Golgari Midrange has been a relevant deck for a while in Standard. It has put up results at all levels. Now, we are seeing a lot of good cards for it rotating out, and we are losing some very useful lands. I thought it might be a good time to shake up the archetype a bit and try out a different archetype within Golgari. Today we are going to be looking at Golgari Self Mill. We will be milling ourselves with a few different creature abilities, and also ramping a bit. Eventually, we will cast some pretty big creatures, and then take advantage of the number of creatures within our graveyard by making the opponent lose life equal to that number. Don't worry if it doesn't quite seem fast enough compared to some of the other creature decks out there—we have a few different ways to gain life that should help us stabilize and set up our combo!
Let me start by saying that I saw Ygra, and my love for cats immediately made me want to throw her into a deck. I think this is a pretty good shell and could be the start of figuring out the best way to use her. I'm not convinced this is the best way to use her, but we have to start somewhere, and we will never know if we don't try out some builds. This deck uses a lot of new cards from the set, and I won't go over all of them, but I will go over the cards that help us the most to set up our win con.
Combo Cards
Bramble is one of those cards that gives us value whether we cast it for the adventure or the creature spell. As a creature, it allows us to ramp. As a sorcery, it allows us to mill a ton of cards and fill our graveyard with creatures, while also putting a permanent from those cards onto the board. We also don't mind bouncing it back to our hand and discarding a card, because we will simply just put another creature in the bin.
Ygra is my new favorite kitty. She makes everything into a food and allows us to gain a ton of life, and we can also sacrifice one of our creatures any time to do so, while also stocking up the graveyard. She also forces our opponent to play creatures, which is great for the control decks who do not want to do any of that. This should be really good in a lot of situations, and just plain good in almost all situations. She also gets larger when creatures or foods die, and eventually she becomes too much kitty for our opponent to handle.
Season of Loss is our finisher in the deck. It's pretty obvious that the 20+ creatures we run will be able to take a big chunk from our opponent's life total. This should come in at the end to do the job. This also punishes a player who runs a ton of board wipes. Even when it isn't used as a finisher, the spell has enough modality to draw us some extra cards, or make our opponent sacrifice a bunch of creatures as well. The card also sees the creatures you control as dying for the turn, thus the second mode can be used to draw cards from that as well!
Tyvar is another fun card to use in the deck. We have a large amount of two-mana creatures, and we want to fill the graveyard either way. This allows us to get value from both. We can also immediately ramp with Bramble Familiar thanks to Tyvar's static ability.
Lumra isn't the absolute way to win the game, but since we are milling ourselves a good bit, it never hurts that she also mills and then brings back all of our lands from the grave. This is incredibly helpful, because now we will simply be able to cast whatever we want. Since we also run Virtue of Persistence and other higher-mana spells, it makes the ETB ability from Lumra that much more relevant. This can also act as a secondary win condition, as we have access to tons of mana after she enters.
Sideboard Choices
Recycling is pretty relevant in our deck, as it allows us to grab some of the cards that we milled that maybe we didn't really want to mill. It would be nice to get back a Season of Loss if we mill it, or simply return one of the creatures that we milled to our hand so we can cast.
This card is still pretty underrated. Since we have a lot of lower-mana-value creatures in this deck, we can use Dirge to get up to two at a time back. This will be particularly helpful against removal-heavy decks.
This is a helpful card to have in the board, and we might as well take advantage of the fact that green has all of the removal that black doesn't have. This helps ensure that our removal is well-rounded, and that we are prepared to deal with anything, while also having a 4/4 for three mana.
I like Sheoldred in the sideboard for when our opponent is also playing a lot of creatures. Since that doesn't always happen, I think her best place is in the sideboard. If we do manage to flip her into the enchantment later in the game, it is basically curtains for our opponent, because you know our graveyard will have plenty of stuff to reanimate.
This card could either be really good or really bad. For six mana, I could think of some better things for us to do, but at the same time it could be a hell of a top deck if it randomly comes up to draw us six cards. It can also give vigilance to a bunch of creatures which is pretty helpful. What makes it even more relevant is that to sacrifice the creatures as foods with Ygra, you do have to tap them. This would allow us to attack, then still tap and sacrifice later. Even if that doesn't sound great, we effectively can destroy either all enchantments, or all artifacts. There will likely still be an artifact deck after rotation, so it doesn't hurt to have a spell that deals with that deck entirely.
We will be playing this deck in early access, along with the last deck that I posted, and many others! Feel free to stop by the channel on Wednesday, the 24th around 8 p.m. EST to see some awesome games!
