1. Nice article, thnx !

    But if i was not familiar with pauper, i will not trust in the whole summary of article:
    “it will provide great value for the cost in allowing you to be competitive …”

    You posted 2-2 in TP (and all 4 decks you were playing against were casual, not competitive), after that 0-2 in DE.
    Competitive? Yes! (Based on mtgonline.com Pauper Daily Results not on your investigation)

  2. I had thought you were doing these weekly for some reason. Good article and hope you do better next time with your deck choice. MTGO doesn’t 100% save all your games for some reason. I would recommend some kind of recording program you ca us during the matches to guarantee you have the videos of them.

  3. Good deck choice, Goblins are always fun.
    I like articles on some of the lesser played formats, Pauper is awesome

  4. Goblins is not incredibly popular right now, but still sees a lot of sideboard hate. TPPS is also a pretty good matchup, especially with them running 4x Sign in Blood now. It’s unfortunate that you went 0-2 versus the deck. That Familiar storm deck seemed way over meta-gamed, as you mentioned. You have the second best game 1 matchup versus that deck of any mainstream build (Mono Green Infect is #1). Once the sideboard hate starts to shift more heavily to affinity and combo, goblins will probably be the best deck in the format for a little while.

    I would highly recommend playing matches in the TP room, as you will get to test your board. I also find that you’ll get higher quality opponent decks this way.

    How is that Thunderbolt working out for you over a 4th Chain Lightning or a singleton Fireblast? Also, you could consider Death Spark out of the board in lieu of Flame Jab.

  6. @Neros: The Pauper Perfect Storm.
    If that doesn’t help you any: saclands, rituals and card draw with either Empty the Warrens or Grapeshot to finish it off.

  7. Hi Guys, sorry for not getting to the comments quicker, but i have been extremely swamped with work lately. Thanks for the feedback all, as usual. I do really consider the comment section here to be some of the most useful content to come from these articles, so please, keep them coming!

    Etriol: You are correct in your assessment of my performance and the logical conclusion that the deck is a good competitive value. If you do look at my metagame analyses though, it should be clear, even without my play to drag down the statement :)

    Neros: Yeah, the ability to capture the games is not as important, as I have taken screen caps to help with my recaps, should the replays fail me on MTGO. I am learning as I go, though, so suggestions with regards to this are always welcome. i just don’t have the computing horsepower to do videos right now, as everything I do is off a laptop.

    Inneutral: Yeah, one of the issues with my match against TPPS is that I should have mulluiganed more aggressively to try to hit a sideboard sweeper for the Warrens tokens. But, I gotta learn somehow :)

    I do in general plan to play matches, not single games, in the TP room. In fact, I have already put in some 2-mans for the next article. This month was just a crazy time crunch, and I was happy to get the article out on time at all.

    The Thunderbolt is really just a pet card of mine (and I think I am missing my 4th chain lightning), so that is a good question. I have been pleased with it, and have found many useful targets whenever I draw it. Not sure it is correct though, as my play time has been to short to really judge appropriately.

    Thanks for your questions and comments, keep ‘em coming!

  8. Thanks for the article! It convinced me to get an even cheaper version of this deck, I always wanted to try it out.

  9. milegyenanevem: Glad to have prompted you to pick this up. I think it is a lot of fun to play, especially if you like bashing with little guys!

  10. Well, my very first deck contained four of Benalish Hero, Icatian Infantry, Tundra Wolves :) Those little guys could band together, but I still hope the Goblins will prove to be more effective.

  11. milegyenanevem: Yeah, I’ve always liked banding just to completely mess with my opponents, who never understand it correctly :)

    Goblins have the suberb advantage of being bigger for the same cost, in general, as well as having synergies that make blocking really a nightmare for the opponent. Give it a go, and let us know what you think back here if you get a chance.

  12. Nice to see another player trying their feet into the pauper pools!
    I got a few comments here so please bear with me on this wall i’m about to drop.

    #1) ALWAYS play matches when in the tournament room as it is sideboards that make the primary difference between a casual deck/game and a tourney one.

    #2) Your sideboard looks to be completely geared toward anti aggro (affinity maybe?)
    Perhaps you could explain the card choices in it to us?
    Personally i’d change it to look like

    4 Pyroblast (good vs storm AND MuC)
    4 Raze (yes you sacrifice a land for this but this can be beating vs both storm decks)
    4 Seismic Shudder
    3 Flaring Pain ( This is for against any deck with pro red effects such as WW or Slivers)

    The reason i suggest these changes are because goblins is one of the best aggro decks in the format usually you can just keep the pressure up and win most races so I see little reason to have your sideboard slow that plan down just to slow your opponent down at the same time?

    Now Storm is your main bogey man here ans that’s what I have chose to focus on.
    Nailing a rav bounce land or sac land can at times set the storm decks back a turn or two giving you enough time to get those last points of damage in. In some cases it just flat shuts them down if you’re lucky.

    Thunderbolt used to be a red deck staple so its fine but as others have mentioned it would not be a first choice nowdays personally since MuC is not as common as it once was.

    Lastly the reason that not all the games are recorded is because for some reason when either your or your opponent concede a game MTGO has a high chance of just not recording it.

  13. Ranth: Thanks very much for the detailed comments, I greatly appreciate it, and think it really benefits the readers as well! To address your points:
    1) Yes, I will almost always be doing this, this month was just tough time-wise. You are correct.

    2) Honestly, the board here is taken from decklists of winning goblins decks (mostly, I had to fudge a few cards for lack of owning them, like the 2 pyroblasts). I do think the Gorilla Shaman’s are warranted, but agree about the anti aggro stuff. I will certainly look into adjusting it as I move forward.

    3) The thunderbolt was there, again, due to a lack of a fourth chain lightning, and the fact that I love Thunderbolt. I will try to tighten up these lists in the future so they are as close to perfect as possible, with no cards missing due to my own collection. i can and will be buying the needed cards. Again, this month was a bit nuts.

    I appreciate the concerns wrt the replays, but feel that in most cases my notes (made after matches), my screencaps, and my replays when available, will be plenty to reconstruct game-states for discussion. I do appreciate everyone’s comments as to how to best handle this, so feel free to comment if you have an idea.

  14. Oh your plan on how to deal with the replay issue is fine. I was mainly commenting on that to let people know the how it happens even if we dont know the exact of the why.

    However if you plan to make notes ect right after games you can catch the replay on the “completed games” in the tourney pratice room it might take a little searching but if you’re quick you’ll be able to catch them even if the server didnt save the game to you “recently played” games list. I hope that helps.

  15. Also, maybe it would be good to test out the decks in a PRE? They are generally very competetive and will allow for a better range of competetive opponents than just in the tourney practice room.
    The whole article doesn’t have to be centered into a PRE but maybe you could build a deck and discuss it and then take it for a spin in one of the weekly PRE tournaments and then write about the results in that way?
    Just a thought!

  16. Ranth: Thanks for the thoughts on replays, any ideas are very useful (and that last one is a good one!)

    SaiDes: I would love to bring these decks into the most competetive formats I can, for the sake of this series. My main issues with these is scheduling. I will look into heading into more Dailies/PRE’s where possible. My issues are that I have children to get to sleep every night, and this severely limits the events I can enter with realistic hopes to be “present” for. I do try to look around for those events that I can fit inot the schedule, but they are more difficult to time than you might imagine :)