4 Frenzied Goblin
4 Tin Street Hooligan
4 Feral Animist
4 Goblin King
4 Rabble-Rouser
3 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
2 Patron of the Akki
4 Shock
4 Moldervine Cloak
4 Blazing Shoal
9 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
4 Karplusan Forest
3 Forest
2 Gruul Turf
1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits |
  Evil
Otto.
Description of deck by its author (quoted):
Another Guildpact card that caught my
attention was Feral Animist. After releasing Feral Thallid, Feral
Deceiver, Feral Shadow, Feral Throwback, Feral Lightning, I figured the
least they could do was to make a Feral Animist. The most spiritual of
all the goblins, the Animist believes that ordinary objects, as well as
animate beings, have a soul. Everything is conscious to the animist,
from rocks and trees, to oversized novelty wolf hands. This fellow is
not to be confused with the Feral Animalist, who believes that humans
are merely animals with no spiritual nature and who is indifferent to
all but the physical appetites, like eating, drinking, and playing Magic
Online. Also do not confuse the Animist with the Feral Anime-ist, who
rabidly collects Duel Masters cards and foams at the mouth while
watching Sailor Moon cartoons. They're totally different things.
With its ability to effectively double its power, Feral
Animist is reminiscent of the formerly-restricted Vintage card, Berserk.
Unlike Berserk, however, to double the Animist's power, you need three
times as much mana. Without the aid of any other cards, three mana will
get you a power increase of two, going from two to four. A second
activation will get you an eight-power creature. To be honest, that really
isn't too exciting. For six mana, Feral Animist gets +6/+0? That's the
same as Firebreathing (albeit with less strict mana requirements), and
nobody's oohing-and-ahhing about Sandstone Warrior (except maybe his
mother).
The thing is, creature pump as simple as Giant Growth,
combined with the ability to double its power, makes Feral Animist a
whopping 10/4. Over. And. Out. With seven mana and a Giant Growth, Feral
Animist swings for twenty! Better yet, with a Blazing Shoal (removing an
eight-mana card), you would only need to use the Animist's ability once to
deal twenty.
Does that get your rabble roused?
I quickly threw together a deck, with Feral Animist, Tin
Street Hooligan, Frenzied Goblin, and some other Gruul cards. After a few
rounds of testing, I discovered that with all the one-toughness creatures,
the deck would just roll over, fetch a stick, shake a paw, and die to
cards like Electrolyze. Or Darkblast. Or Night of Souls' Betrayal. Or
Tibor (What a jerk! Lumia was cool, though). Or Gelectrode. Or Plagued
Rusalka. You get the picture. It wasn't pretty. It was the opposite of
that. It was un-pretty. As a result, I added a full set of Goblin Kings,
and replaced the Giant Growths with the more expensive, but more reliable,
Moldervine Cloak. It's just so good.
Rabble-Rouser is another card that can pump up Feral
Animist for little cost, and it makes another nice target for Blazing
Shoal. Kiki-Jiki, on the other hand, is great for pitching to Blazing
Shoal (the same goes for Patron of the Akki), but is also good for making
extra copies of Feral Animist, Goblin King, and Frenzied Goblin, depending
on the situation.
A few other cards I considered include equipment like
No-Dachi, Sword of the Paruns, and Sunforger (which would, of course,
require a White splash). Kiki-Jiki, while no Parun by any means, really
likes their sword. Kiki-Jiki makes a Hasty token, untaps with the Sword,
and makes another Hasty token, both of which get +2/+0! Sweet! All the
deck would need is some Siege-Gang Commanders to make lots of tokens and
Goblin Warchiefs to give them all Haste. Nah. That's an obvious noob deck.
If you have some, I'd try out Invigorate, one of the
alternate-play-cost spells from Mercadian Masques. If you control a
Forest, you can play it for zero mana if you have an opponent gain three
life. Playing it this way would normally net you +1 damage, but with the
Animist's ability to double its power, it makes the life-gain much less
relevant.
One thing I noticed was that this is very close to being
a Shaman deck, on top of being a Goblin deck, since Feral Animist,
Rabble-Rouser, and Kiki-Jiki are all Shamans. If you wanted to go that
route, it would be a pretty simple. Just straight-up substitute the Tin
Street Hooligans and Goblin Kings for something like Sakura-Tribe Elders
and Viridian Shamans. Maybe add a few copies of Sachi, Daughter of
Seshiro, the de facto Shaman Lord. The card I'd be most excited about
adding to the deck is Skarrgan Skybreaker, who gets along very well with
Kiki-Jiki. If you left Standard, Spikeshot Goblin is a natural inclusion
for either deck, being a Goblin Shaman whose ability keys off its power.
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