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[Gather the Townsfolk]

Here's a version I played a while ago (pre DA) in a small tournament and went 3-2:
1 Elite Vanguard
1 Figure of Destiny
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
1 Mother of Runes
1 Savannah Lions
1 Soltari Foot Soldier
1 Suntail Hawk
1 Lantern Kami
1 Student of Warfare
1 Gideon's Lawkeeper
1 Champion of the Parish
1 Icatian Javelineers
1 Goldmeadow Harrier

1 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
1 Knight of the White Orchid
1 Kor Aeronaut
1 Kor Skyfisher
1 Leonin Arbiter
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Leonin Skyhunter
1 Mistral Charger
1 Serra Avenger
1 Soltari Monk
1 Soltari Priest
1 Soltari Trooper
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Stormfront Pegasus
1 Porcelain Legionnaire
1 Accorder Paladin
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Spectral Rider
1 Raise the Alarm

1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Spectral Procession
1 Flickerwisp
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Midnight Haunting
1 Blade Splicer
1 Stillmoon Cavalier
1 Soltari Champion

1 Hero of Bladehold
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
1 Battle Screech
1 Celestial Crusader
1 Geist-Honored Monk
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
1 Mikaeus, the Lunarch

1 Path to Exile
1 Mana Tithe
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sunlance
1 Dismember
1 Brave the Elements
1 Cursed Scroll
1 Crusade
1 Journey to Nowhere

1 Glorious Anthem
1 Divine Sacrament
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Honor of the Pure
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Angelic Destiny
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

1 Chrome Mox
1 Windbrisk Heights
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Wasteland
1 Mutavault
1 Contested War Zone
25 Plains

Losses were against Staxx (obv, although I won 1 game) and a pseudomirror. Won UGR, UW and Dredgeanimator. I had to try out those one mana fliers because all WW lists seem to play them for some reason. And oh boy were they bad I'll snapcut them before playing this again. Otherwise the deck felt ok.

Gather the Townsfolk - This should be decent
Midnight Haunting - Instancy has actually been surprisingly relevant
Mausoleum Guard, Doomed Traveler - bleh
Elite Inquisitor - not good enough I think. Two drops should have good evasion or better stats.
Spectral Rider - Generic WW-creature, this goes in and out all the time.
Porcelain Legionnaire - decent beater
Loyal Cathar / Unhallowed Cathar - I think I'll try this out. It does produce some card advantage at least.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben - I'll definitely try this one. Such a beater in standard already.
Grand Abolisher - I like this dude a lot. One of the best new bears. But then again we have pretty much monocontrolmeta here in Finland.
Mentor of the Meek - This was way too slow and clunky in testing.
Mikaeus, the Lunarch - This is pretty powerful. It's very versatile and tutorable with Ranger of Eos!
Blade Splicer - Definitely powerful.
Contested War Zone - This has been pretty sick so far.

I haven't played the deck since the last list I posted and the format/metagame has changed so much I'll have to reconsider pretty much everything if I put the deck back together. I also make all these evaluations based on 20-life format, I really have no clue how 5 extra lives would affect the format as a whole (other than aggro being obviously worse).

Metamorph seems decent if your meta includes multiple Thruns/Progeniti.
Recurring Nightmare was always a bit too slow or just not needed. Living Death and Bidding should be sufficient mass recursion.
I didn't like Hero when I first saw it but it's been so good in standard that it's probably good enough for this deck too.
I accept Stingscourger as a metachoice but Clickslither and Pyromancer just don't do enough and there are already quite a few 4 drops.
Sharpshooter wasn't really needed in my meta back then. I'm not sure if I would play it even now but at least some people actually play creatures around here nowadays.

Splashing green is something I have considered also every now and then. There are plenty of ways to do this. You could just splash Tin Street Hooligan and Birthing Pod or go more deep with green and add something like: Maelstrom Pulse, Bloodbraid Elf, Worldly Tutor, Tarmogoyf, Vithian Renegades and maybe Lead the Stampede.

Hi, i am building RB goblin deck right now and would welcome some advice about gameplay.

1) Can anybody advice me some strong Goblin Recruiter chains on turn 2? What are the possibilities and disadvantages.
2) What do you think about Kiki-Jiki and Phyrexian Metamorph?
3) What kind of matchup is GBW hulk-pattern combo? What card choices helps here (some gy hate tutorable by goblins tutors?)

Thanks

1) It's always a bit risky to cast Recruiter on second turn but usually I search something like:
Warchief
Ringleader
Skirk Prospector
Mogg War Marshal
-after this it's much more situation and matchup dependent but most of the time you should go along the lines of:-
Goblin Piledriver
Goblin Incinerator
Goblin Chieftain, Mad Auntie or King
-this would be the first wave. Second wave could include something like:-
Siege Gang Commander
more Kings
Murderous Redcap
Wort
and so on...
Make sure you have access to at least 4 lands when doing this. Best second turn Recruiters are obviously supported by first turn discard to see if coast is clear.

2) Kiki-Jiki enables a tutorable combo kill but isn't very useful otherwise. Metamorph doesn't seem very good but then again I haven't tried it. Splashing Birthing Pod should increase the value of Metamorph.

3) Killing manadudes and landing Magus/Blood Moon seems like a good start. Discard is golden and Hulk is most of the time a bit clunky so fast starts+well timed removal might do the trick. If you have Pattern-Hulk in your meta and it poses an actual threat then you just might want to try combo them out faster (at least if they land an Academy Rector).

I think there are plenty of ways to build RUG right now. At the moment this version looks a bit too all over the place. You could go more aggro route by playing some fish and tempo stuff or controlish by adding a few bombs and tweaking manas to support them or even play a ramp version with Scapeshift! Strongest versions I have seen so far were in fact the combo versions. As a midrangey deck this does indeed look like a worse Bant (not naya). Personally I will surely be playing some sort of Delver/Mongoose-version in the near future

Why wouldn`T you play kiki jiki? he always copies your best creature like inferno titan or avanlanche riders.
No point in not playing him in this deck.
And yes you want another pod trust me on this

If you have Inferno in play you should be winning anyway. Problem with Kiki-Jiki is that you must have another creature (preferably a good one) in play. It costs 5 (triple caster) which is a lot if you use it to copy low cost creatures. Also being a 2/2 makes it too vulnerable to removal for a five cost creature. If you look at the list, there are lots of Legendary creatures and creatures that doesn't produce very much value when copied (like BBE, Vengevine, Image, Sower, Arc-Slogger, Scavenging Ooze, Fauna Shaman etc.). So actually there's no point playing him without the combo.

Tezzeret also costs too much and doesn't have enough utility to be played. The deck should be evolved in a very different direction to have sufficient support for Tezzeret. But that wouldn't be the same deck any more

I can't understand why anyone would play Mox Diamond in an aggro deck. Chrome is perfectly acceptable in WW/rdw.

I disagree with that evaluation.
In an Aggro deck the gained tempo of MD makes up for the possible missed landdrop, but the card(spell) disadvantedge of Chrome is more relevant, because it is harder to make it up.

In a dedicated rdw, boros or Stax I still would play both, because the draws with them are very good and the gained speed is hard to handle for many decks.

Aggro decks already tend to be on the lower side with lands and you can't replace a land in your deck with Mox Diamond (Chrome can do this). That means you have to put it on a spell slot so you are down a spell always when you draw diamond. Mox Diamond also makes mulliganing sometimes very awkward. With aggro decks you usually try to optimize your curve by just keeping couple of lands and low curve creatures. If you get a low land hand you can't probably keep the Mox because you need to dig deeper for land. On the other hand if you get like a 5 land+mox+spell hand, mulliganing would probably be much easier(or more effective) with any other spell in moxes slot. At least I don't like these kinds of risks in mulliganing since mulligan decisions in highlander already have such a huge impact on games.

If highlander had same kind of metagame fluctuations as real formats, different cards would be good in different tournaments. Progenitus, Blood Moon, Baneslayer, Vial, counterspells would all be good in their respective metagames.

At the moment I would not leave home with a blue deck without at least Counterspell, Spell Snare, Spell Pierce and Glen Elendra Archmage on top of already mentioned ones. Of course your game plan and the expected meta greatly affects your card choices here so I wouldn't blame someone with a different kind of counter shell.

I can't understand why anyone would play Mox Diamond in an aggro deck. Chrome is perfectly acceptable in WW/rdw. Rancor should be replaced by Sword or another creature in most of decks. Propaganda effects have not been good in years.
I still like Tarmogoyf very much. Lands are always in graveyards. With black you play discard that's good with goyf. With red you play burn which also happens to work with it and so on.

Some other cards I think are overrated:
Pestermite
ManoWar/Aether Adept
Armageddon/Winter Orb
Maze of Ith
Regrowth
Sword of Light and Shadow

I also wanted to try something with Twin-combos. The deck started of as a pure UR-combo and somewhat fast evolved into a UR control with a combo kill. I tested against UGB-control, Esper-control and Bant goodstuff just to see if the deck can beat any of them. Deck had huge problems surviving through Birthing Pod, Sylvan Library, Thrun and Sword of Fire and Ice. Otherwise most of the games were quite even and I probably lost whole bunch of games just because sometimes I had no idea what I was doing or how was I supposed to survive and combo through hate at the same time. A lot of games took so long that it would have been pretty hard to play out a full match within time limits.

So the deck looks like this at the moment (there are still a few seemingly random cards because I wanted to test them out):

Grim Lavamancer
Snapcaster Mage
Spellskite
Azure Mage
Phantasmal Image
Trinket Mage
Sea Gate Oracle
Vendilion Clique
Goblin Matron
Deceiver Exarch
Pestermite
Imperial Recruiter
Glen Elendra Archmage
Venser, Shaper Savant
Phyrexian Metamorph
Flametongue Kavu
Sower of Temptation
Solemn Simulacrum
Faerie Harbringer
Arc-Slogger
Siege-Gang Commander
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Inferno Titan

Sword of Fire and Ice
Splinter Twin
Bribery

Lightning Bolt
Magma Jet
Fire/Ice
Into the Roil
Electrolyze
Slagstorm
Vedalken Shackles
Treachery

Spell Snare
Spell Pierce
Miscalculation
Mana Leak
Mana Drain
Counterspell
Remand
Cryptic Command
Force of will
Condescend

Ancestral Vision
Ponder
Brainstorm
Serum Visions
Sleight of Hand
Preordain
Sensei's Divining Top
Impulse
Shrine of Piercing Vision
Scroll Rack
Compulsive Research
Thirst for Knowledge
Jace the Mind Sculptor
Fact or Fiction
Careful Consideration
Flash of Insight

Talisman of Indulgence
Talisman of Progress
Izzet Signet
Coldsteel Heart
Coalition Relic

7 Fetch
7 UR producing lands
4 Mountain
11 Island
Mutavault
Mishra's Factory
Faerie Conclave
Riptide Laboratory

I cut Intuition along with Gifts so I don't play Noxious Revival any more. Revival was ok though. I would also play non-basic haters if I ever took this in to a tournament.

How many players participated and plan to make decklists available?

Top8 looks likely to contain 7 Birthing Pods and 7 Stoneforge Mystics!

faerie harbinger (nobody plays this card, i know i know. but: i believe this card is good. it should see more play. its really really good against control like all flash creatures, but more so cause it puts you clique, sower or archmage on top of your library and we all know how GOOD archmage is against control! whatever the situation asks for, sower can save you in critical situations, that makes it incredible versatile. i feel there there can be almost no situation where none of those 3 faeries is good! when you are behind, sower is great, if you wanna get an edge, clique is great, if you are up front, archmage seals the deal, thats what makes harbinger playable in my eyes: the different applications of its 3 targets! i know it seems bad against aggro, but it still a 4 mana isntant removal spell mostly cause you trade 1 for 1. i probably get smashed by the forum for this recommendation but i wanted to at least mention it.)

Although I don't agree with most of the stuff in your post, I think Faerie Harbinger is a brilliant tech! I must try it out immediately.

BAN

I also want shortest possible ban list and still think Top should be banned. I don't know what skill factors people are talking about here. Good players operate faster with Top but even then it takes lots of time and the card is just too good in control mirrors (+it's not very fun either). Burn is pretty much the only deck (I still don't count WW as a deck) at the moment that don't play this so banning it would give additional deck building options. The only other ban worthy card involving a huge time factor (on top of being brutally overpowered) is Gifts Ungiven and that should have been banned years ago.

I have another Question: If you bribery a broodmate dragon and your opponent uses the land, does he get the token too?

110.5a A token is both owned and controlled by the player under whose control it entered the battlefield. -So you keep the token.

tiggupiru, do you still think spellskite is a "horrible card"?

Has there been any results that would prove otherwise? Unless some data is missing, only relevant highlander tournament that has been played after NP:s release was our champs and there were 0 Spellskites in the top 8. I did build a Cephalid Breakfast that might want to play it but I can't still see why you would want this in control/midrange.
Actually there were also 0 Beast Withins, Karns and only 1 Dismember played (6 U decks, 6 B, 3 R, 4 W, 6 G).
On the other hand 4 Batterskulls, 3 Birthing Pods, 2 Sheoldreds, 2 Phyrexian Metamorphs were played.
Entomber exarch also went all the way to the finals.

Yes the sample is small but at least these players didn't think Skite or Beast Within would do the trick.

Beside the obvious cards like Bribery and Fire/Ice I would also like to give more input for a possible improvement/revision/metagaming:

More Ramp: Grim Monolith, XX Mana Stone (forgot about the name), Chrome Mox, Prismatic Lens
Tezzeret Engine: see above, Tezz, Tezz, Thopther, Sword, Artifact lands, Vedalken Shackles
BB(B) Spells: Hymn, Black Zenith, Sorin Markov
U and B Pact, Karn Liberated, Repeal, Thirst for Knowledge, Compulsive Research

That would be a totally different deck (pretty cool though). It would have very different game plan/strategy and would need a whole lot of other adjustments too to support artifact synergies.

If people can get their hands on Batterskulls before our HL-champs (which will be held during the release weekend), I could see the top8 having at least 5-6 (even more) Stoneforge Mystics in the top8. I don't know if other people have tested with New Phyrexia so far but FYI Mystic+Skull is a totally busted pair of cards (at least that is what has happened so far in testing with Sephiron). Also recently I have been using Demonic Tutor mainly not as reactive card but as a second Jace or Mystic (followed by Mana Drain and Gifts Ungiven).

I don't really have an opinion whether Mystic should be banned or not. It definitely is good enough to get hammered but I'd like the banned list to be as short as possible. Hopefully our champs give some more information about the state of the format.