If you ask veteran MTG players which color pair gives the best value, the answer will usually be Golgari. Despite being enemy colors, Black's removal complements Green's creatures and both can use the graveyard. Control the cycle of life and death by playing one of these five decks from MTG Arena's Standard and Historic format!
5. Golgari Mutate (Standard)
If you think this snake’s already a nightmare, wait until it evolves!
Golgari Mutate builds around the Ikoria mechanic that can combine creatures and trigger a Mutate ability. When paired with Scute Swarm, its Landfall ability copies all the mutations making it hard to stop. But even without Scute, your advantage snowballs the more Mutate creatures you stack together.
What's good about this deck:
- It’s cheap to build. You already have some copies of the Mutate creatures thanks to the free starter decks and will most likely have them all if you’ve drafted Ikoria.
- Your creatures make a ton of value. Due to how Mutate works, you’re not blown out even if they kill your mutate target in response. If they do let mutate resolve before killing it, the mutate trigger itself is often worth a card.
- Going off with a mutated Scute Swarm is not only fun but actually game-winning as well.
How to play this deck effectively:
- Your best hand consists of Mysterious Egg/Zagoth Mamba, Scute Swarm and several mutate creatures.
- Mulligan away hands with too many high-cost spells. You want to have early Mutate targets so you can snowball your advantage if your opponent is not able to remove them immediately.
- When facing decks with plenty of removal spells, save Scute Swarm until you can drop it and immediately trigger its landfall to create a copy.
- Take advantage of Dirge Bat’s ability to mutate at instant speed. For example, mutating it to Chittering Harvester on your opponent’s draw step will force them to discard what they drew if they have no other cards.
- If possible play your other lands first and save your Fabled Passage for triggering the ability of your landfall creatures twice.
Cards:
Deck4 Mysterious Egg
2 Zagoth Mamba
4 Lotus Cobra
2 Glowstone Recluse
4 Scute Swarm
2 Dirge Bat
4 Gemrazer
4 Insatiable Hemophage
4 Migratory Greathorn
4 Auspicious Starrix
4 Chittering Harvester
4 Adventurous Impulse
4 Fabled Passage
13 Forest
11 Swamp
4. Golgari Company (Historic)
Reggie will eat your hand if you're not careful.
This deck makes use of the card Collected Company (CoCo) which can put two creatures from your library into the battlefield at instant speed. All your creatures have less than three converted mana cost (CMC) so they can work with CoCo. The rest of the deck consists of disruption, removal, and ways to give your three CMC beat sticks trample.
What's good about this deck:
- You have an advantage when facing other aggressive decks because your creatures are generally going to be bigger.
- You play Thoughtseize which is one of the most powerful discard spells in Magic’s history. For a very low cost, you can take their best card and play around the rest of the cards in their hand.
- It puts the fear of the unknown on your opponent. They always have to worry about surprise blockers or creatures coming out of nowhere and attacking them for lethal.
How to play this deck effectively:
- Your best hand consists of Llanowar Elves, a spell to cast on Turn two, and a Collected Company.
- Mulligan away hands that don't have early-game plays. Depending on your opponent, you need to play early game threats or interaction spells so you don’t fall behind in tempo.
- Don’t run out Rotting Regisaur on Turn 3 if your opponent can stall it and you have other good cards. In that scenario, work on emptying your hand first so the discard drawback doesn't hurt you.
- When you have Scavenging Ooze, exile the most threatening cards in your opponent’s graveyard first. The Historic format has many spells that let your opponent reuse cards in the graveyard.
- Use your Collected Company based on the type of deck you’re facing. Against creature decks, cast it on your main phase so you can attack with the haste creatures. Versus control, cast it on the end of their turn to avoid board wipes or sneak it in when they’re tapped out.
Cards:
Deck4 Llanowar Elves
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Garruk's Harbinger
4 Lovestruck Beast
2 Rhonas the Indomitable
4 Rotting Regisaur
4 Steel Leaf Champion
1 Vivien, Arkbow Ranger
2 Thoughtseize
2 Heartless Act
4 Collected Company
2 The Great Henge
2 Hashep Oasis
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
10 Forest
4 Swamp
Sideboard
2 Thoughtseize
1 Heartless Act
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Reclamation Sage
2 Questing Beast
2 Elder Gargaroth
1 Vivien Reid
3. Golgari Citadel (Historic)
This legendary artifact will test the limit of how much life you’re willing to pay for power.
This deck uses the powerful Bolas’s Citadel to amass a huge board by paying life to cast spells from the top of your library. The goal is to get Blood Artist and enough creatures to sacrifice such that your opponent loses a massive amount of life. Cards like Collected Company and Midnight Reaper also help towards achieving this goal.
What's good about this deck:
- It has a great matchup against ground-based creature decks. Between your walls and creatures, you can trade for value, your opponent will find it difficult to push through damage.
- You can outvalue slower decks with ease. The majority of your deck is already made up of two-for-ones and things will only get worse for your opponent when you get Bolas’s Citadel.
- You have a unique angle of attack. Opponents who are not familiar with your strategy will lose due to not expecting to lose life in the double digits once the deck goes off.
How to play this deck effectively:
- Your best hand consists of mana creatures, a turn two play, and Collected Company.
- Mulligan away hands that don't have early game creatures. You need to play creatures that can block or trade to avoid getting overrun before you can get your engine going.
- Be more relaxed in trading off or sacrificing creatures when you have a Midnight Reaper on the battlefield. Drawing a card means you'll be ahead in cards after each trade.
- If possible, cast Bolas’s Citadel before making a land drop. This lets you avoid a situation where you’re not able to play more things from the top of your library because it’s a land.
- Cast your Collected Company at the end of your opponent’s turn. This lets your creatures from CoCo avoid getting hit with sorcery speed removal before you can use them.
Cards:
Deck4 Gilded Goose
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Blood Artist
1 Overgrown Battlement
4 Priest of Forgotten Gods
4 Wall of Blossoms
1 Llanowar Visionary
2 Midnight Reaper
2 Murderous Rider
4 Woe Strider
4 Collected Company
3 Bolas's Citadel
8 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Phyrexian Tower
3 Swamp
4 Woodland Cemetery
Sideboard
1 Thoughtseize
2 Brain Maggot
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Necromentia
1 Plague Mare
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Thrashing Brontodon
2 Witch's Vengeance
2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
2 Massacre Wurm
2. Golgari Aggro (Standard)
Just like in the movies, it’s not enough to kill this horror once.
Golgari Aggro delivers the beatdown with the best Black and Green creatures up the mana curve in Standard. Heartless Act and Primal Might gets rid of any problem creature your opponent can play. You also have various Planeswalkers and modal land cards to make sure you don’t run out of gas in the mid to late game.
What's good about this deck:
- You have many creatures that hit for a ton of damage and are hard to block. Mutating a Gemrazer onto a Polukranos, Unchained makes it a 10/10 trampler.
- You have a great matchup against the popular mill rogues archetype. Scavenging Ooze will have constant fuel thanks to their mill and Gemrazer’s Reach prevents their flyers from attacking.
- Your modal spells give you something to do when you’re flooding. Agadeem’s Awakening can resurrect several creatures and Turntimber Symbiosis can get a creature and add power to it.
How to play this deck effectively:
- Your best hand consists of creatures that go up the mana curve and a couple of removal spells if facing an opposing creature deck.
- Mulligan away hands that don't have early-game plays. You need to play threats going up the mana curve every turn.
- Play Kazandu Mammoth first over your other three drops. This lets you maximize your damage from landfall triggers as you’re developing your mana in the early game.
- Against a deck light on removal, it’s fine to Mutate Gemrazer onto a creature with low stats to get damage in early even when there’s no target for the trigger.
- When you have Scavenging Ooze, exile the most relevant cards from the graveyard first. This can be your opponent's Escape creatures or cards from your graveyard to stop Zareth San, the Trickster from stealing them.
Cards:
Deck4 Stonecoil Serpent
2 Swarm Shambler
4 Scavenging Ooze
1 Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager
4 Kazandu Mammoth
4 Lovestruck Beast
4 Gemrazer
1 Polukranos, Unchained
1 Garruk, Unleashed
1 Nissa of Shadowed Boughs
1 Vivien, Monsters' Advocate
4 Primal Might
3 Heartless Act
2 Agadeem's Awakening
4 Turntimber Symbiosis
2 The Great Henge
1 Castle Garenbrig
4 Fabled Passage
4 Temple of Malady
7 Forest
2 Swamp
Sideboard
1 Castle Locthwain
2 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Chainweb Aracnir
4 Duress
1 Run Afoul
2 Eliminate
3 Garruk's Harbinger
1. Golgari Adventures (Standard)
This zombie knight’s touch can take down even the biggest of creatures.
Golgari Adventures uses a mix of creatures that have good stats or generate value to overwhelm your opponent. Adventure creatures like Order of Midnight/Foulmire Knight let you keep up the pressure even if they have removal spells. Edgewall Innkeeper lets you add even more value on top of what's provided by Adventures.
What's good about this deck:
- You have an advantage when facing other creature decks because your creatures are generally going to be bigger.
- You get both power and card advantage from your Adventure creatures. Not only do they have excellent power to mana cost ratio, but they also draw cards thanks to Edgewall Innkeeper.
- Compared to other aggro decks, Golgari Adventures mulligans well. Your Adventure creatures have built-in two-for-ones to offset the card disadvantage.
How to play this deck effectively:
- Your best hand consists of Edgewall Innkeeper, a couple of Adventure creatures, and Embercleave.
- Mulligan away hands that don't have early game creatures. You need to play threats going up the mana curve every turn.
- Don't attack with Edgewall Innkeeper if your opponent's deck has cards that can ambush it. For example, decks like Dimir Rogue have several creatures with Flash.
- If the situation calls for it, don’t hesitate to cast your adventure creatures even if you haven’t cast the adventure side yet. An example would be a turn two Order of Midnight against decks that don’t have much removal.
- Consider your options when you damage an opponent with Rankle, Master of Pranks. There are cases where you don’t want to use the draw option because it might let your opponent draw an answer.
Cards:
Deck4 Edgewall Innkeeper
4 Foulmire Knight
2 Order of Midnight
4 Scavenging Ooze
4 Kazandu Mammoth
4 Lovestruck Beast
4 Murderous Rider
1 Polukranos, Unchained
2 Rankle, Master of Pranks
1 Vivien, Monsters' Advocate
1 Garruk, Cursed Huntsman
2 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Agadeem's Awakening
3 The Great Henge
1 Castle Locthwain
4 Fabled Passage
4 Temple of Malady
7 Forest
6 Swamp
Sideboard
2 Bloodchief's Thirst
3 Agonizing Remorse
2 Epic Downfall
1 Heroic Intervention
2 Wilt
1 Soul Shatter
3 Questing Beast
1 Vivien, Monsters' Advocate
You may also be interested in:
