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Episode 168: NEW HOST ALERT! NEW HOST ALERT!
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today Alex and Hobbes have a very exciting announcement. The Goblin Lore Podcast is growing with the addition of the uber-talented and eloquent Taya!! Taya has been on the show multiple times in the past and was previously a host of the Loregoyfs. She joins Alex and Hobbes today (and moving forward) to discuss Goblin... Listen it seemed fitting
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here. You can use our partner code for discounted coffee!
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com
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Transcript
Podcast Reunion
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to the Goblin Lore podcast. And there was some weird inflection in my voice there because this is the first episode in nearly a month that will include both Alex and I and more to come on this. But hey, Alex, how are you doing? I'm doing good. I'm happy to be here, happy to be recording with you and happy for other things that are coming up that are being weirdly
00:00:57
Speaker
awkward and vague about because that's what we do, right? Yeah, people to listen. So yeah, we're getting to record, which is kind of cool. You did your sieve episode, which was a lot of fun. And yes, did your like solo episode, which was fantastic. And, you know, kind of look at that intersection of other hobbies. And I think it's something that's really important for us to be keeping in mind. And we got our first time to actually partner with the fireside Alliance.
00:01:24
Speaker
So do you want to say a little bit about the Fireside Alliance? Absolutely. Yeah. So the Fireside Alliance is a community online. It's a number of content creators decided that they wanted to, they all had their own little communities, but decided they wanted to try to create something bigger than each of their own little silos. And so they created the Fireside Alliance, which is a progressive community of progressive communities.
00:01:48
Speaker
We, Goblin Lore, were not part of the initial group, but we approached them and asked if we could join as creators and partners in this project. And they were gracious enough to accept us in as contributors to this. So we have, you know, they have a Discord, there's a website that'll be in our show notes, a great bunch of different creators, podcasts, mostly, but some other content creators in there too.
00:02:14
Speaker
No magic,
Collaborations & Plans
00:02:15
Speaker
we're the only magic content creators, but lots of other good nerddoms. And so, like Hob said, I did an episode about the game series Civilization. We mostly talked about five, but we did talk about some of the other games too, with some folks from... True Shrinks Pod from Monstra. True Shrinks Pod, yep, from Monstra, which was great. And then there's a guy from Chicago who is part of a podcast that talks about monster movies. Yes.
00:02:43
Speaker
which is cool. It's something that I need to check out. There's a lot of, like I said, lots of cool content creators within there hoping to do some more collaborations and stuff with them in the future.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, especially we wanted to last year and kind of ran late on time for May for mental health. Especially the two shrink spot because they really dig into a lot of mental health stuff. Great. So that is a good fit for what a lot of what we do, especially during May. Yeah, so so Alex has been doing that. I did a solo episode last week kind of talking a little bit about
00:03:14
Speaker
Just the state of me and I got asked like how I sparked and I know we've done that as a question, you know We've talked about this idea of looking at other ways to spark and it was really cool to dig into and kind of think of it as like Intentional decision-making more so than just intense emotion So we did that but we haven't actually gotten to record that means and like like quite a while like a month I mean, it's been like a month since we actually sat down and recorded and yeah
00:03:41
Speaker
Life can be like that. So we're going to talk about that. First, we want to say thank you to the Grineen Coffee Company. So they are a minority owned and LGBT ran coffee company that supports gamers. And we've been just thankful to partner with them for all of our charity events and my own coffee habits and just kind of being able to kind of, yeah, like they've been very willing to support the cast. You can get discounts and
00:04:06
Speaker
We have discounts for a handful of other companies. They're all available in our link tree, which are linked in the show notes. But let's get on to what we are really excited about. As I talked about last time, there's been a lot. Just sickness, mental health, just life. And Alex and I have struggled at times to find regular recording time. It can happen. And with two hosts, that makes things difficult.
00:04:33
Speaker
So we actually, we're going to be having a third host that is going to be joining us regularly, kind of officially. This
Introducing Taya
00:04:43
Speaker
is somebody who has been on the show many times. They are one of our most, I mean, I think they're like third or fourth on our most guest episodes already.
00:04:52
Speaker
Um, and that is Taya. So Taya who used to be part of the lore glaze, since we've been talking here, Ted, do you want to say hi? Hi, everybody. I'm glad to be back on the show. Um, my name is Taya, pronouns are she, her, they, them. I'm looking forward to talking about all things goblin and mental health related. I've been.
Hosts' Introductions & Twitter Concerns
00:05:15
Speaker
playing magic for a very long time, big intercollector, big Vorthos, and commander player, and just really happy to be joining the podcast as a regular contributor.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you you would put out kind of a tweet. Alex and I had mentioned this a while ago and it fell off our radar as things do, you know, about wanting to have you on even more often because we just will have episodes that we're just kind of like, we need another voice for this. Who would be good? And your name just like pops up and you tweeted out kind of like missing doing more regular kind of recording. It sounded like.
00:05:49
Speaker
I was on the Lore Gois for a bit over a year and really enjoyed doing content creation and being part of a regular podcast that was put out for people to enjoy and just kind of really wanted to get back to creating something. And I've guessed it on a few streams. I've been on the MTG Nexus stream a few times. I've been on some charity streams and that's really fun, but I wanted to get to do something on a regular basis.
00:06:16
Speaker
You know, I've always been a big fan of the show and what you discuss and put out there and the mental health focus. So I think it's a great fit for what I want to do. And I'm happy to be part of it. Yeah. So what's nice about this is, you know, one of the things we hope is it means that if life happens for one of the hosts, we obviously realize that can happen for more than one at times.
00:06:40
Speaker
But if it does happen for one person, it does mean that we have a much higher likelihood of just kind of continuing to put out episodes weekly that we aim to do. And I realized we talked to each other across Alex and didn't actually introduce ourselves. No, no, we didn't. Cool. You want to go ahead?
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, so hi, everybody. I am Hobbs Q, pronouns he him, and I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q. Well, for now. So yeah, I am Alex Newman, pronouns he him and also for now can be found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler, a lot more regularly than usual, because I am
00:07:21
Speaker
I don't know. It's been an interesting place to be. Everyone wants to see the end of the world. Yes. Right. That's my favorite. So we're going to, as a trademark of this show, we're going to derail things because I need to share my favorite Star Wars meme. And for people who've been watching episode, you know, since episode four, familiar with New Hope and Star Wars, I don't think you need the picture for this. But it's someone was talking about, you know, leaving Twitter and all of this because it's
00:07:47
Speaker
it's going, it seems like it's going to collapse at any moment. So it makes sense. There's a lot of communities there, a lot of people, I mean, and unfortunately, a lot of people have made their livelihoods. And this is, at least for me, I'm just a social, it's a social outlet and thing. And so it'll suck to lose, but it's not going to hurt me more than that. But so someone was talking about like leaving Twitter and then posted a picture of Grand Moff Tarkin from episode four of Star Wars with the line from the movie, evacuate in our time of triumph and
00:08:17
Speaker
I just, I thought that was funny and I literally think of that image every single day that I log into Twitter and it's still there, but people are talking about the fact that it's still there being surprised. Just tweeting through it. So many quality memes right now about the demise of Twitter that are posted on Twitter. It's quite a thing to live through. It is.
00:08:42
Speaker
Sorry to run through that distraction, but we're here to talk about goblins. Y'all ready to talk about some goblins? We might as well come back after this week. Let's just hit what we need to, right? Let's talk goblins. At this point, goblins
Favorite Goblin Cards: Discussion
00:09:00
Speaker
are the only things keeping Twitter running, I think.
00:09:04
Speaker
It's a pretty good point. I should have made my list maybe. So, speaking of this, this is Alex's already. It's good to be back. Okay, yeah, welcome back.
00:09:18
Speaker
This honestly is a topic Hobbs and I have been bouncing around for over a month because we're like, like a month ago, we're like, okay, we think we can record, but we have no time to prepare anything more. Do you have an episode we can kind of just launch with? And so I came up with this topic and like, okay, cool. A month later, it works out really well. So, because this is a great episode to bring you in to, so I'm so glad that we didn't record this before and now we're able to do it now and bring you in with this. But so what we're going to be talking about
00:09:47
Speaker
We're the Goblin Lore podcast. We're going to be talking about some of our favorite goblin cards. It's simple, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I mean, it's hard to be much more on topic, which is probably the least on topic thing for this show. But yeah, let's talk goblins. All right. Goblins and lists. Yes. A typical factor I am willing to bet
00:10:14
Speaker
that others have prepared and have a list. Yes. Yes. This is this is going to be one of the most on brand off brand on brand episodes that we have had. I did do my best to try to avoid pics that I was sure the two of you would pick.
00:10:29
Speaker
Nice. So, see how accurate that was. We'll see how this goes because I have done some preparation, but despite the fact that, like I just said, we were planning this for a month, I have not done very much preparation.
00:10:48
Speaker
Let's be honest, when I just mentioned that we were finally going to record this, you were like, good, so that I can put the cards back in my deck. I have one goblin themed deck and most of the preparation I did was flip through that deck and pull the cards out. That's what I thought.
00:11:04
Speaker
I have a small stack of cards next to me. Do you all want me to go first then? I can start with one. Heck yeah, start us off. Okay, so I'm going to go the lowest hanging fruit for me if you've been listening for a while, which maybe you haven't, in which case you wouldn't know this. But like I said, I have one goblin themed deck, so I'm just going to start with Zada.
00:11:24
Speaker
I don't want to, for me at least, my list is not going to be too full of legends because honestly that could be another episode approaching more from a lore standpoint than a cards potentially. But I want to start with Zada, Hedron Grinder because she is one of the best, like for me, from the goblins, legendary goblin standpoint, trying to build a commander deck. So you need a legend to build a commander deck.
00:11:50
Speaker
roughly. Zada is the one who mechanically is like one of the most interesting goblins to me. And so Zada's ability, I don't have the card pulled up. So I'll just kind of wing the rough explanation is when you cast an instant of sorcery, if it only targets Zada, the owner of Zada, when you cast that spell and it only targets Zada, you're duplicated for every creature you have that it could target.
00:12:14
Speaker
which means little weird things like combat tricks that are, you know, plus one, plus one, and trample for one mana. And draw a card. And draw a card. There's so many of them. Oh, so many things that are just non-cards in Commander suddenly become the best cards in my deck. And that's one of the reasons I love the deck.
00:12:33
Speaker
It's my all-star card in my feather deck, and I was playing feather at magic 30, and as soon as I played Zada, it became archenemy, and everybody just ganged up and killed me before I could kill anybody else. Yes. That makes sense. For that. If you don't have creature removal, player removal is just as effective. Yep.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, so for that, I'm going to start with Zada because it's she just opened up an entire way that not just a full deck for me, but like one of the things that I love about magic, one of my favorite things about different types of formats. The reason I love Commander so much, the reason when I started doing limited, which sadly I haven't done much of lately, that I loved it is because they make you look at cards, the same exact cards very, very differently. Standard doesn't care about a lot of the things that would be good in, you know, draft.
00:13:27
Speaker
Lots of formats don't care about the things that are good in Commander, but because of this different context, especially Commander, because of how it works with the Commander mechanic itself, there are so many different builds of specific, weird, different, interesting Legends that attack the format or do funky things.
00:13:49
Speaker
that just completely changed the context of which cards are good. And that is one of, from a mill standpoint, is one of the most interesting things for me about the format. And what is more goblin than just having, oh, this rock is super powerful. I wonder what happens if I break it. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, for the good of the community. Absolutely. Zada was very much a communal goblin. Yes.
00:14:15
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to jump in with my number one. I don't think anybody's going to choose it, which is fine. I actually I have it because it was sitting right on my desk. So it is the space family goblin sin from the newest onset.
00:14:33
Speaker
I expected you to pick this one. I didn't even think of the card, but if I had, I also would have expected. Yeah. Yeah, it's it was really funny. I was one of those ones that when they announced that there's been a couple of cards that they've announced that I've been like, you know, we've talked about this idea of like preview cards and like it's not something that we like strive for. We had one with you see a pair of goblins, which was such a good fit.
00:14:57
Speaker
There's been two cards that have kind of been to me like wow Squeak was one You know like when we would squeak came back like I would have loved for the cast to get that But the other was the space family goblins and because it's like literally me And my family on a card like it's like this dad trying to wrangle kids at like a theme park I just it is very on brand and just perfect for me. So yeah
00:15:28
Speaker
That's what I've got. Well, it's a good choice. Yeah, that one got previewed like way, way in advance. So no way. Way early. Yeah. Yeah. But that is a perfect fit for someone with a young family. That is exactly what it is. I'm going to start with one of my favorites because it's one of the goblins that's shown as being ultra intelligent and kind of in charge. And that's Mizzix of the Iz Magnus.
00:15:57
Speaker
Oh, one of the highest ranking goblins in the Izzet League. And they're right at the top of the league. They're one of the most powerful people in the guild.
00:16:07
Speaker
And they're also broken in Commander, but there's, I mean, it would say broken. It takes a while to build up that experience, but it can get really out of hand. But I just love the idea that there is a super respected, intelligent, powerful goblin in the guild that, you know, goblins have a short life expectancy in.
00:16:30
Speaker
you know, she has managed to stick around no matter how many things have exploded in her face. And he's still there and still in charge. I mean, she is perfect for the is it right? Like goblins in general. I love I love is it goblins? Is it goblins? I have an is it goblin on my list. And this one almost made it as I was starting to think Taya so glad you just grabbed it now because I love her. I love her.
00:16:57
Speaker
Oh, that's one each. So that brings it back to me. Sweet. So I'm going to go, we'll go mechanical here. One of my favorite mechanical goblins. I guess several of these are mechanical, but I'm going to start with goblin trash master. This is relatively several years. Yep. This is
00:17:16
Speaker
And I say relatively new because, frankly, I haven't bought a lot of cards, or even know what a lot of the cards are from the last year or two. But this was really good in my Zata deck because it's a Lord, so this gives all my goblins 1-1, but also has the ability to sack a goblin to destroy target artifacts. So in a deck like my Zata deck is a weird combo deck,
00:17:39
Speaker
where I need lots of creatures, so a lot of goblin makers, usually goblin token creators, and I need lots of combat tricks.
00:17:47
Speaker
I don't have a lot of room for utility things like artifact destruction. And so this is a great card that fills that gap for both. It gives me artifact destruction. It pumps my goblins. It also, one of the things when you're attacking with a horde of goblins, lots of them get blocked. Even when you're throwing a bunch of combat tricks, you don't necessarily make them big enough to survive all of the combat.
00:18:12
Speaker
So this is a good way of any that got blocked that aren't doing anything that I care about, killing defenders, trampling over. I could sack them to blow up artifacts. There's a few things that do that in the deck, but it's all around just from a mechanical standpoint. It's just a really good card in the deck. Also got a nice secret layer printing of it, which is fun for the deck.
00:18:38
Speaker
So I'm going to build off of the is it theme. One thing people may know about me is at heart, I'm a Storm player. And I've always really, really enjoyed the mechanic of Storm. It's the only deck I've ever day-tuned a legacy or a GP with. It was in legacy with Storm. And I just love the mechanic. And I love looking at just ways to. So one goblin is goblin electromancer. And actually, I'm going to be basically doing a two-fer because I think they go together really well.
00:19:06
Speaker
and they're both Ravnincan of some sort, which is gutter snipe and electromancer.
00:19:15
Speaker
So Electromancer is blue-red, it reduces the cost of spells. Incident sorcery spells cost one less to cast. And then Guntersnipe is whenever you cast an incident or sorcery, it deals two damage to each opponent. So being able to just play a lot of spells, draw lots of cards, hit something with Storm, but
00:19:37
Speaker
The incidental damage for something just like by gutter snipe and the reduction costs with electromancer if you can do play anything that lets you untap lands or you know just the benefits from things like that are just i just love it and i love the is it and i think electromancer really embodies kind of that.
00:19:53
Speaker
that the flavor text is like, result 752, rapid mass redistribution, result 753, calamitous, reverse synthesis, result 754, acute disarrayment. Is it research notes? I just love it. So,
Controversies & Conclusions
00:20:09
Speaker
yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker
Both starring cards in my Nira deck. I just want to cast as many spells as cheap as I can. But my next one is one where I think everything just hits together. The name, the art, the flavor text, the ability, it's just all there and that's Goblin Diplomats.
00:20:30
Speaker
Oh, perfect. You're not familiar with this card. The art is one goblin pointing at its rear and another goblin making a silly face at you. The ability is tap. Each creature attacks this turn is able. So this predated goat a little bit. Goat is one of my favorite commander or favorite abilities in general. It just gets things moving.
00:20:52
Speaker
This isn't as good, obviously, but it kind of set that template of let's just force things to happen. And then the flavor text is when you need to convey that special kind of message. It's just everything about the card is exactly what I want a goblin to do. I love it because it basically it just is so reminiscent of Monty Python in the Holy Grail. Right, exactly. It's just such the Frenchman. Yeah, direct take from.
00:21:21
Speaker
And it's, uh, yeah. I love it. Yeah. If you have diplomatic goblins, this is going to be what you get. You don't send them to do diplomacy for any other reason. Special kind of diplomacy. Oh, yeah.
00:21:40
Speaker
All right. Well, I am going to go like, I'm out. I've got no more goblins. I came up with two. No, I, I, I'm coming up with more right now. That was, was one that when I'm thinking like, Oh, what's outside of that deck? That one was kind of in the back of my head of love. No one picks that. I'm going to go with that one.
00:22:00
Speaker
So I am going to go with, this is super random, but I'm going to cheat a little bit because I have to cheat. I was waiting. Because I haven't cheated yet. I was waiting. This is going to be my round to cheat. So I'm going to start a two-fer round. So let's... So we're going to start with a token.
00:22:27
Speaker
And then I'm going to actually feature, I'll talk about an actual card right after that too, because they're both from the same set. But the goblin token from Dragons of Tarkir, drawn by Mike Birbeck. Birrek. Sorry, small type of black and white. These are, it's the goblin token that has the small little yeti goblin. Full white, fuzzy, holding a stone knife.
00:22:51
Speaker
hands down my favorite representation of goblins across magic. I've talked about this on several different episodes when the topic sort of comes up, because goblins seem to be one of the most diverse, just represented in what they look like across the plains. Lots and lots of different creature types show up all over the place. You get elves everywhere, you get humans everywhere, but there's a lot smaller variation within those.
00:23:19
Speaker
than goblins. Goblins, there's just so many different goblins, which is great. I love it. But for me, it's the Tarkir goblins, particularly these all white ones that look like little yetis, because I don't know why, I just think that is just so great. But so one of those, it's not quite yeti, they're not quite the white, but it's still the furry Tarkir goblin is Mardu Scout from Fate Reforged, because it's like sort of snowboarding, except down a dune, like a desert dune.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I love it, like little goblin dude, just with Dash running down, you know, going down the hill. The flavor text is perfect. The Mardu all enjoy war, but only the goblins make a game of it. Zoltan Boros art, it's just, it's a nice card. I love it. I didn't know, you know, when you started to go towards Tarkir, I was already wondering, because, you know, that's where our tagline comes from, is from Tarkir. I think we've talked about them a lot, loving them.
00:24:17
Speaker
One thing, you know, I'm just the ankle shanker to vial smasher across timeline. Well, you just got my neck. That was my next pair to be on. That's why I was not taking those ones. OK, well, I'm going to let Tay go and I'm going to come back to me. Yeah. So, yeah, one of my favorite commanders is vial smasher and their.
00:24:40
Speaker
I mean, they're what I want a goblin to be. They're just indiscriminately throwing around exploding things of dragon fire and, you know, causing chaos all over the place. You know, she got a promotion from just being the limited all-star ankle shaker in the original Kanza Tarkir timeline.
00:25:00
Speaker
So this was going to be kind of my pair, but Vile Smasher does what I want to be doing in a game of Commander. It is just, I want to be casting big spells and I want to be randomly dishing out damage when I do that. Vile Smasher is kind of randomly my go-to partner when I'm trying to build a deck. It's like, okay, I have this one thing I'm trying to do, I need another partner. Oh, Vile Smasher, cool.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, it works with pretty much everything. I had a really hard choice in a commander game I played yesterday where I was going to be casting villainous wealth for over X equals 60. And I'm like, well, I can do this with Vile Smasher and do 60 damage to somebody.
00:25:47
Speaker
Or I can cast a duplicating spell first. And as sad as it was, I made the choice to cast a duplicating spell first. That let me hit three opponents with it, because I already had a duplicating effect on board. So I was able to villainous spell three people for 60. Yeah. I really would have liked to have domed somebody for 60. Yeah, like Vile Smasher literally just being like, I don't know how I'm even doing this.
00:26:16
Speaker
I don't understand the physics, but trust me, it works. Time travel may be involved. Switching from lobbing vials of dragon fire to just lobbing nuclear weapons.
00:26:29
Speaker
That is really funny, though, that that was going to be because I just I love that like the timeline shift. That's one of those timeline shifts that I think is the deeper cuts that people don't know as much about. Yeah, and especially it's it's one of them that went from a card standpoint, non legend to legend. Most of them were legend to legend with the same name, who's a different person. And so they're easier to make that connection.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was the contrast of Zurgo, where Zurgo was big buff and in charge and then he became the little bell ringer where the goblin he picked on all the time became like the super well-known and famous goblin. Yeah, it's a really cool. So my next one is Sakashima of a Thousand Faces.
00:27:16
Speaker
So the reason I say this, this is both a cheat and the most Hobbs version. It's really just crack. Yeah, it is. It's straight up just Clark, but like Kirk on Kirk's own and actually I will say I like playing Kirk. I played Clark Timna in another.
00:27:40
Speaker
deck another game the other night where i had no way like i was just flipping coins to try to win and i did like found a way but like i love kirk but kirk with sakashima is just i mean it's ridiculous like the fact that it is a cedh deck that is obnoxious from a trigger standpoint but i i i love copying things i love cloning
00:28:03
Speaker
And having one that works so well with goblins, especially because a lot of the goblin legendaries, I just want more copies of in a different way, but with Kark, especially. But yeah, so so Sakashima, I'm fairly sure Sakashima is really Aki and we just don't know it. Like, how much do we really know about Sakashima? Like, there's not a ton. There's a lot that they've been around for a long time. That's pretty much it.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, that was my next one. Which I think brings us back to you already, Alex. Well, we went in a few directions there. Yeah, I'm gonna go. Let me find out in so many tabs. I opened way too many tabs in a very goblin sense. I just kept opening tabs. There's the one.
00:28:50
Speaker
This is a card actually I believe I've talked about in passing because it's from a sort of flavor standpoint. It's one of my favorite cards in the recent years. I want to talk about Cheering Fanatic. This is a goblin from Battlebond. Battlebond is the
00:29:10
Speaker
Sport world where they do these arena battles and this is like how conflicts are decided So it's it's there's not a lot of like the other you know harmful war conflict there's these these arenas that you know, these these fights that are going on and so You got they got to do a lot of interesting things Make it with the well made with mechanics but also because it was also a two-headed giant set So you got some interesting mechanics that interacted with to a giant in a way that you don't normally see
00:29:39
Speaker
but also from a flavor standpoint. We talked about this two plus years ago when we did an episode about card names, and it's one of my favorite sets for card names because there's so many goofy cards, cards with names that you just couldn't do in other sets. But cheering fanatic, the flavor of this is it's a goblin who is
00:30:01
Speaker
just loves the arena and is so excited about this. And in the art is cosplaying as their favorite champion from the set. And I just, I love that capturing that piece of sort of this culture. It's a thing that doesn't exist in any other magic world. And so I love that they took this card slot to represent this little piece of culture in a way that
00:30:30
Speaker
You just can't, and also mechanically, it's just super interesting because it's, well, when this card attacks, choose a card name, spells with that chosen name cost one less to cast this turn, which A, is two, two little goblin, you can use it to make your combat tricks cheaper. B, you can use it to bluff that you have a specific combat trick. And C, you can use it to make your partner's spells cheaper, because in a two-headed giant, you can look at each other's hands and you can kind of strategize a little bit.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah, my biggest wish for magic right now is a new battle bond set. Every time I see Gavin, I'm just. Yeah, I never it was like it was in a dead zone period where I didn't get to do events, so I never got to play it.
00:31:18
Speaker
as a limited set. It's one of my favorite sets ever and I still have some boxed up because it's one that I'll break out and let's play this because it's amazing. Nice. Xavier and I were pretty close to undefeated in it. I think we split every game we played, every round we played with it. It was just fantastic.
00:31:47
Speaker
So I'm going to take us to a mono-black goblin. Sling gang, Lieutenant.
00:31:55
Speaker
And the reason I'm going with this, well, there's a couple of reasons. Number one, the art is absolutely fantastic in the flavor text, which is freshly promoted to first rock. Zaz was eager to make an impact. So we get like a really nice like pun. But like the art is like this goblin being loaded into a slingshot that looks like he's being drawn back by like a 10 foot goblin.
00:32:20
Speaker
Like, it doesn't even really fully make sense. Like, there's this giant slingshot, but the goblin in the slingshot looks so much, like, smaller. I love the art. But the reason I love this card is because it was like Wizards was around saying, you know, Siege Gang Commander brings along three one ones and cost five and everybody loves it and it's got this activation. How can we make that better and only in black?
00:32:45
Speaker
Right? Like, they're no longer as a cost associated other than to sacrifice a goblin and a target player loses one life and you gain a life. This being another sack outlet for just for Rakdos goblins in particular made that deck just a lot more likely to be able to win because you can have an oppressive board state
00:33:06
Speaker
even if it's like a stalled out board state, you can create a situation where you can literally just sack goblins without any mana investment. And just the fact that it's just interesting to me to see things like mono black goblins and something like modern horizons, because it's an area that we've explored a lot less of. You know, there, I mean, there's been a handful of them, they were really common on Lorwyn.
00:33:31
Speaker
I know we got someone like Onslaught era, but it's not really been, I think it's the area that's our secondary that I would love to see explored more. Even seeing a mono-black goblin commander, and unless I'm missing one.
00:33:46
Speaker
And I don't think I am. We don't have that. We actually don't have any mono outside of red for legendaries. And I think that I'm always up for exploring what goblins look like in all other colors. And so seeing what this could be, Sling Gang really made the list for me. My next one, speaking of rocks, is Togo Goblin weapons. Yes, yes, yes.
00:34:12
Speaker
This is another one where the package really comes together for me. The art is just him looking up at a rock like it's the greatest invention in history. There's lightning in the background and it's like, this is Eureka. I found the greatest weapon that has ever been developed.
00:34:30
Speaker
and the the fact that he's an artificer without actually building anything mechanically is just a flavor of when most of the goblin artificers actually are like you know goblin welder goblin engineer goblins that actually make things whenever you play a land he finds rocks off the land
00:34:51
Speaker
And that's it. He's mass producing weapons just from what you find around. And he's an artificer because of this. One of my favorite little things, too, that may or may not have been an accident, but I think probably wasn't. So you said there's lightning in the background of his art. Oh, it's not an accident. Absolutely not.
00:35:15
Speaker
two printings of shock. There's so many of shock, but two of them. The flavor text is from Togo saying I love lightning. It's my best invention since the rock. Yeah. Yes, that's it. No, it was it was it was totally intentional. I mean, flat out was I mean, there's another one that might have been Togo was quoted from a wandering mage saying once I saw a goblin shouting at a thunderstorm, he lost the argument pretty quickly.
00:35:41
Speaker
Well, there's a few that have that flip. The idea that it's just, you know, like, I love what you're saying kind of like this land itself creates his, his, his artifacts. And then you could throw him at somebody like literally yesterday. I was encouraging a friend of mine to put Togo on a deck of his. He's got a is it a fall duck, the guy who makes elementals for all the equipment that are attached to him. I think it's a monoread from Dominaria. Return to Domino, the first return to Dominaria.
00:36:11
Speaker
And so I've been like, you got to play Togo because then all of your lands turn into turn into rocks that you can equip and keep doing your thing in this deck. And especially the game we played yesterday, he flooded. It was like, see, every one of those mountains would have been a rock. You could have you could have had like 15 elementals a turn. I really, really, though, want like a Charlie Brown altar that just says I got a rock.
00:36:44
Speaker
All right, I'm gonna go with another Ravnican goblin. And this is one I never would have thought of, but this was for back from the original Ravnica block, and I was playing, I played a bunch back then, I loved that. In fact, I loved the original Ravnica so much that when we did return to Ravnica, that's part of what brought me back to magic. This particular card is one I always found funny and also kind of interesting, but I've never actually played with it. Goblin Flekdomancer.
00:37:04
Speaker
Or tokens. That's what I want my rock tokens to be.
00:37:13
Speaker
So this is another is it goblin wizard with the ability sacrifice goblin flecked amancer. You may change the target of the targets of target instant or sorcery spell. And then the flavor text is rerouting magic through a goblins brain is the surest way to throw it wildly off course.
00:37:31
Speaker
And this art from Matt Cavata is very good. It's good. It's really it's wild. So good. I love it. It's like feels like almost like dolly. Like it's very surreal. Yeah, but you've got like this goblin with like goggles and glasses. So in a little like looking glass, so kind of a, you know, feels very professional wizardy thing. But then it's also wearing this red
00:37:58
Speaker
ridiculous helmet with silly straws connected all over and that just completes this sort of goblin picture. It's it's beautiful. So I'm going to take us back to the dark ages. I'm going to take us to the dark. I'm going to take us to the dark and and look at a goblin that. Is wild. It is a four mana one one. This start going.
00:38:25
Speaker
I mean, do you know what it is yet? Oh, I have it open. It's in my tabs of things to talk about. Go for it. OK, good. Yeah, no. So this is Goblin Wizard, which is a goblin and a wizard. And what it does is you tap it. Well, it's got two abilities. You could tap it to put a goblin from your hand directly into play. That's it. Tap it. No mana activation, anything.
00:38:52
Speaker
tap it, put a goblin into play. But because it being the dark and had this really weird like, we've talked a lot about you like the crusade and stuff that goes on there is really about killing goblins. Like there's some horrible art with like a goblin disemboweled. So like, is that Tivar?
00:39:12
Speaker
I don't know. So like, he's kind of a jerk. But anyway, I mean, it's from the dark. So so the other ability that goblin wizard has, and this is wild because back then cards didn't have two abilities like this was red. Give a goblin protection for white until the end of turn. Yeah.
00:39:32
Speaker
Like that's what the wizard but like the art is very it's it's daniel gellan who did a lot of earlier art for magic it kind of has that overlap between goblin and orc almost we know because considering that there's not a that point not necessarily a clear difference in what they were other than
00:39:51
Speaker
It really was only goblins. Orks are much less represented. But yeah, I just love it because it's wild. It's literally in a goblin deck, put a goblin into play. I like this because I was playing back then. And so for me, this was wild because this was the first goblin who clearly wasn't for combat. A 1-1 for four mana was not about combat, but the goblin wizard. So it was this goblin who had
00:40:20
Speaker
wizard abilities and could do these extra more powerful magic things that goblins normally were out of, you know, were normal out of reach for goblins. And so it wasn't, you know, it wouldn't go so far say our first like smart goblin, because really, we don't know necessarily how intelligent this goblin wizard is. There isn't a representation of that. There wasn't a lot of story around this set, not really. And that there was didn't have the goblins as a thing in it.
00:40:46
Speaker
But I'd love this idea. This was the first time we at least that I kind of saw a goblin who wasn't just cannon fodder. Yeah, it's it's a good gobo. Definitely brings us over to you. Yeah, it is. My next one is a relatively recent one. And it's goblin airbrusher.
00:41:09
Speaker
And I like this one because of the art and the idea that one is like, it makes and sells art. You get treasure tokens for art stickers. So you have a, you have a goblin that's out there just, you know, making art for money. And, you know, as the flavor text says, you know, once, once he worked out which end of the thing the paint came from, he was promoted to shirt duty. So he has at least some talent there for, uh,
00:41:36
Speaker
and being able to do his job. And he's an employee. He's a compensated goblin. He has a job. Goblin with a job. I was potentially a union job. Yeah.
00:41:49
Speaker
But the only thing that was treated well at the carnival were the employees from the Infinity Story. That I am guessing they were unionized goblins. So that's what we like to see. In the shirt, Devil Knievel. Yeah. Devil Knievel. Devil Knievel. Yeah, no, just artists out there doing their craft. I love it.
00:42:18
Speaker
I'm going to go to another card with Mad Kavada art, which I just realized as I'm looking at this. So this is one I believe you mentioned at one point in the past Hobbs, but I don't know if we talked about it a lot. Sensation Gorger. Oh my gosh. Probably one of my top five goblin arts of all time. Yeah. Yeah. And so I love this idea.
00:42:41
Speaker
that this this goblin and like the flavor text more, more, more. And this goblin has, you know, like things in its ears to amplify sound and a skunk across its nose and its eyes pulled open. But it's it's this like on a frog stuck in its mouth, all sorts of other things. Yeah, the longer you stare at this art, the creepier it gets. Oh, it's like, yes. But I love this because we're talking talk about red, we talked about the color pie. And for a long time,
00:43:08
Speaker
early magic, just the way it was set up and the tropes that they were trying to evoke to sort of bring people into these fantasy tropes, you had white is good, black is evil, red is evil-ish. And I love that when we can start to explore the color pie, start to expand that stuff, and this is a really good instance of a card.
00:43:31
Speaker
that is not necessarily about combat. This isn't a goblin who's necessarily trying to do all the combat things. This is a goblin trying to experience as much experience as they can. And that's a very red thing. They're trying to feel as much as they can. And that fits that piece of the red color pie. Yeah, we have talked about this. And I think we haven't talked about it. I'm trying to remember if we talked about this with the flavor or just with our food.
00:43:59
Speaker
I think this may have come up, but I love this card. I think it's just the ability on it too. It's a kinship. You basically just, you could refill your hand, right? Like this kind of idea. You can get rid of what you have and get more. So.
00:44:12
Speaker
So I'm going to move us to a card that is controversial for a couple of different reasons. And one of them is a reason that we have episodes still planned that we need to get to with Adrian. And that is Dockside Extortionist.
00:44:31
Speaker
So I'm bringing this up because it's controversial for a couple of reasons. It is controversial because it is good. I mean, it's a lightning rod, especially in higher powered EDH, because a lot of people in EDH now, I mean, fast mana using artifacts and things to ramp yourself is just very common. And it's not
00:44:54
Speaker
unrealistic for a two drop to be able to produce, you know, six to 10 mana pretty early on in the game, especially in CEDH. And I think that that's where there's been a lot of tracking of just the data from lower power tables. So there's there's just tons of discussion about dockside extortion is because it is a
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah, it is a two drop that can come down and if you can find ways to blink it or find ways to clone it or keep bringing it back. I mean, it's just ways to generate tons of treasures and it's a lot of advantage. So one reason I want to bring it up before I get to the full controversy is we've talked about this before. It got reprinted and it got reprinted with new art. And part of this is because it is a goblin with a job, but it really is meant to be kind of that goblin from
00:45:44
Speaker
from Ixalan, except the initial art was not, that's not what was done. So Dockside Extortionist was kind of, you know, it was a, the initial art of it is, it is a goblin pirate. And Alex and I have talked a lot about before that the thing that we love about Ixalan is that goblins have jobs. And the goblins aren't just goblins, like they have their roles of the crew, a lot of them, like what breaches is,
00:46:11
Speaker
is it breaches that had like a specific title and brazen plunderer, but the original Dockside Extortionist came out in a commander set and it was not really necessarily given a world.
00:46:24
Speaker
and the art on it is a typical goblin. Now, this is something that, you know, this is not anything against Forrest Amell, the artist who did the initial art, because I know for a fact that this was meant to be a very much a green stereotypical goblin art. But one of the things we know is that there are tropes with goblins, and even with the way they've been represented in art historically,
00:46:49
Speaker
that are associated with antisemitism. And to then have that art on a card that is basically a money lender, kind of like a small price to pay to keep such pretty things safe, it's extortion. It had a lot of connotations that were associated with anti-Semitic tropes.
00:47:11
Speaker
And so when it was reprinted, it was reprinted with two different arts in Double Masters, but both of them were more of the monkey-looking goblins from Ixalan. They're like blue-skinned, they have hair, they have tails, and it was done very intentionally. And there was kind of some uproar about just the radical shift to this blue goblin. But I think that is because it was meant to be a goblin pirate
00:47:39
Speaker
easily could have been Ixalan based. And I think that the art played not like I said, not I think that it was intentional on the artist part. But that is something that's been a larger conversation for magic that we've had to talk about for a very long time. So, yeah. Yeah, I picked up one of the new arts because I just didn't feel comfortable playing the old art.
00:48:07
Speaker
So I was I actually need to put that new one into my to ready deck because it doesn't have enough fast man already. Well, you're it's your own opponent's own fault for playing fast man also. So that's fair. Yeah. In this case. And so, yeah, I'm going to wrap up with my all time favorite commander to ready. You know, we have a we have a good old gobbo here who just wanted to do his job and.
00:48:38
Speaker
They went and tried to kill him and now. Yes, they did. Now he just kind of upset him a little bit and he's out after breaking all your stuff and, you know, learning to do a little murder, getting some lessons on that from Grenzo.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah. You know, Grant's was a, Grant's was a good teacher. I mean, I love Doretti because Doretti is, you know, our, our only real known goblin planeswalker. So, you know, like this. And, uh, he's also representation for disability community. He's got a selfless power chair. Um, and he's, uh, yeah, he does, you know,
00:49:22
Speaker
all kinds of disgusting things in game, never anything fair. I want more story. I really do. I really do too. I would love to see more story. I'd love to see him show up in a regular storyline. I don't think we're going to get that in the upcoming sets. There's been no hinting that he's going to make an appearance. He didn't make an appearance in War of the Spark, which has been kind of sad that the two times where he might show up,
00:49:51
Speaker
Um, or the spark never heard of it. Yeah, no, nothing happened there. It's the like Simpson's like, and he went back to his home planet. Like we just, nothing happened. So yeah, to ready is, uh, you know, it's a quick deck that I've had built since he first came out in 2014. You know, I've.
00:50:17
Speaker
Spent a lot of time blinging that deck out. I got absolutely crushed by it yesterday when my son was playing it. He made sure to kill me first before he rocket-launched the rest of the table to death. That's a smart child. That is a smart child. I got to die to 38 damage of triple kit Titan in the air multiple times. And then dying to two petabytes to finish off the last couple of...
00:50:45
Speaker
points but uh and then he rocket-launched everyone to death but yeah um i just saw the triplicates the triplicate in action in a game i played this morning so the card's real good yeah especially when you don't pay for it and then yeah it gets killed and then it just comes back and you kill it and dirty brings it back because he's so good at rebuilding things he is yeah he's like i i will take this
00:51:11
Speaker
this little ichor wellspring you don't need and turn it into a 9-9 monstrosity somehow. But yeah, definitely my favorite goblin in magic. Well, Taya, welcome. This was a great first episode to have you. Well, first official episode to have you in. Yes, thank you. I am so happy to be part of the cast.
00:51:33
Speaker
And yeah, y'all, so that's kind of what we had. We've been waiting to be able to tell y'all this, to share this, so we're excited. We have some episodes already kind of coming up that we have actual guests again. We've had them. I mean, we've had people that want to be on the show, that they actually do have people reaching out, and we want you to know we will be doing this. We're just getting kind of the wheels back underneath us a little bit, and this time of year tends to be like that.
00:52:01
Speaker
Alex and I have been very mindful about the being gentle to ourselves with just holidays, winter. So yeah, this is kind of what we're hoping to help with some of that. Great. Glad to be here. And that's our show for today. You can find both of the hosts on Twitter. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:52:29
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to goblinlordpod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com. If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood, God slugs to our link tree on our Twitter account and listed in our show notes, this has everything from our discounts for the grinding coffee company to our Patreons.
00:52:53
Speaker
The music for today's show was by Vindergotten, who can be found at vindergotten at badcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve raffle on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing 4thos content. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmpg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.