Historic Goblins Theorycraft Decks

In yesterday’s State of the Game for November, MTG Arena’s roadmap to roll out the Historic format has been announced! This is news many players have been waiting for, since there were no incentives to play Historic thus far (though you can still queue for it, it does not credit towards daily wins). Beginning with the game update on November 21, players will be able to queue up for Ranked Historic matches, participate in the Historic Anthology Launch Event as well as future tournaments and events.

In addition to this, every quarter we are getting curated cards added to Historic from Magic’s past – according to Wizards – “that have been carefully selected to expand the format in interesting ways. Some are nostalgia plays, some are fun build-arounds to enable new archetypes, and some are powerful new tools”. The first 20 card set is called Historic Anthology 1, that can be purchased for 3400 Gems (four of each card) or crafted with Wildcards.

As we countdown to November 21 (and the Standard ban announcement on the 18th), we will be featuring a variety of theorycraft decks built around the new Anthology cards, or highlight some potentially cool and competitive Historic decks that might be viable going forward.

To begin our Historic journey, we will start with the lovely Goblin Matron and see if she can support the Goblin tribe in combination with Goblin Ringleader from Core Set 2020, another powerhouse! Also note that you can start playing these decks right away in the casual Play queue sans the Historic Anthology cards.

View our Historic deck collection here!

Mono Red Goblins

[sd_deck deck=”a18wR_SM”]

This is the most basic version of the Goblin deck and attempts to take advantage of Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader’s ability to search for specific goblins. Torbran, Thane of Red Fell seemed too good not to use here to give your army a better finishing power. Other cards for consideration include Icon of Ancestry to buff all your creatures and more card advantage.

Gruul Goblins

[sd_deck deck=”lS8Pl_7IQ”]

We have some cool non-red goblins in Standard, and they are Grumgully, the Generous and Zhur-Taa Goblin. We also have a better mana base in Historic so splashing the second color for these is trivial and we don’t make our deck slower by playing lands that come into play tapped.

Grumgully interacts really well with token generators such as Legion Warboss and Siege-Gang Commander and essentially acts as a lord that buffs your whole team. The deck is heavier on 3 drop goblins, but that is because Skirk Prospector allows you to turbo them out on the second turn. The deck curves out really well, and is resilient thanks to Goblin Ringleader.

Rakdos Dreadhorde Goblins

[sd_deck deck=”-qlXn8UF”]

If anybody remembers Standard from more than 15 years ago, there was a deck that used Patriach’s Bidding and [c]Goblin Sharpshooter[/c] to kill opponents out of nowhere. It was my pet deck back in the day (shows my age) and I wanted to do something similar in Historic.

We can try to do something similar in Historic for fun with the above set up. 6 mana is not a big obstacle with Skirk Prospector and 24 lands. If your initial aggro game plan does not end up working out, you can bring back your army with Command the Dreadhorde and either attack for lethal or use sacrifice outlets via Skirk Prospector and Mayhem Devil for extra damage. We can even try splashing a third color for Grumgully to make our goblins even more stronger.

Wrapping Up

What do you think of Goblins in Standard? Do you think it has what it takes to be a decent ladder deck? Join our Discord server to discuss Historic and follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with our updates!