Mainboard (60)
Creatures (14)
Instants (14)
Sorceries (8)
Enchantments (3)
Lands (21)
Sideboard (15)
Gruul Goblins is a tribal aggro deck that wins through Goblin Lackey cheating threats into play and Goblin Ringleader refueling the hand — your discard suite of Duress, Cabal Therapy, and Funeral Charm is critical for disrupting these key pieces early. Engineered Plague naming Goblin neuters almost the entire board simultaneously and is your most powerful card in this matchup. Perish as a sorcery sweeper hits everything in their deck except Goblin King, providing additional reset potential. Smother and Snuff Out come out because Engineered Plague is a more efficient answer to their swarm, and one Ravenous Rats is trimmed since their deck refills via Ringleader making the discard less impactful in topdeck wars. Phyrexian Negator and Hypnotic Specter remain in as your primary clock — getting a Specter through early can be backbreaking, and the combination of hand disruption plus a fast clock is your primary game plan.
Mono-Blue Stiflenought wins by either landing a free Phyrexian Dreadnought (via Stifle) or countering everything you play while drawing through their deck with Gush and Portent. Chill is your best weapon here, taxing every blue spell by 2 mana and effectively shutting down their counter-magic and card draw engine — resolve it early and it often wins the game on its own. Defense Grid further punishes them on their turn, making it nearly impossible to hold up Counterspell and Daze simultaneously. Your removal suite (Diabolic Edict, Smother, Snuff Out) is largely dead against a deck that wins with a single indestructible 12/12, so trim the less impactful pieces while keeping Diabolic Edict in full as your primary answer to Dreadnought. Duress and Cabal Therapy are critical — strip Stifle before playing your threats and discard their counterspells before resolving Chill or Defense Grid.
Selesnya Enchantress wins by assembling Solitary Confinement backed by Sterling Grove and a card draw engine, making your removal nearly irrelevant once it's locked in. Your primary plan is to win fast with Hypnotic Specter and Phyrexian Negator before they stabilize, while Duress and Cabal Therapy strip key pieces like Replenish, Solitary Confinement, and Parallax Wave. Dystopia is a recurring enchantment destroyer that punishes their green and white enchantments every upkeep, and Perish cleanly answers Argothian Enchantress and any Opalescence-animated enchantments that are now creatures. Smother and Snuff Out come out because they rarely have creatures worth targeting early, and your discard suite is better at disrupting their combo than reactive removal.