Golden Control
Commander / EDH
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WOMBO COMBO: Mnemonic Betrayal + Culling Ritual —April 30, 2021
Hey guys, it's another update for Golden Control.
Once again I will mention to you that these are testing changes that I will be trying. I haven't had too many games with these cards yet, but I am pretty confident about these changes.
There actually isn't too many changes this time around, but I think it will be some good quality of life updates. I will also go into some tech that I have in my sideboard that I bring into certain metas.
Changes:
OUT:
IN:
CARDS TO THINK ABOUT:
Reasoning for Changes
Notion Thief & Dispel -> Mnemonic Betrayal & Culling Ritual
I was honestly testing cutting the Notion Thief for Mnemonic Betrayal for quite some time now-- but the release of Culling Ritual has made me feel more confident about this change. After a wheel or into some grindfests, Mnemonic Betrayal can be actually game ending against other midrange decks or turbo ad nauseam decks. Additionally, Mnemonic Betrayal can be an outlet for winning if needed-- since you can utilize windfall + mnemonic betrayal to assemble your own wincon from your opponents. This can be useful when you aggressively are utilizing demonic consultation or tainted pact.
Culling Ritual is one of the more powerful things that golgari has gotten in quite some time. It's obviously not as strong as dockside, but I get some real big power level vibes from the card. Most ramp and most permanents in cEDH aside from commanders are 2cmc or less-- and so you can expect Culling Ritual to be quite large. Culling Ritual -> Ad Nauseam / Peer into the Abyss / Mnemonic Betrayal / Tasigur + Seedborn Muse honestly seems very strong. Culling Ritual into Mnemonic Betrayal can either be a game winning combo or a huge tempo swing.
Notion Thief is something that unfortunately I have felt to be a little too slow on its own and not feel as strong as a stand alone card. I think Hullbreacher alone should be fine for the A+B combo though. I can definitely understand playing notion thief still against more grindy decks or commander centric ones like Tatyova, Chulane, or Niv Mizzet.
Dispel is probably one of the more controversial cuts nowadays. I ultimately wanted to cut some kind of interaction piece for Tasigur and was stuck between dispel, miscast, mana drain, or stubborn denial. I think dispel is honestly the most narrow nowadays and so I'm going to try without it. Many people are going down mana drain nowadays due to being 2cmc, but I think being able to stop abolisher / underworld breach / etc and generate mana might be very useful for the deck. It's expensive and hard to hold up, but I think the trade off is still worth it. There could be some arguments for Stubborn Denial as well, but its been great for me as pretty much a force spike early or a 1 mana negate into the late game so I've decided to keep it. But I can see myself cutting it for dispel in the future.
A common question I can understand might be why not cut Yawgmoth's Will for Mnemonic Betrayal instead of an interaction slot? And honestly I think that's an incredibly fair point. Many Turbo Naus deck lists have made this exact kind of change. However, I think Yawgmoth's Will can also be quite strong with Culling Ritual and more importantly Yawgmoth's Will becomes probably the very best card after Seedborn Grinding. Mnemonic Betrayal simply does not substitute for the raw power of Yawgmoth's Will after Seedborn Muse grinding in my opinion. So I will still be playing both for the time being.
Assassin's Trophy -> Cyclonic Rift
This is honestly more of a hedge against the emergence of stax. Cyclonic Rift is key against some stax decks because sometimes they play too many stax pieces such that not a single removal piece works against them and none of your combos will work through them (imagine rule of law + torpor orb or something).
Well one of the controversial things would be why take out removal if you are concerned about stax? My answer would be that I am only worried about them to a certain degree, removal in general is not very desirable against turbo naus. Cyclonic Rift I think is very necessary in the games you really need it and provides a lot more substance for the match up than a single assassins trophy.
However, if you are regularly playing against stax-- I might suggest keeping assassin's trophy. I would also look into playing Oko Thief of Crowns again and trying out Koma. Oko Thief of Crowns is powerful in the way that it represents a repeatable way to deal with stax hate pieces such as hate bears and artifact stax. He also shuts down commander centric builds, which makes him very desirable. Tasigur is a great way to protect Oko from incoming elks unlike many other commanders. Koma is also a great plan to neoform into or hard cast when up against too much stax. Sometimes in stax games there simply is just too many stax pieces and you cannot put together an efficient win or have easy outs. Many times these games actually just come down to beats and combat. Well making a virtually indestructible 7/7 that makes 3/3s every turn and can tap down huge attackers like Serra Ascendant is a very powerful way to win the stax war. He's not an auto i-win-the-game-when-this-resolves but he will provide you with a VERY strong gameplan that is worth protecting and investing into for these stax games in my opinion. He also just randomly will turn off some combos like Najeela combat, IsoRev, Food Chain, and etc.
I am actively testing these cards still. Obviously they are quite strong into stax, but they have the weakness of being quite weak into turbo naus. As a singleton format, we can only afford to make a certain amount of hedges against certain metagames. Right now, I still am not sure the current presence of stax will warrant the necessity of Koma, Oko, and Cyclonic Rift-- but if stax starts becoming even more popular you bet that these are the cards I'm considering playing again. I think Seedborn Muse, Abrupt Decay, Chain of Vapor, and Cylconic Rift are decent enough options for stax for now.
Yavimaya Coast & Underground River -> Phyrexian Tower & Darkslick Shores
Painlands are honestly not that bad. However they can really stack up in damage throughout the match, especially with something like Seedborn Muse where you will use it as a colored source up to four times per turn. This is significant because when you play Seedborn Muse and lock everyone down, eventually everyone will look to see how they can kill you collectively after you've amassed so much countermagic-- and usually the idea is for everyone to start swinging at you. So your life total is very important while Seedborn is active.
Darkslick Shores is being played instead of Underground River because early game its straight up just better. And then late game with Seedborn Muse, Darkslick Shores just has better usage than Underground River since you won't take so much damage per rotation.
The main reason Phyrexian Tower is being played instead of Yavimaya Coast is honestly Seedborn Muse synergy again. Sacrificing a Tasigur and then recasting him while exiling the junk from your graveyard will make your Seedborn much stronger. Maybe this might be a bit more winmore because Seedborn and Tasigur can usually win the game on their own, but I think I want to test how powerful the tower can be in the deck. I think Phyrexian Tower can be what sets apart a powerful advantage into an actual win with Seedborn + Tasigur though and it can be great to get this from simply a land slot. A colorless land is rough, but I think our 3 color mana base can handle it (although I will have to check if my manabase is producing the right amount of colors given the mana costs distribution later on). There are other niche scenarios such as sacrificing a dork to ritual or sacrificing Nezahal (so that you don't have to discard 3 cards before trying to win with oracle consult-- as normally you cannot try winning with nezahal out with oracle / consult since opponent can cast any noncreature spell and force you to draw while you have an empty deck).
One idea would be that we can run crop rotation nowadays too. Crop Rotation for Ancient Tomb is already pretty strong for early game ramp. Crop Rotation for a fetch land can help more easily cast Tasigur as well. Typically Crop Rotation might have been bad to get back via Tasigur with Seedborn, but including Phyrexian Tower can make it quite strong to get back with Tasigur. I was considering cutting Elves of Deep Shadow, but as much as I hate dorks-- I think its synergy as a dork can be quite strong with our neoform / eldritch evolution / birthing pod strategies. I honestly am going to have to ponder the cut for Crop Rotation and just test my current changes for now-- but don't be surprised to see it in the very distant future (like in one week when I have made up my mind).
Closing Thoughts
I think Culling Ritual is a step in the right direction for us. It's nothing as powerful as dockside or underworld breach, but we are starting to get more power for green once again. I feel that this deck is one of the better shells for Culling Ritual and Mnemonic Betrayal and so I am excited to see new developments. Many of these are testing updates, so I would appreciate any kind of feedback on discord, on moxfield, or even here on TappedOut. Thanks.