Playing around with the infamously "most broken mechanic". Tribal edition.

Each day of the previous week I found out something interesting about Magic or how I think about the game. Today that thing was that I consider Goblin the tribal tribe. If I think about making a random card effect tribal I default to Goblin.

I expect there is some other creature type more deserving of this design, but I thought "Pitch spells but for a tribe rather than color" and here we are.

I know that pitch spells used to exile. I'm using discard just to see whether it is a notable difference.

The idea is to design the cards in such a way that the fact that any color the tribe is in will not break the color pie, so feel free to point out if I'm unsuccessful in that regard.

It's a fair view to hold. Goblin King and Lord of Atlantis were the original tribal lords. And, well, Goblins got way better cards than merfolk (I mean, merfolk tried to shine in fallen Empirse. But that's rather like trying to shine while in pitch blackness and your audience is in another room entirely; watching a Michael Bay film.)

SO yeah; goblins are the first tribe. And certainly the one that's had the most support - because individual goblins are never particularly good. And phrasing it that way; it's a real shame they're not also white.

Aaanyway. This is a nice build around goblin; and goblins want to come out early so MAYBE it's sometimes worth sacrificing a card to do it? I mean, it's a card that you KNOW is worth +1/+1 as well, so it's a pretty big loss.

Certainly seems worth trying. Subverting casting cost is always risky, but I suspect it'll be fine here. By the time it's a game winning bomb, you'd have the mana to flat-cast it anyway.

Don't forget Zombie Master!

I like that this is a cost that gets the big "MAYBE" from someone - that's exactly what I was going for. Good point about giving up a Goblin to put out a card that wants Goblins around though.

Something that came to mind during my time afk was that my apparently not entirely arbitrary choice of Goblin and my unmotivated use of "discard" over "exile" means this gets to discard Squee, Goblin Nabob for profit. I think, I like that.

Even saving up a Squee, the Immortal to later pump this is neat. Squee seems like someone you want around starting a posse.

Eh, zombie master didn't actually DO anything. The other lords had 'make bigger' in common; the zombies just got swampwalk.

Dunno. I never saw zombie tribal in the wild; anyway. And heck; people did elf tribal back before that was even possible - so clearly there's the little matter of flavour on goblins' side too. :)

And.. I totally forgot there was a minor recur theme for goblins. Yeah; that seems like a "Player feels clever for discovering" benefit, rather than "Whoops, broke the game with a loophole". Go for it.

Published as mtgnexus Card of the Day 2021-11-18.