Commander Overview
Goblins are such a strong creature type, and Boggart Cursecrafter is an amazing commander to lead the deck, being able to turn our expendable goblins into damage. Combining that ability with a classic goblin game plan is a great way for us to be strong in and out of combat. We don’t even care if a combat goes bad for us; that turns into damage. Rakdos and Goblins have always been pretty strong, but having Boggart Cursecrafter as the commander changes the game; more damage is always good for us! Boggart Cursecrafter has a lot of things going for it. They are cheap and can come down early and slowly whittle down our opponents for a lot of the game, and since our opponents only have thirty life, being able to whittle them down even five or ten times can be a huge difference.
How to Play the Deck
Playing the deck is very simple; it’s all about being aggressive! Aggressiveness is the key to any goblin deck, and this one is no exception. We do have the added benefit of our commander allowing us to deal additional damage when our goblins die, which can be a great way to affect all of our opponents. This deck is pretty easy to play. As long as we can keep Boggart Cursecrafter on the field and keep making/killing our goblins, we should be good. This deck is pretty good for a player of any skill level.
Synergy’s in the deck
We have a lot of amazing synergies in the deck, my favorites are the ones that support Boggart Cursecrafter like Impact Tremors and Molten Gatekeeper. Both of these allow us to output extra damage and hurt our opponents even more! Since we are primarily a goblin-focused deck, some cards synergize wonderfully with goblins, like Caterwauling Boggart, which gives our goblins menace, which is always nice in a creature-heavy format. Frogtosser Banneret is another card that works perfectly. It discounts nearly every creature in our deck, and that discount can allow our hand to truly explode and have a lot of opportunity and card advantage.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: Since we are an aggressive deck, the early game is actually amazing for us! We can drop Boggart Cursecrafter early so that if any of our stuff dies we can get some extra damage off, as well as aggressive cards like Goblin Arsonist or Facevaulter being great early options to start whittling down our opponents, while this early-game damage may seem insignificant it can truly matter when opponents life start getting low!
Mid-Game: Almost nothing changes in the mid-game. We can play better creatures like Boneclub Berserker, which can be a formidable attacker for us. Still, the overall gameplan remains the same: deal as much damage as possible and keep on swinging!
Late-Game: We don’t really wanna ever get to the late-game, but if we have to, we pretty much switch to the pure ping gameplan. We typically can’t attack opponents’ boards at this stage of the game. I typically lean on Boggart Cursecrafter a lot heavier at this stage of the game.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
We don’t ramp that much outside of Arcane Signet and Commander’s Sphere. Still, we truly don’t have too; we have a very low cost in the deck overall, capping out at five mana, so we are perfectly ok with not ramping that much. We are aggressive and have no problem playing out our hand, even if we do miss some land drops.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
We are very good at drawing cards, and many of our spells, like Deadly Dispute or Fanatical Offering, allow us to get some extra damage if we have Boggart Cursecrafter since we have to sacrifice a creature. We also have an amazing trio in Night’s Whisper, Read the Bones, and Sign in Blood. All of these are great ways for us to draw cards with minimal drawbacks. With all of our card draw in the deck, I never sat around with one or two cards in my hand. Our card draw package is great.
Removal
Being in black here helps us a ton since we can run spells like Breathe your Last and Doom Blade which are good at taking out problematic creatures, we do have some non-traditional removal like Outnumber and Massive Raid which care about the number of goblins we control and since we typically have a full board there’s not much we can’t kill with these. We are not very heavy on removal, as we are much more focused on our game plan, but be mindful that we can’t remove everything. We mostly clear creatures that are in our way!
Protection
We have almost no protection in the deck. This is by design, since we don’t care if our creatures die. With Boggart Cursecrafter on the field, we turn all of those deaths into damage. There is pretty much nothing in our deck that we need on the field outside of our commander, and since they are so cheap, we can easily recast them multiple times. In all of my testing games, I had no trouble without protection.
Utility / Support
Let’s focus on some of my favorite goblins in the deck!Facevaulter can be a huge damage dealer for our deck and a great and cheap way to trigger Boggart Cursecrafter. This is an extremely powerful creature for only mana. I also love Goblin General. Giving our goblins an extra buff can help us a lot in combat, which is always strong. Goblin Caves is another great card for us in combat, a toughness boost makes all of our 1/1’s a lot less bad in combat! Even though we want our goblins to die, we do want them to deal some damage first, and don’t worry, we have our own ways to sacrifice our stuff like Ashnod’s Altar. Mogg Raider is a cheap but strong goblin, a free sac outlet that can buff up a creature before damage. With Mogg Raider and a big board, I have killed opponents in the late-game; the same is true for Goblin Sledder.
We also have some great support cards like Forever Young, a great way to recur our creatures after a terrible combat or a big board clear. Goblin War Strike is a strong finisher for our deck, and if we have been whittling our opponents down, we can kill them even if we don’t have a giant board. Our cheap creatures like Goblin Matron or Goblin General are both fantastic for the deck. Still, they do often die in combat or get targeted, so being able to bring them back with Unearth is very strong and a huge benefit of being Rakdos.
Mana Base
Our mana base is pretty uninteresting. We do have Great Furnace and Vault of Whispers, but these are mostly just untapped sources of each color for the deck. We do have some card draw from Barren Moor or Polluted Mire, but other than that, it’s mostly basics. I had no trouble with our mana base in testing.
Win Conditions
We have two win conditions in the deck and they intertwine with each other a lot, we are mostly focused on combat but with some of our direct damage cards like Boggart Cursecrafter and Impact Tremors we can easily kill opponents through non-combat as well, since both of these focus on doing damage it doesn’t matter which one you go for, as long as our opponents die!
Strengths of the Deck
We are great at both combat and non-combat damage; we are just great at dealing damage.
We are very aggressive and, with our commander, can end games pretty quickly.
Weaknesses of the Deck
+1/+1 counter decks or any deck that has big creatures can be tough for us to attack into.
If we lose our entire board, we can fall behind our opponents and take a lot of extra damage.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Boggart Cursecrafter. Matchup Record: 2-2
I decided to go for the true mirror match here, and it went just as i expected, this matchup is pretty much a race and whoever comes out of the gate faster has more success, cards like Goblin Grenade and Massive Raid were very good in this matchup since they big life swings mattered a lot.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Massive Raid, Goblin War Strike and Goblin Surprise.
Game 2: Vs Twinflame Travelers. Matchup Record: 0-3
This was a rough one; they are better at combat than we are since they are a lot bigger, but additionally, they have counterspells and bounce spells. I had no success with this matchup; it was just a rough matchup for our deck.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Massive Raid, Goblin Caves and Doom Blade.
Game 3: Vs Butch DeLoria, Tunnel Snake. Matchup Record: 3-0
This matchup went great for us, speed is the name of the game here and we are a bit faster than Butch and all of the rogues, the biggest downside of this matchup is that Doom Blade doesn’t work here outside of colorless creatures, i ran over Butch and his gallery of rogues in every game, they are just not as fast as we are.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Brightstone Ritual, Emberwilde Augur and Goblin War Strike.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Boggart Cursecrafter is such a fun commander; Rakdos Goblins feels so much better than just mono-red goblins, and I love having access to some good black card draw. As someone who typically doesn’t play aggressive strategies, this deck was a breath of fresh air and a lot of fun to build and pilot.