Mainboard (60)
Creatures (4)
Instants (22)
Sorceries (4)
Artifacts (4)
Enchantments (4)
Lands (22)
Gruul Goblins is an aggressive tribal deck that floods the board quickly with Goblin Lackey, Goblin Warchief, and Goblin Piledriver, threatening lethal damage before your mana engine comes online. Pyroclasm is your best sweeper here, cleaning up multiple small goblins at once and blanking Lackey before it can cheat in Siege-Gang Commander or Goblin Ringleader. Masticore provides a repeatable removal engine that can pick off individual threats like Goblin Sharpshooter or Gempalm Incinerator while your Survival engine finds silver bullets. Your own Goblin Sharpshooter and Deranged Hermit tokens can hold the ground, and once you stabilize, your mana advantage with Gaea's Cradle and Priest of Titania should overwhelm their board. Nantuko Vigilante and Orcish Settlers are too slow and situational against their linear aggro gameplan.
Mono-Blue Stiflenought wins by either countering your Survival of the Fittest or Stifling the Phyrexian Dreadnought's triggered ability on their own creature, then beating you down with an 12/12. Your primary plan is to resolve Survival and assemble the Goblin Bombardment plus creature engine faster than they can answer it, using Wirewood Symbiote to protect key elves from Powder Keg. Winter Orb comes in to punish their Island-heavy mana base and force them to tap out, creating windows where your Survival activations resolve through their suite of free counterspells (Foil, Gush, Thwart, Daze). Cut the situational utility creatures — Squee's Revenge, Orcish Settlers, and Yavimaya Granger — which are too slow and narrow against this opponent. Keep Nantuko Vigilante in the board as a live threat to their Powder Keg or Tsabo's Web post-board, and prioritize getting Anger into the graveyard to give your team haste and close quickly once the lock is in place.
Mono-Black Midrange applies pressure through Hypnotic Specter and Nantuko Shade while Duress and Cabal Therapy strip your hand before Survival of the Fittest can establish the engine — resolve Survival early and spend cards proactively to stay ahead of their discard. Pyroclasm is the key removal spell, sweeping Hypnotic Specter, Knight of Stromgald, and Withered Wretch in a single sorcery; killing Withered Wretch is especially important because it threatens to exile Genesis and Anger from your graveyard and gut your late-game recursion. Winter Orb creates a powerful asymmetry: your mana dorks, Gaea's Cradle, Quirion Ranger, and Wirewood Symbiote let you continue developing your board while their land-dependent mana structure is throttled to one untap per turn, neutralizing the Dark Ritual burst that normally powers their gameplan. The Nantuko Vigilantes and Thornscape Battlemage come out because their opponent only runs two Cursed Scrolls as artifact targets, and Pyroclasm better addresses the creature threats those cards were meant to answer.