An Analysis of Golgari Draft Archetypes

The Golgari Draft Archetypes

Welcome back! This is the eighth installment of the Current History of Draft Archetypes. The impetus for this series is that I was interested in how often certain archetypes really show up and what kind of variance there tends to be, so I dug in, looked up old draft formats, and crunched some numbers.

I think looking over the archetypes reveals interesting patterns, telling us what tools are most useful in a designer's belt and letting us predict what could be around the corner. It's also a great way to highlight some interesting evolutions and developments over the years. 

Summary of caveats:

• I include all premier sets from Return to Ravnica through Bloomburrow.
• I included most, but not all, supplemental sets released during that time.
• I only included sets with a two-color archetype in the analysis of that color pair. No three-color/five-color draft themes included.
• My research on determining an archetype was either a direct statement about the color pair's theme, looking at the gold card in the set, or occasionally looking at some articles talking about the set if it couldn't otherwise be determined.
• Sometimes a theme is part of two categories (Artifact Sacrifice); I make the final call on a case-by-case basis which it's more representative of, but also try to address that in the notes.

The Color Pair

Just like Azorius gets known as the control color, Golgari is commonly typecast as "core midrange." Black does not inherently lean fast or slow, being a versatile color. For instance, black relies on its kill spells to either disrupt the opponent long enough for its aggressive weenies to finish the job or hold the opponent off long enough for a control haymaker. Green, meanwhile, is the second slowest color, only faster than blue. A centrally green draft strategy has involved a high toughness creature in the early game, some lifegain in the mid game so it lasts long enough to cast big creatures in the late game and quickly stomp the opponent from there. 

Combine the two, and you'll also see them more heavily reach into the graveyard for value, often plucking one or two cards directly from it to keep up the pressure in some way. The primary shared keyword for the colors is deathtouch, which embodies the color's grindy nature by offering unique value. 

Going into this, I wondered if "pure midrange" would rule the roost. I was caught a little off guard by my findings, and I had to comb over them a couple of times before I uncovered this color's wildcard...

Wildcard Archetype: Death

What does "death" mean, exactly? It's not exactly aristocrats, like Orzhov, or graveyard, like Dimir. It's somewhere in between. This archetype falls on a spectrum between using the graveyard purely for value (i.e., recursion/reanimation) and sacrifice archetypes that use the Golgari graveyard recycling strategy to double-dip, as it were. 

These sets are:

• Journey into Nyx
• Battle for Zendikar
• Oath of the Gatewatch
• Modern Horizons 1
• Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths
• Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
• Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
• Modern Horizons 2
• Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate
• Dominaria United
• Brother's War
• Murders at Karlov Manor
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Of these thirteen draft archetypes, three are more of the "sacrifice" variation (Battle for Zendikar, Modern Horizons 2, The Brothers' War). The rest of the archetypes hold to getting value from the graveyard as the reward for what it's doing, with sacrificing merely as an incidental way to get different value. (In some of the sets, milling is the way to go, which has been an interesting twist on the color pair.)

The death archetype works as a solid cover for the color's natural midrange tendencies. I expect to continue to see it, especially given what I uncovered in the next category...

Set Mechanic Archetypes

It has been noted by designers that Magic players actively want new set mechanics with every release. The novelty is a part of the experience (no matter who may tell you that all mechanics are just split cards or kicker). Sometimes the set mechanic is a fun way to dress up what the color normally does in a weird way, but occasionally it's a chance for the color pair to do something genuinely new. 

For Golgari, it's been as follows:

• Return to Ravnica: Scavenge
• Dragon's Maze: Scavenge
• Shadows over Innistrad: Delirium
• Eldritch Moon: Delirium
• Ixalan: Explore
• Rivals of Ixalan: Explore
• Guilds of Ravnica: Undergrowth
• Theros Beyond Death: Escape
• Midnight Hunt: Morbid
• Phyrexia: All Will Be One: Toxic
• March of the Machine: Incubate
• Lost Caverns of Ixalan: Descend
• Modern Horizons 3: Modified
• Bloomburrow: Forage

Okay, so of the fourteen set mechanic archetypes, eleven of them fall into the "Death" archetype previously mentioned in some way, shape, or form. Some are about creatures dying (Morbid), some help to enable graveyard resources (explore), some use the graveyard as a resource directly (escape), and still others allow for mill or sacrifice to work together (descend). This is a uniquely high overlap, which I'll address in the final breakdowns.

Of the mechanics, Delirium and explore have made a comeback already (albeit in different colors). I think both have a shot at returning to Golgari next time. It's a little early to tell if descend will make a comeback, but it's a useful batching of mill and sacrifice, so I lean towards "yes". 

Of the remaining archetypes, we had toxic, incubate, and modified. Toxic is the odd one out here, being part of the Phyrexian poison theming. The other two do work with counters in some way, however, something of an undercurrent in Golgari I'll talk more about later. Incubate was also tied to Phyrexians and is thus unlikely to show up again soon, while modified is flavor-agnostic and works with the color's strengths in unusual ways.

Creature Type Archetypes

Creature types are a popular theme in constructed Magic, but they have difficulty in draft. It's fun to play when you can thread the needle, but the point of draft is decision-making. It's not fun when your only decision is "pick the card with the right typeline", so this is a theme that only shows up every few sets. That's truly felt here in Golgari, which only had four creature type themes in the past twelve years.

• Magic Origins: Elf
• Dominaria: Saproling
• Commander Legends: Elf
• Kaldheim: Elf
• ...And 75% of the themes have been Elves. 

I'm honestly curious as to what the reasoning is. Are there few enough creatures that feel "at home" in Golgari that it doesn't happen? Is it something to do with the colors' respective strengths and weaknesses? Green is first in "friendly to creatures" and perhaps the singular creature type approach is limited and weaker by comparison? Or have Elves been in such an abundance that it makes the most sense for whenever there's a set where Golgari gets a kindred theme. 

Interesting thing to chew on, but moving on...

Card Type Archetypes

...But not for very long. I've used "card type archetype" as a catch-all for decks that use the typeline without caring about creatures. Artifacts, Equipment, enchantments, Sagas, battles... That sort of thing. It does include noncreature subtypes, which is the only reason there are any archetypes here, as it turns out.

Throne of Eldraine: Food

Wilds of Eldraine: Food

That's right. Two. (I had to pull a second card from Throne just to get my usual display...) Golgari doesn't care about noncreature spells as a draft archetype. Black-based draft archetypes generally don't. The card type themes are usually the lowest, but this is new. I almost considered filing this under "Other" and pulling a different one out, but I thought that sticking to the formula would help highlight unusual patches of data.

As for the themes here, I'd expect to see Food again in the next return to Eldraine. It has to be carefully balanced against becoming a drudge by gaining too much life, so the Food tokens need to be a resource. A/B draft mechanics are fun and rewarding when done well, but they do require some tweaking. Technically, the forage mechanic in Bloomburrow does work with Food tokens, though it fell under set mechanic archetypes (and also worked with the graveyard, so not purely Food or Food matters). 

In the future, with black and green both caring about enchantments, I anticipate this to open up a little bit. Duskmourn had its enchantment archetypes in black this time around, but green missed out in favor of going harder on the graveyard themes. 

Alright, with those lightweights out of the way, it's time to dive into the...

Other Archetypes

Oh! There's where y'all have been hiding. Just go ahead and read the list, and I'll do my breakdown afterwards.

• Theros: Midrange
• Magic 2015: Midrange
• Khans of Tarkir: Toughness
• Dragons of Tarkir: Midrange
• Kaladesh: Counters
• Aether Revolt: Counters
• Amonkhet: Counters
• Hour of Devastation: Counters
• Core Set 2019: Midrange
• War of the Spark: Midrange
• Core Set 2020: Enters the Battlefield/Tokens
• Core Set 2021: Midrange
• Zendikar Rising: Counters
• Strixhaven: Lifedrain
• Crimson Vow: Toughness
• Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth: Midrange

There were more on this list until I re-evaluated the wildcard archetype away from "graveyard" and into the "death" archetype, by the way. I think that was for the best, as those two archetypes had a lot of synergy and overlap, and it let me cut to the unusual ones here.

First off, the groups. There have been seven "midrange" archetypes in Golgari, these being archetypes that are more focused on accruing general value rather than a more specific strategy. Wanting to two-for-one the opponent repeatedly until the deck pulls ahead with raw card value. Some of these look similar to the death archetypes because a few of their cards will get value out of your graveyard or creatures dying, but the holistic set doesn't actually prop up a typical graveyard deck. Essentially, Golgari midrange feels like a "fair" version of their graveyard deck.

The only other major grouping is the "counters" archetype, which was mostly around in the Kaladesh-Amonkhet year. That was a fun year of synergy between the sets, even though they both used different kinds of counters. It has come up once again in Zendikar Rising, and it could be argued that some of its set mechanics (scavenge and explore) are counters archetypes, but I would disagree. Scavenge, for instance, is a graveyard deck that uses counters as a reward (and as a way to synergize with the other guilds in its set).

Explore, likewise, was split between the self-mill and counter as a reward. Counters (especially +1/+1 counters) are a tool used well in nearly every set. Counting a draft mechanic that has +1/+1 counters as a "Counters archetype" would be like counting any draft mechanic with draw spells as a "card draw archetype". Distinctions need to be drawn.

The rest of the "other" archetypes are toughness, enters, and lifedrain. Toughness has shown up twice, the only of these to be more than once. It's a fun, quirky draft archetype that requires some interesting set-up to make sure it's not purely boardstall, but it does lend itself to some of the midrange qualities of the color pair. 

Core Set 2020 tried to bring a very unique feel to the core set model with different, interclicking archetypes from normal. Sultai was about "enters the battlefield" and Abzan was about "tokens", so green-black fit somewhere in there, although its core card was more about sacrifice effects.

Finally, lifedrain has appeared outside of Orzhov once, in Strixhaven. The Witherbloom house focused on gaining and losing life, being one of the first instances where the "lifedrain" archetype really started shaping up. Previously, life archetypes only cared about if you gained life and gave you life payments as a payoff, but this also encouraged you to lose life for the cause. 

Overall, I expect to see midrange and counters again with some regularity. Midrange is ambiguous enough as a draft archetype to work well with various set archetypes already established. Same with counters, although that one has more definition and requires a bit more set structure. Lifedrain will almost certainly return to Golgari in the return to Arcavios in 2026. I'd expect the "toughness" archetype to return, but probably not for another five years. 

Final Analysis

Alright, we've gone over the broad view, now let's hone in on the numbers! This one has some reanalyzing to talk about after the first pass, so let's get into it.

• Death: 13 (26.5%)
• Set Mechanic: 14 (28.6%)
• Card Type: 2 (4.1%)
• Creature Type: 4 (8.2%)
• Other: 16 (32.7%)

These are the core divisions, where every single set is only accounted for once. It's not a perfect system, so I do also want to acknowledge different ways it could be looked at.

If the Death archetype includes "set mechanics", the number jumps to 24 (51.1%). If we pull the midrange out of other, then midrange accounts for 6 (12.8%). Finally, I stand by "counters matters" as is, but if we did count all archetypes where counters play a heavy role, it would be 11 (23.4%). If the midrange and counters were both pulled out of the "Other" category, it would be reduced to only 4 archetypes (8.2%). Again, this has some overlap (Scavenge being counted for both "Death" and "Counters", for instance), so it's not the core analysis but it is interesting to hold onto.

Clearly, Golgari cares about the graveyard in multiple ways, whether it cares about creatures dying, using up what's there, or even just tallying it up in some way. This is an area in which it overlaps heavily with Dimir, although the blue in blue-black pushes that color more towards self-mill and less towards sacrifice, which is a helpful distinction. Green-black is also notably more likely to care about just permanents in the graveyard, while blue-black wants some instants and sorceries. The overlap is still a major feature which helps designers build cards which can slot into either pair in draft and keep games fresh. 

Going forward, I expect the ratios to stay the same. There hasn't been a major innovation in the color pair like Gruul's "Power 4" or even a simple "Draw 2" which helps reflavor the core strategy (here meaning midrange). Like with Gruul Stompy becoming Gruul Power 4 or Dimir Control becoming Dimir Draw 2, I do hope that future draft archetypes are more focused on a clear deckbuilding hook and not just generic midrange value, but the graveyard is the only other option. While many sets these days do have a graveyard subtheme, using it for literally every set isn't reasonable. 

Counters was a major experiment back in 2014 era Magic design that's been brought back once or twice, but one which I think has genuine merit going forward. It plays into the midrange nature of the colors without relying too heavily on the graveyard. I hope it plays a bigger role going forward. (And enchantments... please, can we poor enchantment players get a bone.)

Conclusion

That's it for the Golgari. The general Death strategy was tricky to dig up properly, given how much of it just looked like general "graveyard value," much in the same way that Orzhov's sacrifice/death needed to be accrued into its Aristocrats theming.

Much like the spellslingers in Izzet, the prevalent graveyard is rarely commented on, merely accepted. I think both themes are broad enough that they can feel different even when tweaked, while still working with what the colors naturally want to do.

With that, I'm over halfway done with the enemy colors. Pick up the closest sword and give your bravest yell, because next time we're charging with the Boros!