Golgari Breaks Into Standard With Multiple Unique Archetypes

Last updated on December 3, 2025

June, Bounty Hunter | Illustration by Shiren

As noted yesterday on our meta report, Magic's Standard metagame is in a very nice spot right now: WotC's bans from Nov 10 have really opened the field, Avatar: The Last Airbender has brought some new, powerful cards, and there are lots of viable archetypes.

There's one color pair in particular that slipped under our radar yesterday, since when you go by play rate it's quite a fringe archetype right now. But in the last couple of days, Golgari has gotten good results with not one, but two different shells, without using Insidious Roots…

… with one of them being an infinite, kill-you-on-the-spot combo. In Standard!

Icetill Origins

Icetill Explorer – Illustration by Warren Mahy

Icetill Explorer has been the cornerstone of Mono-Green Stompy since Tifa Lockhart and Sazh's Chocobo made the shell competitive back in Final Fantasy.

But the post-ban meta has given rise to a Golgari shell that uses a full playset of Icetill Explorers, alongside another green card from FIN: Esper Origins.

Slightly different versions of these shells have put up pretty good results lately, including a Top Four in yesterday's MTGO Challenge 32.

This is Golgari doing mostly green things (ramping into a huge Sandman, Shifting Scoundrel, or making a huge trampling board with Summon: Esper Maduin), and with a splash of black to provide some board control. Day of Black Sun is particularly effective here: Your ramp makes sure your can wipe anything your opponent plays.

And something important: Earthbending creates what's known as a delayed trigger, that's to say a trigger that will happen at some later point (in this case, when the land dies or is exiled). That trigger is not part of the land's abilities, so all your earthbended lands wiped out by Day of Black Sun will come back to the board.

There are not too many Avatar: The Last Airbender cards in this archetype (some versions include Shared Roots) …

… but a TLA card is crucial for Golgari's other archetype, which plays a lot more into black Magic.

Beifong's Bloodghast Zealots

Blooming Marsh – Illustration by Adam Paquette

A couple of weeks ago, Magic brewers discovered a three-card infinite combo involving one of the new Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s card: Beifong's Bounty Hunters

“Everytime you sac Bloodghast, you earthbend a land,” wrote u/StephaneGosselin in the thread explaining the combo, “which you can sac too, it comes back and makes the landfall trigger, which brings Bloodghast, and so on.”

Going step by step:

• Bloodghast dies (very likely to your own Umbral Collar Zealot),
• Beifong's Bounty Hunters triggers, earbending one of your lands,
• Your animated land dies (Zealot again being a very likely suspect),
• The land's death will not trigger the Bounty Hunters, since they only care about nonland creatures… but when the land returns to the field, it will count as a landfall trigger and reanimate Bloodghast from the graveyard,
• As soon as Bloodghast dies (that's your cue again, Zealot!) you can restart the cycle in an infinite loop.

There are several ways to profit from your creatures and lands dying, leaving the graveyard, and returning to the field… but how do you win with this combo?

Here you go: Festering Gulch

If Festering Gulch happens to be the land you animate, then you can keep returning it to the field over and over, pinging your foe to death.

As it turns out, this four-card combo has a lot of legs, and has already claimed a #1 spot in one of the MTGO Challenges last weekend.

Most of the rest of the deck is about finding and putting your combo in play. Icetill Explorer shows up again (although just as a one-of), and there's a full playset of what by now it's clearly Avatar's best card, Badgermole Cub.

Wrap Up

Insidious Roots – Illustration by Jeremy Wilson

Magic's Standard format looks to be in a great spot right now: There are clearly some dominant archetypes, but the field is open and diverse enough that a lot of archetypes and color combinations are seeing play. There's even an Abzan shell playing again with Insidious Roots, a card that shined with Golgari Aggro shells some months ago.

And Magic's World Championship is just around the corner, so we may see new brews or refined builds in just a few days!