Standard Sligh

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Our congratulations go out to fellow Canadian Alexander Hayne on his successful win at Grand Prix Kraków over the weekend with his Esper (white / blue / black) Dragons decklist.  Five of the Top 8 lists were in fact Esper Dragons (Control) which featured Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Silumgar, the Drifting Death and Dragonlord Ajutai.

In other news, specifically financial news, Hasbro the parent company of Wizards of the Coast provided a rather decent / optimistic First Quarter Report.  Games category revenues increased 7% in the quarter. Franchise Brands MAGIC: THE GATHERING and MONOPOLY increased revenues in the quarter and contributed to successful overall revenue of the company.

As we had mentioned in yesterday's post, we've been spending a bit of time brewing up standard decklists and have 4 so far and a mountain of Magic: the Gathering cards to clean-up, sort, and organise after this is all done.

Anywhoos, one of the new lists we are rather pleased with is a standard format Goblins (or 'gobbies', as we like to call 'em).  This build is essentially a mon-Red token strategy which can be considered a slight variation of Sligh.  If you may be unaware, Sligh decks (named after Paul Sligh) are generally red-based aggressive decks that use small and cheap creatures on early turns to quickly diminish the opponent's life total. If the creatures are not enough, burn spells are used to finish the opponent off. The burn spells also double to remove blockers. 

Let's get into it now - 
As you may know, here at MTG Realm, we've got a thingy for token decks and we want to take yet another run at it using Purphorus, God of the Forge and Obelisk of Urd.  Simply, Purphorus will ding your opponent for 2 life every time you drop a critter while Obelisk can be dropped early for its convoke cost.  These two cards represent Plan A and Plan B which we will give equal weight to.

 
Rather obvious we need to power the engine with cheap creatures, so we will use Dragon Fodder, Hordeling Outburst, as well as Goblin Rabblemaster to help get out 1/1 red Goblin creature tokens.

Here's the summary of it thrown togehter -

• 4x Frenzied Goblin - nice one-drop which gives the opportunity for a small measure of control over how the opponent blocks.
• 4x Foundry Street Denizen - solid one-drop which will typically be packing a bigger punch with all the creatures we are dropping.
• Mardu Scout - 3/1 for 2 ain't bad and we like that we can dash this out should we suspect sorcery removal.
• 4x Dragon Fodder - 2 drop for 2 gobbies
• 3x Goblin Rabblemaster (one's a promo) and we only have three of 'em.  Good token generation and this guy can get huge himself.
• 4x Hordeling Outburst - 3 drop for 3 dudes.
• 3x Purphoros, God of the Forge - we don't ever expect him to go nuclear and are quite happy with how this pings.
• 3x Obelisk of Urd - Urd is the word y'awl.  Nice +2/+2 pump - just be sure to name 'goblin' as your creature type.

• 2x Roast -  conditional spot removal
• 2 Arc Lightning - our metagame has a lot of small dudes.
• 1x Hammer of Purphoros - haste is nice.
• 4x Stoke the Flames - solid convoke burn

Sideboard for our locality -
• 2x Arc Lightning
• 2x Anger of the Gods
• 2x Harness by Force
• 2x Lightning Strike
• 1x Roast
• 2x Impact Tremors
• 3x Krenko's Enforcer
• 1x Stormbreath Dragon

Our casual games at the kitchen table shows that this has promise and we will likely bring it to our local gaming store, OMG! Games here in Barrie after we feel a bit more confident with it.
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