Thirty-three years ago, Wizards of the Coast printed the best lands we're ever likely to get in the original Alpha/Beta/Unlimited dual lands (Tundra, Taiga, etc.). They were printed through 1994's Revised and then locked off behind the Reserved List in 1996, never to be printed again in their original, tournament-legal form or in another near-identical form.

If you're a Golgari player in Commander, a moderately played Revised Bayou (the most common and therefore affordable version of the card) is going to run you approximately $400. An Overgrown Tomb from Lorwyn Eclipsed is under $10. Bayou is a better card than Overgrown Tomb, but it's not forty times better. It's expensive because it's a collector's prize, not due to pure gameplay.

For the same price as a Bayou, you can buy every other card discussed today and still have about $370 left over, so when we say "best Golgari lands in Commander," we're incorporating value into the equation.

Beyond the price of rarer nonbasic lands, Commander mana bases are difficult to balance. You have a little more latitude in lower brackets to develop, which means you can play a tapped land without completely losing the pace of the game. Your lands should ideally enter untapped, but it's not the end of the world if you take a turn off to fetch a Surveil land sub-bracket 4.

As Commander games take longer than most competitive matches and critical turns are sometimes harder to read, it can be difficult to gauge when you lost because of your mana base. If you didn't draw your third land, you can readily fault that for your loss, but it's harder to read a situation like "well, if that Temple of Malady had been a Viridescent Bog, I could have cast Oracle of Mul Daya a turn earlier and hit double landfall to get creature parity with my Scute Swarm."

Personally, I have run suboptimal lands like Darkbore Pathway over Underground Mortuary just because I would rather have lands enter untapped; it's entirely possible that this decision has secretly lost me games, which is part of the beauty of Magic.

Devoid Corner

In general, I'm hesitant to run many lands that produce colorless mana in most two-color decks. There are exceptions. If my deck is running a lot of self-milling, Drownyard Temple is a weird Rampant Growth. But I usually start deck-building with Command Tower, Mana Confluence, and all relevant shocks and fetches, which makes it difficult to find mana slots for colorless lands.

That said, there are some colorless-producing lands more Golgari decks should consider, from Accursed Duneyard to Dust Bowl to Fountainport to High Market to Swarmyard. Squeezing a little extra utility out of your mana base is an easy way to get an advantage in Commander. While pricey, Boseiju, Who Endures is one of the best Mono-Green "Golgari" lands, as you're often milling and buying lands back in the color pair. But if you're looking for the best way to make G/B and you don't have a spare $400, this list is where I start.

8. Restless Cottage

Restless Cottage is one of the few "enters tapped" lands that I include in Golgari decks. It truly hurts to be stuck on two or three lands and draw a Cottage, but it also hurts your opponent when they take four. Restless Cottage can animate after a board wipe and do significant damage, exile a choice card from a graveyard, and give you a quick shot of three life from the Food token.

The mana investment is significant, but having a threat from your mana base is an excellent insurance policy for a stalled-out game. Even if your deck doesn't have Food synergy, Restless Cottage is unafraid of Farewell or Damnation, kills Planeswalkers, and, hilariously, can animate in response to a game-winning Biorhythm against a checked-out opponent who wants to run the latest unbanned tech.

7. Festering Thicket

Like Restless Cottage, Festering Thicket will (barring any Amulet of Vigor/Spelunking/Horizon Explorer shenanigans) always enter the battlefield tapped, which is a strike against it. That said, it's fetchable and cycles for two generic mana. Any deck outside of the pure Golgari combination will reach for the Ikoria Triome (Indatha Triome) or New Capenna triland (Spara's Headquarters) instead, but if you're locked to Green/Black, Festering Thicket does just enough of what you want to be worthwhile.

You're never ecstatic to see it, but in a color combination that's great at recycling lands through Life from the Loam, Icetill Explorer, or Ramunap Excavator, it's a workhorse.

6. Underground Mortuary

Underground Mortuary is a recent addition to the slate of dual lands. Printed two years ago in Murders at Karlov Manor as an upgrade to Temple of Malady, it, and the rest of the Surveil land enemy cycle, ended up being hugely important in both tournament and casual Magic. Surveilling is a magnitude better than Scrying, as it can enable graveyard decks, and being fetchable off a Verdant Catacombs is great.

Entering tapped is a significant downside, but it's less disruptive when you can play a fetchland and then sit back, knowing you can either fetch an untapped basic or a tapped Surveil land depending on what your opponent plays. The one downside is that the Surveil lands came from an unpopular set and are thus quite expensive, but they're worth the outlay.

5. Llanowar Wastes

Llanowar Wastes is a classic that was first printed in Apocalypse along with the other four enemy-colored "painlands" (Yavimaya Coast) to catch up to the allied color pairs. The allies had painlands since Ice Age, while the five enemy color pairs languished with dreck like Pine Barrens. For enemy advocates, Caves of Koilos, Shivan Reef, Yavimaya Coast, Battlefield Forge, and Llanowar Wastes felt like an apology from Wizards.

Even twenty-five years later, the painlands are reasonable cards. They're not the first nonbasic lands you'd reach for in Commander, but your mana base feels incomplete without them. In early turns, you'll take the colored mana in exchange for a point of damage; once you've solidified your mana base, you'll tap for colorless. They're elegant, affordable, and even better in Commander, where the single life is negligible.

4. Nurturing Peatland

Nurturing Peatland hurts, no way around it. It can't tap for colorless, unlike Llanowar Wastes, so every time you use it for mana, you're losing a life. Once you're done using it for mana, though, you can cash it in for a card.

Of the six representatives of the Horizon Canopy pseudo-cycle (Fiery Islet, Horizon Canopy, Nurturing Peatland, Silent Clearing, Sunbaked Canyon, Waterlogged Grove), Nurturing Peatland is probably the best on color identity alone. If you're in Golgari, you likely have some kind of land recursion, from Icetill Explorer to Hedge Shredder, letting you get multiple cards out of your Peatland.

3. Tainted Wood

Tainted Wood is part of a semi-cycle of Tainted lands from 2002's Torment. While obviously suboptimal without a Swamp out, Tainted Wood becomes a pain-free Llanowar Wastes if you do meet that criterion. Between Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Wizards of the Coast's increasing willingness to print lands with two land types (Underground Mortuary, Haunted Mire), that's an easier threshold to meet than ever before.

Crucially, Tainted Wood will always make (at least colorless) mana and will always come into play untapped, so the few times you draw it before you have a Swamp in hand or play is more than balanced out by its speed.

2. Undergrowth Stadium

Undergrowth Stadium isn't fetchable but is otherwise about as good as you could want a dual to be in Commander, as it comes into play untapped early in the game and it taps for either or without asking further investment in life or resources. There's not a lot of analysis needed for the Battlebond lands; while I'd rather have a shockland in hand than a Battlebond land, they're a close second.

1. Overgrown Tomb

A classic for over two decades now, Overgrown Tomb is considered the second-best dual land after the Alpha/Beta originals. First printed in 2005's Ravnica: City of Guilds and brought back every few years since, the shocklands have proved their worth going back as far as Legacy, as they came come into play untapped and can be fetched by the Onslaught/Zendikar fetchlands.

Newer players consistently balk at the price, but the color-relevant shock(s) is the first addition that should be made to every Commander deck, as they're just that good. They're legal in Standard right now, thanks to Edge of Eternities and Lorwyn Eclipsed, and so they're as cheap as they get right now, so stock up.

My Advice to You: Buy Land.

You generally can't go wrong investing in real estate, a lesson that holds true in the real world, and in the Magical. These aren't the only Golgari lands out there - Necroblossom Snarl, Hissing Quagmire, Temple of Malady, Vernal Fen, and Twilight Mire are all reasonable in their own rights - but they are the ones that are most worth investing in.

If you're in the market for an upgrade for your Golgari deck's mana base, and a Bayou is as out of reach as homeownership is for non-Boomers, Overgrown Tomb, Undergrowth Stadium, Llanowar Wastes, and Nurturing Peatland should be your top priorities.

Losing to your own mana is a terrible feeling at the Commander table, and it's one you don't have to experience if you simply budget the lands in your Commander calculations and start with solid basics. A land that taps for mana is great. A land that taps for multiple colors of mana is better. A land that taps for multiple colors of mana while accruing another advantage, whether it's the Channel ability of Boseiju or the Surveil ability of Underground Mortuary, is best of all.