Golgari Airship Overview

Introduction

With the release of the Avatar set, I’ve spent the past week brewing around Phoenix Fleet Airship. The set has been a fantastic addition to Standard, introducing a lot of powerful tools to experiment with. I’ve been captivated by Airship’s design and spent several days trying to make it work across different shells before ultimately finding my way to Golgari.

This write-up is meant to give an overview of the deck’s core game plan rather than be a guide. I've played a ton with this deck the past 2 weeks but I’m still testing different configurations. I do feel the deck has potential to be a player in the meta, with more fine-tuning.

Overview

This is a grindy midrange deck built around Phoenix Fleet Airship as an extremely resilient, inevitable top-end. The primary plan is to land an Airship early and start triggering the sacrifice clause every turn, turning it into a scaling threat most decks can't deal with.

Airship is an extremely versatile card. It can play the aggressive role when ahead, crewing up and pushing damage, but it also shines in grindy games where you're happy to trade on defense. Whenever your opponent spends removal or trades a creature into an Airship, it's card advantage since they lost something while the Airships continue to grow every turn. The tricky part is knowing when to trade and when to sit back — sometimes pushing damage matters, but letting your Airship count grow exponentially is also a line, especially when your opponent can't remove them efficiently.

The deck can also just play a fair game plan using Obsessive Pursuit as an engine and Sentinel of the Nameless City as the primary threat. Growing your creatures and giving them lifelink is very strong in creature based matchups.

Card Breakdown

I’ve been testing a number of configurations, so some of the cards discussed here may not align perfectly with the current decklist in the flex slots.

Ramp Creatures

• 3 x Llanowar Elves

• 4 x Gene Pollinator

• 4 x Badgermole Cub

The ramp in this deck serves 2 purposes. The first is getting down Airship and having extra mana to sacrifice artifact tokens. The second is to have bodies to crew the Airships.

Airship having a crew cost of 1 makes these creatures really important for utilizing them in combat.

Badgermole Cub is an absurdly strong card. With mana dorks it produces huge bursts of mana, and it is one of the biggest reasons to run the ramp package in the first place. It effectively doubles your mana, which can let the deck explode out the gates.

Other Creatures

• 4 x Sentinel of the Nameless City

The enter and attack triggers that create map tokens are very synergistic with the deck, since they are easy to sacrifice. Sentinel having vigilance also makes it strong on both offense and defense, so it's an ideal body to stack counters on.

• 2 x Pawpatch Recruit

Pawpatch is primarily a card that punishes spot removal, which is good in matchups like dimir or izzet. Specifically for this deck, Airships need bodies to be effective so it's really nice to have the option to offspring for more bodies. The token is also beseech fodder.

Alternatives:

• Umbral Collar Zealot

A free sacrifice outlet makes it much easier to enable Phoenix Fleet Airship and reach three sacrifices in a turn for the lifelink trigger on Obsessive Pursuit. It also provides a layer of protection against sweepers by letting you reduce your Airship count below eight, so you can safely commit to the “eight Airships” threshold and force your opponent to have an answer. The surveil helps smooth draws and find key pieces when needed. That said, its body is quite fragile, and in some games it can end up being low impact.

• Tough Cookie

At baseline, it creates a Food token for sacrifice fodder, but the activated ability also plays an important role in heavy removal matchups, providing a mana sink that can animate Airships or other tokens without needing to crew them.

• Deep Cavern Bat

Provides disruption and gives a nice body to stack pursuit counters and offset the lifeloss.

Card Advantage

• 4 x Obsessive Pursuit

I have been extremely impressed with this card. It provides real card advantage, especially when you ramp and have the extra mana to use it effectively. It always gives you a token to sacrifice, which is very important for enabling Airship. The counters and lifelink are also strong for the beatdown plan, especially in creature matchups where you want to outsize blockers. Sentinel needs to attack to trigger, so making it harder to block is a big deal. The lifelink helps stabilize the board, and against aggro it is often game winning to set up one large lifelink attack.

• 1 x Fanatical Offering

Sometimes the deck feels like it needs a little bit more card advantage, which is where a card like fanatical offering is interesting. Provides a sac trigger, replaces the token and draws 2.

Removal

Black removal isn't as good as it was, but the utility it can provide in being bargain fodder is really nice. Either way, it should be tuned to reflect the threats in the meta.

• 4 x Tragic Trajectory

This deck's primary game plan involves making and sacrificing permanents which triggers void easily. It's also really cheap.

• 2 x The Witch's Vanity

This card is played mostly for it's synergy with the deck. It creates 2 tokens and self sacrifices on curve for an Airship on turn 4. Also in a decent spot in the current meta in terms of targets.

• 2 x Nowhere to Run

Instant speed removal in the deck that's also fodder for Beseech.

Top-End

• 3 x Phoenix Fleet Airship

Why only three copies of the namesake card?

Airship is at its best when cast off Beseech The Mirror, since that immediately satisfies the sacrifice condition and starts the replication right away. Casting Airship on turn four with no way to trigger it is far less impactful.

Redundant copies also provide minimal benefit. Because the replication scales exponentially, additional Airships don't meaningfully accelerate reaching the eight-Airship threshold — eight is a power of two, so the growth pattern (1 → 2 → 4 → 8) means the deck doesn't gain much from drawing extras. The focus is on reliably triggering replication, not playing multiple copies.

• 4 x Beseech The Mirror

As mentioned above, Beseech The Mirror is the perfect card to pair with Airship. It's also able to tutor for post-sideboard hate pieces and boardwipes.

Other Options: Ouroboroid, Elegy Acolyte

Mana Base

The mana is not ideal because Golgari does not have access to a shockland and is a point of pain. This deck also wants to avoid playing too many taplands, since they mess with the curve, especially if you draw multiples. The mana base doesn't really have space for utilty even though they would be really nice, since beseech has such an intensive cost.

• 1 x Forest
• 5 x Swamp

The deck needs a high black count to reliably cast Beseech The Mirror. Beseech is very color intensive, so having enough black sources is essential. Wastewood Verge being green first helps a lot here since it plays like a Forest in the early game, which makes it easy to develop your mana dorks, while still giving you black later so you can cast Beseech on time.

• 4 x Blooming Marsh
• 4 x Wastewood Verge
• 4 x Multiversal Passage

The substitute shockland, super important to help make verges tap for black.

• 3 x Restless Cottage

Restless Cottage is a very synergistic manland in this deck since it's able to generate sac fodder and act as graveyard hate. Manlands are also just really good with Badgermole Cub since they animate it for free.

• 2 x Starting Town

Also another multicolor card, playing limited copies because it enters tapped on turn 4, which can be another bottleneck especially if your creatures are removed.

• 1 x Fabled Passage

Enters tapped early which isn't ideal for curving out but it has upsides that are worth it. Counts as a sacrifice trigger for Airship, enables playing Airship and immediately triggering it without extra mana. Also helps get the third sacrifice for pursuit.

Sideboard Cards

• 4 x Duress

Duress is very important in control matchups. It lets you snipe the opponent's answers and counterspells before they matter. Removing their key interaction makes your gameplan much harder to stop.

• 2 x Intimidation Tactics

Intimidation Tactics is very strong at removing creatures with a strong effect from the opponent's hand before they can have an impact through an etb or combo. This deck is low on instant speed removal so a few copies is nice to deal with payoffs in any creature matchup.

• 2 x Day of Black Sun

There is no better board wipe in black for this deck. I would really love a 4 mv sweeper to tutor off of beseech, in black but the only option is Terror Tide which this deck can't support. Day of Black Sun atleast destroys tokens when cast this way.

Aside from that it's really effective against the green aggro decks, most of their threats have low cmc and it kills Tyvar, The Pummeler.

• 1 x Day of Judgment

Black currently lacks a strong four-mana sweeper in Standard, so the deck splashes white for Day of Judgment. Having access to this effect through Beseech the Mirror provides a reliable way to reset the board. In creature matchups especially, value engines like Obsessive Pursuit and the Airship plan gain a huge advantage when the board is wiped on favorable terms.

You do not want to draw or see it in your opening hand, as it’s extremely difficult to cast. However, it is technically castable with help from cards like Gene Pollinator, Starting Towns, and Multiversal Passage.

• 2 x Heritage Reclamation

Hits enchantments and artifacts while also offering some secondary graveyard disruption. Its flexibility makes it useful across multiple matchups.

• 2 x Torpor Orb

This card lines up well against several decks in the format. Allies and Airbending Combo rely heavily on ETBs and are often completely shut down when it’s in play. It does incidentally affect a few ETB effects in this deck, such as Badgermole Cub and Sentinel, but the impact is minimal compared to how much it disrupts opposing strategies.

• 1 x Soul-Guide Lantern, Ghost Vacuum

Graveyard hate. Only consideration to make is tutoring for lantern can be lifesaving in matchups like Superior Spiderman reanimator.

General Strategy

Curve

Badgermole Cub is what pushes the deck toward playing many two mana cards, because it allows you to cast an additional spell on turn 2.

Elf decks usually want to curve into a three mana play, but Badgermole Cub enables an entirely new pattern. The ideal start becomes mana dork into Cub with another two mana spell on turn 2. Gene Pollinator supports this line as well and gives the deck redundancy.

An ideal curve looks like this: T1: Llanowar Elves or Gene Pollinator T2: Badgermole Cub and Obsessive Pursuit T3: Untap with 6 mana Beseech The Mirror for Airship + 2 drop/Crack a Clue.

Airship Combat

Airships are very strong on both offense and defense. On defense you will almost always be able to block, because the Airships can crew each other in response to removal. This makes it extremely difficult for the opponent to push through the final points of damage once the Airships start multiplying.

Eight Copy Threshold

8 Airships in non-control matchups is usually game winning. Even if the opponent has removal on their turn, it doesn't leave you defenseless since Airships can still crew each other in response.

On offense it is important not to attack with every Airship once you reach the threshold if you think the opponent has removal. If the opponent removes one during combat, the rest will stop being creatures and you can lose the entire attack. Leaving a few creatures or Airships untapped gives you the ability to crew in response to removal and protects your combat step.

Playing Against Sweepers

One of my initial concerns against control was that once you reach the threshold, your Airships become vulnerable to sweepers that can wipe out everything you have built. The main way to navigate this is through play patterns. You want to force the control player to spend spot removal on Airships, which still works out in your favor because they are trading real resources into something that replaces itself.

Another important trick is to avoid sacrificing on your own turn if you suspect they are holding a sweeper. By staying below the threshold, you keep your Airships safe while still presenting a threat, since they will take over the game as long as you have creatures to crew. Umbral Collar Zealot also functions as sweeper protection, because you can sacrifice Airships at any time to drop back under the threshold.

The other major concern is Ultima. It can be devastating in the wrong spot, but most lists only play a single copy, and many prefer Day of Judgment or skip Ultima entirely in the current meta. The best way to fight sweepers is to maintain steady pressure so the opponent is forced to use them early and for less value. After sideboarding, Duress helps by sniping a sweeper from the opponent's hand.

Sacrificing Permanents

Airship requires a sacrifice every turn to trigger. Obsessive Pursuit is the easiest way to do this because it gives you a token every turn. When you do not have Pursuit, it becomes important to pace your sacrifices and plan ahead for how you will trigger Airship on the next turn. Map tokens require creatures to use, so they can be unreliable if your creatures get removed. If you expect to lose your board, it is often better to use Maps earlier rather than risk having no way to sacrifice them. Sometimes you should also hold Fabled Passage so you can use it on the turn you need the trigger.

Obsessive Pursuit also cares about how many permanents you sacrifice in a single turn. It grants lifelink if you sacrifice three or more, which is extremely powerful. Because of this, you should think about how many permanents you want to sacrifice each turn and sometimes save something for the next turn to reach the threshold.

Beseech The Mirror lets you tutor Beseech multiple times while bargaining each copy, which can stack up to 4 sacrifices.

Weaknesses

The deck has a few cards that can really put a stop to it. Clarion Conqueror can completely shut down the deck, so it’s important to have removal for it. Ultima, as mentioned above, can also destroy all Airships and prevent lands animated by Badgermole Cub from coming back. This can make it difficult to rebuild, especially when you are missing land drops.

The deck also has a pretty bad matchup into any combo game 1 since there isn't any hand hate in the main deck and the aggro plan isn't fast enough typically.

Mulligan Guide

It’s important to keep an opening hand that actually does something. Hands with only mana dorks can lead to games where the deck stalls out and accomplishes very little. One-land hands are generally risky and should only be kept if the rest of the cards form a clear game plan with multiple mana dorks. Avoid keeping hands that lack early plays.

Conclusion

Building this deck presents an interesting challenge. It needs to find the right balance between midrange value and consistent ways to enable Beseech the Mirror. Having Beseech stranded in hand without a reliable bargain source has cost me several games, especially in versions that leaned more heavily toward the midrange side, such as builds with Deep Cavern Bat.

The deck has shown real promise so far. Phoenix Fleet Airship has been an excellent plan in Izzet and Dimir bounce or Kaito matchups, providing a resilient threat that punishes heavy removal. I’ve maintained a solid win rate in Mythic, reaching as high as #20 late in the season.

If you’re interested in a midrange strategy with flexible game plans, strong engines, and one of the most unique inevitability setups Standard has seen in a while, Golgari Airship is absolutely worth exploring.