Advanced Jumpstart: The Golgari Swarm

Posted on December 16, 2020

Life. Death. Two sides of the same coin, one and the same to those of the Golgari Swarm. This Ravnica guild, divided among numerous factions all vying for power, revels in this cycle of life, death, and rebirth. With it comes the slow ascension to the lofty realms of might that many crave; and, in the meantime, the recycling of life in the undercity is how the guild spends their time.

Today we're gonna tap back into some Advanced Jumpstart, continuing the Ravnica guilds with the Golgari Swarm. We're going to be bringing creatures back from the dead or else using them to fuel the living. Let's dive right in with the original Ravnica: City of Guilds!

Ravnica: City of Guilds Golgari | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Instants (2)
1 Gaze of the Gorgon
1 Putrefy

Sorceries (1)
1 Vigor Mortis

Artifacts (1)
1 Golgari Signet

Classic Ravnica Golgari gave us one of the most broken mechanics in the history of Magic: Dredge. On its own, the mechanic is pretty simple and fine, as can be seen in this list here. The individual cards are solid but nothing game-breaking. Stinkweed Imp comes back after taking down an opponent's creature, but at the cost of 1/12 of your deck (in 60-card formats, anyways). Is that worth it? As it happens, it is when you pair it with the right cards.

In simpler 40-card Magic, however, it's a lot more tame. Many of these creatures are exactly the kind that work fantastic for limited, which is why we'd rather have something like Greater Mossdog over the notably more powerful Golgari Grave-Troll. Thanks to the nature of Jumpstart, we even get to see some more forgotten cards that were genuine powerhouses in their own time, like Grave-Shell Scarab and Necroplasm. If a bunch of your creatures die, that's not a problem for the Gleancrawler! Skip the dredging and just get them straight back to your hand from the yard!

Let's move onto Return to Ravnica block!

Return to Ravnica Golgari | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Vraska the Unseen

Instants (2)
1 Grisly Salvage
1 Putrefy

Artifacts (1)
1 Golgari Keyrune

I'd argue that among all three blocks, Return to Ravnica Golgari was just the best for a Limited environment. OG Ravnica was great if you could draft a whole deck around it proper, but harder to make function so well in a setting like Jumpstart. RTR was fantastic, though, giving us the amazing scavenge mechanic. This encouraged combat, trading off creatures, and then recycling them to beef up your other creatures. Because of this, there's also quite a bit of benefit to sacrificing or pitching your creatures to the graveyard so that you can get the benefit of scavenge. Varolz is great for that, being able to give your other pack's creatures scavenge so they can benefit from this synergy as well.

Beyond that, there really isn't much to say about things. It's just scavenge and a few minor synergies outside that, plus one great planeswalker in Vraska. With that, let's continue to Guilds of Ravnica!

Guilds of Ravnica Golgari | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen

Artifacts (1)
1 Golgari Locket

I'm gonna preface this by saying that Guilds of Ravnica was kinda notable in that Golgari really wasn't that great to draft with. In fact, depending on who you ask it was borderline unplayable. By distilling it to a specific set of cards that makes up exactly one half of a Limited deck, we're able to get there somewhat, but it's admittedly not ideal. There's barely any representation of the guild's mechanic for the set in undergrowth. In fact, only two cards - Kraul Harpooner and Rhizome Lurcher - made the cut, and their abilities are fairly situational and can do next to nothing in many situations.

As such, this pack is more aimed at benefiting any old Limited deck. There's some good removal between Assassin's Trophy, Status // Statue, and Vraska, Golgari Queen, and even some ways to get cards back like with Golgari Findbroker. Underrealm Lich can help sift through your deck as well, allowing you to ensure you're drawing the cream of the crop.

And speaking of the cream of the crop, let's go ahead and mix all the sets together for one epic pack!

All Sets Golgari | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen

Instants (1)
1 Putrefy

Artifacts (1)
1 Golgari Signet

For the last pack, I decided to try something a little different since the mechanics felt all over and a little tough to combine into one pack. Yes, dredge can synergize with scavenge and undergrowth, but not as much as I think one would like. Not to mention that with Limited, your decks are very creature focused, meaning you don't want to throw away any more than you can afford to. So here, I worked to build a pack around Savra, Queen of the Golgari.

In Ravnica: City of Guilds, there just felt like there wasn't enough good and effective support to make her effects work. Here, we get Korozda Guildmage, Varolz, and Grave-Shell Scarab to each help along the way. Dredge and Golgari Findbroker help the overall gameplan by getting the creatures back, and even if you can't get them back, you can still scavenge some of the others. It's not a perfect pack and feels like one of the weaker all sets packs I've put together so far, but has plenty of synergy that makes it hard not to love.

And that about wraps things up for this week! I'll be back next week with no Advanced Jumpstart but rather taking a bit of a look at some of the sweet stuff coming up with regards to the next expansion of Kaldheim! Previews have already started and there's plenty to discuss so I hope you'll join me then!

Kendra Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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TAGS articles, draft, casual, limited, drafting, series, decklist, golgari, kendra smith, jumpstart, advanced jumpstart, 12162020