not lethal. Honestly I was never expecting this matchup, but here we go.
Game 1 I never find a threat. He just mills me out after using Surgical Extraction on my Assault Formation.
Sideboard: Just add in three Leyline of Sanctity. The extra cards are useful.
Game 2 I get a Leyline of Sanctity. He scoops, then reaches for his sideboard and moves about five cards into his deck.
Game 3 he gets the mill plan online and Surgical Extractions my Leyline of Sanctity. I get a Goblin Charbelcher and get off two disappointing belches. At this point, he is at 3 life and I have about 20 cards left in my deck and two lands. I go for the kill since I know both lands are right near the bottom, and he Crypt Incursions me for 26 life. I belch once more, then scoop since I cannot win.
This honestly makes me tempted to turn Scavenging Ooze into Gaea's Blessing, but I doubt I'll run into mill too frequently.
Overall, takeaways is that we are great against the fair decks and are slightly slower than fast combo. Recross the Paths only did it's thing once, and so I might be cutting it for something like Wurmcoil Engine to up my number of threats. I'm also somewhat tempted to go down to 6 lands and add an additional Lay of the Land. Playtesting will ensue to test it out.
Comment sweep and hopes for more suggestions. Let me know if you do any playtesting, the data is always useful.
Great idea. But it needs play testing. Seems like a simple Dryad Arbor can eventually kill you.
May 14, 2016 9:59 p.m.
My hats off to you. This is a very hard deck concept for modern. Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, Seething Song are all keys that are absent. Very hard deck without them.
May 14, 2016 10:02 p.m.
lemmingllama says... #4
@Joker1430 Dryad Arbor will have a tough time killing us, since we will normally either activate Goblin Charbelcher or be able to block it with a wall. If we also have a Assault Formation out, we will kill that Dryad Arbor too with the wall.
Also Rite of Flame and Seething Song are both banned in Modern. That is why we are running the walls and the Arbor Elf/Utopia Sprawl packages, to ensure we get enough mana.
I did consider adding red for things like Desperate Ritual, but it reduces the consistency. I would maybe want to add some Simian Spirit Guides if removed the Assault Formation part of the deck and went much more all in on the ramp strategy.
May 15, 2016 7:22 a.m.
This is actually really cool and surprisingly consistent!
Nice work! +1
May 16, 2016 2:25 p.m.
blasphemale says... #6
Playing Arbor Elf seems a little awkward in the case that you get a Chancellor turn 1 and no land. I think you're better off playing a dork that produces mana instead of untapping a land.
May 16, 2016 3:54 p.m.
If you actually playtest the deck you're far more likely to get Chancellor and use that mana to use a 1 mana land fetch and then play that land, essentially netting two mana on turn 1.
May 16, 2016 4:16 p.m. Edited.
lemmingllama says... #8
@TMBRLZ I was actually surprised how consistent it is. The only issue is that sometimes we can't get all the forests out of the deck and just have to roll the dice. Thanks for the +1
@blasphemale We frequently will have a Lay of the Land type effect, since we run 12 in the deck. You are correct that Arbor Elf doesn't always produce mana, but it also has a much higher upside than Birds of Paradise since we are also running Utopia Sprawl. Getting to four mana as fast as possible is the plan, and typically we want to get to seven mana to play around removal. Arbor Elf gets us to that mark faster.
May 16, 2016 5:48 p.m.
Squirrelbacon says... #9
This is an interesting idea to say the least. I do think it is worth adding some Birds of Paradise just since it's mana consistency. Also, maybe throw in fetch lands to thin out the deck, Wooded Foothills are great but you'll pay for them, which can be used with Stomping grounds since that counts as a mountain also. Another card that might help would be Explore and that one is cheap all adding four of to play an extra land and draw should be simple. Other than that... I dunno what to say on this one.
Good Luck!
May 17, 2016 10 a.m.
I feel like people should be required to actually playtest this deck before they make comments.
It's severely irritating.
I think it's pure genius. I'm actually tempted to build it.
May 17, 2016 10:10 a.m.
lemmingllama says... #11
@Squirrelbacon I do agree that Birds of Paradise would be good, but I'm currently running the additional walls to improve Assault Formation. If I was running a more typical Belcher list, then BoP would definitely be in here.
Wooded Foothills is strictly downside in this deck. We can't fetch them using our Lay of the Land effects, so it would actually decrease the success rate of our Goblin Charbelcher.
Explore would be interesting, and I would likely run it if I was going for a more all-in Belcher approach. However, we would have to cut some of the walls in order to run it, and that would seriously limit the effectiveness of Assault Formation.
Honestly, it's the sideboard that needs work. Currently we have about one flex spot in the mainboard, that being Recross the Paths.
@TMBRLZ If you do put it together, let me know how it runs. I haven't been able to get a lot of playtesting in against other decks, so more data would always be helpful.
May 17, 2016 3:43 p.m.
I've only been jamming it on here. I may try it on Xmage late tonight or tomorrow night. Or proxy it out and test it out at the shop when I work the next couple of weeks.
I will say in all my goldfishing here though that Recross the Paths is generally the most useless card in the deck. Maybe I should try utilizing it on more of a priority than our lower cmc options and see how it runs, but I don't really appreciate it in my hand currently.
And I'll tell you what my friends at the shop told me when advising me on my sideboard for my Izzet Painful? combo deck. As a deck who's main (and really only method) of winning is to do this one specific thing, your sideboard needs to be less about responding to other decks and more about protecting your own. You want to make a sideboard that deals with their sideboard against you. You want to be able to protect your Goblin Charbelcher and get around cards that limit your ramp. The most relevant thing I can think of at the moment would be Aven Mindcensor + Leonin Arbiter .
Considering your deck is nearly strictly Green it would be hard to make a balanced sideboard.
I feel like you definitely want Pyroclasm. You simply want to have a turn 2 response to a flooded Elves and/or Affinity board.
Also consider putting in a white source in the deck. Say something like Sacred Foundry so you can have two shots at mountains for Goblin Charbelcher should you draw the other. This allows you to comfortably have a red source in play too and it can be fetched by Safewright Quest.
With this white source you can run cards like Kataki, War's Wage or Stony Silence in the sideboard to devastate Affinity and Eggs should you ever run across that mess. The white also allows you to equip yourself with non-green enchantment removal if needed to turn off things that might slow your deck down (or maybe even Silence your opponent). Also access to Path to Exile.
You also have cards like Vandalblast to consider. The reality is your biggest threats are going to be cards that hate Goblin Charbelcher, which is enchantments and artifacts.
Your a hard deck to protect honestly, because there's only so much you can manage to protect with without . And my thoughts are pretty scattered as a result.
May 17, 2016 4:06 p.m.
Here's a list of cards I think would be useful to your sideboard: (to keep things straightforward)
(and this is assuming you put a 1-of Sacred Foundry in the mainboard)
Silence (can be very useful when you maintain priority and put it on top of something on the stack (like Charbelcher's ability) - can mess with control big time when used appropriately)
A lot of the other cards you already have like Autumn's Veil, Leyline of Sanctity, Relic of Progenitus, and Nature's Claim seem solid in the deck. Consider adding and what it can do for you though in your variance of defense mechanisms.
May 17, 2016 4:17 p.m.
lemmingllama says... #14
@TMBRLZ Recross the Paths is better when we aren't goldfishing and are playing against more controlling decks. The fact that we can stack our deck once we remove all the lands means we can continuously find more disruption or Goblin Charbelchers. Additionally, it allows us to tutor up whatever we need to combo off, such as stacking a Goblin Charbelcher on top and then bottoming it, with a Nature's Claim for their Stony Silence second. I do believe that it is the worst card in the deck, but it also adds a new layer of threats to the deck that other people may be unprepared to deal with.
Firespout has almost always been more impressive in testing than Pyroclasm. It has wider applications against the current Zoo decks, and it still wipes out both Elves and Affinity. I could maybe see including it in other situations, but I would rather have the higher impact card. Also with any Utopia Sprawl or Arbor Elf, we still have that turn 2 Firespout wipe.
Splashing white would be interesting, but I would likely remove red from the sideboard if I wanted that to happen. Our mana is already stretched as it is, so I would rather just splash a single color. Stony Silence is the largest hoser to this deck, which is why I am running so many Nature's Claims and the Fracturing Gust. I would never want to splash it in here. Fracturing Gust is also more impressive than Kataki, War's Wage in most scenarios.
Silence is a really cool one, and honestly one of the cards I would want to run if I did splash white. It is just a huge upgrade to Autumn's Veil in most cases, and it is good in a wider number of matchups. Wonderful card, especially since you can use it aggressively as well as defensively.
Path to Exile is good, but we rarely require it. It would help out when we need to Assault Formation them, or if we need to dig more basics out of our own deck. However, most of the creatures such as Aven Mindcensor can be killed with Firespout, which also improves our aggro matchups. I would include it if I did splash white, but honestly I don't think that there is enough justification to go white.
Vandalblast is sweet. I do really enjoy the card. However, Fracturing Gust and Nature's Claim are typically just better. If I did want to run a strictly artifact hoser, Ancient Grudge would likely be my pick.
Finally, your last point of adding a Sacred Foundry. Splashing any more than a single non-basic Forest makes it extremely difficult to clear out all the lands. Only Safewright Quest and Recross the Paths can get out the non-basics from our deck. We don't want a second unfetchable land. Stomping Ground is necessary to add a splash and because if we don't fetch it, then at least it being a mountain gives us a smaller fail rate. If I was going to add white, I would have to cut the Stomping Ground for a Temple Garden to also ensure we can get that turn 1 green source. Sacred Foundry just increases the risk of mulligans and bad belches.
TL;DR - White isn't as good as red since it doesn't have sweepers, and we can't easily splash two colors. I'm likely going to stick with red since it adds more robust options and makes our belches more likely to succeed.
Also right now I'm looking at maybe putting Defense Grids and Eternal Witnesss into the deck. Right now I'm testing out moving Recross the Paths into the sideboard (cutting Scavenging Ooze) and adding in one Eternal Witness.
lemmingllama says... #1
@Exiled_soul/chuckles9876789 Here's the list I was talking about
May 12, 2016 10:38 a.m.