Locations
Just over three decades ago, Wizards of the Coast printed the best Lands we're ever likely to get: the original Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited dual Lands.
They were printed up 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 anything that would come close.
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.
So, for the same price as a Bayou, you can buy every other card ranked here and still have about $370 left over, so when we say "Best Golgari Lands in Commander," value is definitely part of the equation.
Let's take a look.
Top Golgari Lands for Commander
If you're in the market for an upgrade for your Golgari deck's mana base, these are the cards should be your top priorities.
- Restless Cottage
- Festering Thicket
- Underground Mortuary
- Llanowar Wastes
- Nurturing Peatland
- Tainted Wood
- Undergrowth Stadium
- Overgrown Tomb
Remember: 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 a colorless card like Boseiju or the Surveil ability of Underground Mortuary, is best of all.
Below, we look at what each card can do beyond just two-for-one on mana.
8. Restless Cottage
Restless Cottage is one of the few "enters tapped" Lands that's worth it for 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 damage.
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 investment is significant, but having a threat from inside your mana base is an excellent insurance policy for a stalled-out game. Even if your deck doesn't have Food synergy, Restless Cottage survives the likes of Farewell or Damnation and kills Planeswalkers.
Hilariously, it 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 the Cottage, Festering Thicket will always enter the battlefield tapped, which is a strike against it. That said, it's fetchable and cycles for 
.
Any deck outside of the pure Golgari combination would do better going for Indatha Triome or New Capenna's Spara's Headquarters instead, but if you're locked to Black/Green, 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 leagues 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 fetch Land 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 "pain Lands" like Yavimaya Coast, catching up to the allied color pairs and completing the cycle.
The allies had pain Lands 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 pain Lands 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 and there's no way around it.
It can't tap for colorless, like Llanowar Wastes can, so every time you use it for mana, you're losing a life. Once you're done with it, though, you can cash it in for a card.
Of the six representatives of the Horizon Canopy pseudo-cycle, 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 alt for 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 ( like Underground Mortuary and 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 shock Land 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 shock Lands 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 fetch Lands.
Newer players consistently balk at the price, but the color-relevant shock(s) is the first true upgrade 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.
How to Choose the Best Golgari Lands for Commander
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 below 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 lose 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 this:
"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."
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 but, that's the beauty of Magic.
Considering Colorless Lands for Golgari Decks
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, for instance.
 |  |
Most Commander mana bases start with Command Tower, Mana Confluence, and all relevant shocks and fetches, which makes it difficult to find mana slots for colorless Lands.
However, there are some colorless-producing Lands more Golgari decks should consider, like these:
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.
Conclusion
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 the ones ranked here most worth the investment.
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.
