Commander Deck of the Week: Savra, Queen of the Golgari

Way back in the earliest days of Magic: The Gathering, I was a fan of green creatures. I liked their size and utility. But the removal options and counterspells available back then were incredibly efficient, and it was endlessly frustrating that each of my creatures would be easily answered with little I could do about it.

Eventually, a friend of mine suggested that I add black to my green decks since black had a lot of ways to recur creatures from my graveyard and my mind was blown at just how perfect that was.

Even though it was years before two-color combinations were codified by guild names, I was reborn as a Golgari fan and have been ever since.  I’ve got a couple links to columns I wrote about my early love of green and black at the bottom of this column, so check ’em out if you’re interested.

When I started playing EDH and building decks, I definitely wanted to build some Golgari decks, and I naturally took at look at Savra, Queen of the Golgari because, well, she’s the Queen of the Golgari.

There was one huge problem here: I was personally against running “when my creature dies, everyone sacrifice a creature” effects like Grave Pact because it was so oppressive to other players if they weren’t able to deploy multiple creatures in a turn and didn’t have any removal options on hand to blow up the sacrifice engine. I wrote an article here that addresses my philosophy and grappling with how to Golgari in a way that’s much more friendly to the sort of Commander games I prefer to play.

Golgari Sacrifice: The Fun Way

I pretty much put Savra out of mind as an option for building a deck around until Ravnica Remastered came out with new artwork for Savra, and in one of the packs I opened, I got a foil version.

Aurore Folny’s artwork is so cool and so Golgari. I felt incredibly sad that I wouldn’t be able to build a deck with Savra as the commander, but then I thought: how could I build a deck where Savra provides benefits, but doesn’t constantly set up a feel-bad board-state?  The key to unlocking this puzzle was the Witherbloom theme from Strixhaven: School of Mages that gave green some great payoffs for gaining life to offset the black side of the equation of life drain. So, the thesis for the deck was: what if I don’t have any other creatures that have black in their color identity, so when I sacrifice another creature, it’s only going to gain me that 2 life from Savra’s trigger?  This gave me a great blueprint that pulled together a deck that felt very Golgari (and Witherbloom to be fair), but also provided the Commander game experience I desired.

Granted, Savra herself is black, so sacrificing her will provide a trigger but since it’s a choice I can make I’m fine with that one exception. There might even be circumstances where being able to force an everyone else sacrifice a creature can help save me or a temporary ally from a singular huge attacker.

Okay, let’s dig in!

Other Lifegain

Savra is the primary way I’m gaining life, but I’ve added some other ways to do that. I just recently added Bristlebud Farmer from The Big Score because it makes Food that I can sacrifice to gain three life, but I might use its attack trigger depending on the state of the battlefield. Whip of Erebos giving all my creatures lifelink is going to be a huge life gain boost, and its ability to bring back a creature from the graveyard for one last hurrah during your turn can be clutch sometimes too.

Lifegain Payoffs

Here are the direct life gain payoffs.  Accomplished Alchemist can end up providing a great deal of mana, while Ezzaroot Channeler can discount a ton of mana for creature spells, and then Blossoming Bogbeast does a pretty good Craterhoof Behemoth impression when you’ve gained a bunch of life. Prize Pig is a nifty card that accumulates ribbon counters for each life you gain, and once you’ve got three or more ribbon counters on it, you remove the ribbon counters and untap it. It’s much better when you’ve got a bunch of small life gain triggers than one big one, netting you extra mana along the way.

Green Creature Self-Sacrifice

It’s sweet that green has a fair number of creatures you can sacrifice for a utility effect, from the land ramp of Sakura-Tribe Elder to the menu of effects that Cankerbloom offers. I’m a huge, huge fan of Bighorner Rancher from Fallout for most green decks thanks to its mana potential, but its ability to sacrifice for life makes it a rockstar here.

Sacrifice for Profit

Sacrificing other green creatures has never felt better than when you’re gaining life along the way! I’m incredibly excited about Natural Order sacrificing one creature to search up another higher-end one, and how cool that we can also run Magus of the Order, which will include two sacrificed creatures in the process. I also love Victimize and Dread Return for reanimation effects that include sacrificing along the way. Speaking of reanimation, Living Death crucially sacrifices creatures on the battlefield for its effect, netting me a bunch of life if Savra is on the battlefield.

Graveyard Recursion

What drew me to Golgari was graveyard recursion, so I’ve got more of that here. Reanimate can hurt if you’re bringing back a high cost creature, but this deck gains a bunch of life so it’s easily offset. Weatherseed Treefolk is a sweet throwback to many of my earliest multiplayer decks, bouncing back to my hand whenever it dies and goes to the graveyard; I particularly love combining it with Greater Good. And I love the new Outlaws of Thunder Junction card Badlands Revival, which reanimates a creature from your graveyard and lets you get another permanent from your graveyard to your hand.

Card Draw/Selection

Do you play creatures in your Commander deck?  Do your Commander games last longer than 20 minutes?  Then you should be playing Twists and Turns like me!  Even if it’s the only card in your deck that explores, it’s worth running. A small bit of card selection for one green mana, and once your seventh land enters the battlefield, it transforms into Mycoid Maze for extra mana ramp and an excellent mana sink.  I simply love the grindy value of Mosswood Dreadknight, and the version with art from Keith Garletts is so, so cool!

Outlaws of Thunder Junction‘s Pillage the Bog is a really cool card that provides increasingly more powerful card selection the longer the game goes. You can cast it early if you’re just hunting for another land drop, or you can tuck it away with plot and play it later for free to find something sweet.

Removal

If I had an extra Damnation, I’d slide it in this deck; I don’t, but that’s okay. I’ve got a lot of other options and will need to rely on other players if a sweeper is needed. I really love the flexible options built into Golgari Charm for just two mana at instant speed—you can potentially kill a lot of 1/1 token creatures that might otherwise be problematic, or you can regenerate you entire team in case of a destroy effect, or you can destroy an annoying enchantment like Smothering Tithe or Rhystic Study. I’ve also picked green creatures with removal effects attached like Acidic Slime (my 30^th Anniversary Play Promo shiny version), Woodfall Primus (which can be sacrificed and then comes back for more), and Whiptongue Hydra to sweep the skies of pesky fliers.

Interaction

I really love the tricky utility of Imp’s Mischief and Sudden Spoiling, which never fail to surprise whenever you cast them. Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress is a really cool land where you can target any creature to make it effectively unblockable for the rest of the game, or in a pinch you can take out a blocker that is keeping you from attacking.

I mentioned Blossoming Bogbeast is like a Craterhoof Behemoth, but why not also run Craterhoof Behemoth? It makes an excellent target for Natural Order or Magus of the Order, or some of the big mana turns and just cast it from your hand.

Mana Ramp

I have a ton of card draw, so I expect to be hitting my land drops every turn, but it won’t hurt to have some additional land ramp too. I did want to have a couple green creatures in this role that I might want to sacrifice for profit if I don’t really need that mana, so that’s why Bramble Familiar and Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea made the cut.

Okay, here’s the full deck list!

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

So, what other green self-sacrificing creatures might I have missed including here?  Are there any other sacrifice engines I should add?

Okay, below are those two other Golgari articles I’ve written in the past that might be of interest, so check ’em out!

You Lika The Juice? – I, Golgari

The Ultimate Golgari Commander Deck

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.  

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy. 

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