I pride myself on my Golgari () bona fides. I started playing just after Fifth Edition in 1997, and I immediately gravitated to the beautiful midrange pairing of efficient creatures backed up by good removal, even if I thought that Force of Nature and Dark Banishing were the best we could do. The 1999 "The Rock and His Millions" deck developed by Sol Malka, which paired cheap value creatures like Yavimaya Elder with top-end threats like Deranged Hermit and Phyrexian Plaguelord, was the moment that I understand the full beauty of the game.

By the time Ravnica rolled around and gave us former Rock players a canonical identity and guild name, I had fallen in love with Spiritmonger and the interaction between Ravenous Baloth and Oversold Cemetery. It used to be a running joke that midrange Golgari decks, dating back to the original Rock, had a 50% matchup against anything. I find a kind of nobility in that.

So, suffice it to say, I've logged my reps with the Black-Green color pairing in Commander. My first Commander deck, and the one I still play in Bracket 4 games, is Savra, Queen of the Golgari, but I've built numerous Golgari Commander decks in the two decades since. Golgari gameplay is my favorite strategy - midrange with resilience built in from your graveyard recursion and enough ramp to get your threats out early - but there's also something very satisfying about the color pair aesthetically and philosophically.

The cyclical interplay of life and death feeding off of and generating each other feels especially present and suitable within the game of Commander, as alliances fragment and creatures die and reanimate en masse.

The Top Golgari Commanders to Build Around

As of the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we have 84 Legendary Creatures in the Golgari pairing (86 if you count the two from Unfinity, Spinnerette, Arachnobat and The Most Dangerous Gamer), with at least an 85th and 86th coming in Secrets of Strixhaven. This is a far cry from when I started playing Commander, when your options were Savra, Queen of the Golgari, Sisters of Stone Death, and Vhati il-Dal.

Now, in 2026, the top Golgari Commanders are Lathril, Blade of the Elves, Chatterfang, Squirrel General, and Meren of Clan Nel Toth, all of which suggest much stronger strategies - too strong in some cases, as decks for those three have essentially been solved. Instead, we're going to focus on underrated Golgari Commanders, ones whose strategies haven't been as fully explored.

Best Build-Around Golgari Commander for Food Decks: Gyome, Master Chef

Gyome can drop an entire supermarket's worth of Food tokens at the end of the turn if you're willing to play unfair. The loop of Gravecrawler plus Warren Soultrader, for example, will let you make as many Food tokens as you want. The question then becomes: what to do with your endless buffet?

You can sacrifice them to Peregrin Took or Savvy Hunter to draw your entire deck, grow a Super Shredder to player-killing status, or drain the table with Mirkwood Bats. Even if you're not interested in going infinite, Gyome embodies the midrange plan of attack perfectly - play value cards and build up insurmountable mounds of cardboard resources that you can trade in for wins.

Food was a subtheme of Throne of Eldraine before roaring back with The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, and we're now spoiled by what originally appeared to be a one-off mechanic.

Top Cards

Mirkwood Bats, as always, and the aforementioned Savvy Hunter are top picks. Gyome also lets you commit crimes for per or mow down the table with Horobi, Death's Wail, and provides a way to tap creatures without involving them in combat, so Scaretiller, Pain Seer, and Seedship Agrarian are exceedingly fun cards in the deck.

The newly-printed Pizza Face, Gastromancer and the assortment of Food synergies in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles power up the Gyome deck.

Best Build-Around Golgari Commander for Landfall Decks: Smeagol, Helpful Guide

Tempt with the Ring may have been a bit of a flop in terms of flavor (it's odd for the One Ring's corrupting influence to be reduced to pure upside) but it plays well in Smeagol, one of the top Golgari Commanders. This is a bit of a double-edged sword. While it's great to have a Commander who uses the mechanic well, if you focus on tempting you're going to have to run all nine Nazgul.

I find the Nazgul tedious in Commander - they add too much consistency and bean-counting to the average game, not to mention the financial aspect of collecting all nine. That said, they're clearly cool and beloved cards, so feel free to lean into the Nazgul build of Smeagol. It's certainly flavorful and potent. Personally, I eschew the Nazgul and focus more on the sacrifice-and-landfall aspects of Smeagol. While opponents hate land destruction and land theft, it's slightly less objectionable when you're skimming it from their decks rather than the battlefield.

Top Cards

Sakura-Tribe Elder is a classic, while Wight of the Reliquary and Springheart Nantuko interact exceedingly well. If you're playing mono-Green Landfall in Standard right now, this is your deck. Mossborn Hydra, Tifa Lockhart, Traveling Chocobo, and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower all lock right into the Smeagol shell. The forgotten Nissa of Shadowed Boughs is incredible with Smeagol, both rewarding you for hitting land drops and providing bodies to sacrifice.

Best Build-Around Golgari Commander for Typal Decks: Zask, Skittering Swarmlord... and Copmany

The hivemind of Zask, Skittering Swarmlord, Grist, the Hunger Tide, Grist, Voracious Larva, The Swarmweaver, Amzu, Swarm's Hunger, and Aatchik, Emerald Radian. In practice, though, until they give us "Partner with Five Other Commanders," the nod goes to Zask.

At this point, after thirty years of Magic and over twenty of official Commander support, typal decks often build themselves. Run off to your search engine of choice, type in "creature type: X" and grab the best forty results, then add Chronicle of Victory, Roaming Throne, Vanquisher's Banner, and some lands. Zask is different.

While we have enough playable Insects finally, it's the resilience they offer that makes it a more fun build. Part self-mill, part recursion, Zask lets Golgari off the leash in Commander, and allows you to treat your graveyard as a second hand and the bottom of your library as a third. Plus, they were printed in Jumpstart 2022, meaning they're obscure enough to be initially non-threatening (the downside of this, of course, is that the price tag is daunting).

Top cards

Haywire Mite has quietly become one of my favorite cards of all time. It solves so many problems so efficiently, and it's at its peak in Zask. Canoptek Scarab Swarm, Icetill Explorer, Horizon Explorer, Scouring Swarm - Wizards has been printing increasingly powerful Insects in recent sets, and its finally time to welcome our new insect overlords.

Best Build-Around Golgari Commander for Offbeat Typal Decks: Jenova, Ancient Calamity

Jenova is a Commander whose utility only increases as more sets are printed. When she was first printed in 2025, we had 101 non-Changeling Mutants. With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that number almost doubled to 189. With Marvel coming down the pike, we'll have even more Mutants soon. Personally, I've enjoyed playing Jenova as a +1/+1 counters deck, even without many Mutants. She scales up extremely well in a game of Commander, as she makes your creatures more threatening and, if they're dealt with during combat, draws you cards to replenish your hand and rebuild your board.

Top Cards

Madame Null, Power Broker lets Jenova act more like a single-target Ouroboroid, while +1/+1 counters synergy cards like Hollowmurk Siege and The Ozolith let you pile innumerable buffs onto your creature, Mutant or not. Green's long held affinity for +1/+1 counters and Black's similarly long-lived love for sacrificing creatures mean you have thirty years of solid cards to choose from when building. Michelangelo, Weirdness to 11, Agent Frank Horrigan, Alpha Deathclaw - all play into both the Mutant angle and the counters angle, which Jenova appreciates.

Best Build-Around Commander for a Legendary Party: Cleopatra, Exiled Pharoah

Cleopatra seems like a quite linear Commander to build, asking you to play as many Legendary Creatures as you can handle, supplemented with lands. But I built a Cleopatra deck last year and have been consistently revisiting it to tweak it with each new set. There are so many Legendary Creatures you can potentially include that every Cleopatra deck has a different personality based on who built it, and that's not even touching the political implications of the Commander.

There are 620 Legendary Creatures that you can potentially play in a Cleopatra deck, from Baron Sengir to Mai, Scornful Striker, and so you can customize your Cleopatra deck based on expected brackets or past experience with your playgroup.

Top Cards

Plaza of Heroes, The Great Henge, Reki, the History of Kamigawa. More than anything, Cleopatra lets you play a deck with every card listed here. Jenova is the most valuable player in my own Cleopatra deck, for example, and her open-ended qualifications mean you can run 40 lands and 59 Legendary Creatures of your preference, if you so choose.

My Cleopatra deck runs ten staples and synergistic non-Legends. Vraska Joins Up and Time of Heroes were just too perfect to leave out, but it runs 50 Legendary Creatures all along the mana curve to maximize Reki, from Grist, Voracious Larva to Legolas Greenleaf to Beledros Witherbloom. Newer cards like Rocksteady, Mutant Marauder and Mai, Scornful Striker are also easy picks.

Best Build-Around Golgari Commander for Bracket 3: Belbe, Corrupted Observer

First printed in 2020 in Commander Legends, Belbe was an in-game depiction of Eladamri's daughter, Avila, who was murdered and reanimated by agents of Phyrexia to serve as an observer and arbiter of the succession crisis on Rath between Crovax, Greven il-Vec, and Ertai. Frightened by Crovax's cruelty and romantically involved with Ertai, she partially overcame her programming as a tool of Yawgmoth.

Her card beautifully translates her conflicted but principled attitude toward her Phyrexian overlords. She'll reward anyone for their brutality, but she's focused on ramping you most of all toward massive colorless monstrosities.

The typical optimized Belbe deck runs cards like Sanctum of Stone Fangs and Pulse Tracker to ping your opponents before or during combat, before adding six colorless mana during the second main phase and casting anything from Wurmcoil Engine to Portal to Phyrexia. That's fun, certainly, but a little one-note.

Personally, I love a political Belbe deck. Her symmetrical mana-adding ability encourages your opponents to attack each other, so she almost has a pseudo-Goad effect when in play. You can run cards like Seizan, Perverter of Truth and Forsaken Wastes to put a clock on everyone while accelerating the table's average velocity, or you can hang back and act like the in-lore Belbe by running Instants like Crushing Disappointment to play kingmaker.

Part "group slug" deck, part Tinker deck, the Belbe deck is customizable based on your preferences and tailorable to any bracket. Cast an early Krang, Utrom Warlord or Emrakul, the World Anew if you're up against higher level opponents, or stick to sillier threats. You can build Belbe as a truly nasty Stax deck with the consent of your table, running Pox and Death Cloud to lock everyone out of the game.

She's a "solved" Commander, but one with a ton of options available for the creative deck-builder, and she's cheap both in terms of mana value and dollar value. I can't recommend her highly enough.

Join the Swarm

Golgari is a value-oriented color pairing. Your creatures are bigger, you can recur them if they're dealt with, and they often provide some form of card advantage. Black gives you sweepers and card draw, while Green gives you ramp and beef. It's an extremely complementary pair that doesn't have any immediate weaknesses. Your removal can be as broad as Pernicious Deed or as pinpoint as Maelstrom Pulse, but you can truly deal with anything as a Golgari mage.

Whether it's pairing Survival of the Fittest with Reanimate, casting Sylvan Scrying to find an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth for your Cabal Coffers, or ramping out an Eldrazi, Golgari has done it all since I was tapping Llanowar Wastes at the lunchroom table. Take one of these Commanders for a spin and put your personality into your deck-building. The Golgari Swarm will reward your efforts.