Golgari GuildgateGolgari Guildgate | Art by Eytan Zana

October 7th marks 20 years since the momentous release of Ravnica: City of Guilds, the 36th expansion set for Magic: The Gathering. It's wild to think that there are people who play Magic now - who might even be on the Pro Tour - who weren't even born when that set came out!

This was a year or so before Sheldon Menery first brought EDH (which later became Commander) to the masses with an article on Starcitygames.com, but I argued the set belongs in the pantheon of Magic sets that helped shaped the foundation that built the most popular way to play Magic.

In The 5 Most Important Magic Sets for Commander I made the point:

"The flavor of the guilds, along with the various legendary creatures that supported the themes, were just as important as the typal themes from Onslaught block to pique growing interest in EDH deckbuilding. It set the tone for other cycles of color combinations - from Shards of Alara to Strixhaven: School of Mages - that continue to inspire us to this day."

One of the joys of Commander is being able to express yourself in the card choices you make while building your deck, starting with the commander itself. Ravnica: City of Guilds, along with the subsequent sets in the Ravnica block, Guildpact and Dissension, codified each of the ten color pairs in Magic into a coherent identity rooted in the flavor of each color and how they intersected.

Each guild was deep and interesting, and gave players cool flavor hooks to dig into. Twenty years later, I bet most Magic players can easily name the guild name associated with each of the symbols below.

In the Beginning, There Was Green

Prior to the advent of the guilds, most Magic players identified by one of the five colors they preferred - there were blue mages, black mages, red mages, etc. I always identified as a green mage since the very beginning of my Magic career in early 1994 when I opened up an Unlimited starter deck and stared at the incredible Swamp Thing-esque art for Force of NatureForce of Nature.

I mean, look at that beast! When you compare it to the other premier rare creatures in the other colors - Shivan DragonShivan Dragon in red, or Lord of the PitLord of the Pit in black - this was an 8/8 that would trample right over those creatures!

Back in those early days I played multiplayer Magic games with my friends, and I set out to make my deck as fearsomely green as possible.

Of course it didn't take long for my playgroup to figure out how to effectively fight against my green monsters. As fierce as my large green beasties were in combat, they proved to be extremely squishable from spells.

My green creature threats ate black removal spells so much an old buddy of mine sketched out a hilarious picture for me where a scary creature was saying "I am the GREAT and POWERFUL Lhurgoyf!" and there was a old-timey messenger stepping into scene saying "TerrorTerror-gram for Mr. Lhurgoyf!"

And of course there were the sweepers like Wrath of GodWrath of God that would sweep away all of my green creatures right into the graveyard. Clever friends paired it up with Circle of Protection: GreenCircle of Protection: Green to force me to commit more creatures to the battlefield before pulling the trigger on the sweeper.

This sort of frustration bled over into my fledgling tournament Magic career, where I desperately tried to win with decks based around green creatures and Forests. It's hard to imagine now, but creatures back then were so much worse than they are now; the green all-star creature was Erhnam DjinnErhnam Djinn, whose super-power was only costing a single green mana and having an extra point of toughness, which was so strong for four mana that it needed a drawback.

Adding Black to the Mix

I was bitterly complaining to my good friend after getting crushed by control decks in yet another tournament, and he asked "Why don't you add black to your deck? Black has ways to bring creatures back from the graveyard, right?"

It was that proverbial light bulb moment. I dug through my collection, and soon had a deck that featured green creatures and Oath of GhoulsOath of Ghouls.

I can clearly remember sitting down in Round 1 and facing down a mono-red "Sligh" deck in the hands of a local ringer, where he burned away my first few creatures and then I deployed Oath of GhoulsOath of Ghouls and Spike FeederSpike Feeder. I blocked his attack with the Feeder, sacrificed it for four life, and on my upkeep since I had more creatures in my graveyard I got it back and played it again.

He scooped soon afterwards, and not long after that I had secured my victory.

Round 2 I faced down a Control deck, and once I slipped the Oath of GhoulsOath of Ghouls past the wall of counters, I kept getting back and casting creatures they countered over and over until I ran them out of counterspells and creature sweepers and my creatures started to stick and deal damage.

I didn't win that tournament, but I did better than I'd done in a long time.

Of course not long afterwards tournament Magic was rocked with creature decks featuring Recurring NightmareRecurring Nightmare and Living DeathLiving Death, and I played the heck out of those decks to great success. Once those cards rotated out of competitive Magic I even tried to hold onto the glory days building tournament decks with green creatures and Oversold CemeteryOversold Cemetery.

I, Golgari

By the time Ravnica: City of Guilds rolled around, I was still calling myself a green mage, but it didn't quite fit because my decks featured plenty of black cards paired up with the best green creatures of the day. So when I started reading about the Golgari guild, and starting playing with its signature dredge mechanic, things just clicked.

I am a Golgari mage!

When Mark Rosewater first described the Golgari Swarm, he said this:

"[Green and Black] are the two colors that have an appreciation for the cycle of life. And they are the two colors that most take advantage of abusing this cycle. Green and black, for instance, are the two colors most adept at manipulating the graveyard and taking advantage of its resources. They are also the two colors that use their link with the graveyard to make use of recursion, consistently reusing their threats... these two colors share a resiliency to withstand the forces of death."

As a Magic player, I love the long, slow value grind. I want to always have something I can do, turn after turn after turn, and this has manifested in my deckbuilding by pairing good creatures with graveyard recursion, aligning with how MaRo described the flavor he was imbuing in the Golgari Swarm guild.

I even latched onto that first Golgari mechanic, dredge, and ended up building a Standard deck around it for the States championship tournament that year.

What's kind of hilarious in retrospect? The community's feeling was that dredge wasn't very good, and mostly just a Limited-only mechanic. In Mark Rosewater's article on the mechanics from Ravnica: City of Guilds he even said "I heartily recommend not passing judgment on [dredge] until you play it because it is a very quirky mechanic that is much stronger than it might first appear."

It was fun to go back and read Aaron Forsythe's article on balancing the mechanic during development. Wizards definitely thought dredge was better than the initial general consensus from the Magic community, but I think they also didn't get just how nuts it proved to be over time.

I backed into playing a dredge deck while trying to figure out a way to abuse Bloodbond MarchBloodbond March and Kokusho, the Evening StarKokusho, the Evening Star.

The First Dredge Deck?

The idea was to somehow get two or three copies of Kokusho in the graveyard with a March on the battlefield when you cast a Kokusho, bring back the ones from the graveyard, and then legend-rule killing all but one and draining your opponent for ten or fifteen life. Some friends and I cooked up the idea of using the dredge mechanic to fill the graveyard, but a funny thing happened while I was testing the deck - I kept winning games with just the dredge cards, while Bloodbond MarchBloodbond March kept getting milled into the graveyard.

I ended up cutting the Marches and leaning more and more on the dredge plans, and I kept winning in playtesting. It gave me that old Oath of GhoulsOath of Ghouls feeling of inevitability, so I made some last minute tweaks and took my dredge pile jokingly named "Nicedraft.dec" to States... and made Top 8 with it!

You can read about my adventures with one of the first Dredge decks to hit the tournament scene here: Judging Dredge: Top 8 at Virginia States

Of course, it didn't take too long before players caught on just how bonkers dredge was, especially after Wizards began printing cards like NarcomoebaNarcomoeba and Bridge from BelowBridge from Below that combo'd so well with the self-mill engine.

It even dug up IchoridIchorid from the obscure depths of Torment where it terrorized the tournament scene for a while.

Dredge got so out of hand that Mark Rosewater ranked it high on his informal "Storm scale" which ranks Magic mechanics from Level 1 (will definitely see again, most likely in the next set/evergreen; cards such as deathtouch and Equipment) to Level 10 (I never say never, but this would require a major miracle; cards such as storm and bands with other).

Dredge initially ranked an eight, and fluctuated between ten and nine before finally settling at a ten. But we have had a few major miracles since then!

The Legends of the City of Guilds

If you do a Magic card database search of Ravnica: City of Guilds looking for legendary creatures, our modern sensibilities will be shocked at how few there are!

These were made before Wizards of the Coast really started designing legends with Commander in mind, though these definitely feel like they were made as bombs for Limited and creatures to jam in casual, kitchen-table Magic decks. When I started getting into EDH a few years later, I definitely took a look at the available Golgari legends.

In addition to the two legends from Ravnica, there was Vhati il-DalVhati il-Dal, which was neat but decidedly underpowered; Iname as OneIname as One, which was just insanely expensive to cast; and Nath of the Gilt-LeafNath of the Gilt-Leaf, whose abilities are better suited to tournament Magic as opposed to a casual, friendly format like EDH.

Sisters of Stone DeathSisters of Stone Death was an incredible mana hog, requiring a ton of mana to cast, and a bunch of mana for its activated abilities. I did have a foil copy of Savra, Queen of the GolgariSavra, Queen of the Golgari, so I built a deck around that for a little while. But I didn't like the play pattern the strongest ability enabled, forcing opponents to sacrifice creatures until it became oppressive.

I dabbled with other Golgari legends over the years as they popped up, but none of them really felt like a good fit for my play style and my desired play experience... until Mirrodin Besieged arrived!

Glissa, the TraitorGlissa, the Traitor set my Golgari heart beating in a flurry of excitement: a potent battlefield presence with the combination of deathtouch and first strike, and that graveyard recursion that brings me such joy. Sure, it could only bring back artifacts, but there are a ton of artifacts that are fun to get back over and over.

I loved Glissa so much I played it in numerous tournament decks while it was Standard-legal. I still have my Glissa, the TraitorGlissa, the Traitor Commander deck intact all these years, and even got to do a deck tech about the deck with The Professor from Tolarian Community College!

I also made a Commander deck around Glissa SunslayerGlissa Sunslayer, which has a very similar vibe but plays much differently. You can read about it here: Commander Deep Dive: Old Character, New Flavor, Glissa Sunslayer.

I did eventually circle back around to Savra, Queen of the Golgari in 2024 and built a Commander deck I really liked by not playing any other black creatures in the deck, instead leaning into the life boost side of its abilities synergizing with many lifegain payoffs that we've gotten in more recent years.

Funnily enough, this circles right back to my very early days playing the Golgari color combination - green creatures, and black spells. You can read about it here: Commander Deck of the Week: Savra, Queen of the Golgari

What's Your Guild?

Which of the ten Ravnica guilds do you most identify with? Or do you feel kinship with one of the named three-color combinations? Which commander best exemplifies what you love about that color combination?

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