Standard – Golgari Adventure

Edgewall Innkeeper has proven to be one of the most powerful cards in Throne of Eldraine. It requires such a low investment to break even, and then your 1-mana creature simply turns every creature in your deck into a cantrip. This is enough to spawn variants of the Adventure archetype in several different colors, such as the Selesnya Adventure deck, but Golgari has a lot of the same tools but with much more interaction in a longer game.

Golgari Adventures Decklist

4 Foulmire Knight/Profane Insight
4 Knight of the Ebon Legion
4 Edgewall Innkeeper
4 Order of Midnight/Alter Fate
4 Smitten Swordmaster/Curry Favor
2 Once Upon a Time
2 Find/Finality
4 Lucky Clover
4 Murderous Rider/Swift End
4 Lovestruck Beast/Heart's Desire - Showcase
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen
1 Castle Locthwain
9 Swamp (339)
6 Forest (347)
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple of Malady

Golgari Adventures (Arena Formatted Decklist)

Edgewall Innkeeper is the reason to play a deck like this. We're willing to play some "bad" adventure creatures just to take advantage of this draw engine. If we ever manage to put multiple copies in play, we can "go off" and draw a lot of our deck.

Lucky Clover is the other "engine" that supports these adventure creatures. Though less important, it is extremely powerful with the right draw. All you need to do to get ahead on its mana and card investment is to draw a single Murderous Rider. Any value it produces after that is simply extra.

What hasn't been said about Murderous Rider already? It keeps Teferi and Oko in check, and can kill any random fatty like Rotting Regisaur that your opponent tries to cast. It can then later be cast as a 2/3 lifelink creature to trigger your Innkeeper.

Foulmire Knight is perhaps the most important of the adventure creatures (beside Murderous Rider) in these colors, since it is a 1-drop that also provides a real body. A 1/1 deathtouch can trade up with a lot of things in this format, and this deck wants its creatures to be able to trade off. It also provides raw card advantage in a drawn out game against a control deck.

Order of Midnight is the definition of mediocre without the supporting shell, but it fits perfectly into this strategy. Even at its worst it can easily rebuy an Innkeeper or Foulmire Knight, helping you to either restart your engines or stay alive. You're then left over with a cheap adventure creature to cast that can poke in for damage each turn, making this deck's combo finish easier to achieve. But once you have a Lucky Clover in play, this card becomes amazing. Since it's technically a creature card, it can rebuy a copy of itself plus another creature for essentially infinite value. It might be hard to get the creature portion into the graveyard to actually loop it repeatedly, but usually this will be enough value to win the game.

You may have noticed that all of the aforementioned creatures that we're planning to include happen to be knights. Smitten Swordmaster gives us another angle of attack, allowing us to combo kill our opponent if they are able to stop our attacks. It doesn't really take all that much to become a threat – three random knights in play plus a Lucky Clover or two could be a drain for 6 or 9 life. It can cast as a lifelink creature early against aggressive decks or simply as a cheap adventure creature to trigger Innkeeper. This is a low opportunity cost to be able to add a completely different win condition that gets around any interaction. Knight of the Ebon Legion is included as a way to increase the knight count that also fits well on the curve, though this slot could be up for debate.

Lovestruck Beast rounds out the adventure creatures in the deck. Its adventure is only a minor buff when doubled with Lucky Clover, but it's just such an above-rate creature that it's certainly worth including. The only 1/1 creature we have besides the beast's adventure is Innkeeper, though we are already going to great lengths to ensure that we keep one in play. The 5/5 body is a great blocker that can threaten quick damage if they can't stop it from attacking.

Find // Finality is an old staple that hasn't seen much play recently, but it fits great here. Edgewall Innkeeper is a lightning rod that you will always want to rebuy as many as possible, and Foulmire Knight is good at trading. This also contributes to the possibility of starting an Order of Midnight chain once you have a Lucky Clover in play. The Finality half will probably not be cast a ton, but it is nice that we get a completely different effect in our deck for free that could bail us out of some dicey situations.

Once Upon a Time still seems to be up for debate regarding how many copies to run, but it's definitely an excellent card. For a deck like this that runs so much better if it finds its key creature, this helps us achieve that draw so much more often. It can be a bit clunky if we find multiple copies, so in a deck like this that always has a ton to do with its mana it might actually be correct to be running less than four copies. Perhaps time will tell!

Vraska, Golgari Queen is a beautiful way to round out this deck. The Abrupt Decay ability is simply good in this format, as it is one of the few ways to deal with an Oko, Thief of Crowns. It also gives you a sacrifice outlet for your random adventure creatures that you may want to rebuy in order to cast their adventure again, all while accumulating value.

Here is a video with us piloting an early version of the deck. We were missing a bit of the ability for a consistent combo kill in this build, but were still able to demonstrate a lot of the deck's capabilities.

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Michael Schuller

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