(Meren of Clan Nel Toth | Art by Mark Winters)

To the Golgari, anything buried is treasure.

Welcome to another Back to Basics! After a Halloween-inspired detour for the original Innistrad set, we're back to covering two-color pairs. We're not truly out of the woods, though, as this particular guild is a big fan of graveyards and destroying things that stand in its way.

So, let's pick up our shovels, dig up some dirt, and unearth the most played Golgari (,) cards in Commander!

10. Grisly Salvage - 51,179 decks

This unassuming instant has been a role player in several Constructed formats since its release in Return to Ravnica. Whether it's EDH, a throwback to 2012 Standard, or Pioneer, casting Grisly Salvage will stock your graveyard up and give you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you want to develop your mana or your battlefield.

And, make no mistake, filling the 'yard accounts for half — if not more — of the power of this card, especially when you can build around milling yourself with your pick of Delve, reanimation effects, Delirium, Undergrowth, Karador, Ghost Chieftain, Muldrotha, the Gravetide shenanigans.

You won't necessarily run Grisly Salvage in every Golgari deck, but you'll absolutely know when you're building a list that wants it.

9. Corpsejack Menace - 51,608 decks

Just as my most played Boros cards list showcases several distinct-but-synergistic ways you can build red and white decks (curve-out aggressive, equipment Voltron, go wide tokens, etc.), this 4/4 demonstrates one of Golgari's most popular themes outside overt graveyard shenanigans: counter combos!

In fact, Golgari features another counter doubler, Winding Constrictor, while green brings Hardened Scales, Doubling Season, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, and more to the table.

Corpsejack Menace also offers combo potential: With Ghave, Guru of Spores and Cryptic Trilobite in play with at least three counters on it, you can take a bunch of game actions, move counters around, and get infinite death triggers for Zulaport Cutthroat!

 

There are a lot of combos you can pull off with this 4/4, with the added benefit of Menace being interchangeable with other enablers like Branching Evolution, so check out the Commander Spellbook entry to for deckbuilding inspiration!

8. Poison-Tip Archer - 55,060 decks

Golgari having access to an extra Cutthroat is nothing to scoff at, especially when it's also an Elf! You don't have to play into that theme to make Archer work, but it's good to know your sacrifice engines can feature a lot of redundancy without compromising kindred synergies in decks like Lathril, Blade of the Elves and Abomination of Llanowar. The 2/3 also slots right into Savra, Queen of the Golgari!

I did compare Archer to Cutthroat, and by extension, Blood Artist, but it's important to note that you don't gain life when other creatures die. This means that, while many infinite sacrifice engines will still do the trick, some combos that Cutthroat and company enable won't be as effective.

For example, you can go off to some extend using this Yawgmoth, Thran Physician-centric combo, but you can't do it infinite times. Archer is still a great option to have access to because of the consistency it adds to your engines.

 

 

 

7. Binding the Old Gods - 58,192 decks

 

This Saga is memorable to me because I always think it's called "Binding of the Old Gods" (anyone else?) but it turns out it's a handy tool in EDH! It regularly finds a home in enchantment-themed decks playing Golgari mana, including Narci, Fable Singer and Anikthea, Hand of Erebos.

Narci is a great commander to have around, along with Tom Bombadil, Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe, and Eivor, Wolf-Kissed (though the latter two cards can't run Binding) because Sagas are a blast to play with and getting to build around them offers yet another quirky deckbuilding pathway in the format.

Even if you're not going deep on the card type, it's hard to build a deck where you're happy with at least two of the modes. Grindy, removal-heavy decks helmed by Vraska, the Silencer and Chevill, Bane of Monsters love this card, because you will get opportunities to extract value from the deathtouch chapter on top of making use of the destroy effect.

Your opponents will have tough choices to make when suddenly blocking with their bounty-countered creatures nets you a card or when Vraska gets more shot at adding Treasures to her collection.

6. The Gitrog Monster - 5,814 decks as commander, 53,663 decks in the 99

Before I discuss the card, let me take this opportunity to share with you one of my favorite Magic stories of all time and one that is related to the Gitrog, Sacrifice by Michael Yichao.

As a commander, Gitrog is one of the most popular two-color options in Lands-matter decks, which tend to both allow players to play more than one land per turn and reward them for playing lands. It also serves as the focal point for many combos, including this rather infuriating one featuring Glacial Chasm that prevents all damage that would be dealt to you until the combo can be disrupted.

This combo also offers an astounding level of redundancy, as there are a ton of green cards fill in for Gitrog or the other part of the combo, something that lets you play lands from your graveyard.

 

In the 99, Gitrog can be essential as an aforementioned redundancy piece for combos and value engines, including common payoffs like Felidar Retreat, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and Scute Swarm.

5. Golgari Charm - 59,132 decks

 

Like Boros Charm and Rakdos Charm in past list articles, the black and green version makes the list of most played Golgari because it's so flexible. Regenerating all your creatures is old-fashioned text in 2024; what it does is protect your commander from destruction-based removal.

Giving creatures -1/-1 can come in handy against token strategies and may even steal a game with Poison-tip Archer in play! And, as I've written before, having access to enchantment removal can often get you out of a sticky situation. DougY has a nice article going deeper into some of the format's best "charms."

 

4. Moldervine Reclamation - 93,273 decks

This is a sweet enchantment engine that works extremely well with much of what Golgari likes to do. It's incredible in token decks led by commanders like Beledros Witherbloom, Nemata, Primeval Warden, and Slimefoot, the Stowaway.

I've named three of the most played commanders of decks that run Reclamation, but you'll see that there are many more Legends that can either produce tokens, sacrifice them, or both.

You probably want to run this in a deck that has other ways to make tokens and that benefits from having them around. According to EDHREC data, Squirrel, Eldrazi, and Saproling kindred decks look like a good place to start.

3. Culling Ritual

Since Pernicious Deed was printed, Golgari has been excellent at destroying multiple nonland permanents at once, especially when they're cheaper. Culling Ritual isn't the best pure sweeper in its colors, with Ritual of Soot in mono-black, Maelstrom Pulse, Gaze of Granite, and others all offering different upsides. What Ritual specializes in, however, is turning a clogged board into an often-mind-boggling amount of mana for you.

Even before you build a 99 that can take advantage of having a lot of and pips in your pool, you'll be delighted with all the Golgari commanders that benefit from stuff getting swept. Grismold, the Dreadsower gets really large, really quick, Sarulf, Realm Eater does as well, and Vraska can immediately turn all that mana into Treasures with fun abilities.

Being a sweeper, Ritual is also just excellent in a multicolor control deck alongside format staples like Mystic Remora, Swords to Plowshares, and counterspells.

 

2. Deathrite Shaman - 123,357 decks

What a card! For one mana, you get a mostly-turned on mana creature that also prevents graveyard shenanigans and fiddles with life totals to boot. Sure, you could make use of its type and run it in an Elf deck, but Deathrite is the type of staple creature that can excel in any strategy. It's so good, in fact, that Commander's Herald writer Priscilla Kwortnik put it in the A-tier of her tier list of one-mana creatures in cEDH!

 

1. Efficient Targeted Removal

You're not necessarily playing Golgari because of the removal spells, though you can in a grindy or controlling "Rock" deck I mentioned above. But, once you're building with the color pair, having access to some of the most powerful and versatile effects is a great bonus.

While many of these spells do carry constraints, like Putrefy and Abrupt Decay, there are enough spells in the pool for you to build a removal suite that answers anything your opponents will be able to throw at you.

Assassin's Trophy alone is in 303,757 EDHREC decks, meaning it tops the list of the most played Golgari cards in Commander.

 

Every journey has its inevitable end....

That's enough digging for today, folks! Golgari certainly boasts a ton of recursion and removal effects, so I'm glad we got to see different spins on the color pair with Gitrog and Corpsejack Menace.

I am a big fan of playing black and green cards across different Constructed formats, especially when I can play Grisly Salvage and Glissa Sunslayer, which narrowly missed the top 10 list. Winding Constrictor is one of my favorite cards of all time, too! Let me know which Golgari cards you enjoy playing the most.

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