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 Goblin Dark-Dwellers.

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 Den Protector – Deathmist Raptor 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 Painful Truths and Radiant Flames, 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:

Standard Jund

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creatures (21) 4 Hangarback Walker 4 Den Protector 4 Deathmist Raptor 4 Thunderbreak Regent 3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer spells (13) 2 Duress 2 Despise 4 Draconic Roar 3 Kolaghan’s Command 2 Exquisite Firecraft lands (26) 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 sideboard (15) 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

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