As we’ve covered before, the decision to keep certain cards exclusive to the MTG Foundations Starter Collection and Beginner Box has led to some unnecessary confusion. One positive upshot of this is that the new Standard format has been slower to solidify than usual, however. As players stumble upon cards they’d totally overlooked before, new strategies rise to the surface. Last weekend, one such deck emerged to take on all comers. With the advent of Fynn, the Fangbearer from the Starter Collection, a new Golgari Poison brew has entered MTG Standard. Unlike many similar bold innovations, this one looks legitimately powerful, too.
Golgari Poison In MTG Standard
Before we get started, it’s worth noting that Golgari Poison isn’t an entirely new archetype in MTG Standard. Since Phyrexia: All Will Be One brought the titular mechanic back, players have experimented with different versions of the deck. Selesnya Poison proved the most popular, but still wasn’t really a top-tier meta player.
This list draws many of its key cards from the same poisoned well. Venerated Rotpriest is the Poison card in Standard, and it’s an easy four-of here also. It’s both a cheap Toxic attacker early, and a pseudo combo piece later on. This deck runs 15 cards that can target your own creatures, which opens the door for a huge burst of Poison with Rotpriest out. These cards range from combat tricks like Royal Treatment to removal like Infectious Bite and Drown in Ichor. Obviously aiming removal at your own creatures is less than ideal, but if it gets your opponent to 10 Poison it’s well worth doing.
That’s the ultimate goal of any Poison deck, of course: getting 10 Poison counters on the opponent as soon as possible. In that sense, the archetype as a whole is a kind of Aggro/Combo hybrid.
Rotpriest embodies this best, but cheap Toxic creatures like Bilious Skulldweller help the plan along nicely. Outside of creature combat, the deck can also spread the infection in other ways. Infectious Bite places a Poison counter by default, and Drown in Ichor lets you Proliferate, which equates to one extra counter if you’ve placed one already.
If you can reach the final stage of Innkeeper’s Talent, you can even start placing Poison counters two at a time. Ideally, you’ve wrapped the game up long before that point, however.
A Touch Of Death
So far, so standard. What sets this new Golgari Poison list apart from those we’ve seen in MTG Standard past is its focus on Deathtouch synergies. I mentioned Fynn, the Fangbearer earlier, and it really is one of the most transformative cards for the deck. Giving all of your Deathtouch creatures an extra Toxic 2 is huge, and can lead to some blisteringly fast wins with the right draws.
Drop Bilious Skulldweller on one then Fynn on two, for example, and you can swing in for three Poison counters right away. Follow up with Rotpriest and Infectious Bite on turn three and there’s a very good chance the game’s over. Even outside of these Christmas Land scenarios, Fynn is still a fantastic card. It applies two Poison a turn itself, and, more importantly, it allows you to play a lot of generically good Deathtouch creatures in Golgari colors.
Glissa Sunslayer, for example, is pretty much a Standard super-staple at this point. It’s well-statted and has three very relevant abilities. In this deck, it can also apply two Poison a turn with Fynn out. The same goes for Preacher of the Schism, one of the most consistently solid creatures in Standard. In a lovely twist, this deck also gives Tinybones, the Pickpocket a real chance to shine. His graverobbing antics haven’t earned him much love in Standard so far, but the potential for Poison makes him a lot better.
So that’s Golgari Poison. You drop early Poison creatures, get in for damage, and hope to close things out before turn four rolls around. The great thing about this list is that it works with or without Fynn. Sure, he’s a huge boost, but you can easily win without him. Flexibility like this is the hallmark of a winning strategy.
A Fighting Chance
Is this new Golgari list the one that will finally take Poison to MTG Standard supremacy? There’s actually a very real chance. Most new decks that crop up come undone due to the same core issue: Standard is really fast right now. Prowess decks are everywhere, which makes it difficult for slower strategies to get a foothold. Even the Midrange decks in the format don’t really curve beyond four. That means a deck needs to be able to compete in the early game in order to compete in current Standard.
Golgari Poison does just that. It has a ton of cheap creatures and removal, which lets it fight for the board early. It also has similarly explosive potential to Prowess decks. Where those can win out of nowhere with Slickshot Show-Off, this deck can do the same with Venerated Rotpriest and Fynn. In many ways, Golgari Poison is actually very similar to Gruul or Mono-Red Prowess. It may not be as consistently fast, but it has many more ways to generate card advantage. The abundance of Deathtouch creatures also lets it trade very well against Dimir Midrange et al.
This deck has every chance of making it big in Standard. Its creator, Stepanov Danyil, took it to a first-place finish in a Ukrainian Store Championship this past Sunday, so it’s off to a good start. This is a great chance for previously-neglected gems like Fynn and Tinybones to finally get the flowers they deserve. Even if it means a few people need to get poisoned along the way.
