Mainboard (60)
Creatures (16)
Instants (12)
Sorceries (4)
Artifacts (3)
Enchantments (4)
This is a fast, symmetrical creature matchup where the first player to establish board dominance usually wins. Goblin Lackey on turn 1 is the highest-priority target — use Seal of Fire or Mogg Fanatic immediately to deny free drops of Siege-Gang Commander or Goblin Piledriver. Goblin Piledriver can grow to an unmanageable size in a single attack step once Warchief grants haste, so kill it on sight with Incinerate or Lightning Bolt before it ever attacks. Earthquake replaces the slow Cursed Scroll as a reset button when the opponent floods the board with small goblins; casting it at X=2 clears most of their army while leaving you with burn spells and Fireblast to finish the game. Grim Lavamancer is particularly strong here, converting spent removal spells into repeated pings that efficiently trade against their 1-toughness engine pieces like Goblin Lackey and Mogg Fanatic.
Mono-Blue Stiflenought wins by countering your threats and either landing a Phyrexian Dreadnought through Stifle or locking you out with Vision Charm's phase-out ability. Your game plan is to go under their counterspell suite with cheap burn spells that are hard to counter profitably — Mogg Fanatic, Seal of Fire, and Lightning Bolt all demand answers or quickly close the game. Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast come in as efficient, uncounterable answers to their blue permanents and can also blank their counters in a pinch. Goblin Cadets comes out because its attack-redirection drawback is especially punishing when the opponent can choose blockers freely, and it rarely connects meaningfully against an island-heavy deck. Keep the pressure relentless and aim to have Fireblast or a Lavamancer as a finisher once they've tapped out to protect the Dreadnought.
Enchantress is a combo-control deck that wins by assembling Opalescence with Parallax Wave or locking you out with Solitary Confinement, so your priority is disrupting enchantments before they stabilize. Naturalize and Tranquil Domain give you instant-speed and sorcery-speed answers to key permanents like Sterling Grove, Solitary Confinement, and Enchantress's Presence — hit Sterling Grove first when possible to deny tutoring. Anarchy is a one-sided board wipe against the many white protection enchantments and can blow out an Opalescence board. Ball Lightning is too slow and fragile against Swords to Plowshares and Parallax Wave, while Cursed Scroll's mana investment is inefficient when you need green mana for your sideboard answers. The green dual lands come in to reliably cast Naturalize and Tranquil Domain, and you need to be as aggressive as possible in the early turns since Goblin Cadets is a liability against Swords to Plowshares.