“To that state of mind where I was ignorant and it was wartime.”
Art:Tibalt, Rakish Instigator
by Chase Stone
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Tibalt is a very interesting commander. We are super good against decks that care a ton about lifegain, and while that doesn’t come up that much in these matchups, we are super strong, I debated and debated how to build this and felt that a goblin deck would allow us to catapult and build on Tibalt’s -2 ability with cards like Impact Tremors
and Witty Roastmaster
, I really like the backup strategy with the burn package, the burn package in this deck allows us to pressure opponents immensely and deal a ton of additional damage after we have attacked for the turn. Between our strong combat presence and our strong non-combat damage presence, this allows us to have a really quick time to kill, and opponents can struggle to deal with us, at a certain point, our opponents cannot survive all of our burn and with cards like Mob Justice
and Massive Raid
that time can come quite quickly. This one is a blast! Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Tibalt, Rakish Instigator Goblin Burn!
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Why Tibalt, Rakish Instigator?
Tibalt is a good asset for our deck; against lifegain-focused decks, they are absolutely ruined when we bring Tibalt; against most Matchups, Tibalt helps by producing some extra creatures who are great chump blockers and a cheap and small source of non-combat damage. While Lifegain-focused decks are really bad against Tibalt, there are some common cards in the format that Tibalt can affect, like Arabella, Abandoned Doll
and Gray Merchant of Asphodel
. Because of the passive and -2 ability and Tibalt being quite cheap, I pretty much always cast them on turn three, and they typically stay out for quite a while. Tibalt isn’t needed for the game plan overall, but it can be quite nice.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Arabella, Abandoned Doll Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 4-0
This is a very good matchup for our deck, we can effectively shut down the life gain from Arabella, and they can’t really do much to remove our creatures or stop our board; this matchup definitely feels like a race, but luckily, we are quite quick. I had a ton of success with this one.
Indulging Patrician
Record against Indulging Patrician 3-0
Indulging Patrician is a very good matchup for our deck; with Tibalt on the field, we can just shut them down, combine that with an aggressive deck and our non-combat damage, and we can take over and dominate this game pretty easily.
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
Record against Trelasarra, Moon Dancer 3-0
This is another deck we just simply shut down; they can’t do much after we get Tibalt out, and we can just attack them a ton and chip them down. Being in Selesnya, they don’t have a ton of ways to get rid of our creatures or our commander.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
General Kreat, the Boltbringer
Record against General Kreat, the Boltbringer 2-3
While we were able to get two wins in the testing games, I don’t think that this is a favorable matchup. It is winnable but not one I go into and think it’s going to be great for us. General Kreat is definitely the better goblin commander than Tibalt; our edge comes from the fact that we have a great burn package and can deal additional damage, and with some of our burn targets, we can easily kill their commander.
Nimble Larcenist
Record against Nimble Larcenist 0-3
This is a rough one for our deck; they have a ton of counterspells, hand disruption and creature removal which we really can’t fight against it can be really hard to stick or resolve the best of the best of our deck, I had no success against them, they countered our best stuff, removed the stuff we were able to stick and dominated the game as a whole.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel Record against Gray Merchant of Asphodel 0-2
I struggled in this matchup originally I thought this would have been quite good for us as we can shut down one-half of their commander’s ability, but this was a rough one, they have so much removal and were able to remove Tibalt through combat damage pretty easily, they destroyed our best creatures and kept our creature count low and just ran away with the game while gaining the life from Gray Merchant is good they are still able to deal that damage, and that can hurt a lot as well.
Strategy Overview:
Burn it down:
We have a pretty nice burn package allowing us to do a ton of non-combat damage to our opponents and burn our opponents down; if we deal fifteen or twenty damage to our opponents, they are in the killable range from our burn spells.
Always be attacking:
We are quite aggressive and should be attacking pretty much every turn we go really wide, and being able to attack often is core to our gameplan; it is really easy to keep swinging, and with how many creatures we have, we can afford to keep on swinging and not worry about our goblins dying.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
We have so many awesome goblins in the deck, from great utility pieces like Goblin Matron
which is a great and cheap tutor for the deck to more aggressive goblins like Goblin Bushwhacker
and Foundry Street Denizen
which are both great aggressive pieces for the deck and allow us to hit hard early, that early-game damage can matter a ton, especially in the mid-late game when we get ready to cast our bigger burn spells. Since we have a decent burn package and are running twenty-five total spells in the deck, I really like Guttersnipe
in the deck, they are a goblin and are affected by our buff creatures like Goblin General
and Goblin Lookout
which can be very good ways to deal some additional damage. There is quite a bit of removal in the format, and I really like Goblin Chirurgeon
as a way to stop our opponents from being able to actually kill our opponents creatures. I had a ton of success with both Unruly Catapult
and Witty Roastmaster. These are pretty much additional copies of Impact Tremors and can allow us to deal a lot of non-combat damage.
Instants:
We start off at instant speed strong with Big Score
and Unexpected Windfall
, which are both strong pieces of card draw and mana production, i love both of these cards and run them in pretty much every red deck I build, they provide a ton of utility for the deck. I really like Burn Bright
and Goblin Surprise
, which are both great buffs for the deck, and if an opponent doesn’t have a lot of creatures, we can hit them like an absolute truck. One of my favorite burn spells in the deck is Searing Blaze
. We can easily get the landfall trigger, and three to a creature and three to an opponent’s face is extremely good for only two mana.
Sorceries:
Since we go wide so often, we love taking advantage of good combat situations, because of that, we are running both Coronation of Chaos
and Cosmotronic Wave
, which are both really strong ways to control combat and hit our opponents hard. Our burn package is pretty good at sorcery speed with cards like Mob Justice and Goblin War Strike
, which can deal a ton of damage to opponents and if they have been attacked a bit previously can easily end the game, these are both great ways to end the game, especially against decks that have a really big board in the late-game, and we can’t really attack into them. We also have some more traditional burn like Rift Bolt
and Lava Spike
, which are just straight damage spells for the deck and can help get our opponents into the range where we can kill them with some of our bigger burn spells.
Artifacts:
We chew through our hand super quickly, so being able to draw cards through our mana rocks like Commander's Sphere
and Mind Stone
can help us keep the gameplan going. This is also the same reason why we are running Spare Supplies
it can be quite tough to keep our hand full, but we do have a decent amount of supplemental card draw that can help us to refill.
Enchantments:
With both Impact Tremors and Raid Bombardment
we can dish out a crazy amount of non-combat damage and put a lot of pressure on our opponents, I really like Raid Bombardment in this deck, there have been games where I just went to combat with all of my small creatures and killed my opponents. Goblin Caves
and Goblin Shrine
are the perfect pair for the deck and can allow us to be a much stronger force in combat, one these is great, but with both of them it’s really awesome.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Because of Tibalt, we are really strong against strategies that attempt to gain life or need to gain life to succeed. Many of these decks are white or white/green and don’t have a lot of removal.
- We are very good against decks with a small board presence since we can go super wide.
- We have a lot of non-combat damage that can whittle down opponents very quickly.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We can have tough matchups against control decks since our huge non-combat damage spells often don’t resolve.
- It can be rough against the goblin’s mirror match. Tibalt doesn’t add much, and some more effective goblin commanders like General Kreat, the Boltbringer
can overwhelm our board. - Decks have on-board clears, and removal can be very tough; if we run into Drown in Sorrow or Sulfurous Blast, it can be very rough.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I had a lot of fun with this one, and playing Goblins and Burn reminds me so much of my early days of magic and just having a ton of classic mono-red fun. While there are a ton of awesome goblin commanders, Tibalt being able to produce some additional creatures / non-combat damage dealers is pretty awesome. I hope you all enjoyed this one as much as I did! Stay tuned and TAP IN