Active and Reactive

Changing Speeds with Goblin Bidding

by Jeff Zandi

Goblin Bidding is a very successful deck archetype that has the ability to
produce game wins very rapidly. Before Patriarch's Bidding was added to the
deck, the Goblin deck had only one speed. FAST. The mono red version of this
deck was capable of super fast wins, maybe the best mono red creature-based
deck in the history of Magic: the Gathering. The only flaw with the deck was
its inability to come back late in the game. Basically, if mono red Goblins
didn't manage to win quickly enough, there was a chance that the opponent
could manage to reset the board. If the opponent did manage to live through
the initial Goblin onslaught, the opponent was often able to win the game.
At the Onslaught Block Constructed event in Japan last year, a single black
card was added to the deck to change everything. That card was Patriarch's
Bidding. Patriarch's Bidding gives the Goblin deck the ability to do what it
does best, which is to throw every conceivable Goblin at you with the hasty
help of Goblin Warchief while ADDING the ability to DO IT ALL AGAIN if or
when those Goblins end up in your graveyard.

THERE WAS EARLY DOUBT ABOUT ADDING BIDDING TO THE DECK

The addition of black mana and Patriarch's Bidding was not immediately
accepted by competitive Magic players. It seemed crazy. So much of mono red
Goblin's advantage was wrapped up in the incredible consistency of an
aggressive one color beatdown deck. Okay, so you're adding a black card, is
it a splashable card like Terror or Dark Banishing? No, it was Patriarch's
Bidding, a card with a five mana casting cost seemingly TOO HIGH for this
aggressive deck, and what's more, a casting cost requiring not one BUT TWO
black mana. It looked like a bad idea on paper, but the addition of
Patriarch's Bidding evolved this deck from a one-trick-pony aggro red deck
into a true monster.

TESTING FOR THIS YEAR'S U.S. REGIONALS

For the past month, my team has been primarily testing about a half dozen
different decks, chief among them red/black Goblin Bidding, blue/red/black
Affinity and mono white control. Here is the basic design of Goblin Bidding
that we have been working with. If it looks a lot like many other Goblin
Bidding decks you have seen, you're not imagining things, our Goblin Bidding
deck IS a lot like the other versions you have seen. This deck design has
become very standard in the past year. We've tried some interesting changes
to help the deck in game one against the meta game, but we keep coming back
to a design very similar to that below.

Goblin Bidding
Goblin Warchief x4
Goblin Sharpshooter x4
Skirk Prospector x4
Goblin Piledriver x4
Siege-Gang Commander x4
Goblin Sledder x4
Skullclamp x4
Gempalm Incinerator x4
Patriarch's Bidding x3
Sparksmith x2
Bloodstained Mire x4
City of Brass x3
Mountain x12
Swamp x4
SIDEBOARD:
Echoing Ruin x4
Patriarch's Bidding
Dark Banishing x3
Electrostatic Bolt x4
Detonate x3

CHANGING SPEEDS WITH GOBLIN BIDDING

Okay, so you're playing Goblin Bidding. You shuffle up and start a match
going first with no knowledge of the opponent's deck. Your opening hand
looks like Mountain, Bloodstained Mire, Goblin Warchief, Skullclamp, Goblin
Sledder, Goblin Prospector and Gempalm Incinerator. Not too much to think
about, drop Mountain and Prospector setting up for a turn two Goblin
Warchief and you are literally off to the races. This is the kind of hand
that you can expect a lot from this deck, and these hands aren't too hard to
play. However, in other situations, things can be different. You may know
more about what your opponent is playing. You may have a much less
aggressive starting hand like Mountain, City of Brass, Swamp, Patriarch's
Bidding, Goblin Sledder and two Goblin Piledrivers.

Depending upon your opening hand and the deck you are playing against, you
may need to change speeds with your Goblin Bidding deck. Your focus will be
a little different against Affinity than against a control white deck,
still, at every juncture, your decision is going to be based a lot on what
your deck gives you. The combination of these two factors will help you
decide when you need to mulligan, and how aggressively you will need to
mulligan.

VERSUS CONTROL DECKS

Against control decks, and I'm thinking about primarily mono white control
decks right now, the decision to go fast or slow is more dependent on the
matchup. In this matchup, you simply don't have to kill your opponent as
fast. This is very good news for you, because you can afford to keep many
more hands against the control decks. An opening hand that has too many
mountains and too few Goblins might be perfectly okay against control decks,
the same kind of hand that you would need to mulligan against the very
aggressive Affinity deck. Against the control deck, you shouldn't assume
that you need to kill them before they clear the board with Wrath of God or
a similar effect. Very often, you get in six to eight to ten points of
damage, then the white player blows up the board with Wrath of God, smiling
as he gains a four or five to one card advantage. After all, his board is
all land. His turn two and three plays have been cycle for land, cycle for
board clearing cards, or even search (with the help of a little blue in the
deck) for board clearing cards. After clearing the board, the white player
feels pretty good on turn four. He shouldn't. He's tapped out and you could
quite easily play land number five on your next turn and win instantly with
Patriarch's Bidding (if you had Warchief in the yard with a few other
goodies). Many things work to your favor in this matchup. Because of Goblin
Warchief and Goblin Prospector, many of the things that happen to your
opponent after you cast Bidding occur too quickly for the Wrath of God and
Akroma's Vengeance cards in his hand to help him. Sometimes your opponent
wants to turn things around with Decree of Justice. Good for him, I hope he
taps out during his turn in order to create two or three 4/4 Spirit tokens,
because if he tries to make a bunch of 1/1 tokens by cycling the Decree at
the end of your turn, those little guys are very likely to get crunched by
your Goblin Sharpshooter. (a year ago, the most popular versions of this
deck did NOT contain four copies of Sharpshooter, but since hindsight is
20/20, they probably should have) Another way that you change up the speed
of your Goblin Bidding deck against control decks is in the way you use your
Skullclamps. My goal against control decks, if I am not fortunate enough to
have the turn four speed kill, is to use the Skullclamp early and often,
eating my Sledders and even my Prospectors in order to keep my hand full of
cards. This action ALONE will largely overcome the card advantage of their
Wrath of God effects. Of course, every use of Skullclamp in this deck does
two things that help your Patriarch's Biddings by putting another Goblin in
the graveyard and by moving the three main deck copies of Bidding into your
hand (or at least closer to being in your hand).

Any way you look at it, the Goblin Bidding player simply has a big advantage
against the control player in game one. This advantage is lessened to some
extent after sideboarding for two reasons. First, the control deck player
has cards in their sideboard that improve their game against you, and
second, you simply don't have many cards in your sideboard that are likely
to help you against control. If they are good, they sideboard in cards like
Holy Day, Silver Knight or even Purge or Wing Shards. If they are more
old-school, they might bring in Circle of Protection: Red. I used to be
afraid of COP:Red coming in from the board, scared enough that I thought the
red/green fetch land and some copies of Naturalize from the sideboard could
be a good move. Now I know better. Goblin Bidding simply has too many
sources of damage for the control player to hold you off with COP:Red even
if he has ten or more mana sources open. It really is a simple as this: if
your opponent can't handle Patriarch's Bidding, they can't beat you most of
the time. Control decks with no counter magic, and even those with a splash
of blue and up to four counter spells, are simply not up to the task of
stopping the Goblin Bidding deck a lot of the time.

VERSUS AGGRESSIVE DECKS

The first time I played Goblin Bidding against one of the recent really good
Ravager/Affinity decks, I felt like the Goblin deck was a fish out of water.
In this match up, Goblin Bidding doesn't always feel aggressive enough. Your
turn one is a mountain and a Prospector. Their turn one might be Seat of the
Synod, Chromatic Sphere, Welding Jar, Ornithopter and a Frogmite or two
followed by turn two Ravager or Enforcer or both or even more degenerately
fast starts. Suddenly, Goblin Bidding looks like LAST YEAR'S aggressive
deck. One of the things that Affinity simply does better than the Bidding
deck does is abuse Skullclamp. For Bidding to use Skullclamp in the early
game inherently means giving up a Goblin that you COULD be attacking or
blocking with in future turns. In their deck, Skullclamp on Arcbound Worker
is a win/win for them, and Skullclamp on many other of their creatures is
added beatdown.

Against Affinity decks, you have to judge your opening hand much more
carefully, because the matchup can be "checkered flag or crash" for you,
meaning you may have to beat them aggressively with less chance to come back
from near-death to win the game with Patriarch's Bidding. Against Affinity,
if you don't draw a very aggressive hand, you may need to mulligan. Here
comes something the Goblin Bidding player doesn't want to hear: if Goblin
Bidding deck starts with its best opening hand, and the Affinity deck starts
with its best opening hand, the Affinity deck will probably win. Now the
good news, most hands for the Affinity deck are NOT the optimal hand. In
every situation except the best possible hands, Goblin Bidding has a very
good opportunity in the Affinity matchup. Of course, we're talking about
game one.

As you can see in many current builds of Goblin Bidding, the sideboard is
full of hate for the Affinity deck. One of the more revolutionary ideas is
to use the sideboard to turn the Goblin Bidding deck into a Furnace Dragon
deck for games two and three. However, anytime you depend on your sideboard
in order to win a matchup, you are admitting a huge weakness. I think Goblin
Bidding has a lot going for it against the Affinity deck in game one. While
many people are fitting main deck Electrostatic Bolts and Shatters into
their Goblin Bidding decks, I like sticking with Gempalm Incinerator. If you
expect to play against a lot of Affinity decks in your Regionals tournament,
by all means be prepared to sideboard in lots of hate. Moreover, you may
find that maindeck control cards like Electrostatic Bolt may take the place
of, GULP, Skullclamp. I don't think that I would be interested in removing
Skullclamp from the deck, however, because I believe that, ultimately,
Goblin Bidding is a control deck masquerading as a beatdown deck.

A CONTROL DECK MASQUERADING AS A BEATDOWN DECK

Summing it up, I hope every opening hand I get from my Goblin Bidding deck
gives me a chance to win the game on turn four. When that doesn't happen, I
continue to love the Goblin Bidding deck because Patriarch's Bidding
functionally turns the deck into a control deck that can come back from a
very poor board position to win the game many times. Skullclamp is a very
important part of the control deck portion of the overall Goblin Bidding
strategy. I think it is very hard to beat a deck that can look so much like
a pure beatdown deck and yet create such GIANT turnarounds late in the game.
This is what changing speeds with Goblin Bidding is all about.

As always, I'd love to hear what YOU think!

Jeff Zandi
Texas Guildmages
Level II DCI Judge
jeffzandi@thoughtcastle.com
Zanman on Magic Online