Blue’s Brews: Golgari Knight Adventures!

Hello internet, my name is Blue, and today I have something exciting to share with you all! Today is the launch of my first official solo series for the YouTube channel called “Blue’s Brews” where I build decks in various formats around different ideas, whether they be janky, competitive, or otherwise, and play through some game for you all to watch and enjoy! Today’s episode was one I enjoyed playing for post-rotation standard with Golgari Knight Adventures! It was a ton of fun to play and basically the entire deck from before rotation survives into next year except Knight of the Ebon Legion, which I replaced for the video. Feel free to watch the deck tech provided in the video, however I don’t feel like I explained it well so I’ll go over it again here just to make sure we’re on the same page. Before we get into it, a quick reminder that if you enjoy the video and everything else we do here on the site, go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel to keep up with whenever we have a new video go live! Now let’s get into the deck and video matches! 

Editor’s Note: We were having trouble with the YouTube embed, so it’s found at the bottom of the article instead of here at the top like we wanted. Sorry for the trouble!

Golgari Knight Adventures

Creatures (33) 4 Edgewall Innkeeper 4 Foulmire Knight 4 Order of Midnight 4 Smitten Swordmaster 2 Blacklance Paragon 1 Scavenging Ooze 4 Lovestruck Beast 4 Murderous Rider 2 Rankle, Master of Pranks 4 Beanstalk Giant Spells (4) 4 Lucky Clover

Lands (23) 3 Temple of Malady 1 Indatha Triome 4 Zagoth Triome 2 Castle Locthwain 9 Swamp 4 Forest

Engine Pieces

So the deck is pretty self-explanatory but if you don’t understand it, let me go over it for you starting with our two main engine pieces; Edgewall Innkeeper and Lucky Clover.

So if you’ve played Standard at all since Throne of Eldraine was released last year, you’re all too familiar with these two cards. They’re the driving force behind Adventure-style decks in standard and arguably the only reason the decks exist to begin with, and that’s certainly the case in our deck as well. Innkeeper allows us to keep our hand full and continuously cast spells to fuel the Clover and another card I’ll get to shortly. Clover itself let’s us double up our Adventures for massive profit. As I go through the rest of the deck, you’ll see the driving force behind Clover with each new card. So what package are we running to support help these cards? Let’s get into that now!

Knights!

So the other half of our deck’s name is “Knight” and that’s not just because we’re playing a bunch of Knights. That’s because one of the easiest ways for us to win the game is with Smitten Swordmaster, or more specifically, its Adventure Curry Favor. With a Clover out, this quickly becomes a massive burn spell to close out the game. Even just a single knight and Clover on the battlefield translates to a 4-point life swing for only . When you get more bodies on the battlefield, that damage stacks even further for even more damage. It’s truly an absurd finisher when we can’t get in for damage.

But that’s not the only Knight in our deck! We have several more, and most of them come with an Adventure to synergize even more with the deck! Let’s start with those to make this easy.

All three of these are absurdly powerful in our deck because they just work so well with everything else on top of being really good cards on their own. First, Foulmire Knight can draw us cards to keep cards in our hand as well as being a 1/1 with Deathtouch that gets even more absurd with either engine piece because that means it’s drawing us even more cards for incredible amounts of card advantage. Second, Order of Midnight can get back creatures repeatedly from the graveyard to create this stream of recursive creatures that most opponent’s can’t keep up with, especially with a Clover out and we can get back 2-5 creatures (depending on how many Lucky Clover‘s are in play) at once for only . It’s also a flyer so it’s easier for us to get in damage with it. Lastly, Murderous Rider is our primary removal spell, being able to kill anything we need it to and then some if we have multiple Clovers in play. The life loss does stack up so you do need to be cautious about how much life you’re spending to Swift End, but otherwise it’s very strong. As I mentioned earlier as well, all three of these are Knights so they can help kill our opponent with Curry Favor on top of being solid creatures. There is one knight in our deck that doesn’t have an Adventure that we should discuss and that’s Blacklance Paragon.

While not as strong as the other Knights for several reasons, it’s still a really solid card in the deck. In the video matches, I talked about how I didn’t play the full 4 because I wasn’t all that impressed by it, but honestly, its Knight synergies alone should warrant the full 4 over what I had played (which I’ll discuss in a moment.) If you play the deck, I’d highly recommend just playing 4 copies. Lifelink and Deathtouch aren’t irrelevant abilities, it’s a 3/1 with Flash, and it works with our Knight gameplan.

Other Stuff

We have a handful of cards that aren’t Knights that we need to talk about, then we’re on to the lands and we’re done! We have four more creatures that I played in the video, but one of them I think should just come out for the last copies of Paragon we previously discussed. These cards are Lovestruck Beast, Beanstalk Giant, Rankle, Master of Pranks, and Scavenging Ooze.

So all of these serve different purposes that I think are really important. First of all, Lovestruck Beast and Beanstalk Giant are just to help us with the Adventure plan, similar to how we’re playing Blacklance just to support the Knight plan. While they’re initially just here for synergy, they’re also really good cards on their own without a Clover or Innkeeper. Beanstalk Giant can ramp us early to get an important mana advantage over our opponent to start playing multiple things all in the same turn to draw cards and play around removal and counter spells easier, as well as being a massive threat in the late game either after we’ve run out of gas or to just put another body on board to even further represent lethal. Lovestruck Beast is similar in style but very different for the deck. heart’s Desire can help put bodies on the board to either chump block with or, if we have a Clover out, help flood the board to keep applying pressure from all kinds of different angles. Tall with the Giant, wide with the tokens and small Knights, and spell damage with Curry Favor!

The last two are a bit odd. I mentioned earlier I was playing a creature that I didn’t really like and it probably should come out for the last two copies of Paragon, and that card is Rankle. In our video matches, he didn’t do anything and he doesn’t synergize with the rest of the deck at all. I just kinda threw him in hoping he would be good and it goes without saying that he wasn’t. He felt incredibly weak in the deck compared to everything else we were doing, so while Rankle is a powerful card, he just didn’t fit in here. last, but definitely not least, is Scavenging Ooze and this is an important one. Similar to Rankle, Scooze doesn’t synergize with the deck at all, but unlike Rankle, the ball of slime definitely belongs and I regret only playing one copy. Post-rotation Standard is full of aggressive decks like Mono-Red, but also graveyard-centric decks like Sultai Uro and the built-in graveyard hate and life gain can help us stay ahead against both! If you play the deck, please squeeze in a second copy! I personally cut a land and it definitely felt correct. Speaking of lands…

Lands

There’s nothing too special about the lands but it’s important to go over them so you know what’s what! With Overgrown Tomb rotating out, we don’t have many options so we gotta play what we can. In the video, I played 4 Zagoth Triome, 1 Indatha Triome, and 3 Temple of Malady. The Triomes are mostly so we have additional dual lands that can also cycle when we don’t need them in the late game. The Temples are pretty self-explanatory as the only actual Golgari duals left in standard that aren’t draft chaff, and lastly I had two Castle Locthwain to help draw cards if we did manage to run out of gas. The rest of the mana base consists of basic lands to fuel Fertile Footsteps because sometimes you end up able to grab them all because of multiple Clover’s in play. I had 4 Forests and the rest Swamps, but you could probably go down on Forests. With Footsteps, you’ll find your green mana easily and the deck is about 85% black so you don’t need a ton of green mana outside of Scooze to eat the graveyard.

Wrap-Up

Anyway, that’s it from me for today! I hope you enjoy the video linked below! Before we go, one last reminder that if you enjoy the series and anything else we do on the site, it would be much appreciated if you took a moment to subscribe to the YouTube channel and check us out on Twitter @MTGOracle! Don’t forget to follow me @TheRealBlueMTG and our sponsor @Mana_Traders while you’re there! That’s it from me today. This is Blue, signing out!