I'm not sure exactly why this card stopped being
included in the recent trope-heavy core sets. I
can think of few better exemplars of what
goblins are all about in Magic: small
red-aligned creatures who don't look like much
on their own but like to blow things up, and
make a disproportionate impact doing so. It's
also one of the scariest goblins you can see
hitting the table across from you: you know
things are going to die, probably your things,
and you have very little control over when.
Actually, maybe that's why he hasn't been in the
recent core sets, come to think of it. He even
terrorizes the notoriously cheap-spell-biased
formats like Legacy and Vintage thanks to Goblin
Lackey and Food Chain, and there are very few
red creatures that can say that.
It's probably obvious, but it bears repeating
again: using his own goblin tokens as the cannon
fodder is only the most obvious play, but not
the only one by any means. Try it with Mudbutton
Torchrunner.
This guy was once THE figurehead for a Goblin
Tribal deck. And whynot? He brings the whole
tribe with him! Even decks that weren't really
dedicated to the Goblin Theme wanted to play
this thing because it's equivalent to a 5/5 for
five, and it's four bodies on the table, and/or
it's three Shocks in one card. That kind of
versatility is just impossible to ignore!
When Goblin tribal returned in force during
Lorwyn block, WotC really wanted to avoid making
it feel like Onslaught Block 2: Goblin Harder.
So they split the old tribes up into more than
one color, and also gave Goblins the subtheme of
bringing back Goblins from the graveyard (but
only on Black Goblins, so that combos with
Magic's long storied history of Red Goblins that
sacrifice themselves wouldn't be too absurd.)
And since goblins were now getting brought back
as well as being sacrificed, there was much less
emphasis on Goblin tokens. But of course,
Goblins are in practically every block, so
there's always new pieces to that particular
puzzle coming out.
