Alchemy Golgari Midrange Deck Guide

Introduction

Hey all, the Bo3 Qualifier Play-In is here, followed by the Qualifier Weekend immediately after. The Alchemy format has shifted in a few ways since I published my metagame breakdown a few weeks ago, so I’ll briefly cover those before getting into the deck today.

First, several aggressive decks have become popular, like Naya Convoke, Naya Legends, and G/R Inscription still sees some play as well. Because of this, cards like Temporary Lockdown have become a sideboard staple for decks like Esper Rusko Control. There are also some decks taking advantage of the land cyclers from the Lord of the Rings set, such as Troll of Khazad-dum and Oliphaunt and casting Push // Pull to return them to play and smash the opponent.

A variant of that deck also uses Hidetsugu and Kairi to put Push // Pull on top, sacrifice or otherwise kill the Hidetsugu, and then bring it back right away and burn out the opponent in one turn. G/B Roots decks have fallen off quite dramatically, as the format quickly adjusted to them, packing plenty of artifact and enchantment hate, as well as graveyard exile.

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In these ways the format has somewhat evened out to contain all of the macro-archetypes (Aggro, Midrange, Control, and Combo) to provide a format that is hard to attack on all fronts, meaning it is hard to spike the Qualifier weekend with a deck that beats the whole meta. That being said, I’ve settled on a Midrange deck that I believe has a good shot against a majority of decks in the format, especially against the Aggro decks and graveyard based Combo decks.

G/B Midrange Bo3

by Strickles

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Alchemy

best of 3

5 mythic

29 rare

12 uncommon

14 common

0

1

2

3

4

5

6+

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Planeswalkers (1)

1

Nissa, Ascended Animist

$4.49

Creatures (27)

4

Deep-Cavern Bat

$2.76

3

Sharp-Eyed Rookie

$1.47

4

Mosswood Dreadknight

$7.96

2

Tranquil Frillback

$11.98

3

Sentinel of the Nameless City

$6.87

3

Preacher of the Schism

$19.47

1

Glissa Sunslayer

$3.99

1

Nantuko Slicer

$0.00

2

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

$159.98

2

Generous Ent

$1.58

2

Troll of Khazad-dûm

$0.00

Instants (10)

2

Cut Down

$2.58

3

Go for the Throat

$4.47

3

Tear Asunder

$6.87

2

Urgent Necropsy

$1.98

Lands (22)

5

Forest

$1.75

5

Swamp

$1.75

4

Llanowar Wastes

$3.96

2

Captivating Crossroads

$0.00

4

Restless Cottage

$7.16

2

Underground Mortuary

$21.98

60 Cards
$273.05

Sideboard

1

Liliana of the Veil

$13.99

2

A-Haywire Mite

$0.00

1

Cut Down

$1.29

2

Duress

$0.70

3

Glistening Deluge

$1.05

2

Deadly Cover-Up

$0.98

1

Stone of Erech

$0.35

2

The Stone Brain

$3.98

1

Palantír of Orthanc

$0.00

15 Cards
$22.34

Key Cards and Gameplan

Inspired by the G/B Midrange deck in Standard, this deck’s main plan is to play to the board with efficient 2, 3, and 4 drop creatures while disrupting the opponents strategies with removal, and maindeck answers to the graveyard, artifacts, and enchantments. 

The Threats

The 2 and 3 drops are the core of the deck and curving out 2 to 3 is important in most matchups. At 2 we have disruption with Deep-Cavern Bat and grind with Mosswood Dreadknight and MKM newcomer Sharp-Eyed Rookie. Rookie has impressed as almost all of the other creatures in the deck can enter play and upgrade it as well as give you a clue. If not removed it can easily generate 2-3 clues over the course of a few turns, giving you more fuel for the late game.

The three drops are also very efficient at what they do. Preacher of the Schism draws cards or makes lifelink blockers depending on the life totals, and most importantly can almost always attack or block and trade 1-for-1 thanks to deathtouch.

Sentinel of the Nameless City provides map tokens to draw lands or upgrade our creatures, and Vigilance means it is good on offense and defense, making it a key card against aggressive decks.

One Glissa Sunslayer is a must answer threat that can draw cards or destroy enchantments, but unlike our other 3-drops that are rocking 4 toughness, Glissa dies to spells like Lonely End, Lightning Strike, and the discard ability from Trumpeting Carnosaur.

Our last three drop, and one of our best tools, are two copies of Tranquil Frillback which gives us a super flexible card that can gain life against aggro, destroy artifacts and enchantments like Midnight Clock, Palantir of Orthanc, and Insidious Roots, and exile the graveyard against Roots decks or Push // Pull decks.

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Rounding out our creatures are Sheoldred, the Apocalypse to stick once the opponent is out of removal and close out the game even on crowded boards, and one Nantuko Slicer to provide some late game value that can access the opponent’s graveyard and give us tools we wouldn’t otherwise have against other Midrange and Control decks.

We also play two copies each of Generous Ent and Troll of Khazad-dum to let us cheat on land count, be strong late game finishers, and give us a lot of evidence to collect for our maindeck Urgent Necropsy and sideboard Deadly Cover-Up.

Lastly, we play one copy of Nissa, Ascended Animist as a late game creature engine and more artifact and enchantment removal.

The Answers

Another perk of this deck is getting access to a variety of removal spells that answer a variety of permanent types efficiently. Cut Down and Go for the Throat are here doing what they usually do, but we also have Tear Asunder to answer artifacts and enchantments for 2 mana, or anything for 4 mana. The above mentioned Urgent Necropsy gives us a flexible removal spell that can often 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 the opponent.

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The Mana Base: The mana base is pretty straight forward. Originally I was playing more copies of Captivating Crossroads and Underground Mortuary but too often was I having to delay my curve due to the high amount of taps lands, so I’ve trimmed down on those and chosen to play more basics. While getting color screwed could be an issue, with our land cyclers being able to find Underground Mortuary, I haven’t had any problems with that yet. Four copies of Restless Cottage give us more threats, life gain, and graveyard hate hidden in the mana base.

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Tips and Tricks

There are several things to keep in mind when playing this deck against the meta. First, Tear Asunder is very flexible but it cannot deal with opposing creature lands. However, it is our only answer to the popular B/W sideboard card Raddic, Tal Zealot, as it is a green card and gets past the Hexproof from Black ability that is otherwise lights out against our removal suite. Against Push // Pull decks, it is important to keep in mind that they can reanimate creatures from your graveyard. If you have already exiled their graveyard, or their graveyard is less impressive than yours, Tranquil Frillback can target yourself with the graveyard exile mode, but another great trick is to just exile all of your big creatures when collecting evidence with Urgent Necropsy as you are allowed to exile more than the mana value of the permanents you are targeting.

In general, it is best to play Mosswood Dreadknight as a creature on turn 2 rather than drawing a card, as getting on the board is usually going to better than drawing a card most of the time. The rare circumstances where it might be better to draw a card is if you are convinced that your opponent has a way to kill it and you don’t think you will be able to cast it from the graveyard the next turn, as you would rather be casting a three drop or need to hold up removal or otherwise disrupt their strategy.

Sideboarding

The sideboard can be easily split into a few categories of cards you bring in and cards you take out against certain archetypes.

Against Aggro decks like Naya Convoke, Naya Legends, etc:

The goal against these decks is to sweep the board early with a Glistening Deluge, establish a board state with our beefy 3 and 4 drop creatures, and if necessary clean up again with a Deadly Cover-Up. We trim some of our clunky top end, as well as our Rookies, as they will usually die to Glistening Deluge and we usually don’t have time to grow it or crack clues anyways. Our other creatures notably survive against the Deluge or in the case of Mosswood Dreadknight don’t mind dying and being cast from the graveyard the next turn if you have time.

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Against Aggro decks like G/R Fiery Inscription

Similar to other aggro decks, we want to cut clunky top end, but in this case it is much less about sweeping up the board and more about answering Fiery Inscription and gaining some life.

Against Graveyard Decks like G/B Roots

The goal is to bring in more answers to the graveyard and enchantments, and cut cards that don’t do great on a gummed-up board.

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Against other Midrange decks like B/W Dollmaker, etc

In these matchups we want to bring in a couple of grindy cards, as well as some disruption for their hand to deal with cards like Reprieve and Porcine Portent. We cut creatures that are only okay in the match-up, as they frequently die without getting value. The one copy of Deadly Cover-Up can come in or stay out depending on how many creatures they are playing, but sometimes they will get ahead on board and you need to clean things up. It also provides another answer to Raddic, Tal Zealot.

Against Control decks like Esper Rusko, Sultai Rusko, etc

Again, we want some disruption and an additional hard to answer threat in Palantir of Orthanc and take out relatively useless removal, as we have other ways to answer Rusko, Clockmaker efficiently. 

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What is with the The Stone Brain?

Honestly, I’ve just started to try it out against some of the Combo decks but I’m not sure if they will stay in the sideboard or not. They could easily be more copies of Duress or other grindy cards to play against the Control decks in the format.

Against combo decks, you can usually cut copies of Go for the Throat to fit in The Stone Brain, or on Cut Down if they don’t have good targets.

Overall Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

This deck is quite good against Aggro decks, Graveyard decks, and slow combo decks, as our creatures are good at stabilizing the board, we have access to great tools to sweep up creatures or otherwise answer graveyards and artifacts/enchantments, and we can close the game relatively quickly once we stabilize or disrupt their strategy.

This deck has good tools to grind against other Midrange decks, and all of our creatures are must answer threats, hopefully forcing them to make difficult choices with their removal spells.

Weaknesses

This deck’s biggest weakness is the weakness of most Midrange decks in any format: It struggles against decks that are “bigger” or “more greedy” such as control and ramp decks.

While we play efficient threats and removal, control decks like Esper Rusko Control can usually run us out of threats and then refill their hand with Midnight Clock. While we can try to mitigate this by removing their Clocks with our artifact removal, in a fist fight their cards tend to be higher quality than ours. Our winning draws usually involve curving out, removing a Rusko, Clockmaker, and disrupting their removal/sweepers with a Duress and/or Deep-Cavern Bat.

Wrapping Up

Saying the deck struggles against one of the most popular decks in the format might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but I expect a lot of players to be on Naya Convoke and other aggressive strategies this weekend to try to go under the Rusko, Clockmaker decks, and I do believe that we have good matchups against those decks.

So I am calling a shot, and predicting that many players will choose scissors to go after paper, so it is time to bring the Rock! As always, good luck to everyone who is competing this weekend!