Today’s the release and as currently unemployed, I’ve had the time to think about what to play. The ideas are pretty endless, but the problem is that I won’t have access to everything today, so I’ve used what I have been able to trade for (and I’ll actually get some of the cards I’ve bought later today, because it pays to be close to a professional seller).

So, after a lot of consideration, I decided to have a test run with [card]Goblin Dark-Dwellers[/card].

So, what could I do with them? I was going to do this myself, but our her, Frank Karsten, was faster and wrote a Magic Math, which answers this question (among others): How many targets do you need to play to probably get the benefit from the Goblins?

His rough answer was 10, if you are content with 80% reliability. (I have 13 in my deck.) Then, I remembered (again on ChannelFireball) this list I tried out some time back: Jund Dragons. Its not very good against many decks, but its a great Jund-style, grindy deck, with plenty of card advantage, but not in the form of drawing cards. Its basically a Black-Red Dragons deck with the [card]Den Protector[/card] – [card]Deathmist Raptor[/card] package that’s often so great.

Changes did need to be made. I needed to fit the Goblins there and I needed to make room for more cheap instants and sorceries. Also, the list is missing two cards, which I assume are lands, because 24 lands just isn’t enough for this deck.

There’s 130 instants and sorceries from these colors in Standard. Here’s a list of cards I looked at while deciding upon the ones I wanted to use:

[draft]
Arc Lightning
Complete Disregard
Despise
Draconic Roar
Duress
Exquisite Firecraft
Feed the Clan
Fiery Impulse
Flaying Tendrils
Foul-Tongue Invocation
Grasp of Darkness
Infinite Obliteration
Kolaghan’s Command
Magmatic Insight
Mind Rot
Rakshasa’s Secret
Read the Bones
Reave Soul
Rending Volley
Roast
Ruinous Path
Sarkhan’s Triumph
Savage Punch
Seismic Rupture
Self-Inflicted Wound
Smash to Smithereens
Tears of Valakut
Tormenting Voice
Touch of the Void
Transgress the Mind
Twin Bolt
Ultimate Price
Wild Slash
[/draft]

So, yeah, plenty of options. Some are clearly sideboard options and I’ve cut some cards which cost 3 or less, but just don’t work with the Goblins (such as [card]Painful Truths[/card] and [card]Radiant Flames[/card], although the latter made it into the sideboard). In the end, I went with the following, but if you do choose to play this list, try to tune it for your meta:

[deck title=Standard Jund]
[creatures]
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Den Protector
4 Deathmist Raptor
4 Thunderbreak Regent
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
[/creatures]
[spells]
2 Duress
2 Despise
4 Draconic Roar
3 Kolaghan’s Command
2 Exquisite Firecraft
[/spells]
[lands]
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Hissing Quagmire
2 Smoldering Marsh
3 Cinder Glade
2 Swamp
4 Mountain
4 Forest
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
[/lands]
[sideboard]
1 Yasova, Dragonclaw
1 Feed the Clan
1 Burn Away
2 Ultimate Price
2 Infinite Obliteration
2 Virulent Plague
3 Radiant Flames
1 Duress
2 Self-Inflicted Wound
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

The manabase is not good. [card]Despise[/card] into [card]Draconic Roar[/card] into [card]Deathmist Raptor[/card] into [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card] is impossible, unless you morph the Raptor (which is actually often a good idea, because people will assume its a [card]Den Protector[/card] and kill it).