MVG (Most Vertical Goblin)

The recent printing of Goblin Freerunner made me realize something: ever notice that goblins have the extreme sports aspect of Magic on lockdown? Skiing, bobsledding, snowboarding, even parasailing... the rest of Dominaria's gotta step it up!

When is a goblin not a goblin?
When you tie it to a rock sled and push it
down a mountain, apparently.

Thus, we have collected the most foolhardy and adventurous little green guys from Skirk Ridge to Kuldotha, Akki and Mogg alike. The First Goblin Olympics covers all sorts of dangerous events, and even has a Torchrunner on loan from the Frogtosser Games. Let the mayhem commence!

Creatures
4 Fire Juggler
4 Goblin Bowling Team
4 Goblin Freerunner
4 Goblin Glider
4 Goblin Rimerunner
4 Goblin Rock Sled
4 Goblin Ski Patrol
4 Goblin Sledder
2 Mudbutton Torchrunner
4 Oxidda Daredevil

Lands
1 Arena
21 Snow-Covered Mountain

The Eternal Ski Jump

A peculiar interaction occurred to me, engendered by the unique qualities of Assault Suit as discussed last week. We've all seen creatures with activated abilities that last until end of turn, and we've all seen activated abilities that can be activated only once per turn. The humble Goblin Ski Patrol, however, is rather unique on a couple accounts.

As its oracle wording can attest, when you activate the Ski Patrol's ability, it gets +2/+0 and flying... forever. Not until the end of the turn, not until your next turn, until the goddamn sun goes out. Much like the permanent Riding the Dilu Horse, nothing short of leaving play undoes the bonus: because of course, why should it matter? You're sacrificing the Goblin at the end of the turn anyway. And just to ensure you don't try to double up by pumping four (or more) mana into him, you can only activate the ability once. But again, real estate for card text is precious, so there's no point making the addendum that this can only happen once per turn - you can only activate the ability once per game, period. Overall, the card gets the desired effect: he can go off a ski jump for one glorious attack before getting crushed to death by impact.

...unless he has the proper safety gear, that is. As you'll recall from the last article, if you activate the Goblin Ski Patrol and he has an Assault Suit equipped, he's not going anywhere at the end of the turn. At this point you can proceed to do whatever other tricks your want with the Suit, because for the rest of eternity you have a 3/1 flying Goblin, perpetually caught in the most radical ski jump ever. There's no card, counter or other marker to denote that he has the boost: ya just gotta remember. How often do you see that in the game, hmm?

Let's Hear It For Mogg Bombers

My first-ever goblin deck, loosely speaking, existed around the year 2000 - somewhat before dedicated goblin decks were truly viable as a competitive entity. The deck essentially consisted of every card that said "goblin" on it I could find in the 10-cent bins. For a while this meant that the biggest creature in the deck was the 3/2 Goblin Cavaliers, and heaven help you if he dropped while both Goblin Shrine and Goblin Caves were out. Not long before the deck was dismantled and reborn under the newfound legitimacy of Onslaught block, however, there was the addition of a new biggest lunk on the block: the mighty Mogg Bombers.

I pretty soon found out that the Bombers weren't all that. For one thing, they hardly ever functioned as a creature. In the low-power, just-starting-out environment of mediocre critters crashing into each other, generally your opponent would play a creature the next turn and blow him up. If not, well, then I would drop some real nasty tech like Kyren Sniper or Goblin Flotilla and blow my own Mogg Bombers up - because what, I'm going to stop playing creatures in the goblin deck? I guess more often than not I was left wondering why I would work with the Bombers when Lightning Bolt was a quarter the mana, instant speed, and could be pointed at creatures. Even in such a weak deck, he always felt like he underperformed.

Recently, though, some rules clarifications have helped to highlight just how the Bombers's unusual ability can be tuned to your advantage. Under closer inspection, they can be quite handy after all - and no, not as a creature!

So because sacrificing the Bombers is part of an effect and NOT a cost, it will absolutely trigger multiple times if multiple creatures show up at the same time. Dragon Fodder will get you two creatures as well as six points of damage to your opponent's face for just two mana. Siege-Gang Commander ups the ante to a staggering twelve damage, and he's right on curve after you play the Bombers. Have even more mana to spend? Goblin Offensive amounts to a very unusual Fireball that grants quadratic damage for your mana. If your opponent has even a middling army, a Mogg Infestation will hit him for six damage for each creature he has - take that, elf decks! Of course, since you don't want your opponent to prematurely detonate your Bombers by dropping some chump on his turn, it's best to set them off the turn you play them - and for the sake of speed, that means finding some way to drop multiple creatures without costing mana. Krenko is the perfect setup, immediately turning your four mana into a Lava Spike for each goblin you control.

The other handy thing about Mogg Bombers is that, like all creatures, if they come into play at the same time as someone or someones else, they will recognize all those other creatures coming into play. Exempli gratia, you bring back Mogg Bombers and three other creatures into play with Twilight's Call, he sees three other creatures came into play and immediately bins himself to nail your opponent for nine damage. Patriarch's Bidding has been successfully pairing with goblin decks for years, and can quickly kill your opponent on the spot if you used Buried Alive to grab three Bombers.

How do you tie both of these handy tenets together? There's no better way than a kicked Rite of Replication - 5 triggers from the mogg you target, plus 4 each for all of the copies coming into play, means a total of 75 damage to your opponent's face. That should sort him out, yeah?