Golgari Black Depths - 2022 Brew and Mini-Primer

Legacy BG (Golgari) Combo Dark Depths

molok

Land (25)

• 2x Bayou
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 4x Dark Depths
• 1x Forest
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Sejiri Steppe
• 1x Swamp
• 4x Thespian's Stage
• 4x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 4x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Combo (20)

• 4x Crop Rotation
• 4x Elvish Spirit Guide
• 4x Lotus Petal
• 4x Sylvan Scrying
• 4x Vampire Hexmage

Interaction (15)

• 2x Duress
• 2x Inquisition of Kozilek
• 3x Not of this World
• 4x Pithing Needle
• 4x Thoughtseize

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Sideboard

Take out fast mana against control (7)

• 2x Abrupt Decay
• 2x Sylvan Library
• 1x Sylvan Safekeeper
• 2x Veil of Summer

Targeted removal and hate (4)

• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 2x Force of Vigor
• 1x Tower of the Magistrate

Graveyards (4)

• 2x Leyline of the Void
• 2x Surgical Extraction

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Maybeboard

Evasion (5)

• 1x Aphotic Wisps
• 1x Apostle's Blessing
• 1x Funeral Charm
• 1x Rancor
• 1x Rite of Consumption

Hate cards (4)

• 1x Choke
• 1x Golgari Charm
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Phyrexian Revoker

Maindeck utility (2)

• 1x Collective Brutality
• 1x Maze of Ith

Sideboard value package (2)

• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Paradox Zone

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Introduction: reviving Golgari Dark Depths! Show

Black-green Depths seems to have been superseded by Naya/GW Depths (more grindy) and Rainbow Depths (super fast and all-in).

There is also a recently popular mono black depths list which is less consistent/fast, that plays Urza's Sagas and other "good stuff" black cards as a backup game plan (a nice budget deck!) I started off playing mono-black depths but really wanted the power of Crop Rotation which is where this list started to grow on me. I also read through all 165 pages of "Turbo Depths" discussion going back 10 years on MTG The Source. A fantastic resource.

With this list we're going back to the "roots" of Depths lists from 3-5 years ago, trying to solve some of the problems which current lists run into.

Comparing with Other Depths Lists.

Naya (or green-white) Depths

• plays a Green Sun's Zenith tutor package, resembling a Maverick shell that also has a land-based combo. Currently the most popular/successful iteration on a Depths shell in late-2022.

• Pros: Superior interactive package from white removal plus tutorable hate-bears. It plays the grindy game very well with Knight of the Reliquary.

• Cons: can have trouble with faster combo because the deck isn't especially quick.

Rainbow Depths

• core of black-green that splashes blue for Stifle and also Flusterstorm in the sideboard. It uses rainbow lands like Mana Confluence and Gemstone Mine, plus a lot of fast mana acceleration.

• Pros: very fast and consistent at putting Marit Lage into play on Turn 2 or 3. The blue splash is good against Storm and other combo matchups. Budget friendly, as no dual lands are needed.

• Cons: If Marit Lage is removed, can top deck very poorly because a lot of the cards are situational (Stifle, Not of this World) and there is no source of card advantage. Gets absolutely destroyed by Sudden Edict, and has only a few tools to play against other instant-speed interaction. It can be frustrating to play when the hands are so polarizing.

• Blood Moon is devastating and Red Stompy is a terrible matchup. The list has remained basically the same for the past 2 years, which might mean it's perfected, but also that people are picking it up without giving a lot of thought to the current meta.

Slow Depths

• a black-green depths shell that uses Dark Confidant, Mox Diamond and more main-deck removal but fewer tutors, cutting cards like Sylvan Scrying.

• Like "The Rock" that also happens to have a mid-game combo finish. Good if you expect to play against grindy midrange, very weak against combo.

My list isn't really a "Turbo" Depths (which plays a full 8x fast mana) or "Slow Depths" which gives up on speed entirely.

Instead, we fit in Dark Confidants and more flexible interactive spells, so we can go fast but still play a longer game if needed.

Mana Curve: playing our spells on time.

The mana base for all Depths decks tends to be quite bad, because you need at least 4x Dark Depths (produces no mana), and 3-4x Thespian Stage, and 3 or 4 tutorable silver bullet lands (Sejiri Steppe, plus several of Bojuka Bog, Ghost Quarter or Wasteland, Karakas etc.) There just aren't that many untapped sources that make our colors of mana.

Happily, the London Mulligan rule makes it not so bad to go down to 6 or 5 cards.

Curving Out

From deckbuilding "rules of thumb" we want to have 11 proactive plays to make on Turn 1, and at least 10 proactive plays to make on Turn 2.

Turn 1:

• 6-8 Discard Spells (playing more than 8 is probably bad)

• 1-4 Elvish Reclaimer

• 0-3 Sylvan Safekeeper

• other 1 mana spells such as Crop Rotation, Pithing Needle, etc. don't count as we really don't want to play those the first turn.

• mana acceleration such as Elvish Spirit Guide --> Dark Confidant can allow us to play 2-mana spells two turns in a row. BUT, we'd rather save that fast mana as a surprise for later turns.

Turn 2:

• 4 Vampire Hexmage (very demanding on black mana)

• 4 Sylvan Scrying or Once Upon a Time.

• 3-4 Dark Confidant

• Dauthi Voidwalker? I have seen this in some grindier lists but would not recommend it generally, because it doesn't interact with the primary gameplan at all.

• activating an Elvish Reclaimer for 2 mana.

Utility Lands and Colored Sources. The Correct Package to Play?

The Math for Colored Sources.

According to Frank Karsten, here are our key breakpoints to cast our spells with 90% consistency:

Turn 1: For {G} (Elvish Reclaimer) or {B} (Thoughtseize) we want 14 each of Green and Black sources.

Turn 2: for {1}{G} and {1}{B} we'd want 13 of each source.

My list has 11 untapped {B} and 10 {G}, excluding one-time effects like Elvish Spirit Guide (which would make 14, but we prefer not to use Turn 1).

This would seem very bad, but we can be bailed out by Once Upon a Time which makes our opening hands better (discussed in a later section).

Land Choices: a Breakdown

A large part of the land base is set to support our Depths combo. Those are 12 (or maybe 11) combo lands:

• 4x Dark Depths

• 4x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (allows Depths to tap for mana, speeding up the combo by a turn)

• 3-4x Thespian's Stage.

To cast our spells, we also want (10-11 lands):

• 1x Forest and 1x Swamp (basics give some outs to Blood Moon).

• 3-4x black/green Duals (I like 2x Bayou which we will fetch most of the time, plus 1-2x Nurturing Peatland to fix our mana or be cashed in for a card later). Blooming Marsh is also a decent budget option here.

• 4x Verdant Catacombs plus maybe 1 additional fetch land.

• 1-2x Boseiju, Who Endures which sometimes is an Assassin's Trophy, and other times just lets us play green spells. Fantastic addition to the deck! Play 2 if your meta has a lot of Blood Moons.

• Possibly: Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth is "Urborg #5". This competes with Fetch #5, a second Nurturing Peatland, or a 4th Thespian's Stage.

Silver-bullet tutor package to use with Crop Rotation:

• Sejiri Steppe is an all-star. It protects Marit Lage and gets through annoying blockers like Baleful Strix and Flickerwisp.

• Bojuka Bog instantly makes the Reanimator and Dredge matchups much better. It will occasionally suck when it comes into play tapped, other times it just wins the game.

• Wasteland or Ghost Quarter, used to clear out annoying lands our opponent controls.

I think those three are must-haves, but there are other lands we might like to play, that maybe live in the sideboard.

Karakas and Maze of Ith are excellent defensively, but very bad for our mana.

Shizo, Death's Storehouse shows up in mono-black lists but I think isn't that great, as Fear doesn't get through the Thopter Tokens and Strixes that are the most annoying blockers.

What about Urza's Saga? Show

I've seen some G/B Depths lists which add Urza's Saga, obviously a very powerful card. (See the YouTube channel for streamer, DougesOnTwitch for example gameplay in this style).

Pros:

• Provides a Plan B of making Constructs and beating down for the win.

• Tutors for other useful cards like Expedition Map, Hex Parasite, Shadowspear, and Pithing Needle.

In my opinion, the Cons outweigh:

• There are few other artifacts to make the constructs big.

• Makes an already stretched mana base even worse. You'll probably have to play 28+ lands, and 3 or 4 Mox Diamonds, to cast your spells.

• With even just 2-3 tutor targets for Urza's Saga, you will still occasionally be drawing them which feels bad.

Once you have a list of 28 lands, some Mox Diamonds, plus a few tutor targets, you now have 33-36 cards of your main deck taken up by "air" which neither finds your combo nor protects Marit Lage. I don't think the games you win by construct beats outweigh the loss of consistency.

Which land search effects do we want? The case for Once Upon a Time.

Crop Rotation is insanely powerful and an immediate 4-of, so our other potential tutors are Expedition Map and Sylvan Scrying. Scrying is less total mana to cast and therefore preferred. There could be a case for playing a split between them just for mana curve reasons.

The Naya Depths lists don't run these "to-hand" land tutors, but there's a significant benefit to having at least some of those effects, because it lets us find Boseiju, Who Endures to clear a Blood Moon, which is otherwise a total lockout.

Very old Depths lists would play Into the North, plus snow-covered basics, as another way to find Depths. This is almost certainly the worst of the tutors and I mention it just for historical interest.

The Math of "Once Upon a Time"

Once Upon a Time (OUAT) is not played in most of the creature-light depths lists because they prefer the consistency of finding combo pieces. But, OUAT is very powerful:

• cheats on mana to look at the top 5 cards in the first turn of the game, so more marginal hands become "keeps".

• later in the game OUAT is playable at instant speed, so we can hold up some other play and then cast this on their end step to find a needed piece.

• Makes our sideboarded creature "hatebears" more consistent because we're more likely to find them.

What are your chances for an important hit when casting OUAT on turn 1? Is it consistent enough?

All assuming you don't have one in your opening hand:

• get a Dark Depths (or any other 4-of): 33%

• get a Hexmage or Thespian's Stage (7 hits): 52%

• get any half of the combo, assuming you have a tutor which gets the other half (11 hits): 70%

• get a source that produces both {B} and {G} (8 hits): 57%

• get a {B} source (12 hits): 74%

• get a {G} source (10 hits): 66%

• get a {G} source or Spirit Guide (14 hits): 80%

Once Upon a Time basically makes your mulligans better, but at the cost of lower consistency and ability to find silver-bullet lands on demand.

How many OUAT do we play?

We want to draw it in the opening hand, but only one copy. Not really wanting to see additional OUAT in our first 3 draws.

• 4x OUAT: 36% chance to draw exactly one in the first 7. (7% chance of 2 in opening hand). 16% chance to draw 2 or more in the first 3 turns.

• 3x OUAT: 30% chance to draw exactly one in the first 7. (4% chance of 2 in opening hand). 8% chance to draw 2 or more in the first 3 turns.

• 2x OUAT: 25% chance to draw exactly one in the first 7. (1.5% chance of 2 in opening hand). 3% chance to draw 2 or more in the first 3 turns.

• 1x OUAT: 13% chance to draw exactly one in the first 7.

To have the best chance to draw one but not extras, 3 copies is the best number. Later in the game, we prefer to draw Sylvan Scrying and find exactly a land we are looking for.

Once Upon a Time makes our sideboard better.

Say we really want Collector Ouphe to shut down an artifacts deck.

• With 1 copy of Ouphe, there's a 12% chance it's in our opening hand. With 2 copies of Ouphe, there's a 22% chance.

• OUAT has a 9.4% chance to find a 1-of creature out of our deck.

• With 3x OUAT, that's a 30% chance to have it in the opener, so we can hit an Ouphe either on the 12% it's in our starting hand, or on the 30% chance we have an OUAT and the 9.4% chance it finds an Ouphe: about an extra 3% chance, or 15% odds that we get an Ouphe in our opener.

This makes our limited sideboard space a little bit more potent.

The Creature Package.

Many old Depths lists just ran Hexmage and some Sylvan Safekeeper.

The card Sudden Edict which is now played in many black lists has made this strategy much worse. Having a few "filler" creatures that are also legitimate threats that must be removed (Dark Confidant, Elvish Reclaimer) puts a tax on opposing removal spells.

Elvish Reclaimer carries the same mana commitment to tutor for a land as Expedition Map but also has the advantage of being a 3/4 beater or blocker in the late game. It can also tutor at instant speed. Smart opponents will remove it on sight, helping our later plays survive. The main reason not to play a lot of them is that it can be awkward to have in multiples.

Sylvan Safekeeper is the most effective way to protect Marit Lage against single target removal. Very annoying for our opponent once we have a few lands in play! The main downside is that it's weak early on, when we have few lands to sacrifice, and the body is meaningless outside of Sudden Edict fodder.

Disrupting the Opponent and Protecting the Combo.

There are about 10-12 slots in the deck we can use to interfere with their gameplan or protect our own.

Discard Spells

Most lists run between 6-8 discard effects.

• 4 Thoughtseize is the best and most flexible effect, at the low cost of 2 life.

• 0-4 Duress catches Force of Will, but misses some very annoying creatures like Magus of the Moon.

• 0-2 Inquisition of Kozilek is great against aggro, but misses some interactive spells we'd like to hit.

• Cabal Therapy honorable mention, some old lists ran this with Khalni Garden but that was back in the days of Gitaxian Probe. This doesn't seem good to me.

How many to play? Looking at the opposing hand is super valuable to know when to go for Marit Lage. It also improves matchups against other combo decks. The tradeoff is that they're poor topdecks.

In sideboarded games you probably cut the 2 worst discard effects to bring in more targeted cards.

Protecting Marit Lage

• Crop Rotation into Sejiri Steppe. Very flexible and strong!

• Not of This World is old technology and a great "gotcha!" card. However, the mana cost means you can't play it with Dark Confidant. It's also very narrow, and only helps when the token is already in play.

• Sylvan Safekeeper makes a later game Marit Lage almost unkillable. It's only good once you have a few lands to spare, though.

• Tamiyo's Safekeeping is a new addition. It can protect any card you have in play (fights Wasteland!) and incidentally gains a few life, too. The most flexible option, but also less powerful, as you have to keep {G} open to play it.

Pithing Needle, or not? Show

Needle is at its best to shut down Karakas, Wasteland, and similar. It can also function defensively to turn off Sneak Attacks, Griselbrands, Auriok Salvagers, planeswalkers and so on.

Downsides to Pithing Needle:

• Blind-naming a target makes the card much worse in G1 or if you don't know what the opponent is on.

• Expecting to name Wasteland with Needle, sometimes blindly, means we have to play Ghost Quarters which are a much-inferior card.

• Can be removed from the board, and now that Boseiju, Who Endures is available to other grindy lands decks, there is more chance that it will die.

• Cannot be tutored for in any way so to have consistency, we must run a lot of them, when sometimes it will be a dead card.

• Does not help at protecting Marit Lage from Brazen, Swords to Plowshares, and similar effects which are now very common in Legacy. Instead, older lists would run Not of This World which counters lots of instant-speed removal, but (a) is only good once the token is already in play and (b) is totally dead in many of matchups.

Alternative: Tamiyo's Safekeeping to protect both creatures and lands. Extra Wasteland to clear out Karakas, and generally disrupt our opponent's game.

In my list I have Tamiyo's Safekeeping to test out, but that could easily be Safekeeper or Pithing Needle instead, depending on your meta.

Budget Substitutions

The Rainbow Depths list is "budget" relative to legacy, at under $1,000 to assemble. This list adds the Bayous + fetch package which increases the cost.

Owning 1x Bayou is enough to get most of the benefits, then you'd probably only play 3x Verdant Catacombs too (I prefer not to have many more fetches than fetchable lands).

Overgrown Tomb is an obvious-but-inferior replacement, but you could also use Blooming Marsh plus additional Nurturing Peatland. Playing few or no Forests has a small edge in making Submerge a bad sideboard card, although that is not being played much these days.

A higher budget version of this list also plays 3-4x Mox Diamond. Obviously it's viable but I see several downsides to this:

• you have to play about 28 lands to have enough to consistently discard to the Mox. If you play a Mox Diamond on turn 1, but then miss your land drop on turn 2, it hasn't actually been better for you than a Lotus Petal. Plus, it may randomly get destroyed by Prismatic Ending.

• More lands means more tutorable silver bullets (good!) but also more "air" and poorer topdecks (bad!) You'd probably want to be playing Life from the Loam to make up the lost card advantage, and then the question becomes: why play a fast Depths list when there are better Loam decks around, like a traditional red-green Lands list?

If you've read this far, considering upvoting this post so that other people can find it too!

I'm still testing and trying new things with Dark Depths. Please leave a comment and any feedback with your own experience playing similar decks.

Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Legacy legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 2 Mythic Rares 20 - 9 Rares 18 - 4 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.86
Tokens	Marit Lage
Folders	possible