Goblin Depot's Tiny Leaders Julio

Goblin Depot Tiny Leaders Reborn Highlights

We hosted our monthly Goblin Depot Tournament with 7 players. Not bad for a Sunday.

The Podium

Photos by Goblin Depot.

• 1st Place: 🏆 Exilius piloting Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh & Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful (this is the 5th time they've made it to the podium)
• 2nd Place: 🥈 Ghatto piloting Kratos, God of War (this is the 5th time they've made it to the podium)
• 3rd Place: 🥉 Nushio piloting Grist, the Hunger Tide (their 3rd trophy-worthy finish to date)

Meta Watch

Unusual for Tiny Leaders, most of the decks featured Green, and 3 of them were Golgari (Green/Black).

As usual though, the field was remarkably diverse, with players bringing a wide variety of strategies to Goblin Depot. A true local classic: Kratos, God of War has now been seen 2 times at Goblin Depot, and that damned Mutt, RogDog made it's third appearance at the store.

We also saw fresh faces on the field like Grist, the Hunger Tide, Sarulf, Realm Eater.

Play History

Photos by Goblin Depot.

It was a slow, Sunday afternoon. 7 of us gathered to play. I had a bad day, so I couldn't help myself and chose Grist as my Tiny Leader.

TheCosmerian made this fantastic "Gristmas" video back in December featuring, well, Grist, in an "Oops, All Bugs" mode. The idea is simple: What if the deck was all bugs and lands? How many lands can you cut to maximize the +1 Uptick? I loved the idea, spent a few hours staring at Spreadsheet Formulas, and made a slightly modified variant with fetchlands to bug the other players.

First round was against Ricky, with his Donnie & Mike deck. Unfortunately for him, Grist was just too fast, with both games ending around turn 3 or 4, with each +1 uptick bringing 4 - 8 bugs, the armies 1/1 insects and him having no real response to Grist meant the gameplay was entirely one-sided. Sorry!

My second round was against Exilius, with a RogDog that I was looking forward to facing. Unfortunately, he had already seen the deck in practice and mainboarded hate pieces 'in case I would use it', and that, alongside my really bad luck (1-2 bugs per pull) meant that despite my best tries, Grist went 0-2.

For my third round I faced Fer's Sarulf Deck deck. The Grist shock factor let me win G1 in a blink of an eye, pulling 11 bugs in turn two. For the second Round, Fer really packed in the heat, with an extremely well-timed Boseiju ruining my plans. I managed to defend myself with a lot of small bugs, but with no Grist in sight, I knew the game was over the moment he Boseiju'd my plan away. Game 3, I can say I won to mulligan. Fer unfortunately went down to 3 cards in his starting hand, and couldn't really do anything against a turn 3 Grist that, again, pulled 11 bugs. Sorry.

Afterwards, I did a casual match against Ghatto, the Kratos player. Again, not knowing what Grist does means that the shock factor is very high. Pulled about 3 bugs, then around 13. He tried to stop me with a Crawling Space, which I removed to hurt him with the bugs and Grists' Ultimate.

For me, Grist doesn't feel like playing Magic: The Gathering. It feels like hitting the slot machines and trying to land 7 7 7. When you win, it's wild. When you lose, you still have the next match.