The Best Black/Green Commanders In MTG

Summary

• Golgari commanders excel at graveyard interactions, strategies, and abilities, offering unique and powerful gameplay options to consider.
• Golgari commanders like Old Stickfingers, Yargle and Multani, and Baba Lysaga provide diverse playstyles, from graveyard manipulation to explosive power.
• New additions like The Mycotyrant and Beledros Witherbloom bring fresh dynamics to Golgari decks, offering unique playstyles and strategies.

Few color pairs in Magic: The Gathering synergize as nicely as black and green (also known as "Golgari"), especially when it comes to the graveyard. When together, the two have tons of strong abilities and strategies at their disposal.

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Whether you want to yank things out of the graveyard, put things in there for your own profit, or want to slowly sap the lifeforce away from your opponents, Golgar is a color pairing you should definitely consider. Here are the best Golgari commanders in the game.

Updated August 21, 2024 by Ryan Hay: There are always new legendary creatures coming out that shake up metas and can take over games, and in the good ol' reliable Golgari color pairing, you have some strong ones. This time around, we're going to add The Mycotyrant, Baba Lysaga, Night Witch, and friendly little Smeagol, Helpful Guide to all those Golgari brewers options.

24 Old Stickfingers

Old Stickfingers Loves A Bursting Graveyard

In the Golgari colors, your graveyard often acts as a secondhand. With tons of ways to pull things out of the graveyard, having a way to easily dump all your creatures there is powerful, and Old Stickfingers does it perfectly.

Old Stickfingers gets stronger the more creatures you have in your graveyard, but the ability to put creatures there just by playing your commander is the real draw here. You'll need to get a lot of mana for it to be really explosive, but once you're done, it can set up practically every graveyard effect. Ixalan's descent, Theros' escape, Innistrad's disturb; all of them work nicely with Stickfingers. Just watch out for a Tormod's Crypt.

23 Yargle And Multani

A Vanilla Creature? As A Commander?

Vanilla creatures often aren't played in the 99 of a deck, let alone as its commander. Despite that, Yargle and Multani manages to overcome everything bad about vanilla creatures thanks to one thing: its absolutely massive stats.

At 18/6, you only need to hit twice with this to take someone out through Commander damage. It makes Yargle and Multani a surprisingly powerful Voltron commander – give it double-strike, or at least a +3/+0 boost through enchantments, Equipment, or combat tricks, and they're a one-hit kill.

Voltron in Golgari is pretty unheard of, making Yargle and Multani a unique commander for if you want to try something outside of the usual black/green style.

22 Baba Lysaga, Night Witch

She Comes In Threes

A fascinating Commander, Baba Lysaga, Night Witch both does a lot and doesn't to a ton all at the same time. You can tap Baba Lysaga and sacrifice three permanents of different types to make each opponent lose three life, you gain three life, and then you get to draw three cards.

With a plethora of triggered abilities and permanents that do things when they die, you can start triggering all sorts of cascading and powerful effects. There are multiple ways to get around Baba Lysaga's restrictions too, including being able to sacrifice tokens or cards that have multiple permanent types.

21 Slimefoot, The Stowaway

He's Just A Fungi

Slimefoot, the Stowaway is the perfect example of an effective Golgari commander whose abilities reflect both colors that make up its identity. Able to create a 1/1 saproling token for four mana, Silmefoot comes with an excellent mana sink that works well in conjunction with the copious mana green can produce.

Additionally, Slimefoot causes each opponent to lose one life and for you to gain one life whenever a creature you control dies, synergizing greatly with the sacrifice-heavy strategies that are sped up by the disposable tokens Slimefoot can produce.

20 Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Your Lives Are A Sacrifice I Am Willing To Make

In Magic: The Gathering, few things fit into black's color identity as well as forcing opponents to sacrifice permanents. Meanwhile, green is fantastic at putting +1/+1 counters on your own creatures, building them up gradually.

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The insect Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest is a Golgari commander who ties all of this together, putting a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control whenever an opponent sacrifices a permanent. Not only does this synergize well with "edicts" – ways to force your opponents to kill their own stuff – but Mazirek also capitalizes off of cards that sacrifice themselves — such as lands like Evolving Wilds, or Saga enchantments.

19 Carth, The Lion

Superfriends, But For Goths

A black/green Planeswalker-heavy deck might sound a bit limited, especially when you consider how many of Golgari's strategies care more about creatures. However, Carth has two incredible abilities that make him a real powerhouse.

The first is his card-filtering ability. You don't need to hit a Planeswalker card with it, and if you do you can just opt to put it on the bottom of your library along with the rest. Being able to get chaff off the top of your library is always a good move, and for four mana Carth does it excellently.

The second benefit does apply more specifically to Planeswalkers, but having loyalty abilities cost +1 loyalty extra is something a lot of unaware players might trip over, thanks to it being framed more like a negative. Every ability is effectively 'cheaper', with negative abilities taking less of a chunk out of your 'walkers, and positive ones having more of a boost to your loyalty.

This is especially great for Planeswalkers with zero-cost abilities, like Tyvar Kjell; Garruk, Cursed Huntman; and Ugin, The Spirit Dragon. They'll passively pick up loyalty by using these abilities, keeping them in play for a lot longer.

18 Glissa, The Traitor

For The Glory Of Phyrexia

Providing synergies with artifacts, Glissa, the Traitor is a Golgari commander unlike any other. Allowing artifacts to be returned from your graveyard following the demise of any of your opponents' creatures, Glissa can even then bring artifacts to your hand from the graveyard using her activated ability

Additionally, Glissa comes packing two relevant combat keywords — first strike and deathtouch. This means that very few creatures are able to best her in direct combat without some kind of edge.

17 Gyome, Master Chef

It Looks Like Dinner's Ready

In a color pair full of death, corruption, and decomposition, you'd probably not expect to find a commander that cares about serving up 'delicious' Food tokens. And yet, Gyome does it with style.

Provided you can keep creatures entering the battlefield, such as by pulling them out of your graveyard, you could be making lots of Food tokens. Combine that with an Academy Manufactor or any other artifact-loving card, and it could be very tricky indeed.

Best of all, Gyome can even protect the creatures you do want in play by giving them indestructible until the end of the turn. All you need to do is pay some mana and sacrifice a Food token – potentially adding even more to your sacrifice theme.

16 Hogaak, Arisen Akropolis

Commander Tax? What's That?

Oh, Hogaak. Only having a brief stint in Modern before a swift ban, Hogaak, Arisen Akropolis showed the power and value that come with a card that does not require lands to cast. While not as strong in commander as it is in other formats due to higher life totals and a lack of duplicate cards in decklists, Hogaak is still a very strong card that can be utilized as a powerful commander.

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Hogaak cannot be cast by the utilization of lands or other mana sources. Instead, it can only be played with its convoke and delve keywords, giving Hogaak the flexibility to helm a creature-based deck, a graveyard deck, or a combination of the two, all without requiring the use of your lands. It's also an 8/8 with trample, which is very nice no matter how you have to play it.

15 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord

The Classic Golgari Commander

One of the most straightforward commanders on this list, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord is a commander who wants as many creatures to be in your graveyard as possible. A Zombie who gets +1/+1 for each creature in your grave at a given moment, Jarad has the potential to become a huge powerhouse with enough self-milling.

"Golgari" comes from the Golgari Swarm, a guild on the plane of Ravnica that Jarad once led long ago. He's since been killed (again) and replaced by Vraska, who now is also missing in action. Who will rule the Golgari now?

Additionally, in the instance that you need to push any extra damage through to opponents or move a creature from the battlefield to your graveyard, Jarad can sacrifice creatures you control in order to deal damage to each opponent equal to the sacrificed creature's power.