Readers!

It took me way too long to figure this out, but the perfect commander for a Goblin deck has been staring me in the face all along. It took two new products being built and discussed for me to think of it, but now I can't believe I missed it. That's right, the perfect Goblin deck commander is a Wizard who makes Orcs.

When I say "perfect" I should really qualify what I mean. Saruman is by no means a synergistic or even powerful commander for a Goblin deck. Saruman encourages you to run a bunch of non-creature spells, he provides no synergy between Goblins, and the Orcs he creates and the text box barely and briefly mentions Goblins only at the end, providing a meager ward 2 in a format where coughing up 2 mana for ward is beyond trivial. If it sounds like I not only failed to talk you into it but also talked myself out of it a little, you're forgetting that Saruman has something that so many potential commanders for Goblin decks in the past have lacked. He has Blue in his color identity.

Saruman is going to occasionally give you some value for playing a non-creature. He will occasionally force someone to not target your Goblins because they can't come up with the two-mana target tax. That's what I like to call "gravy" and while gravy is great if done properly, the Blue pip is what matters to me. I want to play Goblins with dumb Blue cards. Specifically, I want to play Goblins in a deck that has an Intruder Alarm.

Building with Intruder Alarm as our thesis Enchantment sounds a bit fraught, but I really don't think it is. While we are building to have our deck be optimal when we have Intruder Alarm out and therefore our Goblins should synergize with the card, I maintain we can build a good deck that would still be good if you never drew a single card to let your goobies untap. There are some very powerful Goblins with tap abilities, and some of them even go infinite with Intruder Alarm. We can, therefore, build a kind of Splinter Twin deck that masquerades as a simple value-oriented pile. Intruder Alarm is excellent with Krenko, Mob Boss, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Goblin Wizard, Mad Auntie, Lighting Crafter - even Rummaging Goblin and Izzet Chemister can pull off some really dirty moves if they can tap more than once a turn.

It's not just Intruder Alarm that I think would be pretty nasty in the deck - Mind Over Matter, Dismiss into Dream, Kindred Discovery, Reflections of Littjara and Freed from the Real are all potential adds. Dismiss into Dream in particular can be very nasty because it goes off with only Goblin Sharpshooter, a card that is absolutely going into this stupid, janky pile. However, it wouldn't be a Goblin deck made by yours truly if I didn't try to jam Artifact shenanigans into the deck. You know what Artifacts and big, dumb, Blue Enchantments have in common? They both give you amass triggers with our commander. Remember him? He makes Orcs, Orcs we can use as we see fit. Swing, throw it at them with Goblin Bombardment, sac for mana to some manner of altar - I even stared at Hatchet Bully for WAY too long trying to decide if putting a -1/-1 counter on an amassed Orc is the best possible outcome for a deck with Hatchet Bully. Maybe I'll test that another day - this is not a deck with Hatchet Bully. Unless you want it to be - I cannot stress enough that this deck is deeply stupid and if it gets going it's going to be fun to play against until the game ends abruptly.

What does such a pile look like and why haven't I tried this noise sooner?

White Hand, Blue Goblins | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Saruman, the White Hand

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Brash Taunter
• 1 Goblin Chieftain
• 1 Goblin Engineer
• 1 Goblin Matron
• 1 Goblin Recruiter
• 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 1 Goblin Tinkerer
• 1 Goblin Trashmaster
• 1 Goblin Warchief
• 1 Goblin Welder
• 1 Goblin Wizard
• 1 Goro-Goro and Satoru
• 1 Hobgoblin Bandit Lord
• 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1 Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1 Lightning Crafter
• 1 Mad Auntie
• 1 Ovika, Enigma Goliath
• 1 Pashalik Mons
• 1 Relic Robber
• 1 Rundvelt Hordemaster
• 1 Scrap Welder
• 1 Slobad, Iron Goblin
• 1 Tar Pitcher
• 1 Warbreak Trumpeter
• 1 Wort, Boggart Auntie

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Daretti, Scrap Savant

• Instants (8)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Kazuul's Fury // Kazuul's Cliffs
• 1 Irenicus's Vile Duplication
• 1 Living Death
• 1 Patriarch's Bidding
• 1 Scrap Mastery
• 1 Wake the Dragon

• Enchantments (12)
• 1 Dismiss into Dream
• 1 Dreadhorde Invasion
• 1 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki
• 1 Freed From The Real
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Goblinslide
• 1 Impact Tremors
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 1 Kindred Discovery
• 1 Mana Echoes
• 1 Mind Over Matter
• 1 Shared Animosity

• Artifacts (16)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Battlemage's Bracers
• 1 Bolas's Citadel
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Cursed Mirror
• 1 Deluxe Dragster
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Mindslaver
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Portal to Phyrexia
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1 Umbral Mantle

• Lands (36)
• 1 Swamp
• 4 Island
• 5 Mountain
• 1 Barad-dur
• 1 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1 Blightstep Pathway // Searstep Pathway
• 1 Canyon Slough
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Darkslick Shores
• 1 Den of the Bugbear
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Hall of Storm Giants
• 1 Hive of the Eye Tyrant
• 1 Luxury Suite
• 1 Plaza of Heroes
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Riverglide Pathway // Lavaglide Pathway
• 1 Shipwreck Marsh
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Training Center
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Xander's Lounge

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This is actually pretty hilarious.

Keeping their creatures tapped down is an easy-to-circumvent mode of the card, but if you have ways to tap their creatures during declare attackers, you could frost their stuff, but at that point, I'd rather be dismissing them into their dreams. I tried not to get too cute with Intruder Alarm - it makes our creatures better but we don't need them.

All of THAT said, I was very close to putting Mycosynth Lattice and Unwinding Clock in the deck. If you wanted to get way, way more artifact-heavy, there are a lot of easy cuts. I also didn't add the full Welder package so we're just going to have to use Mindslaver a finite number of times, usually 1, and be OK with that. I'm OK with that. Mindslaver completely changes a game and I love running it with Goblin Welder.

What do we think? Too cute? Is building Goblin typal but also Artifact-themed and also with an Intruder Alarm package too many hats? Or does everything synergize nicely? Leave me a comment on my many social media platforms because I am forced to hedge my bets and try to be everywhere until it's decided who will be the next Twitter when Twitter implodes. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!