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Episode 176: So many Vials to Smash
445 Plays1 year ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! This week Taya and Alex profile everyone’s favorite goblin with wild hair, Vial Smasher. We talk about her story, Tarkir as a whole, and do a deck tech for Taya’s Vial Smasher commander deck. The deck is a big mana deck designed to cast a large Villainous Wealth while doming opponents with Vial Smasher in the process. Goblins love setting fires and playing with other people’s toys.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We are back today with our longest running series actually. This is one that we started pretty early in the show and we thought was going to be this thing we did a lot of and then we kind of had a big gap and then have been doing more in the last year or two, which is really nice. So we are here to do a goblin profile.
00:00:56
Speaker
Just before we get too deep into the episode, I just want to thank the Grandin Coffee Company. I tend to forget, but I just want to get that out early. They are a wonderful sponsor. They have been sponsoring us for a while. They're a coffee company that is Black-owned, LGBTQ-run, just this wonderful coffee company, wonderful people who
00:01:19
Speaker
They like to support gamers. They reached out and have been supporting us for a while. They contribute to all the charity stuff that we like to do. And now, as we're recording this, it's February, so we're a couple months away. But we've got Mental Health Awareness Month coming up in May. We've got Pride Month coming up in June. We've got just all sorts of stuff coming down the pike, I'm sure, as we get going. And it'll be wonderful to work with them for these things once again this year.
00:01:49
Speaker
and for whatever else comes up. So that out of the way, I might as well promo, I guess. So we're doing a goblin profile.
Host Introductions
00:01:58
Speaker
Sorry, just a little discombobulated. We were talking before the show. This has been kind of a weird week for us, including the fact that Hobbs will not be here. He unfortunately has just hit him hard enough that he is taking the night off from recording.
00:02:16
Speaker
Got myself. I'll introduce myself. Of course, Taya can introduce herself and then we'll get into the topic. I have said everyone else's name except for my own. I'm Alex.
00:02:27
Speaker
I'm not Twitter at Mel underscore chronic glare. Um, sometimes now maybe a little more than I used to, but anyway, uh, and today we are doing a goblin profile, a vial
Profile on Vial Smasher
00:02:38
Speaker
smasher. Cause Taya, you have a vial smasher deck that you've been telling us about. I do. Um, she's, uh, one of my favorite named goblins. Um, by the way, you know, I'm Taya, she, her, they, them pronouns. Um, my Twitter is at Taya transcends.
00:02:56
Speaker
And Vial Smasher is a fun goblin, like a lot of legendary goblins, we don't have a whole lot of story on her, but she does one thing and does it really well, which is throw files
00:03:13
Speaker
dragon fire and set things on fire. Oh, yes, which is absolutely makes makes for legendary in multiple ways, both in the the actual card mechanical way and in the but also in the very good, you know, the mill mill away there, but also in the very good flavor for those manner of being good at explosions, which is what to say is one of goblins, three favorite things, of course, food, rocks and explosions are. Yeah.
00:03:41
Speaker
And we covered food last week. That's true. We absolutely did. And so for this episode, as Taya said, there's not a ton of story about vials measures, so we'll absolutely cover that. We want to talk about that. But what we were going to do in addition to that is something Hobbs and I did, oh, God, I think it was last year, but time has no meaning.
00:04:04
Speaker
where he and I both talked about a goblin deck that we had and talk kind of about the story that we had for those goblins. For me, it was Zada. For Hobbs, it was Grenzo. So if you do sort of like the model of this episode, those are two episodes in our back catalog that you can check out as well. So Teo, why don't you, do you want to kind of talk about the deck or do you think we should talk about kind of the story first? Let's talk about the story first. So
00:04:31
Speaker
We first meet Vile Smasher in the original Tarkir timeline, where she is a non-legendary 2-2 called Inkleshanker. And she's one of Sarkon's friends in the Marduk clan. He doesn't have a whole lot of friends, but he gets along pretty good with this one little goblin. As a random aside, also probably not one of the best, but absolutely one of my favorite cards in Khan's Limited.
00:05:00
Speaker
Oh, it is so good. It was so great. Yeah. Giving all of your other attacking creatures death touch and first strike is so good. It's just, just beautiful. But anyway. Yeah. So yeah, just going right after those ankles, like you think going in low and it doesn't matter how much damage you deal, you're going to cripple somebody. Oh yeah. Yeah. You can be as tall as you want, but you got to touch the ground somewhere for the most part. Yeah. So.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah. And then when we come back around to the dragon side and the very first story of dragons, we get to catch up with our friend, Ankle Shaker, except now she has a name and it's File Smasher. And Sarkhan is very surprised about this. And this is the story, A Tarkir of Dragons, by Kimberly Craines.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just a quick, okay, I'm gonna probably keep quick deciding because that's the thing I like to do. But for folks who aren't familiar with the con storyline, which unfortunately may be a lot, we were just kind of demonstrating how long ago that was. Can't believe that it's eight years old at this point. Yeah, it was, I really, I love this side, I thought it was a neat
00:06:16
Speaker
a neat idea, but the basic premise was that Sarkin, from Sarkinville, who is from Tarkir, a world that used to have dragons, but they have gone extinct. He, through various story machinations, basically goes back in time and changes the timeline.
00:06:36
Speaker
And so there are dragons. When he comes back to the world in the dragons of Tarkir, the set storyline, like Tae was saying, and finds his old friend, only different. Yeah. You know, one of the things that kind of comes out of this story is that nobody knows who Starcon is in the new timeline. He's basically never existed. So none of his
00:07:04
Speaker
old friends recognize him at all.
00:07:09
Speaker
I like the joke that he Marty McFly'd himself, but I realize now that is also a reference that a number of people may be too young to get. Back to the future reference, if that is the case, you don't know who Marty McFly was. Yeah. Oh, that's just making me feel really awkward right now. So in this week's episode of making the co-host depressed,
00:07:38
Speaker
So anyways, we get back there. Sarkhan goes to meet up his old pals in the Mardu and finds his old rival, Zurgo, has been demoted from Khan of the Clan down to Bellstriker.
Time-Traveling in Tarkir
00:07:52
Speaker
And all he does is essentially call the dragons to come play now. That's his whole job at this point. And he was a total jerk, so it was well deserved. Yep.
00:08:03
Speaker
See, you linked us the story beforehand, and I was reading it a little while ago to prep for the show. And I realized, maybe just because it's been eight years, but also, I'm not sure I actually ever read this one. And this was a fun little story. Yeah. And when he first shows up at the Marduk camp, he gets greeted by this hyperactive little goblin who's intruder, intruder.
00:08:30
Speaker
speaks very poor English, but gets to point across and throws a vial of dragon fire, her namesake tool at Sarkon, and he does his thing and transforms into a dragon and deflects the vial. And then she gets down on her knees and she's like worshiping the dragon man. As you do. Yeah, as you do. And
00:08:59
Speaker
You also get the other thing that I think is kind of pertinent to mention is that she apparently has a nickname, which is Vile Breaker, which Zurgo Bellsringer brings up. And that kind of plays into even more with her commander mechanics because it's completely random who she hits. Oh, that makes sense. I didn't I didn't put that together. I did kind of like that, you know, she kind of liked that nickname, it seemed, when it's reading, which
00:09:29
Speaker
She did not like her nickname, not at all. She was like, no, I'm File Smasher. Yes. And that kind of fits in with the whole car here, or the Mardu in the sort of history. One of the stories from the previous set, Fate Reforged, that was a big deal in the names, choosing names. I think that probably came up in multiple stories, but I know specifically for Alicia in her story.
00:09:55
Speaker
And so that makes sense, too, to put that together, where if that is Vilesmasher's names, Vilesmasher, it's kind of a dig and not really a friendly one, which kind of goes to your point about Serco kind of being a jerk. Sergo is still a jerk in this timeline. He's just a jerk with no authority. Yeah. So he does carry that part over.
00:10:22
Speaker
where he was really, in a lot of ways, the main antagonist of the cons of Tarkir. Yeah, and like you say, even from a card standpoint, and this is, oh man, it's been, I was gonna say it's been a long time, but actually you did this like a month ago, where we go, well, this could be another episode. An episode I wanna do sometime is to talk about, this one is very, there's very direct lines, but I kind of love the idea of examining
00:10:49
Speaker
characters who come back with different color identities and kind of what that might mean, not just mechanically, but also story-wise. And so with Zurgo, you see a lot of change in his two things, but like you say, a lot of that personality.
00:11:05
Speaker
is still there and he just doesn't have the authority now because he had this world had dragons so it's like just being a big beefy orc wasn't enough for him to sort of muscle his way into a position of authority yeah
Desire for More Vial Smasher Stories
00:11:21
Speaker
and it kind of applies in the story that he's just a bad warrior in this one because his blade is just worn down from beating on a bell and he doesn't actually see any combat with it
00:11:34
Speaker
where that was his whole thing in the initial timeline. Yeah, I mean, and that kind of fits a little Milfos too with the card and with how the circle belt striker card plays compared to how the Helm Smasher. Yes.
00:11:54
Speaker
There are some very male designs, for sure. Yeah, like that whole block structure, all three of those sets, was that the last three-set block structure? That's another rabbit hole. It was one of the last for sure. But it was a really interesting idea of we're going to have one set in the present time,
00:12:16
Speaker
go back into the past and then have the events of that past change. Yeah, it was the last three-set block because the next set after that is Battle for Zendikar. Ah, yep. And that was the start of the two-set block for a while. So you have that interesting Milfo sort of examination of, well, how would this character be different if things changed, if the world around them was different? And how would they be the same, especially from a story standpoint?
00:12:46
Speaker
We see that, you know, that Zurgo definitely has some personality characteristics that were the same, were very similar. Yeah, and... But to Vilesmasher, I guess, talking about focusing on... Vilesmasher is... she's a good little goblin. She just wants to protect her people and light things on fire. It's kind of like everything you want out of a goblin.
00:13:15
Speaker
And sadly, that's about all the story we have for her. It's kind of a bummer. I wish, she's one of those characters I would love to see revisited through some in-between fiction or something, or a new commander set card that just kind of catches up on where she's at. Yeah, yeah, because it was,
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, and I love it was in the is in a commander set to begin with, too, which is a one of the things I loved about those commander sets for a while was the ability to sort of check in on lots of different places. And we've kind of we've lost that since they started tying the commander decks to the planes because we used to get a lot of it.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, like that set alone, because that was the four color ones that had the first partners. So there was 15 partners plus the five four colors. And if I remember correctly, so 20 legends plus a smattering of other ones within the decks. And we had something like 10 or 12 worlds represented, including both versions of Tarkir, which I loved. Yeah, we got both versions of Tigam.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yep, you got two versions of Ticam. I want to say there was at least one of the partners was from the alternate Tarkir, but now I'm blanking because I realized the bird one who I have a vial to match your deck. I haven't played much.
00:14:45
Speaker
if that's a whole other thing, but I was using Mishaie, he's at the Blue White Bird. Yeah, the bird partner. Which I was thinking was only from the other part here. No, no, they're both from the present timeline. Yeah. The Dragon's timeline. Yeah. Anyway. But we have gotten some legendary characters from the other timeline printed in between.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, which is super cool. I love that that gets to be alive in some of those products. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it much until you mentioned it, but now that the commander sets are tied to the set releases, we're just not getting as much of that as we used to. No. And I can see from a marketing standpoint where that is cool and makes sense, but unfortunately sometimes marketing and magic as a product
00:15:39
Speaker
doesn't jive as well with what would be cool as for magic as a consumer and as a participant. So kind of moving to talk about the deck a little bit.
Deck Strategy: Villainous Wealth
00:15:53
Speaker
The commander parrot I'm running is Vilesmasher and Thrasios. And Thrasios is yet another busted Semic commander. And when I get to the theme, it'll make sense why I'm pairing these two up. But Vilesmasher does, whenever you cast your first spell each turn, choose an opponent at random. And she deals damage equal to that spell's mana value to that player or planeswalker they control.
00:16:21
Speaker
So you just randomly get to toss out some damage every time you cast your first spell. Which is one of my, of all the partners, I think Vile Smasher is my biggest go-to. I've only built one deck with her, but I have a number of decks where I need another partner, Vile Smasher. It's always going to be Vile Smasher.
00:16:45
Speaker
She mixes well with any of the commanders because you're going to get incidental damage for casting spells, which is something you're going to be doing anyways. And one of the things I love about her ability is because it's random.
00:16:59
Speaker
there's a little bit less weight politically, socially within the game of, well, I'm just choosing you to target you. I'm sorry, I just rolled the die and it's whoever the die lands on. That's who gets hit this turn.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, although I have it in my Rakdos Lord of Eldrazi deck and it doesn't matter if it's random or not when somebody takes 10 from an Eldrazi, they tend not to be too happy about that. Yeah, well that was the other thing from a metal standpoint. One of the things I love about Vile Smasher is doing funky things like
00:17:39
Speaker
delve cards or other alternate mana cost things that allow me to sort of cheese that and dome someone for like seven when I only paid like four mana or something. Yeah, so and just to get into the explanation of the deck, what Thrasios does is Thrasios taps for a colorless for each card you've drawn this turn.
00:18:09
Speaker
So as you can see, the whole point of my deck is to make a lot of mana. And why I'm making that mana is to cast another Khan's card, and probably my favorite magic card of all time, which is Bill and his Wealth.
00:18:27
Speaker
Speaking of doming people for large amounts. So Villainous Wealth is a Salt-Eye and X, and target opponent exiles the top X cards in your library who may cast any number of spells with mana value extra or less from among them without paying their mana call. So my whole deck is about making a lot of mana, so drawing a bunch of cards with Thrasseo
00:18:53
Speaker
I'm playing villainous wealth on my opponent and copying and forking it and recurring it, and whenever I cast a big villainous wealth, just incidentally doming somebody with File Smasher. Nice. Yeah. It tends to work. I've only gotten to play this deck a few times because it's relatively new, and it's really good.
00:19:24
Speaker
Oh, that's that's great. Yeah, it's so I had I've accidentally gone infinite mana twice in this not even realizing I had it on board. And then it's a matter of well, um,
00:19:44
Speaker
I'm just going to villainous wealth you for 60 and fork it and villainous wealth you for 60 at the same time, and then let's take half an hour to resolve this and see how much stuff I have on my board after. See, let's say I appreciate that you had something to do with that, but that you spent half an hour to see. I once had a deck where I accidentally went infinite with mana on board and then literally had no way to win the game.
00:20:13
Speaker
I had to add in a wincon later. The last time I played this deck, I hit a bunch of draw spells off of my son's deck. So I was drawing cards as I was resolving the spells for his deck. And I still had another one for x equals 60 on the stack targeting our friend Kaburi.
00:20:37
Speaker
And off of my draw spell, I draw Comet Storm off my deck. So I just Comet Storm everybody to save from having to resolve their quest. In response to my own shenanigans, I just end it all. You're welcome. You're welcome. Let's save some time here.
00:21:03
Speaker
So I get to play a lot of things in this deck that are kind of unusual and don't get to see a lot. It's a big self-wheel deck. So I'm just trying to draw as many cards as I can during a turn and trying to pump up that Thrasios as much as possible. And then I have some ways to tap Thrasios and tap her again.
00:21:34
Speaker
So I just have to ask, and I want you to kind of go into some specifics on other things you like, but just for my own weird self going back to old cards that I just was mystified by when I was captivated by when I was a kid. Do you have instill energy in the deck? Um, no, I don't have instill energy. Probably not a good card, but it's, it's one of those cards that
00:21:57
Speaker
I will sometimes play even though I probably never should imagine it anymore. I think I can see the art in my mind, but I totally forget exactly what that card does. I remember the specifics, but I know it lets you, it's an aura. I don't think it's a good thing. Haze, untap a creature, only during your turn and only once per turn. Yeah, it's fairly limited, but at least back in the revised days, it was
00:22:25
Speaker
Such a unique thing and we had nothing broken to do with it But it was a super unique card to be like, oh I get to tap my one were elves and then I get to untap it and tap it again Yeah, I mean it's not it's not a bad card But yeah,
Unique Cards and Mechanics
00:22:47
Speaker
so what are some of the other like, you know big fun cards you've got going on in there and
00:22:52
Speaker
All right. So some of the other fun stuff I have in this deck, um, I'm just going to kind of start going through and, um, okay. And one of the packages I have is what am I going to do with all these cards? I'm discarding because I don't want to just, um, deck myself here. I want to make use of my resources. I want to be a good goblin. And even if I'm blowing things up, I want to make good use of what I'm blowing up in the process and.
00:23:21
Speaker
So I'm running another oldie, goodie, library of Lang. Another one is whenever you skip the discard phase of your turn, and if anything forces you to discard, you can put them on top of your library instead. I don't really care what I'm drawing. I just care how many times I've drawn during a turn. So I don't mind just wheeling stuff and drawing the same cards that I just wheeled. Nice.
00:23:51
Speaker
And then there's a new card called Containment Construct, which lets you exile a card that you've discarded and play it till end of turn. So that lets you get a little bit of value out of something you've discarded. It's a big mana deck, so of course I'm playing Crufix, the god that lets you bank mana. So I can just bank mana between turns too to get a nice big X spell on my turn.
00:24:20
Speaker
I'm playing a few cards from the Warhammer set as well. Oh, interesting. Yeah, one of them being Magus Luceria Cain, which taps to add two colorless, and when you cast a spell with X and its mana cost using that mana, you get to copy the spell. Oh. Okay, yep, I see where that'd be useful.
00:24:49
Speaker
And, sorry, what colors was that again? She is, she is Teamer. Okay. So that's a nice fun expel. If my primary plan fails, I've got, you know, good old Niv-Mizzet Firemind, so I can just turn all that card drawn to direct damage. And also Locust God to also turn that into direct damage. So I've got a few ways if
00:25:18
Speaker
something happens to my villainous wealth or I just don't get it for some reason. I'm playing more tutors in this deck than I do in most of my deck because it really is about playing that villainous wealth. And I want to make sure that I can get it during a game.
00:25:36
Speaker
I tend to play very limited tutors because I don't like playing a deck that plays the same way every game. In this one, I leave a lot of things up to chance as far as to what I play otherwise or how I get to this end state, but I want to make sure I can get that villainous wealth. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, so I'm playing a mystical tutor and vampiric tutor. And, um, I think this one has a demonic tutor in it too. Yeah, it does. So I'm definitely playing a higher, um, Tudor total than I normally would. Um, I am playing some of those, uh, good dredge cards. Like you said, because I play really good with file smasher. Like I have a treasure cruise in this deck. That's when I don't play in commander a lot.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of my favorites. If I have graveyard-y things, again, just the mel in me is like, oh, it's a good draw spell if I usually can dredge at least some number. Yeah, and doming somebody for eight when you cast it is just lovely, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I said, there's a lot of wheel effects. I play every
00:26:54
Speaker
good wheel that I can in here. So Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Misfortune, Whispering Madness, which is a blue-black wheel that also has Cypher on it. So you encode it on a creature after you cast it. And then every time that creature does damage again, you can recast the spell. Oh, I forgot about something. That was a Demir mechanic, right? Yeah, that was the Demir mechanic for the Return to Ravnica block.
00:27:22
Speaker
That's right. That is such a funky mechanic that I never think about, but it's, that's a cool, repeatable way to do something if you have ways to get there. And then I'm playing, you know, what is usually a broken card because people combine it with things like Narset.
00:27:40
Speaker
is Teferi's Puzzle
Protection and Counter Strategies
00:27:42
Speaker
Box, which, like I said, I only care about getting that card draw number up. I'm not trying to stop people from drawing cards. So I think if somebody was building this deck as competitive as possible, they would be playing the Nar sets and stuff to keep other people from drawing, but I don't play like that. No, that's fair. That's the same for me. And I know some folks who will play decks more in that vein, and that just, for me, is fun, so I tend not to.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. I did put Staff of Domination in the deck, but found out it was way too easy to go infinite with it. So that is something that I actively need to pull out and replace with a similar effect that just isn't as powerful. Maybe I'll put that on Still Energy. And that's a low power card that does the same thing I want to do.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I like it. And for me, some of it too is just the nostalgia. For me, that was one of the cards I played with back in the day when I started. And then I have all my doublers that I can. So I've got the creature that doubles that I already mentioned. I've got Unbound Flourishing, which is an enchantment that doubles X spells.
00:29:03
Speaker
I have a couple of different forks, Reverberate, Twinferno. You know, I actually don't have good old classic forks. No, it doesn't because the other ones aren't double red. It's easier to cast them. Yeah, that's just kind of the state of
00:29:24
Speaker
the game, I guess, in a lot of ways. I mean, Reverberate is fork, but you get to... It only works on instance and sorcery, so I could have just replaced that with a regular fork and had the same effect, but I like the art on Reverberate better than the art on fork. That's fair. The art on Reverberate is great. Yeah, as such, I'm running the Warhammer 40K one, which has some absolutely sick art on it. Oh, I'm not sure I've seen that. I'll have to look that up.
00:29:53
Speaker
So if you don't mind me pulling back just a little bit, you mentioned something earlier that I think is really interesting just from how you build decks, because I think I build kind of in the same way because you talked about one of your packages.
00:30:06
Speaker
Do you, is that a common thing for decks or is that more for this deck where you kind of have discrete cards? That's just how I think about deck building is that I'm, I kind of break down what the deck wants to do and then put in sets of cards that accomplish that. So you have some, you have some packages that are in every deck, your card ramp package, your, um, your card draw package, your ramp package, um, things that you always need.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah. And then you, uh, then you build into ones for the specific thing you're working on. So yeah, that's, that's, I guess, I don't know how common, but that is just a thing I've sort of landed on myself when I'm trying to build. And maybe it's when you're trying to do funky mechanical, metal, sort of things, you tend to gravitate towards that sort of style.
00:30:55
Speaker
Because that's what I've found for myself, at least when I'm building a deck that kind of has a few different interlinking things it's trying to do. I kind of need to examine the deck in that way. I don't always care so much how many creatures, how many units and sorceries. It's more about, like you say, the packages. How does it do this thing? Does it do that thing? How many of each effect?
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's just breaking down the deck and how you build it and how you look at the components that make it up. I build more commander decks than is healthy for me to build, so it's not too uncommon. Especially over the holidays, I built four new decks. I haven't built another one since then, so I've gone a month
00:31:49
Speaker
and a month and a third without building a new deck. So, good job. I've only gotten to play them once too. So, if anybody's listening that does streaming or anything and wants someone on their stream to play Commander, let me know because I would love to play some more streams. So, kind of I think the last thing.
00:32:15
Speaker
You know, I do have my standard grant package, standard card draw package. Those are both part of the deck, especially being a green deck. It's mostly land ramp via sorcery instead of artifacts. I've only got a few artifacts in here. One of them though, which tends to be, it's one of the ways to go infinite mana pretty easily with Thrasios is Umbral Mantle.
00:32:45
Speaker
Because as long as you have drawn four or more cards during a turn, which is not hard in this deck, Umbral Mantle just goes infinite with Thrasios. Oh, okay. Yep, that's that. If people don't know what Umbral Mantle is, it is one of those weird Shadowmore cards that has untap on it. And it has three untap. This creature gains plus two plus two until end of turn. Equip cost is
00:33:14
Speaker
zero. So as long as you can generate four mana, you can just keep untapping and tapping the creature, make the creature infinitely large and generate infinite mana. I'm not surprised we haven't seen the untapped mechanic.
00:33:32
Speaker
No, no, I'm not either. It's from a metal standpoint, there's some some interesting and fun sort of design
Embracing Chaos in Gameplay
00:33:40
Speaker
stuff there. But it is especially in a large card pool of a commander format. It is too easy to just to three card infinite combo. Yeah. Yeah, and then like,
00:33:58
Speaker
a lot of good blue decks. I have my protection package. I tend to play a lot less counterspells than most people, but I am running a few in this deck just because I want to make sure my big villainous wealth actually resolves. So I have a fierce guardianship and a classic counterspell.
00:34:23
Speaker
and a mana drain because what's good about, or what's even better than generating a lot of your own mana is taking your opponent's mana and then villainous-welthing them with their own mana. Yep. So yeah, and that's kind of, so the Wind Con really plays out differently all the time because you're, the deck itself, you know, other than Vial Smash, you're doing direct damage and
00:34:51
Speaker
Um, occasionally a very large comet storm. It doesn't really have much in the way of, um, there's a few other things I mentioned to miss it and locust God that can, um, do incidental damage here and there, but it's not a deck that, um, is meant to kill your opponents. It's a deck to let you kill your opponents with their own stuff.
00:35:15
Speaker
Which is cool. And I like, I guess, I don't know if this works out for you, but I know kind of who it was. It might have been Hobbes. But somebody was talking about a deck that mostly like takes opponents things or copies opponents things, which is why I'm thinking it was Hobbes, maybe it's Mariki, Reaperadek. But he likes it because
00:35:37
Speaker
it from a power level standpoint, it's easy to scale up and down. Oh, I mean, that could be me talking about my recoup deck too, because my recoup deck is nothing but clones. So I am just relying on what my opponents are playing. Yeah. So yeah, maybe it maybe was even you talking about that deck too. And like, I like I love that idea of just
00:35:54
Speaker
You're like, whatever crowd, you can kind of play it because the win condition is your win condition. So if you got a powerful deck, I got some powerful options, if not. Yeah, it scales up to an extent because if their decks are too fast or powerful, it's just, you know, it's clones are filled with four drops. You're not going to be able to keep up with a...
00:36:14
Speaker
super powerful deck, but it scales up to an extent. Or, you know, if people are playing Praetors in Eldrazi, I can clone those. If people are fast as oracle-ing to win, I'm still not going to win that. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But no, that's cool. And yeah, that's kind of an overview of this deck. I'd say, you know, it plays. It plays like a lot of
00:36:44
Speaker
Simic decks from the start where you're just focused on ramping as fast as you can and card selection mostly to try to find what you're, in this case, find that villainous wealth. But then you're just trying to stockpile enough things where you can have one big turn with Thrasios and kick off at least in X equals 10 villainous wealth and preferably do it to more than one player at a time.
00:37:14
Speaker
And it feels real good. It does take a while to resolve. I don't play this one over Spelltable for obvious reasons. That makes sense. As someone who's not really played a lot of online magic, I don't think about that, but that makes a lot of sense that you kind of have, unfortunately, the different
00:37:38
Speaker
places you're playing kind of affects the types of decks that you can just feasibly play. Right yeah and that's kind of been a bummer through the whole pandemic because like I said villainous wealth is probably my favorite card in magic and I have not gotten to play as many of them as I would like. It used to be the kind of the idea for this deck came from villainous wealth was the
00:38:04
Speaker
WinCon for my, one of the WinCons for my attracts experience counters deck, which is probably the most fair attracts a deck anybody has ever built.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yeah, you know, even she even said that it was a, you know, reasonably fair attracted to sideline your story too much. But there was one and I have no idea who this was. I'm pretty sure Hobbs would know who this was. But it's the last last time there was a Minneapolis event. Somebody had a track so as many different counters as I can get that
00:38:41
Speaker
I've heard of that too. They had like 47 different counters or some number. So I love that attracts experience counters that yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of you know, I have this really memorable memorable game. And it's one that she even was actually part of where I villainous wealth. A friend of mine
00:39:10
Speaker
for 10 and hit their, what is it? It's the, it's slipping my mind the name of the card, but it's the storm card that lets you play cards off the top of your library. Oh.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna have to look this up now because so I hit that off of their library plus all their other spells By the time I resolved that one my storm count was like 15 so then I got to cast 15 things off the top Library and that was That was a lot of fun
00:39:59
Speaker
That's beautiful. And I love that idea, too, that you've built this deck that, by and large, has a main plan. You've got a couple backup plans, you get a couple other things you do, but... Mine's desire is the name of that spell. But it's like, you have a main plan, you have tutor support to hit that main plan, but then, because it's something as random as Villainous Wealth, how that actually plays out is going to differ literally every game. Like, it absolutely will be different every time.
00:40:29
Speaker
And that's why I didn't feel bad about playing the tutors that I normally would. Because to me, Commander Dex playing the same every time completely defeats the spirit of the format. Yep. Yeah, I really love that randomness. That is kind of goblin to the goblin of the core. It is a reason I tend not to play a lot of tutors. Like I said, I am running.
00:40:59
Speaker
I'm running a Rift Sweeper in here, which if you're not familiar with, it lets you get a card out of exile and shuffle it into your deck. So even if people get rid of my villainous wealth, I do have a way to get it back. That is a favorite of a former roommate of mine. He had Rift Sweepers, like every green deck he played. It's very familiar with Rift Sweeper. Yeah. You know, normally I don't run it, but since the deck is really hinges on one card, I wanted to make sure I had a way to get it back if I needed to.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because it'll make me cry if I can't fill in this well somebody. And, you know, the thing is people get excited a lot of times when you do it too, because they get to see what's going to happen. And it's not like you're stealing their resource that they paid for. So they don't tend to get salty like you do if you're just up and stealing their creatures or whatever.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah, only if it's off the top of their deck, it's just like, Oh, cool, what's gonna happen? Yeah, and they in a weird way, you also get to like help them show off their cool stuff. Right? Exactly. Sure, they're not casting it. But they still get to be like, look at all my cool things that you just ripped off the top of the deck. Yeah. Last time I played, um,
00:42:17
Speaker
somebody chaos wand me and hit expropriate off the top of my deck and I thought it was hilarious because it's like well I'm the one who is playing expropriate so this is obviously my fault but there's a little bit of that too I do love that version of stop hitting yourself that's a new one I haven't had a lot of experience with so yeah we were playing a pod I don't know if you're familiar with Neera she's a more recent commander
00:42:44
Speaker
Yes, vaguely familiar with the card. Yeah, so two of us were playing Nira decks. So we were just chaos flipping off of each other's decks. And then the other person... I forget exactly what they were playing. They were playing something chaos-y as well. And at one point they cloned one of the Neeras, so everybody had a Nira. Oh no.
00:43:10
Speaker
That's great. And this is something that we've been trying to Shawn in also has a Neera deck so and then she even has one so at one point that the idea is to have a four player pod of nothing but Neera decks without Wayne Shawn and she woman. Oh my god. Yeah, I have Neera in
00:43:31
Speaker
a deck I've only gotten to play Watchtoys because pandemic, and I'm blanking on the name of this commander, but they're the green, red, blue elemental that whenever you are cascading, you may play a land that was revealed in the cascade. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah, I don't remember the name of that one either.
00:43:49
Speaker
being a land thing and being sort of a random thing because you're building this deck around Cascade then, which is one of my favorite random mechanics in the game. So yeah, I pulled a Neera and just some random booster pack I opened at my local store. It's like, well, this goes in this deck. I had like a Roshan. Neera's another one that I really love and it's another random deck and I just, you know,
00:44:17
Speaker
something about these kind of decks really draw me to them. Even if they're not as consistent and likely to win as a lot of people want their commander decks to be. I have a lot of fun playing them. So like, yeah, they took my expropriate, they copied it. Fun was still had by all. We were laughing the whole time it was being resolved because of just how ridiculous it got.
00:44:43
Speaker
And then what they got to do with their two extra turns and how many spells they copied once they had near out because one of the things they stole was my Hive intelligence which copies your first instant of sorcery every turn. Okay Coffee every there swarm intelligence My
00:45:07
Speaker
reign of cards is twisted by my former roommate who likes to play Hive Mind. And other things, like the same guy who plays Wrist Sweeper in lots of decks. It's like there is a very weird subset of cards that I am more familiar with than I probably would like to be. I would, I would, I feel bad for anyone who's that familiar with Hive Mind. That card doesn't do anything fair. No, it's
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's the simple version because there's no simple way to actually explain how the card works. But basically, it's when anyone casts something, everyone casts that something. And it is just as painful to resolve as that makes it sound.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, and it also combos with a lot of things that keep people from casting stuff out of order, so you can keep people from just casting spells with it. Yes, and I'll say, he is not someone who plays those things. He likes the chaos, he will take advantage of the chaos, but he's another one who plays Teferi's puzzle box, but he's played it in his Nekusar deck where you're taking damage for every card you draw.
00:46:14
Speaker
So he'll he'll use those things against you, but he won't put in the Nar set to stop you from drawing because what's the fun of that? Yeah, I still have. I still have seize the day and some of my red decks because I used to have a. A.
00:46:38
Speaker
And what was the name of that commander you just said? Nekusar? Nekusar, yeah. Had one of those on my playgroup constantly and I more than once I got them right when they did a big wheel effect. I seized the day their Nekusar and killed them with their own wheel.
00:46:55
Speaker
Oh, that's right. That's the split second hijack. Yeah. That's that's great. And just a fascinating thing for me of how like play groups work and metagame and yeah, cool.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah. It's like for a long time, um, I had somebody in my group who played bribery in all their decks. So I took everything out of my deck, like plate steel colossus and stuff like that because I didn't want it coming back my direction. Yep. Cool. So that's kind of an overview of my, uh, vial smasher deck. It's, it's, uh, just like her, it's, uh, full of chaos and, um,
00:47:42
Speaker
you know, things that go boom. The namesake spell might be a Salt-eye spell, but she's doing a lot of damage when I cast it. Yeah, it all explodes. I think that's probably all fine by Vial Smasher. Yeah, I do love Vial Smasher. And like I said, she's in my Rakdos deck too, because nothing's more fun than casting Free Eldrazi and doing a bunch of damage in the process.
00:48:12
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Taya Transcendence, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:48:34
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:49:01
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.