Discussion Forum

The general rule for your mana base is start with 40 lands, then remove one land for each two ramp, artifact mana in the deck. Like if you have a sol ring, golgari signet, keyrune and cluestone along with four ramp spells like Kodama's Reach or Cultivate, you'd run 36 lands.

This works well for most decks but can be adjusted a fair bit depending on how high your mana curve is or how many colors your deck runs. As an example, I've seen a mono green elf deck be extremely successful with 23 lands or a five color mana base may require 40 lands plus a fair amount of fixing.

As far as strategy goes, Jarad is a fan of dredge cards, reanimation and big fatties like Lord of Extinction although that two card combo is fairly uninspiring. I would personally avoid including that card simply because it's just a two card combo that basically wins immediately with little people can do to stop it. It's fun once or twice and then it just gets old to win in that way.

Varolz on the other hand is a fan of big efficient creatures that kill themselves like Phyrexian Dreadnaught and Death's Shadow. He's also going to like things that pull creatures out of your deck like Buried Alive or Survival of the Fittest to gain quick access to specific scavenge targets. He is potentially very degenerate with turn 3/4 kills possible but your first deck probably won't be nearly as threatening. Exiling your yard is generally bad in EDH so this one might be more of an advanced strategy and you might want more experience before going with him as a general.

I would personally suggest Savra as a nice golgari general to start with that supports a graveyard/control strategy without being too obnoxious.

I don't disagree with Epsilon but I usually stick to 40 land regardless of how many accelerators I run. In green decks I run up to 15 cards that ramp my mana base (Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Solemn Simulacrum, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Explosive Vegetation, Far Wanderings, Rampant Growth, Farseek, Seedguide Ash, Skyshroud Claim...)

I do this because I don't want to miss any early land drops (up to turn 6 I don't want to miss any land drops) and I always want to accelerate the first few turns so that I can overwhelm my opponent with big abusive cards. I compensate for having so much land and accelerators by always running a lot of cards that draw cards so that I don't run out of gas.

In black and green you have tons of good cards that draw cards (like greater good, decree of pain, Ancient Craving, Harmonize, Garruk, Primal Hunter and so many others) and you've got the best tutors in the game. BG is probably the easiest combination to start with.

Do try to find a nice balance in your deck with multiple win conditions and don't throw everything on trying to get stuff in the yard in order to ressurect it. Graveyard abuse is one of the strongest and most used forms of abuse and people will or at least should play at least a few cards that can empty a graveyard.