Gruul Goblins in Aetherdrift Standard

Posted on February 28, 2025

Hello Reader - and welcome to Aetherdrift Standard! The beginning of this format has been quite interesting - as we've seen a mix of Foundations Standard decks getting some new tools, new brews taking aim at the existing ones, and some older decks from previous iterations of Standard rise again! I had the opportunity to play a bunch of different brews submitted by my Twitch viewers during the MTGArena Streamer Event before the pre release, and every single brew that I played was so fun! Out of 18 different decks that I had the opportunity to play, one really stuck out to me, and made me want to continue brewing on the base of the submitted deck. Many thanks to Twitch viewer EyLDS for the original submissions! I can say with absolute certainty that Standard is very healthy right now.

Mono Red Goblins | DFT Standard | EyLDS

Instants (3)
3 Witchstalker Frenzy

Artifacts (2)
2 Agatha's Soul Cauldron

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This original deck submission was submitted for Best of 1 Standard because during the Streamer Event, we're encouraged to play new brews in the Best of 1 queue to show off new cards from Aetherdrift. There was a Best of 3 ranked queue available for the Streamer Event, however it was mostly meant for the Pro Tour competitors who were invited into this event to test Standard decks in preparation for that tournament.

EyLDS Mono Red Goblins deck was an absolute blast to play. With 31 creatures in the main deck, you can tell that it's quite aggressive - especially with the ability to play multiple "Lords" that give your creatures extra power and toughness while being resilient in a sense to some removal spells. The most exciting part of this deck from the original gameplay was Agatha's Soul Cauldron. For the majority of cases, you'd use Agatha's Soul Cauldron to exile your own goblins from the graveyard to grant your other goblins with +1/+1 counters the activated abilities of cards exiled with Agatha's Soul Cauldron. Imagine giving your Goblin Tokens created by Howlsquad Heavy the activated ability of Krenko, Mob Boss - or simply granting the Exhaust abilities of Draconautics Engineer!

A few days after the Streamer Event, I wanted to make some changes to this submitted brew. While I thoroughly enjoyed playing the deck, and it had an amazing win record against other creators, I wanted to see what could be done to make it slightly more competitive against the supposed Standard Metagame when Aetherdrift released. I took the original base of EyLDS deck, changed some numbers of certain cards, and added Green cards to give the deck a little bit more power, while leaving open new sideboard options for Traditional Standard Best of 3.

I present to you - Gruul (R/G) Goblins!

Gruul Goblins | DFT Standard | CFavretto_Jr

Instants (2)
2 Witchstalker Frenzy

Artifacts (2)
2 Agatha's Soul Cauldron

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Adding Green to the deck gives the ability for some great includes in this build - especially Afterburner Expert in the main deck. Afterburner Expert is a great example of a creature that is resilient to removal spells such as Cut Down, Go for the Throat, and Grim Bauble, while also having the ability to be reanimated out of the graveyard whenever you use a creature's exhaust ability. It pairs incredibly well with Draconautics Engineer, in that if Afterburner Expert is in your graveyard, you can activate the first Exhaust ability of Draconautics Engineer to give it a +1/+1 counter and other creatures you control haste - and since Afterburner Expert would be in the graveyard, it will be reanimated and have haste! Or if you're lucky enough to have 5 mana up, you could activate both exhaust abilities of Draconautics Engineer to create a 4/4 Dinosaur Dragon Token, give all your other creatures haste, reanimate the Afterburner Expert, and swing for at least 9 damage.

In addition to adding Green for the inclusion of Afterburner Expert, I realized that this deck would be kind of weak to Authority of the Consuls, and Domain decks featuring Zur, Eternal Schemer. Pawpatch Formation was the first possible sideboard option that came to my mind as an auto-include, since that card is just so versatile. It's also a fantastic sideboard option against Abhorrent Oculus decks, Golgari (B/G) decks featuring the Demon package, Pixie, and Dimir (UB) Bounce decks.

Overall, I think this deck is great and was able to climb the MTGArena ladder from Diamond 4 to Mythic with this on Day 1 of Aetherdrift Standard. It definitely can use some more work, and I have already begun to make some addition edits to consolidate the numbers of certain creatures. After playing many matches with this deck, I realized that we don't really have an answer to the Simulacrum Synthesizer decks - or Lotus Boom as some folks are calling it now. I think in the most immediate edit would have to work 2 copies of Brotherhood's End in the sideboard - simply for the mass removal option against the majority of the Simulacrum Synthesizer deck.

If you'd like to see some gameplay of this Gruul (R/G) Goblins deck, I'd encourage you to check out my recent Twitch VOD from an #MTGPartner stream I did recently. Towards the end of the VOD you'll see me play a few matches with it to much success!