Now, I like my Just For Fun decks to be mostly budget unless the combo really demands it and it really sounds like fun. And given that I decided this would be Standard, a couple options jumped out at me for being worthy of combo exploration: Zombie Apocalypse and Corpsejack Menace.

Zombie Apocalypse could be fun. Find a way to put a bunch of Zombies into your graveyard, then pull them all back out. Theoretically, the win could be almost immediate. I tried it. It didn’t really work. I just couldn’t find a Golgari build that could pull this off with any consistency.

The other option was Corpsejack Menace. While he’s not part of a two-card, game-winning combo (as far as I know), he can make some creatures real big real fast. Interactions with this Fungus tend to be more in the territory of what I call “synergy” and a bit out of the realm of my definition of “combo,” but my Johnny side still appreciates synergy to the extreme, so let’s get started!

Death's Presence

We’ll start putting all the pieces together later, but for now, just imagine a 2/2 dying with Corpsejack Menace and Death's Presence on the battlefield. You’ll get to put 4 +1/+1 counters on something (the Menace perhaps). With a sacrifice outlet, you could be doubling total power with each iteration—which quickly brings us to our next category.

Death’s Absence

But undying isn’t just a keyword for 1/1s. While I want to keep the mana curve low with Death's Presence as the endgame, adding in an Undying Evil as part of a 1-mana-instant package of one- and two-ofs seems to be a good idea. If you play Corpsejack Menace with five lands, keeping available, a removal spell from your opponent means you can cast your Undying Evil and end up with a 6/6 Fungus just from its own ability. If you happened to have a second Corpsejack Menace, that makes it an 8/8, and if there’s a lingering Death's Presence, you can stack the triggers such that you’ll be placing sixteen additional counters somewhere else.

The deck is just a bunch of durdling and +1/+1 counters, but the more Corpsejack Menaces and Death's Presences we have on the battlefield, the more this starts to feel like a combo deck.

Death for Vanity and Pleasure

On the turn we cast Death's Presence, we want to have a Bloodflow Connoisseur on the battlefield. She is the final piece of the primary combo engine. Let’s take a look at an ideal sequence:

• We cast a Young Wolf and a Butcher Ghoul in the first couple turns. Perhaps we take a few points of damage.
• On turn three, we cast Bloodflow Connoisseur, but looking at our hand, we decide not to be too hasty with her. We decline blocking, taking a few more points of damage, perhaps dropping to 14 or so.
• On turn four, we cast a Corpsejack Menace. Our opponent is too frightened of the undying to attack in at this point.
• On turn five, we cast another Corpsejack Menace, leaving 1 mana available. The opponent casts a removal spell on his turn targeting a Corpsejack Menace, but we cast Undying Evil, and the Fungus returns as an 8/8.
• On our sixth turn, we cast Death's Presence and attack with three 1/1s, a 4/4, and an 8/8. Unless the opponent blocks or otherwise deals with all five creatures, he’s dead. Suppose he blocks the 4/4 and the 8/8. Sacrifice a Young Wolf to the Vampire, and she receives 4 +1/+1 counters from her own ability and another 4 from Death's Presence. Sacrifice that same Young Wolf, which is now a 5/5, and we can put 24 more +1/+1 counters on her. She’s a 33/33. That still leaves us with the Butcher Ghoul and the two Corpsejack Menaces available for sacrifice. And if our opponent blocked the Connoisseur, too, that’s no problem. We can then sacrifice her to her own ability and let the enchantment and the Golgari prerelease cards do the rest, putting 132 +1/+1 counters on the unblocked Butcher Ghoul. Quadrupling is fun!

Phew. That was a finely crafted scenario with little interaction from the opponent, and no plan survives first contact with the enemy—especially when you have to play with creatures and fight through the red zone. But the Golgari are all about slowly building up an inevitable force, and we’re just adding some sunlight to that greenhouse . . . or death magic . . . or whatever. We’re speeding up the process. That’s what I meant.

You Are Welcome among the Swarm

With the core combo fleshed out, we still have to fill out the deck. Some combo decks just need draw spells and control elements to carry them through the early game, and some just need ritual spells and other speed-increasing effects, but this one will often be playing an attrition game and making somewhat beefy creatures, only rarely comboing off in full. To that end, we’ll need pieces that let us fight that attritiony fight.

Extra Counters

Blessings of Nature is a random throw-in because it can add a lot of counters for just 1 mana. Perhaps this should be Increasing Savagery, but one time, one day, I will be rescued by the 1-mana miracle off the top, and it will add 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 counters to my creatures, and it will be glorious. Now seems like a fine time to mention that I like one-ofs in my casual decks because it adds more variance and excitement to the experience. If it’s a card I need, I’ll run four; if it’s for fleshing out the deck and providing support, let’s mix it up a bit.

The last two one-ofs in this category are Hunger of the Howlpack and Ring of Xathrid. The Dark Ascension instant is another 1-mana trick to save your guy or add a ton of counters, and the Ring is a great way to add in the power-over-time element the Golgari are all about. Regenerate to survive for now while growing your guy 1, 2, or more counters at a time.

Be careful with the cards in this section about breaking the undying aspect of your creatures. Young Wolf may not be ready yet for the Hunger of the Howlpack, and a Butcher Ghoul with no counters maybe shouldn’t wear a Ring of Xathrid.

More Stuff for 1 Mana

Tragic Slip is great for only 1 mana, letting you slip very powerful removal into your curve. My combo decks often don’t have a lot of ways of interacting with the opponents’ permanents because I like to focus on achieving whatever my goal might be for that deck. But I made room for these two here, and with all the death going on in the deck, achieving morbid status shouldn’t be tricky. For those players more appreciative of removal, find room for a couple more of these.

Rancor is obvious, and perhaps there should be one or two more. Its power is well known, but it’s especially useful when your creatures can become as large as the 133/133 example Butcher Ghoul above.

Grinding It Out

Grisly Salvage used to exist in four copies, but some were cut to make room for some of the other cards in this section. They’re helpful for digging for Corpsejack Menaces, undying creatures, Bloodflow Connoisseurs, and/or lands, but there’s not a lot that wants to be in the graveyard, and it can be depressing dumping a Death's Presence.

Finally, we have Altar's Reap and Triumph of Ferocity. The Garruk-featuring enchantment can help us maintain a lead or just dig deeper off an early 4-mana 4/4—or even off a 1/1 against a slower or control-based deck. The Altar's Reap went in after two Bloodthrone Vampires were cut. They were nice as sacrifice outlets, but they didn’t play well with counters and weren’t particularly useful. The deck needed more card advantage, and Altar's Reap provides card advantage while serving as a sacrifice outlet when there are no Vampires around.

The Swarm in Powers of 2

All right! I think we’re ready for a decklist. We’ve covered all the cards, but I threw together a sideboard built of a few other pieces I considered and some things that could be useful in certain matchups. I rarely play matches Just For Fun, but you may find some use in it.

"Golgari Menace"

• Creatures (19)
• 2 Butcher Ghoul
• 2 Sluiceway Scorpion
• 3 Vampire Nighthawk
• 4 Bloodflow Connoisseur
• 4 Corpsejack Menace
• 4 Young Wolf

• Spells (18)
• 1 Altar's Reap
• 1 Hunger of the Howlpack
• 1 Undying Evil
• 2 Grisly Salvage
• 2 Ranger's Guile
• 2 Tragic Slip
• 1 Blessings of Nature
• 2 Rancor
• 2 Triumph of Ferocity
• 3 Death's Presence
• 1 Ring of Xathrid

• Lands (23)
• 8 Swamp
• 9 Forest
• 2 Evolving Wilds
• 4 Golgari Guildgate

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Increasing Savagery
• 2 Jarad's Orders
• 2 Korozda Guildmage
• 2 Sign in Blood
• 2 Sluiceway Scorpion
• 2 Grisly Salvage
• 4 Sewer Shambler

Buy This Deck

Apart from the sideboard and basic lands, the price of the deck all added together comes to 3.09 tickets, so I think the goal of making the deck budget has been accomplished. And the goal of making a fun deck has been accomplished as well. It’s not the style of combo deck that can go off every game, but it “goes off a little bit” almost every time. And when you do make that 133/133, man, will it be worth it.

Bonus Apocalypse

And just for those of you wondering after I left you hanging at the beginning, here’s what the Golgari Zombie Apocalypse build looked like:

"Golgari Apocalypse"

• Creatures (22)
• 2 Maalfeld Twins
• 3 Bloodflow Connoisseur
• 4 Black Cat
• 4 Butcher Ghoul
• 4 Diregraf Captain
• 4 Dreg Mangler
• 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

• Spells (16)
• 4 Grisly Salvage
• 2 Jarad's Orders
• 2 Treasured Find
• 4 Mulch
• 4 Zombie Apocalypse

• Lands (22)
• 1 Island
• 6 Forest
• 8 Swamp
• 3 Golgari Guildgate
• 4 Evolving Wilds

Buy This Deck

Until next time, I’m Andrew saying, “Geez. Does that thing have trample?”

Andrew Wilson

@silent7seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com