Before the deck a prologue - My Friday and Saturday night groups are getting on my nerves with the horde decks. Saturday one of the games ended with one guy overruning with well over 200 saprolings. I'm getting sick of hordes. Every one (and I'm guilty too) is either playing them or a weird combo deck. Well, except for my weird combo deck which is currently banned from the table cause it goes off turn 4, 5 or sometimes as late as 6 (Warp World)

I put together a basic Golgari deck and got trounced because Savra, for all her hideous goodness, can't kill the darn tokens FAST enough. So I figured it was time to invest in some global pain.

29 Critters
1x Golgari Thug
3x Stinkweed Imp
3x Junktroller
2x Havoc Demon
2x Civic Wayfinder
2x Grave Shell Scarab
4x Golgari Guildmage
2x Savra, Queen of the Golgari
4x Golgari Rotwurm
4x Shambling Shell
2x Noxious Ghoul

1 Enchantment
1x Dark Heart of the Wood

2 Artifacts
2x Golgari Signet

6 Sorceries / Instants
1x Vigor Mortis
2x Recollect
1x Life from the Loam
2x Putrefy

22 Lands
3x Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
4x Golgari Rot Farm
8x Swamp
7x Forest

Noxious Ghoul + Shambling Shell should equal PAIN for token decks. If I need to destroy meatier prey there's Havoc demon. Given time Golgari Guild mage can throw counters on Savra and himself to stay out of reach of these globals. Guild mage & Rotwum insure I can sack the Havoc Demon on demand. All this token and cheap crap killing insures that the sacrifices to Savra are worthy MWA HA HA.

Any suggestions for the deck?

Not sure what all is in the last few editions (though my own Golgari deck has been winning occasionally over at Rabon's, since I started back playing with Ravnica), but if there's any usable cards with an effect similar to Evincar's Justice (which is 2 points damage to all creatures and players), you can take care of a lot of the lower-end tokens in one fell swoop. Heck, if EJ was legal for your game, its buyback cost would allow you to routinely sweep away the token hordes.

I even pulled out my old sliver deck, freshened it up with some newer cards, and showed them why Brian G. refused to play when I brought out its original incarnation.

Still can't convince them that they totally misunderstand how that Takklemaggot (the gift that keeps on giving) is supposed to work. They think that when the creature goes away, the new target has to be one of that same player's creatures, despite the official ruling I printed out from WotC.

I'd play Infest first (1 cheaper, there are no other arcane spells in my deck). I'd rather find creatures that come into play cause -1/-1 or such cause Golgari has a ridiculously easy time recurring critters.

Entomb or buried alive might work - with this deck it might as well be a tutor. Ditto living death.

Quote from: PookaI'd play Infest first (1 cheaper, there are no other arcane spells in my deck).

My search didn't find that one because it isn't in Standard (which I for some reason assumed you were limited to).

QuoteI'd rather find creatures that come into play cause -1/-1 or such cause Golgari has a ridiculously easy time recurring critters.

If old cards are OK, perhaps this one could help against hordes:


Other ones that can work:

And especially:

Oh, and of course:

Been doing some trading - got the deck into much more viscious shape - Saturday night's game was painful for them.

LANDS (22)
7x Swamp
6x Forest
4x Golgari Rot Farm
2x Darigaaz's Caldera
1x Llanowar Wastes
2x Svogthos, the Restless Tomb

CREATURES (20)
2x Golgari Guildmage
3x Shambling Shell*
2x Golgari Thug*
2x Noxious Ghoul
2x Savra, Queen of the Golgari
2x Graveshell Scarab*
2x Stinkweed Imp*
2x Llanowar Dead
1x Quirion Dryad
1x Spiritmonger
1x Junktroller

SPELLS (13)
4x Recollect
4x Putrefy
4x Naturalize
1x Life from the Loam

ENCHANTMENTS (5)
3x Perniciuos Deed
2x Molderverine Cloak

The decklist I'm moving towards at the moment (need to do some more trading)
LANDS (22)

4x Swamp
4x Forest
4x Llanowar Wastes
4x Golgari Rot Farm
4x Overgrown Tomb
2x Svogthos, the Restless Tomb

CREATURES (20)
2x Golgari Guildmage
3x Shambling Shell
2x Golgari Thug
2x Noxious Ghoul
2x Savra, Queen of the Golgari
2x Graveshell Scarab
2x Stinkweed Imp
4x Spiritmonger
2x Llanowar Dead

SPELLS (13)
3x Recollect
4x Putrefy
4x Naturalize
2x Life from the Loam

ENCHANTMENTS (4)
4x Pernicious Deed

This is a very, very diruption heavy deck, possessing the means to kill any permanent type except lands - If I do build a sideboard then Rotting Spoil is definitely first pick for that one problem. Pernicious Deed is THE defining spell of this color combo and I'm surprised I forgot about it until I bought some packs of Apolcalypse on a lark and pulled one. It completely changes how the deck plays.

Now instead of trying to build up for the havoc demon the deck uses putrefy and naturalize to handle spot problems until a spiritmonger comes online, followed by a deed (spiritmonger can regenerate from the deed). But the savra / shell mischief is also present along with the shell / noxious ghoul. Indeed this deck is so anti critter I'm thinking it would be at a loss at what to do with a creatureless deck. But then again, such an opponent has to deal with dredging creatures against which counterspell is a worthless reply.

Sideboard (tenative)
4x Rotting Spoil (landkill)
4x Gaea's Blessing (anti-stall, counter decks - keeps them from winning by decking this dredgemonster).

7 slots I'm undecided on.

Can you use that one card you were overly fond of in our games, that caused you to reshuffle your graveyard into your hand? It seems it would work wonders if you get close to being decked (though it would hurt your creatures depending on your number of creatures in your graveyard).

I beat Tim and AJ with my Golgari deck yesterday, BTW. In fact, I won 3 times yesterday, with 3 different decks. I'm getting much better than I used to be.

A couple cards I used were one that put a saproling token into play each time one of my non-token creatures goes into the graveyard (devastating in a golgari deck), and an enchantment that allows me to tap 4 creatures to destroy a target artifact or enchantment - I forget the names at the moment, so I don't know if you have these in your deck. I nuked all the creatures on the board with evincar's justice twice, which resolved with me putting 4 saproling tokens into play, then used them to smash one artifact or enchantment per turn. while bringing out a grave troll and using Svogthos - they actually tried to MILLSTONE me to death - which only made the Restless tomb even more powerful....

What about Poisonbelly Ogre?

While not exactly a Golgari card, it does play havoc on the horde-makers, especially those that like to double or triple the tokens in play with one card, like Saproling Symbiosis.

And since most Ravnica-based token decks are G/W, consider Massacre with its alternate casting cost.

For that matter, to slow down some of the white cards, Gloom would be a good sideboard card.

Hey, that looks like a pretty nice Rock style deck.  My friends and I play 4 or 5 player games very often too, and because I'm the better player, they always seem to team up on me.  They haven't won one since I busted out my strong Rock deck a while ago.  There are some things it could tweak...but I like it.  Enough meat to take out a player one at a time, and enough control to continually wipe the board countless times.  Enjoy!


Creatures:   19
Spiritmonger   4
Vulturous Zombie   4
Troll Ascetic   4
Silvos, Rogue Elemental   2
Diety of Scars   2
Dusk Urchins   2
Lord of Extinction   1
      
Spells:   18
Damnation   2
Pernecious Deed   4
Putrefy   4
Terror   4
Nevinyyral's Disk   2
Infest   2
   
Lands:   23
Overgrown Tomb   4
Llanowar Wastes   4
Twilight Mire   2
Forest   5
Swamp   6
Svogthos, the Restless Tomb   2

With multiplayer Vulturous Zombie SHINES especially with so much control (might not work with all the tokens though, might need to trade it out), and I LOVE my latest addition of Lord of Extinction!  One game he was a 62/62  Too bad he didn't have trample