Golgari Save the Queen [PreDH]

[Oversoul]

Some of the players at my LGS have been getting pods together for "preDH" games. I'm excited to try that, and if participation in this variant continues, I'll keep building decks for it. Here's my first attempt.

Commander:
1 Savra, Queen of the Golgari

1 Abundance
1 Abyssal Gatekeeper
1 Apprentice Necromancer
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Barren Moor
1 Bayou
1 Beast Within
1 Bitterblossom
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Burgeoning
1 Buried Alive
1 Carrion
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Constant Mists
1 Creakwood Liege
1 Crop Rotation
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Crystal Vein
1 Culling the Weak
1 Damnation
1 Dark Ritual
1 Decree of Pain
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Dread Return
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Far Wanderings
1 Fertilid
1 Fleshbag Marauder
8 Forest
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Genesis
1 Genesis Wave
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Grave Pact
1 Harrow
1 Journey of Discovery
1 Life from the Loam
1 Living Death
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Manabond
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mind Slash
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mox Diamond
1 Natural Balance
1 Natural Order
1 Noxious Revival
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Polluted Delta
1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Reanimate
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Regrowth
1 Shriekmaw
1 Sol Ring
1 Spike Weaver
1 Spore Frog
1 Squandered Resources
1 Strip Mine
1 Survival of the Fittest
8 Swamp
1 Sylvan Library
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Sylvan Scrying
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Victimize
1 Viscera Seer
1 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Worm Harvest
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Zuran Orb

1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Praetor's Counsel

 

[Oversoul]

While I didn't get to take this deck into a proper preDH pod, I did play it twice, and I was generally happy with it. I already see some adjustments that I want to make, but I like the deck overall and I am just really enamored with this whole concept. I did Worm Harvest shenanigans in a Savra deck before and I love it.

The deck performed OK, but found itself between a rock and a hard place. One player was running Omnath, Locus of All. That commander is stupidly powerful and the player was pretty much staying shields down and building up resources for a big turn, which I knew would eventually be a problem. Another opponent was running an aggressive deck I've seen before, helmed by Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor. I didn't have many creatures to sacrifice, so if I compromised my own board state with Savra out, I could have weakened the Omnath player and made it easy to finish him off. But if I did that, I'd probably be banding the Obuun player the game. So I held back, and this gave the Omnath player time to set up to the point where I couldn't stop him anymore. He used Cadaverous Bloom and Peer into the Abyss, then took some eons-long turn to cast a bunch of spells, eventually killing everyone but me. From there, it was more durdling until he finally finished me off. I'd have gladly kingmade in favor of the Obuun aggro deck if I'd suspected that it would be this extreme.

Second game shouldn't really count. It was a quick 1 vs. 1 test before the game store closed. I did get to cast Genesis Wave for 13, which was pretty cool. Ultimately, it didn't really matter. My opponent was running a self-mill deck helmed by Lazav, the Multifarious. He worked his way into the nonbo of Living Death + Leveler, and decided it was funny enough to let that happen and watch himself get decked. I might have done the same in his position. It was funny.

I want this deck to be able to more reliably have black creatures on the battlefield sooner. So I'm going to work on that.

 

[Oversoul]

Finally got to use Worm Harvest! This deck put up a pretty nice performance, but I botched it as a player. I should have won, but I dredged into Gaea's Blessing at exactly the wrong time. Forgot about that. I had other options and could have used them. Dredging that one time went on to cost me the game. I also would have won if I hadn't been targeted with Exhaustion by a player as his last move before scooping. He actually said that he was going to target my other opponent, but I pointed out that my board state was more dangerous to him, so he changed his mind and hit me with the card. Less than a minute later, he was telling us that he was out of time and had to leave the table.

Frustrated that I lost, but happy with the deck's performance.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Phyrexian Reclamation
-1 Praetor’s Counsel
+1 Living Death
+1 Carrion

Took this deck into a pod where I thought it stood a decent chance. Unfortunately, the deck stalled out and one of my opponents did some big, stupid engine with food tokens, and none of us could stop him. Oops.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
-1 Wurmcoil Engine
+1 Creakwood Liege
+1 Shriekmaw

Still tweaking this list, bit by bit.

 

[Oversoul]

Played a proper PreDH game with this deck. It was looking dicey at first, but Decree of Pain on a clogged board set me up to begin using Worm Harvest to take over.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Journey of Discovery
-1 Crystal Vein
+1 Entomb
+1 Phyrexian Tower

 

[Oversoul]

Got stuck with this deck, but Bitterblossom gave me enough chump blockers that I wasn't an appealing target, especially with everything else going on in the game. Once I topdecked Phyrexian Altar, I could use Savra to bully the table a bit and get rid of most creatures. That bought more time, as my life total shrank. Eventually, I started looping Genesis Wave and totally took over the game.

 

[Oversoul]

Had a game that presented an interesting puzzle, but ultimately I couldn't deal with massive proliferation on planeswalkers by an Atraxa Superfriends deck. Picked off with the -9 on Vraska, Betrayal's Sting followed by proliferation. Oh well. I did design this as a preDH deck, and those don't normally have to deal with so many planeswalkers.

 

[Oversoul]

Tried this deck again, but I guess I wasn't warmed up or whatever. I misplayed several times. Ultimately, I got hit by full graveyard exile by the deck next to me, which was itself doing way more graveyard recursion than I was. Already determined that I'm not going to play graveyard hate chicken with another reanimator-style deck at a casual EDH table. So I conceded and joined a different table shortly thereafter.

 

[Oversoul]

Although the two decks I recently edited are newer, I played this deck in my first game last night. One of my opponents remembered playing against some deck of mine (I do not know which) and was concerned about both infinite combos and "long turns." Kind of tricky to accommodate both concerns, but I figured this deck might work. I guess the result was that he became unhappy with this deck's tendency to kill his creatures. He was also rather manadrowned, so that might have been the real reason for his frustration. I dunno.

Opponents tried to shut down Savra through various means. I used Living Death to bounce back from a board wipe, then Noxious Revival to bring it back again after a second board wipe. Worm Harvest was making a bunch of tokens, but I wasn't dishing out much damage yet. My opponents collectively decided that they couldn't stop me and all conceded.