Moonrise over the Sea by Caspar David Friedrich (1822).

Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage by Daarken.

I used to have an O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami deck built around a Maze's End wincon. It had all the good non-basic land tutors I could get my hands on. It was janky and fun and it even managed to win its first game.

In Core Set 2020, Magic released a new five color legendary creature that seemed like an even better leader for my Maze's End deck in Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. I wound up buying a leftover prerelease kit and was lucky enough to pull Golos from a booster, so I decided to rework my O-Kagachi deck. I was able to get a game in with the new build and so far the results are pretty encouraging.

Let's take a look at Golos. I briefly touched upon him last week, but he deserves a much deeper dive than one of my "sidekicks" columns could provide.

Golos is a Legendary Artifact Creature who costs five mana and when it enters the battlefield you can tutor up any land and put it onto the battlefield tapped. With 3 power, 5 toughness and no keywords or abilities that are relevant to combat, Golos isn't likely to be much of a combat threat. His "party trick" is outstanding. For two mana along with one mana of each color () you exile the top three cards of your library and you can play them this turn without paying their mana costs. That's a uniquely powerful ability, but it's also a uniquely bad match for a Maze's End deck. Before we dive into strategies and tactics, let's look at some of the ways we can make this deck work well.

Maximum ETB

If we're hitting our land drops, can get Golos out and can find a way to get extra Golos enter-the-battlefield (ETB) triggers, we should be able to really crank up the number of lands we have on the battlefield. With lots of lands, we get lots of mana and with lots of mana we dramatically increase our ability to make impactful plays or possibly win the game.

We'll want to run Panharmonicon and Yarok, the Desecrated to double our enter-the-battlefield triggers. Deadeye Navigator and Temur Sabertooth will both help us get more ETB triggers. Deadeye Navigator will let us flicker Golos for the low, low cost of two mana. Temur Sabertooth will bounce Golos to our hand, allowing us to get another cast and another ETB.

Blade of Selves will let us attack with Golos and have a token copy of Golos enter the battlefield for each opponent that the original Golos isn't attacking. Those token copies will die to the legend rule, but you'll get an ETB trigger for each of the token copies of Golos that get created. At a five player table you attack one opponent, get three Golos ETB triggers and you can go get three lands.

You could swing once and assemble Urzatron if you ran Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, and Urza's Tower in your list. That's some powerful synergy.

Each of these ETB triggers means another land on the field, which would be strong if it were just a basic land. Being able to get any land at all means we're in a good position to build a land toolbox deck.

A good way to try to survive long enough to try to win and to also get additional ETB triggers is to clear the board early and often.

A well-timed boardwipe won't earn you many friends, but they were trying to kill you anyways. What a boardwipe will do for you goes beyond just helping your opponents to exhaust their resources. You'll also put Golos back into the command zone. That means more castings and more ETB triggers.

Going Large

This deck is going to want to go large, or maybe I should say that it wants to go "Lage"... Marit Lage. If you can get Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage onto the battlefield, you can have all sorts of fun.

You make Thespian's Stage into a copy of Dark Depths. The latter is a legendary land so you sacrifice the Dark Depths with the ice counters on it and you turn your Thespian's Stage copy of Dark Depths into a 20/20 legendary indestructible flying black Avatar creature token named Marit Lage.

When do you go for Marit Lage?

I'm thinking that if you start the game with Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots it makes sense to go for an early Marit Lage. This deck isn't build around Marit Lage. We're not running double-strike so that we can kill opponents in one swing, nor are we running any of the many other cards that might want to target a 20/20 like Traverse the Outlands, Fungal Sprouting, or Chandra's Ignition. A dedicated Golos / Marit Lage deck might be fun but that isn't this deck.

The other time you might go for Marit Lage is when you have Panharmonicon or Yarok on the field so you can get both lands with one ETB trigger. It's just too easy, so if you feel like having a flying indestructible 20/20 would be fun you might as well go for it. The worst case scenario is that someone will steal it and send it back at you. The best case is that you'll be able to close out the game in style by swinging over the top for 20 damage.

Maze's End

Golos is unlikely to tutor up 10 guildgates and your Maze's End in one turn but it should make that particular alternate win condition much, much more achievable.

If you can assemble nine or more Gate cards with different names and activate Maze's End, you win the game. Golos can get you any of them, but it's up to you whether you want to put your wincon on the field early or wait until you're up around eight or nine Gates before you tutor up Maze's End. My advice would be to save it for later. Players do run land destruction and if someone blows some land removal on a Gaea's Cradle, Cabal Coffers or some other valuable land earlier in the game you'll be glad you saved Maze's End for later. You can be fairly sure they won't waste it on a guildgate and you want to minimize the window of time they have available to get rid of your wincon.

It's worth noting that with the printing of Gateway Plaza, we now have an extra Gate available to us. That means that if one of our Gates gets blown up, we can feign disappointment and hope that they think the threat has been averted. I wouldn't suggest you actually lie to them, but if they don't realize you can win with a Gate in the graveyard or in exile, that's not your fault.

It's also worth noting that you can actually win with two Gates in the graveyard, but only in a really, really weird way. You'd have to make one of your Gates into a creature and then cast Sakashima the Impostor as a copy of the Gate-creature. Maze's End requires that you have 10 Gates with different names and since Sakashima always keeps her own name, he would qualify and would let you activate Maze's End and land the win. We're not doing that with this deck, but I can see trying to do that someday just to have done it.

The Maze's End wincon will probably be reliable in a casual meta where decks aren't going to out-race you and nobody is running enough removal, let alone removal that can target lands.

Surviving Aggro

If you're telegraphing that you are going after a Maze's End wincon, your opponents should probably be throwing everything they've got at you. You're not fighting them on the battlefield so unless they can blow up your lands or combo off before you win, it's just a matter of time before you can get everything together to win the game.

That means you'll want ways to survive aggro. Boardwipes do that by just destroying everyone's creatures, but sometimes that isn't enough.

Spore Frog is a cute little frog who will gladly hop on over to the graveyard to prevent all combat damage that turn. You can get him back with Sun Titan, but it's hardly a reliable way to survive more than just a single alpha strike. Fortunately, we're running a number of more traditional fogs including Constant Mists, which can keep you alive for a really long time if you're willing to sacrifice your own lands to pay the buyback cost when you cast it. If it gets countered, you're out of luck but we've got one more panic button available to us.

Glacial Chasm is a non-basic land, so we can tutor it up with a Golos enter-the-battlefield trigger. It will force us to sacrifice a land when it enters the battlefield and will prevent us from attacking, but all damage including noncombat damage that would be dealt to you is reduced to zero. The downside is that it has a Cumulative Upkeep cost of 2 life. Every upkeep we'll put an age counter on it and then pay the upkeep cost for each counter on Glacial Chasm. That means over five turns we'll wind up paying 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 = 30 life. This isn't an easy way out, but if we're close to a Maze's End win and our opponents have been putting off dealing with us, this land may buy us the turns we need to get to the end of the maze.

Punching Back

Running a ton of boardwipes is fine, but if your Maze's End wincon gets disrupted and your Marit Lage threat gets dealt with, you can't very well ask your opponents to just kill each other off for you. Any good deck is going to have ways to punch back.

Since this list is going to be running 10 Gates and should have an easy time getting them onto the battlefield, it's a great excuse to run cards that care about Gates. Golos isn't a combat threat, but if you equip him with Glaive of the Guildpact you could probably have a three or even a two turn clock on an opponent. If you're looking for big beaters, Gatebreaker Ram and Gate Colossus are on theme and should be able to block or jump into the fray for you.

After a boardwipe or if you can get it out early enough, Spawnwrithe is a card that can really spiral out of control. When it does combat damage to a player you make a copy of it. The first turn or two don't seem like a big deal but if you can keep swinging your army will get exponentially bigger turn after turn until your opponents eventually get overrun.

Rampaging Baloths is a fine addition to a deck that should be able to get lands onto the battlefield at a healthy or even at an alarming rate. A 4/4 Green Beast creature token isn't that impressive on its own but we've got enough ramp and enough ways to get extra Golos ETBs that this card should pull its weight if it sticks around.

The fact that we run a lot of boardwipes makes Hydra Omnivore a potentially strong include in Golos. Wipe the board. Drop Hydra Omnivore. If one of our opponents doesn't have a blocker when our turn rolls around again they'll all be taking 8 damage, as it will damage each other opponent if it is able to do combat damage to one of them. The real fun comes when you equip it with Blade of Selves. Hydra Omnivore isn't legendary, so you can swing and have all of your token Hydra Omnivores survive when your Golos tokens died to the legend rule. If you can get three of them through, each of your opponents will be taking 3 x 8 = 24 damage.

The Decklist

The list below is the actual list I've been playing. I actually got to "live the dream" with Blade of Selves and Hydra Omnivore just this past Tuesday. It was a six player table and we had suffered through so many boardwipes that everyone was ready to wrap it up and split into two tables. I was able to convince everyone who had blockers to just let the Hydras through and get the game over with. Five Hydra Omnivores hitting five opponents for 8 damage each meant 40 damate to each opponent. It felt pretty good, though in truth some of the guys were holding back removal and letting the attackers through just to get the game over with.

You'll see a lot of familiar nonbasic land tutors as well as a lot of Gate-centric cards in this list. If you can catch a table unprepared, you should be able to get this deck to work. If your meta sees it too often you can bet they'll be packing land destruction soon enough, especially if don't switch up decks and just play this list exclusively.

This Land is My Land | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Golos, Tireless Pilgrim

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Avenging Druid
• 1 Baird, Steward of Argive
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 District Guide
• 1 Elvish Rejuvenator
• 1 Gate Colossus
• 1 Gatebreaker Ram
• 1 Gatecreeper Vine
• 1 Gateway Sneak
• 1 Hydra Omnivore
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Ramunap Excavator
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Skyshroud Ranger
• 1 Spawnwrithe
• 1 Spore Frog
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Temur Sabertooth
• 1 Trinket Mage
• 1 Weathered Wayfarer
• 1 Windborn Muse

• Instants (11)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Fog
• 1 Haze of Pollen
• 1 Naturalize
• 1 Pause for Reflection
• 1 Return to Dust
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Teferi's Protection
• 1 Winds of Qal Sisma

• Sorceries (16)
• 1 Circuitous Route
• 1 Gates Ablaze
• 1 Genesis Wave
• 1 Hallowed Burial
• 1 Open the Gates
• 1 Planar Outburst
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Reap and Sow
• 1 Restore
• 1 Rout
• 1 Scapeshift
• 1 Slaughter the Strong
• 1 Sylvan Scrying
• 1 Tempt with Discovery
• 1 Terminus
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Blind Obedience
• 1 Burgeoning
• 1 Darksteel Mutation
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Guild Summit
• 1 Lightmine Field

• Artifacts (9)
• 1 Amulet of Vigor
• 1 Blade of Selves
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Glaive of the Guildpact
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (36)
• 9 Forest
• 9 Plains
• 1 Azorius Guildgate
• 1 Boros Guildgate
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dark Depths
• 1 Dimir Guildgate
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Gateway Plaza
• 1 Glacial Chasm
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Gruul Guildgate
• 1 Izzet Guildgate
• 1 Maze's End
• 1 Orzhov Guildgate
• 1 Rakdos Guildgate
• 1 Selesnya Guildgate
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Thespian's Stage

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You'll notice that I haven't yet added Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots and there are a number of other cards I've discussed that haven't yet been included either.

The Golos Trap

Have you noticed that I haven't devoted much time to discussing Golos' second ability?

Golos will let you pay seven mana in the form of to exile three cards off the top of your library and you can cast them without paying their mana cost. This is a fantastic ability, especially if you're ramping like crazy and can pay for it more than once in a turn.

It's a trap.

I should be clear - it's a trap if you're running this deck and going after the Maze's End wincon.

You're quite likely to exile a Gate card. If you exile more than one, you're not going to be able to win using Maze's End because you'll have less than 10 left in the deck.

You'll be tempted to use Golos' second ability because it's fun to see what you're going to get, but it's just not worth it unless you've already abandoned the Maze's End wincon for that game. There are other builds for Golos that will be great for using this ability to cheat casting costs and they're worth looking at, but the Maze's End build isn't that build.

Other Directions

Once you've won a few times with Maze's End, you might find that the deck gets a little stale.

It's the same thing every time. You tutor for lands and either rely on boardwipes, fogs and a lack of land destruction to eventually win. Folks might outrace you or your games might become archenemy because your friends have seen your deck too many times and know that they've got to apply pressure if they want to keep you from winning. This deck isn't cEDH but alternative wincons can get predictable and stale for some people.

If you wanted to abandon your Maze's End wincon you'd be opening up a ton of room in the deck for other lands and for other cards. There are 12 lands you'd pull out because if Maze's End is out, your Guildgates can go too. You can also drop the Gate tutors and all the cards that desperately want you to have Gates on the field. That means dropping Gate Colossus, Gatebreaker Ram, Gateway Sneak, Glaive of the Guildpact, Gates Ablaze, Guild Summit at minimum and we might add in District Guide and Gatecreeper Vine as well. That means we're looking at as many as 20 cards you can replace.

Don't forget that your upgrade should leave you with about as many lands as you had before. So what other builds could you pivot to once you've gotten tired of winning and losing with Maze's End?

Big Mana Eldrazi

What's more fun than using Golos and Blade of Selves to tutor up all three Urza lands?

Lots of things, but using those lands to make big mana and cast Eldrazi Titans seems like a pretty fun direction to take your Golos deck. Cheating big Eldrazi into play with Golos' second ability is also a great approach if you run enough topdeck manipulation.

Blinkmoth & Blightsteel

What land is also a creature with infect and can wreck someone's day really quickly?

Blinkmoth Nexus, and if you go get Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and Kessig Wolf Run you should be able to put 10 poison counters on an opponent pretty quickly. You should also be ramping so efficiently that hardcasting Blightsteel Colossus won't have to wait until the late game. With a little topdeck manipulation you might even use Golos' second ability to cheat it into play.

Once you go Black...

If battling with creatures isn't your jam, maybe casting big Black X spells is.

Why not use Golos & Panharmonicon to go get Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and aim to cast a huge Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire to close out your game? Those three Urza lands will also fit into this plan and I'm sure there are plenty of ways to lean Golos toward black spells and make an X-spell Golos deck really work.

The Ultimate Toolbox

When you can tutor up any land you like, it's not a bad idea to just build the deck as the ultimate lands toolbox. Rogue's Passage, Buried Ruin, Homeward Path and a dozen other lands are going to be incredibly useful in the right situation but not that helpful in others. Having a commander who can go get you just what you need for the game ahead is very powerful.

Are you up against a deck that uses lots of Mind Control or Act of Treason effects? Go get Homeward Path.

Are you facing off against Uril, the Miststalker or Narset, Enlightened Master? Tutor up Arcane Lighthouse.

Getting the right land for the right situation won't win you the game, but it will put you in a much better position. You'll have to part with those 11 guildgates and your Maze's End but you probably won't miss them that much.

Final Thoughts

I usually like to provide a more polished list for my columns, but I also find that my decks are constantly evolving and changing and I suspect Golos will see more changes than my usual deck. The last game I played with it was one where I didn't even seriously go after the Maze's End wincon because my sense of the table was that I wouldn't survive long by putting a target on my back. Next time out I'll probably go hard after the Maze's End win but it won't take long for me to move the deck on to something else - probably Urzatron Eldrazi.

Are there any directions that you would take a Golos deck that I haven't touched upon here?

As always, I love to hear from you so please comment with what you're doing with Golos, or what you might do with him if you decided to build around him. I'm guessing most of you aren't into running Gates.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!