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 [scryfall]Goblin Dark-Dwellers[/scryfall].

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 [scryfall]Den Protector[/scryfall] – [scryfall]Deathmist Raptor[/scryfall] 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:

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 [scryfall]Painful Truths[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Radiant Flames[/scryfall], 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. [scryfall]Despise[/scryfall] into [scryfall]Draconic Roar[/scryfall] into [scryfall]Deathmist Raptor[/scryfall] into [scryfall]Thunderbreak Regent[/scryfall] is impossible, unless you morph the Raptor (which is actually often a good idea, because people will assume its a [scryfall]Den Protector[/scryfall] and kill it).