Food Chain Goblins

by Panik8 on 07 June 2014

Main Deck (60 cards)

Sideboard (0 cards)

No sideboard found.

The owner of this deck hasn't added a sideboard, they probably should...

Submit a list of cards below to bulk import them all into your sideboard. Post one card per line using a format like "4x Birds of Paradise" or "1 Blaze", you can even enter just the card name by itself like "Wrath of God" for single cards.


Deck Description

My take on the Food Chain Goblin deck that dominated its era.

It generally wins when Food Chain hits the board, on Turn 3, but if a T1 Lackey hits an opponent on T2, good things can happen.

I'm also thinking about adding Orcish Lumberjacks and/or Tinder Walls to speed things up on a more regular and reliable basis, but they're currently needed elsewhere... They don't really belong in the Sideboard and are only shown for informative purposes.

This deck normally runs 4 of each Sledders, Grenades and Piledrivers, for the sake of versatility, but since none of them are required for the combo described below, I listed what I'd consider my optimal setup for a "T2 Sharpshooter Win".

How to Play

Ideal hand is Mountain, Forest, Lackey, Prospector, Food Chain, Matron and Ringleader. It plays out...

T1. Mountain, Lackey
T2. Forest, swing with Lackey if an opponent is open, then use its ability to play the Matron, fetching a Recruiter, then play Prospector, sacrifice Lackey to Prospector's ability, play Food Chain, sacrifice Matron to Food Chain to play Recruiter, re-ordering the deck (see below for my "optimal" order) with 2 leftover mana, sacrifice Recruiter to play Ringleader and start the chain...

This is the order I normally want my Goblins to be when I start drawing them with the first Ringleader: Warchief, Warchief, Warchief, Ringleader, Sharpshooter, Sharpshooter, Sharpshooter, Ringleader, Sharpshooter, Commander, Commander, Ringleader, Maniac, Maniac, Marshal, Prospector, and then whatever, but Matrons are good...

....so when the chain starts, I should have 1 mana left over from playing the Ringleader, sacrifice the Ringleader and Prospector for another 7 mana, play 2 Warchiefs and the second Ringleader for that 7 mana and sacrifice that Ringleader for 5, playing the third 3 Sharpshooters and a third Ringleader. At this point, I start tapping the Sharpshooters (for 3 damage) every time before I sacrifice anything. Sacrifice the third Ringleader for another 5 mana, play the third Warchief, the fourth Sharpshooter, and a Commander, tap all Sharpshooters (for 4 damage, total: 7), sacrifice the Commander for 6 mana and play the other Commander, the last Ringleader and both Maniacs, with 1 mana left. Tap all Sharpshooters again (for 4 damage, total: 11), sacrifice the last Ringleader for 5 (6 total) and play the Marshal, Prospector, and whatever Goblin you might still have in hand. Tap all Sharpshooters again (for 4 damage, total: 15) and start sacrificing Goblins (starting with the tokens spawned by the Commanders) to the Prospector (so the mana produced can be used to activate the Commander's activated ability) and tapping the Sharpshooters each time, so every 3 Goblins sacrificed (2 for mana, then 1 for 2 damage) will translate in 14 damage (2 from the sacrificed creatures and 12 from untapping and re-tapping the Sharpshooters each time), repeat this process until only the Sharpshooters, Maniacs and the Marshal remain. This should happen at least 4 times, for 56 damage from abusing the Prospector's, Commander's and Sharpshooters' combined abilities (total: 61), at which point we can tap 2 of the 4 Sharpshooters for another 2 (total: 63) and tap both untapped Sharpshooters, both Maniacs and the Marshal to activate the Marshal's ability and deal 10 damage to every player and creature, including the Maniacs, who then reflect that damage, 20 total, to targets of my choosing...

Final total, 83+10*# of opponents. In other words, it can easily kill 8 opponents on second turn. And the Marshal is still alive to tell the tale!

As was mentioned earlier, I'm considering to use Orcish Lumberjacks and/or Tinder Wall from another deck, so I don't need to rely on the Lackeys getting through on T2 to get the combo going. Basically, a T1 Lumberjack would allow the T2 Forest to produce 4 mana (1 from tapping it, then 3 from chopping it), which would allow to play the Food Chain on T2 and have a Lumberjack left to sacrifice to start feeding the chain. Likewise, Tinder Wall on T1 allows to produce enough mana to play Food Chain, only it requires another 1 CMC drop to start feeding the chain.

Deck Tags

  • Vintage
  • Tribal
  • Goblin

Deck at a Glance

Social Stats

4
Likes

This deck has been viewed 1,484 times.

Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

000444

Card Legality

  • Not Legal in Standard
  • Not Legal in Modern
  • Legal in Vintage
  • Not Legal in Legacy

Deck discussion for Food Chain Goblins

Suggestions are welcome. I own many more Goblin cards which can fit in this deck, but didn't bother listing here, for simplicity's sake. Like I know most people run a similar deck with AEther Vials, but I need those in my Sliver deck and I always liked Food Chain Goblin, anyway. :)

0
Posted 25 June 2014 at 06:31

Permalink

Also nice background/writeup here.
This format is premodern.

1
Posted 07 September 2021 at 21:29

Permalink