While most eyes are on Foundations right now following last weekend’s Prerelease, the rest of the Magic world hasn’t just been standing still. The weekend also saw the Ultimate Guard European Magic Series RC take place in Lille, France. Pioneer was the featured format, and the winning deck was something few could’ve predicted. Rather than a typical meta staple like Izzet Phoenix or Rakdos Midrange, the event was topped by a brand-new MTG strategy: Golgari Food. We’ve seen decks run a couple of Food cards in the past, but none quite as hungry for them as this list.
Golgari Food In MTG Pioneer
This hot new brew comes to us courtesy of Marc Tobiasch, who piloted it to a 14-3 first place finish at the RC. First impressions are that it’s an incredibly streamlined list. Other than a 1-of Vraska, Golgari Queen, the rest of the deck is made up entirely of full playsets. Second impressions are that ‘Golgari Food’ is an incredibly appropriate title.
The majority of nonland cards in this deck deal with Food in some way. It can make it in five different ways, including through surprise inclusion Vinereap Mentor. It can then leverage Food through a number of different sacrifice effects, including Cauldron Familiar and Deadly Dispute.
Ultimately, this is the crux of the deck. These sacrifice effects generate incremental value, be it in the form of cards or direct damage. The deck runs the classic Cat/Oven combo, in which Cauldron Familiar is baked in Witch’s Oven every turn to create an infinite blocker and damage source. It backs this up with Scavenger’s Talent, which adds another layer to the deck’s grindy gameplan. Now it can generate an extra Food every time Familiar dies, and slowly mill the opponent out each time a creature or Food is sacrificed.
This sounds incredibly slow, but the deck has a sneaky combo in its back pocket. With an Ygra, Eater of All in play, Golgari Food can win the game on the spot. Since Ygra makes every creature a Food, a Cauldron Familiar in the graveyard will be able to sacrifice another in play to recur itself. This can then be repeated until your opponent dies from the gradual life drain.
Familiar Faces
So Golgari Food can operate as both a Midrange deck and a Combo deck. Not bad at all for what appears, on the surface, to be a mediocre first draft of a Food theme deck. Of course, Pioneer players will be aware of the deck’s pedigree in advance. A lot of the pieces here are already seeing consistent play in Jund Sacrifice, after all.
Specifically, the Ygra/Familiar/Oven/Talent quartet. Other than Ygra, Jund Sacrifice maxes out on these key cards as well. The combo/grindy potential is just that good. What sets the two decks apart, other than the obvious color difference, is that Golgari Food is much more focused on the combo angle.
The deck includes Cache Grab to try and get Cauldron Familiar into the ‘yard early. This has nice incidental synergy with Vinereap Mentor, too. It also helps turn on Delirium for Traverse the Ulvenwald. An odd pick at first, but when you consider it as a tutor for combo pieces its stock goes way up.
With this powerful combo in mind, it’s easy to see how Golgari Food cleaned up at this weekend’s Pioneer RC. Leaning harder into the combo angle than the more Midrange-heavy Jund Sacrifice seems to be a good move. All the extra Food the deck generates makes it capable of dragging out games until it hits all its pieces. It also enables an alternate win condition: huge Ygra beatdown.
More Food in play means more fuel for this mighty Bloomburrow Beast. While Ygra lacks evasion, it can still catch opponents unawares sometimes. Especially with four Fatal Push in the main to clear the way.
A Deck Worth Cooking Up?
Golgari Food is an exciting new deck, and a potential player in the Pioneer metagame going forward. As always, it’s important not to get carried away, however. As most of us know, one big tournament result does not a meta deck make.
That said, it does seem to be well-positioned against the current Pioneer field. The meta at RC Lille was full of common decks like Izzet Phoenix and Rakdos Midrange (Now often going by the moniker ‘Rakdos Demons’ instead). Jund Sacrifice even showed up a few times. Clearly the deck can compete against these popular strategies, so there’s little reason to doubt its potential beyond this RC.
While Izzet Phoenix can be tricky, it’s still ultimately a positive matchup for Golgari Food. Cat/Oven strategies like Jund Sacrifice have always performed well here, and this refined version does as well. Extra effort has been made in the sideboard to address Phoenix, too: Both Leyline of the Void and Pawpatch Formation make the matchup much, much easier.
As for Rakdos, the fact that it’s still mostly an on-the-ground Midrange deck really puts Golgari Food in a good position. Outside of an early Archfiend of the Dross, the deck should be able anything Rakdos throws at it. It can even use Vraska’s -3 to deal with an Unholy Annex early, which can severely hamper the deck.
It’s early days, but Golgari Food is looking like the natural next evolution of Jund Sacrifice. It offers the same gameplan, just more efficient, more streamlined, and more consistent. Make sure you keep this deck in mind when planning for your next Pioneer event.
