[Back] [Home] [Up] [Next]

4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
6 Mountain

Sideboard:
4 Clickslither
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Pyroclasm
2 Krosan Grip
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Goblin King

Dirty Kitty 2006.

Description of deck by Brian David-Marshall (quoted):
So, let's talk about the deck. If you just looked at the creatures, this doesn't look all that crazy. The big change comes in that spells column. By running 10 fast mana spells (Seething Song, Rite of Flame, and Brightstone Ritual), the deck gains the ability to muscle out crazy numbers of goblins with Empty the Warrens. That combo has been showing up in lots of the goblin decks today, but the real innovation, one I haven't seen anywhere but in Billy's group (so far at least), is Fecundity. With Fecundity and a Skirk Prospector out, every goblin sacrifice means a card draw and a red mana. In that world, Mogg War Marshal becomes Ancestral Recall and Black Lotus. Combined with the cost reduction of Goblin Warchief to help things along plus the brute power of Empty the Warrens, plus all the red rituals, once in this mode a player can potentially draw the whole deck up if needed, particularly once more than one Fecundity is out. Killing from there is just a matter of picking the best method for the board, whether it's sending in Piledrivers with countless goblin tokens (think "more than Magic Online can count" countless), revving up the ultimate Goblin Sharpshooter, or even just pointing a gigantic Grapeshot at the opponent's face.

So in some ways, the deck gets to enjoy the best of both worlds, putting pressure on the opponent with an aggro rush but threatening to go off combo-style should the opponent tap out at the wrong moment, something that often happens as they struggle to deal with the deck's early charge.

Billy Moreno was nice enough to sit down with me for a bit after the fifth round of play today to walk me through some of the history of the deck. Billy is one of several players running Dirty Kitty, including Osyp Lebedowicz, Josh Ravitz, Ben Stark, John Fiorillo, and Luca Chiera of the Italian national team. Billy said that a bit after Time Spiral hit Magic Online, some of the goblin decks started showing up with the red ritual cards to power out Empty the Warrens. A couple even made Top 8 of some Premier Events, at which point they caught the eye of Brian David-Marshall, who pointed them out to Billy. The group liked the deck, but it was Billy that came up with the idea of adding Fecundity.

As he described it for me, from there the deck went through a number of different iterations. Early versions still had outmoded late-game cards like Siege-Gang Commander and Goblin Ringleader, which just gummed up the new engine. From there they tried various toolbox approaches thanks to Goblin Matron and even experimented with a Burning Wish version (with one Empty the Warrens in the sideboard), but those approaches were coming out clunky. The more they practiced with the deck the more they were able to streamline it down to a more focused approach, keeping that powerful early game while maximizing the explosive combo elements.

The final phase was deciding on the two "one-ofs" in the deck for Matron to get. In the end they went with one Sharpshooter and one Sledder, both of which provide ways around potential problem situations and make it easier to just put the game away depending on the board in question. Sledder, for example, is great after a big Warrens or against decks like Boros with pro red, as you can wait to see what gets blocked and then sacrifice everything to make one of the unblocked creatures lethal, not to mention its ability to ease the impact of cards like Pyroclasm.

Now that they're almost through the Extended day I asked how the deck felt, and Billy pointed out that while some players like Osyp were doing well (4-1 as I write this), he himself hadn't fared as well, going 3-2 so far after running into several different issues. Despite that, he still felt the deck was the right choice and was glad he'd gone with it. Another sign of good preparation was that even this far into the event he didn't really think any of the cards in the main or 'board were mistakes and had to be switched. With more practicing he felt there were some minor tweaking possibilities, such as going to 20 land or experimenting with a couple Chrome Moxes.

Have a casual deck you want to submit to MDV?  Go here.  Do you see an error on this page?  Email it to this address.   

by Billy Moreno [2006 Magic World Championship], featured on www.magicthegathering.com by Brian David-Marshall

TRIBAL: Goblins - Fecundity / Empty the Warrens