Here are my personal Top 10 Goblin creature cards:
Goblins can't do what elves do to repeatedly generate massive amounts of mana, but they can sacrifice their lives for the greater good thanks to Skirk Prospector. An incredibly useful little guy who allows us to play a three drop on turn two or sacrifice creatures in response to exile effects. You can also use his ability to sacrifice a blocker and prevent an opponent gaining life from a life link creature. There are many other creative ways to use a prospectors ability in response to a myriad of situations.
The card that was so broken that Wizards of the Coast™ has to change the way combat worked. Players would declare attacks with Mogg Fanatic and then with combat damage on the stack sacrifice him to deal additional damage to a blocking creature. This was before I started playing but many an older player has recanted tales of fanatic being busted back before 8th Edition.
These days fanatic is still a great little critter to play. He can eat a turn one Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves and Noble Hierach or he can be used late game to finish off an opponent at low life.
While we may not have a lot of ramp options with our creatures, Goblin Warchief goes further by simply reducing the cost of other goblins. This works great with cards like Mogg War Marshall meaning we essentially get 3 goblins for 1 mana. The second line of text gives all of our creatures haste which means we can quickly play out our hand at a reduced cost then turn boys sideways and slap our opponent in the same turn.
This legacy superstar is our number one removal magnet. An unanswered Goblin Lackey can quickly close out a game. The small unassuming 1/1 body can strike fear into even the most seasoned opponent as putting our more expensive goblins into play for nothing makes it a force to be reckoned with. If you swing with a lackey and any other bigger creature you can guarantee it's the lackey that gets blocked or removed.
The Gobmother, our beloved matron is the core of most goblin decks. Being able to tutor any goblin card to hand makes Goblin Matron one of the best cards you can draw in a game. Because of the amazing utility of our other goblin cards, she enables us to find an answer to any situation we find ourselves in. For a long time she wasn't available to Modern players but after being reprinted in Modern Horizons 1 she enabled us to move away from the traditional 8 whack builds and into a more grindy midrange deck.
Another card that wasn't available to Modern players until it was reprinted in M20, Goblin Ringleader is our best play for card advantage. If you're ever unsure what to tutor for with a Matron then Ringleader is your answer. As most goblin decks are running 30+ goblins you can guarantee Ringleader is going to pay off and draw you at least 2 cards. There is no better feeling than flipping 4 goblins off the back of a Ringleader, just make sure you've cracked all your fetch lands to thin that deck out first.
The first Legendary goblin on my list, Krenko, Mob Boss does exactly what we want to do when playing goblins. Quickly flooding the battlefield with little 1/1 green guys is a very effective strategy. Krenko sees most play in the Commander format where decks can find ways to activate him multiple times in one turn. There are many ways to "go infinite" with Krenko and close out games very quickly. Just be warned, once your playgroup realises his true power you will find yourselve being hated out of a lot of games.
All hail the great and powerful Muxus, Goblin Grandee! An absolutely insane effect in our decks, when Muxus enters the battlefield you reveal the top 6 cards of your deck and put all goblin revealed cards into play. Costing a whopping 6 mana can seem quite prohibitive but we can often find ways to play him early thanks to cards like Goblin Lackey and Skirk Prospector. Played mostly in Legacy decks where Lackey can be used but also sees play in Historic where he can be played turn three with a good opening hand. If you can get a Muxus into play then it's pretty much goodnight for your opponent.
2. CONSPICUOUS SNOOP
The printing of this card changed the entire goblin archetype. We went from aggro/midrange to a straight up combo deck.
The top two lines of text allow us to know what card we will draw next to adjust our strategy accordingly and we are able to cast goblin cards from the top of our deck which can give us enourmous card advantage over an opponent. The last line is how we use Conspicuous Snoop to combo off and win games as early as turn 3.
I'm sure since you're already here you know exactly how we do the combo, but incase you've been living under a rock:
With a Conspicuous Snoop in play we cast Boggart Harbinger which allows us to search for any goblin and put it on the top of our library. We find Kiki-jiki, Mirror Breaker and put that on the top, Snoop then gains the ability to create a token that is a copy of target non-legendary creature. Snoop uses this ability on itself to create a copy of itself. We repeat this process until we have a board full of Snoop copies. We then use the last Snoop to copy the Harbinger we played earlier, allowing us to tutor another goblin to the top of our library. There are two options for which goblin to pick, one choice is Mogg Fanatic which give us the ability to sacrifice all our Snoop copies to deal damage directly to our opponent and finish the game. The other option brings us to number one on my list...
This card is the main reason goblins now play black mana sources. For the entire history of Magic The Gathering™, Legacy goblin decks were mono-red. Yes, there were players who splashed a second colour for utility and sideboard cards but before Sling-Gang Lieutenant goblins stuck to the consistency that a mono-coloured deck offered. This and the addition of Munitions Expert in Modern Horizons 1 is what made Modern goblin decks a viable strategy. Before Snoop brought his combo to the table we would slap opponents around with 1/1s then finish them off with Sling-Gang. Even now with the combo builds we can still play out a Sling-Gang and win the old fashioned way, turning boys sideways, dealing damage then sacrificing them to drain our opponents remaining life total.
That's it!
Thank you for reading my first ever article, I hope you enjoyed it. Obviously there are loads of goblins that didn't make this list, that's the tough part of picking out a Top 10.
I'll leave the comments open below so you can tell me what your favourite goblin is and tell me how wrong I am for not including it.
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