Card/Deck Archetypes & Themes For Golgari Swarm (GB)

Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Hello, everyone! There was already a thread on GB, but I'm more interested in themes that in separate gold cards. Currently I'm working on my modern focused cube, and I struggle with creating a GB-sacrifice archetype. I already support WB aritocrats with a possibility of splashing red or green, but I also 'd like to have a separate deck for Golgari. I have multiple cards in mind, but:
1.) What deck type is better? Aggro, midrange?
2.) What are the potential win cons for this archetype?
3.) What to build around (anchors)?
If you have some experience in supporting this strategy or you have some another ideas for GB, please, write about them bellow. Thanks:)
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Karn Cuberated said:
Hello, everyone! There was already a thread on GB, but I'm more interested in themes that in separate gold cards. Currently I'm working on my modern focused cube, and I struggle with creating a GB-sacrifice archetype. I already support WB aritocrats with a possibility of splashing red or green, but I also 'd like to have a separate deck for Golgari. I have multiple cards in mind, but:
1.) What deck type is better? Aggro, midrange?
2.) What are the potential win cons for this archetype?
3.) What to build around (anchors)?
If you have some experience in supporting this strategy or you have some another ideas for GB, please, write about them below. Thanks:)
Click to expand...

In my cube, I have Golgari's primary archetype as Reanimator/GY Shenanigans and it's secondary archetype as Constellation Enchantress.

If you want to support graveyard, Grisly Salvage, Vessel of Nascency, Gather the Pack, and Commune with the Gods count as both card draw and GY dump. Depending on your budget, cards like Bloodghast, Vengevine, and Gravecrawler can work back-up duty. These cards require a little bit more support than some other options, but they can be pretty good. Some less archetype-specific cards for this deck are Honored Hydra, Roar of the Wurm, Scrapheap Scrounger. These can go in to a multitude of decks but are especially good in a deck with Graveyard interaction. You could also do a reanimator package if you wish, but those are slightly parasitic...

Enchantress is harder to support than graveyard, but it is rewarding when you get it to work. Cards like Doomwake Giant, Grim Guardian, and Eidolon of Blossoms are all great in a deck trying to take advantage of enchantments. Nighthowler is like a 3 cc Lhurgoyf which is also an enchantment.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

TrainmasterGT said:
If you want to support graveyard, Grisly Salvage, Vessel of Nascency, Gather the Pack, and Commune with the Gods count as both card draw and GY dump.
Click to expand...
Isn't there a danger of self-milling out with these?
As for reanimator, our playgroup finds it too badass for our cube environment. We had an idea of sacrificing "death matter" cards for value. I heard of some midrange strategy where, AFAIR, you play some defensive mana-dorks, ramp for a solid sac-outlet and "eat" your dorks and other "death matter" cards. I don't know if an aggro version would be better, but now we lean more towards midrange 'cuz we already have "Arisctocrats" aggro.
As for constellation, it seems to be better for lower power levels, but correct me if I'm wrong. We'll discuss running these theme, thank you:)
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Karn Cuberated said:
Isn't there a danger of self-milling out with these?
As for reanimator, our playgroup finds it too badass for our cube environment. We had an idea of sacrificing "death matter" cards for value. I heard of some midrange strategy where, AFAIR, you play some defensive mana-dorks, ramp for a solid sac-outlet and "eat" your dorks and other "death matter" cards. I don't know if an aggro version would be better, but now we lean more towards midrange 'cuz we already have "Arisctocrats" aggro.
As for constellation, it seems to be better for lower power levels, but correct me if I'm wrong. We'll discuss running these theme, thank you:)
Click to expand...

You're only going to mill out if the format is really slow or you're running like 5 of them.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Onderzeeboot said:
There's also a bunch of sweet morbid card in BG.

Click to expand...

I always surprize how insane Tragic Slip is:) Skirsdag High Priest is definetely in my list, as well as Deathreap Ritual and Sacura-Tribe Elder. But... Isn't the Ritual a bit slow?
As for Greater Good, I haven't had any experience with it yet. My plan was to sacrifice tiny creatures to get benefit, but this way I'll lose cards. It might work in case we want to fill our graveyard. I should think about it.
By the way, don't you know some solid midrange threats which are sac outlets at the same time? Eater of Hope, Lord of Extinction - that's what comes to my mind right now.
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

Could this be a thing? All of the scion stuff plays well with Morbid and things like Blood Artist. Power Level is all over the place. Depending on power level things like Thought-Knot Seer might be able to sub in for the more questionable cards. Probably won't play all of these cards but they could make this flavor of aristocrats feel different from WB.



I like how the devoid stuff can set up a utility package.





If you want to add cards that only one deck will ever use



Non-Colorless Eldrazi that could play into the Aristocrats them. Boo for mixing scions and spawn

 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Wow, thank you for so many suggestions, Fulcrum!)
In my opinion, scions and spawns fit into this archetype really well, because midrange needs some ramp and, like you said, they are a part of the "sacrifice" theme. The problem is I personally don't like eldrazy very much (just visually), but I'm ready to iclude some)
 
ravnic

ravnic

To me, there is no greater joy than playing a value dredge deck in cube, which can be great in {B}{G} (and {U} if you want).

Enablers:


Pay offs:



There are much more but you don't even have to run all of these. There are many nice toys that have also value outside of the deck.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
How have people found Hermit Druid? The Magic history fan in me loves the idea of using these cards that were appropriated for completely broken purposes in their intended fashion, but I'm not sure if decks that aren't heavily graveyard-oriented would ever play it

Codex Shredder is really neat and a ton of design space is opened up when you can run cards in that power band as generically useful tools without feeling embarrassed
 
ravnic

ravnic

For us, the druid has been petty decent just as a card drawing engine, but usually you want at least some synergy potential to MD him. Like, a Roar of the Wurm and a Spitting Image makes it a good choice in your green ramp deck.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

We should discuss dredge more carefully, because now it doesn't seem to fit into the environment of our cube to much. Also in limited formats I usually feel nervous when I have so many cards put into my graveyard:) But there's certainly some place for creativity. Are there some good cards which pull stuff back from graveyard in "Modern era" (our cube is modern-focused)? I heard of how powerful dredge deck is, but I haven't had any experience with it yet.
Anyway, thank you for the idea
(P.S. ravnic, this question isn't on the currently discussed topic, but what archetype do you have in your red-black section?I've seen your thread on Rakdos. I know there's a good aristocrats theme, but I already have it in WB)
 
Featherhall

Featherhall

I'm surprised that no one mentioned the potential of Golgari running a +1/+1 Counter theme. It may be more potent in a lower powered cube, and it does come off as a tab bit "generic". However between Corpsejack Menace and Winding Constrictor adding some redundancy in doubling counters, and the large amount of cards that exist in both colors that have counter support (Scavenging Ooze Tireless Tracker Flesh Carver Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet Carrion Feeder Hardened Scales, etc.) I think that kind of theme has legs.

Hmmm, may try to flesh this out some later.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Featherhall said:
I'm surprised that no one mentioned the potential of Golgari running a +1/+1 Counter theme. It may be more potent in a lower powered cube, and it does come off as a tab bit "generic". However between Corpsejack Menace and Winding Constrictor adding some redundancy in doubling counters, and the large amount of cards that exist in both colors that have counter support (Scavenging Ooze Tireless Tracker Flesh Carver Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet Carrion Feeder Hardened Scales, etc.) I think that kind of theme has legs.

Hmmm, may try to flesh this out some later.
Click to expand...

Black-Green is so diverse that you can basically make any type of deck you want, except for maybe draw-go control. That's the beauty of this color pair, I suppose.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Featherhall said:
I'm surprised that no one mentioned the potential of Golgari running a +1/+1 Counter theme. It may be more potent in a lower powered cube, and it does come off as a tab bit "generic". However between Corpsejack Menace and Winding Constrictor adding some redundancy in doubling counters, and the large amount of cards that exist in both colors that have counter support (Scavenging Ooze Tireless Tracker Flesh Carver Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet Carrion Feeder Hardened Scales, etc.) I think that kind of theme has legs.

Hmmm, may try to flesh this out some later.
Click to expand...

We wanted +1/+1 counters to be in UG with a possibility of splashing red, but now we doubt, if it's powerful enough. Probably ,we'll return to this theme later
 
ravnic

ravnic

Karn Cuberated said:
We should discuss dredge more carefully, because now it doesn't seem to fit into the environment of our cube to much. Also in limited formats I usually feel nervous when I have so many cards put into my graveyard:) But there's certainly some place for creativity. Are there some good cards which pull stuff back from graveyard in "Modern era" (our cube is modern-focused)? I heard of how powerful dredge deck is, but I haven't had any experience with it yet.
Anyway, thank you for the idea
(P.S. ravnic, this question isn't on the currently discussed topic, but what archetype do you have in your red-black section?I've seen your thread on Rakdos. I know there's a good aristocrats theme, but I already have it in WB)
Click to expand...

1) I think the power level of Dredge can be adjusted just like any other archetype. And with the right cards I found it to be only a small risk of milling yourself to death. But all that said, dredge is just my single favorite archetype so I would always recommend it to any one testing it at least :p

2) I'm not focusing on 2-color pairs in design that much, but most rakdos decks in my list tend to be sacrifice decks followed by hard aggro ones.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Featherhall said:
I'm surprised that no one mentioned the potential of Golgari running a +1/+1 Counter theme. It may be more potent in a lower powered cube, and it does come off as a tab bit "generic". However between Corpsejack Menace and Winding Constrictor adding some redundancy in doubling counters, and the large amount of cards that exist in both colors that have counter support (Scavenging Ooze Tireless Tracker Flesh Carver Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet Carrion Feeder Hardened Scales, etc.) I think that kind of theme has legs.

Hmmm, may try to flesh this out some later.
Click to expand...


https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/1-1-counters.379/page-12#post-67221
 
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