Decklog #1: Refining Golgari Airship

Introduction

Welcome to the first decklog! I'm hoping to make this a weekly thing where I will document my ongoing testing and refinement of Golgari Airship as I continue to tune the list.

This week was mostly about iterating on feedback from the r/spikes post and improving the deck's overall consistency. The meta hasn't settled yet, so my focus has been on how naturally the deck can access its main game plan and how smooth it feels across different matchups.

State of the Deck

The deck has felt great this week, with a solid win rate overall. I'm currently playing it in Top 20 Mythic (early season), and the games have felt competitive and dynamic. Here are some of my current matchup impressions:

Jeskai Control

This matchup feels positive. The deck grinds extremely well and is naturally resilient to board wipes. Obsessive Pursuit provides unmatched card advantage, letting you fight through removal and rebuild easily. Repeated Airship attacks pressure the opponent and often force them to trade removal just to stay alive.

Azorius Artifacts

Slightly unfavorable. Airship is strong here since Split Up is terrible against Vehicles, but the matchup often comes down to speed. If the opponent assembles Repurposing Bay quickly, the game can end fast. Post-board, access to more disruption makes things more manageable.

Simic Ouroboroid

Generally favorable. The deck can occasionally lose to their explosive starts, but this swings both ways since this deck also has access to insane cub starts. Postboard, sweepers make this matchup much easier since one well set up sweeper can put the game away.

Kavaero Reanimator

Game 1 is rough since it's hard to interact meaningfully with their combo. Games 2 and 3 improve dramatically with access to graveyard hate, which Beseech can easily find.

Airbender Combo

Similar to Reanimator in that sometimes you just lose to the combo if you don't draw removal. Torpor Orb is a huge upgrade post-board and makes Games 2 and 3 much better. Creature removal is also relevant here, making the matchup easier to navigate.

Temur Otters

This is the toughest matchup right now. There isn't a clean hate piece that lines up well, and removal doesn't trade efficiently with their combo creatures. Sometimes they durdle or stumble, which gives a window to win through aggression, but overall it's unfavorable.

Gruul Delirium

Pretty favorable. The deck relies heavily on the graveyard, so Soul-Guide Lantern is incredible at slowing them down. They also have almost no answers to large lifelinking creatures, so using pursuit effectively is key.

Izzet Looting / Lessons

Overall favorable. Izzet struggles to answer Airship effectively. The main thing to watch for is getting tempoed out by Stormchaser's Talent.

Dimir Bounce

Really favourable matchup. They have very few ways to handle Airship, and their recursive removal isn't effective against it.

Changes

There are a few key changes in this version that I believe have made the deck much more consistent.

Manabase

The big change this week was going from 23 to 25 lands. My initial hesitation was that adding more lands might just lead to flooding since the deck already plays seven mana dorks. I also wasn't thrilled about the options since I didn't want to add more Starting Towns.

What I didn't realize at first is how critical it is to hit land four on curve. Missing land drops feels bad in most decks, but here it's especially punishing because it makes Obsessive Pursuit actively bad. You end up losing life without being able to use the tokens, and that slows the whole deck down.

Land Count vs. Chance to Hit 4 Lands by Turn 4

Land Count	On the Play	On the Draw
23 Lands	58.6%	68.3%
24 Lands	63.2%	72.6%
25 Lands	67.5%	76.6%

Mathematically, going from 23 to 25 lands raises the odds of hitting the fourth land drop on the play from 58.6% to 67.5%, about a 10% increase. That extra consistency has been very noticeable in testing, and I'm happy with the adjustment.

The lands I added were a Forest and a Swamp. My main concern with this is drawing both Forests can be problematic for casting breach on curve. The change in odds on not having 3 black sources on turn 4 because of drawing both Forests is around 2.8%, which feels like a reasonable cost for improving the overall land count and color balance. Adding more basics also means Verge lands are active more often, and in some cases, playing a Forest can actually end up enabling more black sources overall.

I also swapped one Restless Cottage for a Fabled Passage. Both have their upsides, but I didn't want to play too many early taplands. Passage feels better now with the higher land count since you can afford to hold it until turn four more often and it helps thin the deck a bit once your mana is set up.

Airship Count

Another change was going from three Phoenix Fleet Airships to two. Airship is still the core gameplan of the deck, but I've found that extra copies tend to be redundant. Most decks have almost no ways to interact with it, so drawing multiples rarely adds value. I'd rather have a flexible top-end slot that can matter in games where Airship is too slow or doesn't line up well.

The first card I tested in that slot was Elegy Acolyte. A lifelink body for Obsessive Pursuit that also leaves behind a 2/2 when tutored with Beseech seemed promising. It played fine, but after looking through green creatures, I realized I had completely forgotten about Bristlebud Farmer.

Bristlebud Farmer has felt really nice overall. The ETB makes two Food tokens, which gives immediate sacrifice fodder and a way to buffer your life total. The attack trigger is a major pull because of how it synergizes with Pursuit. You can stack the triggers so that you sacrifice the food first which makes getting to 3 sacrifices much easier. Add on the fact that it starts as a 5/5, this can easily take over in creature based matchups with lifelink or be a really aggressive threat to end games quickly.

Removal

I decided to play Bitter Triumph over Nowhere to Run because it answers a wider range of threats. I was occasionally struggling with cards like Kaito, Bane of Nightmares or Elspeth, Storm Slayer, and Triumph provides a clean answer to both.

Removal slots are dependent on the metagame, and this is something I plan to refine after Worlds once things settle.

Other Cards

Pawpatch Recruit was an attempt to shore up the deck's occasional lack of board presence and vulnerability to heavy removal. It performed fine overall, but I often found myself cutting it in favour of hand disruption. It also made the deck weaker to sweepers. Still, it's a card worth keeping in mind for the future.

I also cycled between a few 2-drops as a one-of: Tough Cookie, Umbral Collar Zealot, and Soul Stone. The creatures gave had moments where they shined, but overall they felt pretty weak. Soul Stone also didn't perform particularly well as it was often hard to fit into the curve and I would rather just have more lands.

I decided to play Defend the Rider instead as a protection spell that can protect Airships or creatures, or create a creature to crew an Airship. This seemed like a solid one-of, even if it isn't a card I would tutor for with Beseech.

Other Interesting Cards to Test

Faunsbane Troll

Saw this in the Golgari Ouroboroid deck at Worlds. It wasn't on my radar before but seems worth a look.

Brave the Wilds

The bargain mode is interesting since it can create a land creature for Badgermole Cub while also triggering sacrifice effects. The baseline of fetching a land is fine, but the versatility makes it appealing to try.

Next Steps

I definitely need to start tracking my match results so I can back up my thoughts with actual data. Once Worlds wraps up, the meta should start to stabilize, which feels like the perfect time to gather more concrete information on the deck's matchup spread.

I also want to tighten up my sideboarding. Right now it still feels pretty vibe-based, and I'd like to map out some specific plans to eventually put together a proper sideboard guide. I always find writing those tricky, even after a ton of games, but having the structure in place should make the process a lot easier.

If you have any questions or want to discuss the deck, feel free to join the Discord.