Much Abrew: Golgari Citadel (Standard, Magic Arena)

by SaffronOlive // May 6, 2019

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. War of the Spark is here! As such, we're heading into our new Standard format today for a deck that sort of walks the line between random midrangey good stuff and infinite combo: Golgari Citadel. While we had a deck tech on a similar deck a few days ago, the build we're playing today has evolved to be even more focused on going infinite with Bolas's Citadel. The main idea is to get down a Bolas's Citadel along with a Path of Discovery and then play through our deck until we find a Wildgrowth Walker or two. Once we have a Wildgrowth Walker on the battlefield, all of the creatures in our deck become free since we can play them from the top of our deck with Bolas's Citadel, and then we immediately gain back the life we spend to cast them with the help of Path of Discovery exploring and Wildgrowth Walker gaining us life whenever we explore. Even better, the exploration gets the extra lands on the top of our deck out of the way to help make sure that Bolas's Citadel doesn't fizzle. The end result is that we can play through literally our entire deck and then use Bolas's Citadel to drain our opponent out of the game by sacrificing our board. How easy it is to go infinite with Golgari Citadel in Standard? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we can talk more about the deck!

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Much Abrew: Golgari Citadel

Discussion

Let's start with the record: Golgari Citadel was pretty awesome. We played five matches, and despite some punts along the way, the deck cruised to a 4-1 finish, only dropping a tough three-game match to UB Control, where our opponent actually stole our Bolas's Citadel with Hostage Taker and used it to reverse combo by somehow having a pile of Enter the God-Eternals on the top of their deck.

This was even more impressive considering that I played the deck pretty poorly. Well, maybe not poorly, but in our first couple games, I was having so much fun looping through the deck and gaining hundreds of life that I sort of forgot that we could use Bolas's Citadel to kill our opponent. Then, after convincing myself that we needed to try to kill our opponent with Bolas's Citadel, I made the mistake of sacrificing Bolas's Citadel to itself while we had another copy on the top of our deck, thinking we could play the new one and continue the combo (which obviously doesn't work since Bolas's Citadel would no longer be on the battlefield). The good news is that none of these punts actually cost us games. In fact, we still won all of these games quite easily, which is a testament to the power of the combo.

As for the deck itself, it's basically a straightforward combo build of Golgari Citadel. Rather than being a midrange deck that plays Bolas's Citadel for value, this build of Golgari Citadel is all-in on the combo itself, with Wayward Swordtooth and Path to Discovery giving us ways to get extra lands off the top of our deck and Gaea's Blessing to make sure that we'll never mill ourselves out, which is actually a concern in this deck.

Speaking of Gaea's Blessing, it's also an important part of actually killing with the combo (rather than just generating a bunch of value and playing through the deck). The idea is that we can play through our deck with Bolas's Citadel; wait until we are about to explore a Gaea's Blessing into our graveyard (and shuffle our graveyard back into our library); and then sacrifice a bunch of Jadelight Rangers, Merfolk Branchwalkers, and such to drain for 10 (which also gives us more creatures to play off the top of our deck). Eventually, we'll hit another Bolas's Citadel and do it again to drain for 10 more and 20 our opponent all in one turn.

Apart from the combo aspects, the deck is basically a Golgari Midrange deck, and it can pick up some wins just by playing Wildgrowth Walker and some random explore creatures to beat our opponent down.

So, should you play Golgari Citadel in War of the Spark Standard? I think the answer is yes. While the deck felt competitive, it was also just amazingly fun to play. The combo turns are spectacular and actually happen pretty consistently. While the deck can struggle if Bolas's Citadel gets countered since it's pretty much our only legitimate finisher, in general, the combo of being good and fun makes Golgari Citadel a deck you should probably experience in War of the Spark Standard, if you get a chance!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.