Saturday, March 10, 2018

Saturday: 35:06 (1 Google, and I was kind of drunk)

Goblin Warchief

I could have sworn, when Zvi Mowshowitz reviewed this card the first time it was printed in Scourge, his exact quote was "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?" but I looked it up and I was wrong. (He definitely said that about something, but what? I mean, he has a reputation as something of an alarmist, so it could have been a lot of things, whether they ended up being a problem or not.) Still, when this card was printed, Goblins was already among the best decks, and this was just absurdly over-the-top. Goblin Piledriver was a monster with this card around. Later on, it found a home in Extended, accelerating Goblin Ringleader into more Goblins like Skirk Prosepector, then Seething Song, and Empty the Warrens, turning a normal creature deck into a combo deck on demand. And it returns in Dominaria.

Many of its old friends aren't around anymore, too old even for Modern (Seething Song and Chrome Mox, key cards in the old days, are recent enough but banned). Siege-Gang Commander is back, and that's a very nice combo. Only the rules-tricky cards have been previewed, so I haven't seen much else in the Goblin department, but you don't have this card in the file without a lot of theme to back it up, and I hope it adds up to something good. If you can't appreciate a good Goblin deck in the format, you have no soul. What kind of Magic player are you, anyway?

The only Goblins that see play in Modern right now are Kiki-Jiki and Goblin Guide, but this has a chance to change that. I had completely forgotten that Piledriver got a reprint in Origins, making him legal for Modern Warren Instigator can do really amazing things with the right support, and it's so sad that it never got to do that in any format, considering its inspiration, Goblin Lackey, was good enough to get banned (partly because of Siege-Gang). Modern is fickle, though, and I'm not sure 5C Humans isn't just better (whose existence adds a lot of splash damage to boot).

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