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Savra, Queen of the Golgari

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Savra, Queen of the Golgari

At a glance

  • Commander: Savra, Queen of the Golgari
  • Colors: Golgari
  • Archetype: Golgari aristocrats edict control
  • Power tier: mid

Cards

Commander

Savra, Queen of the Golgari — , Legendary Creature — Elf Shaman (2/2)

Whenever you sacrifice a black creature, you may pay 2 life. If you do, each other player sacrifices a creature of their choice. Whenever you sacrifice a green creature, you may gain 2 life.

The printed text matches the scout’s paraphrase. Two important nuances drive the build:

  1. The two triggers are independent and check color, not type. A creature that is both black and green (a Golgari gold creature, or a token like the black-and-green Pest/Insect) fires both triggers off a single sacrifice — an edict and 2 life. That makes “BG fodder” strictly better than mono-color fodder, so I prioritized it where the commons pool allows.
  2. “each other player sacrifices” — Savra’s edict never hits me. With one free sac outlet and a token to feed it each turn, she becomes a one-sided board-control engine: every turn the rest of the pod loses a creature of their choice while I lose a 1/1 token.

commander_oracle_ok = true.

Gameplan

Mid-power Golgari grind. The deck is a repeatable edict machine with an aristocrat drain backstop. I don’t win by attacking — I win by inevitability: forced sacrifices strip the pod’s board faster than they can rebuild, while death-drain payoffs whittle their life totals to zero.

Core loop: free sac outlet + token generator + Savra. Sacrifice a black/BG token → opponents each lose a creature, I gain 2 life → repeat next turn. Layer in:

  • Aristocrat drain (Tattered Mummy, Blistergrub, Etched Familiar, Falkenrath Noble, Vengeful Dead) so every sacrifice also drains life — this is the actual win condition.
  • Recurring fodder (undying creatures, spore-counter Thallids, death-token makers) so I never run out of things to feed Savra.
  • A recursion package (Grim Harvest, Gravedigger, Dread Return, Cemetery Recruitment) that loops my best fodder/payoffs back, giving true grind inevitability.

Win condition

Aristocrat drain inevitability. Repeated Savra edicts dismantle opposing boards while Falkenrath Noble / Vengeful Dead / Tattered Mummy / Blistergrub / Etched Familiar drain the table every time a creature dies. Grim Harvest + sac outlets form a hard loop (recur a drain body, sac it, repeat) that closes the game even from behind. No combat needed.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands — 36. Command Tower, Golgari Guildgate, Jungle Hollow, Haunted Mire, Woodland Chasm, Foul Orchard, Witherbloom Campus, Subterranean Cavern, Strangled Cemetery, Titan’s Grave, Festering Gulch, Bojuka Bog, Barren Moor, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, 11 Swamp, 10 Forest.
  • Ramp — 9. Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves, Elves of Deep Shadow, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Yavimaya Elder, Ashnod’s Altar, plus the two fetch-lands (Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse) thin/fix. Sakura-Tribe Elder and Yavimaya Elder double as Savra fodder.
  • Card advantage — 10. Phyrexian Rager, Elvish Visionary, Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Village Rites, Deadly Dispute, Corpse Churn, Mire Triton, Yavimaya Elder (draws on sac), Grim Harvest (recurring card stream). Recursion (Cemetery Recruitment, Gravedigger, Dread Return) adds further grind advantage.
  • Spot removal / interaction — 11 (edicts + targeted). Diabolic Edict, Cruel Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Devour Flesh, Warren Weirding, Vraska’s Fall, Disfigure, Grasp of Darkness, Moment of Craving, Bake into a Pie, plus the body-edicts Fleshbag Marauder / Demon’s Disciple / Slum Reaper / Abyssal Gatekeeper / Tithing Blade as extra interaction.
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe — 2. Innocent Blood (symmetric edict — devastating when I have a spare token and they have one fat threat) and Demon’s Disciple / Slum Reaper (each-player edicts). Black can’t true-wrath at common, so the inevitability plan (repeatable Savra edicts + drain) is the compensation, exactly as a control deck should.
  • Sac outlets — 6 (free where possible). Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer, Bloodthrone Vampire, Nantuko Husk (all free), Lampad of Death’s Vigil and Gnawing Zombie (drain-on-sac), plus Ashnod’s Altar.
  • Fodder / payoffs — the rest. Token makers (Saproling Migration, Sprout Swarm, Hunt for Specimens, Tukatongue Thallid, Blisterpod, Carrier Thrall, Doomed Dissenter, Shambling Ghast, Infestation Sage), recurring fodder (Young Wolf, Butcher Ghoul, Putrid Goblin undying; Thallid + Deathspore Thallid spore engines), and drain payoffs listed above.

Key synergy lines

  • Single BG sac = double trigger. Hunt for Specimens / Send-style Pest tokens, Infestation Sage’s BG Insect, and Scarblade’s BG Elf are black-and-green: sac one to Carrion Feeder and Savra fires the edict and the lifegain off one body.
  • Undying + Savra = repeatable edict. Young Wolf / Butcher Ghoul / Putrid Goblin die, come back, and can be sacrificed again next turn — a renewable edict engine that also triggers every “creature dies” drain twice (death + the eventual second death).
  • Grim Harvest loop. Return a death-drain creature (Tattered Mummy, Blistergrub), recast it, sac it for an edict + drain; Grim Harvest’s Recover buys itself back whenever a creature hits the yard. Steady inevitability.
  • Doomed Dissenter / Carrier Thrall / Blisterpod / Shambling Ghast all replace themselves with a token when sacrificed — feed Savra, get fodder back, repeat.
  • Falkenrath Noble + any sac outlet turns each forced sacrifice (mine or theirs, via my edicts) into table-wide drain. With Vengeful Dead and the Mummies online, edicts double as Lava Spikes for the whole pod.

Pilot notes

  • Lead on a dork or fetch into Savra on turn 4. Don’t jam Savra into open removal if you can’t immediately protect/rebuy her — the deck functions without her, she just accelerates it.
  • Hold edicts for value: with Savra out, prioritize your free outlets + tokens for the one-sided edict; save hard-cast edicts (Diabolic, Geth’s) for spot-killing hexproof/protected threats.
  • Pay the 2 life freely early — you have heavy lifegain (Savra’s green trigger, Jungle Hollow, Gutless-style gain, Mire Triton) and the life total is a resource here.
  • Sequence sacrifices to maximize “dies” triggers: get Falkenrath Noble / Vengeful Dead / a Mummy down before you start chaining sacs.
  • Mire Triton, Corpse Churn, and Yavimaya Elder fill the yard to fuel Dread Return (flashback = sac three creatures, which is itself three Savra triggers) and Grim Harvest.

Weaknesses

  • Low to the ground / no big threats — a deck that goes wide faster than you can edict (1-for-1 sacrifices) can outpace you; lean on Innocent Blood, Demon’s Disciple, and drain reach there.
  • Graveyard hate hurts the recursion engine; the deck still functions as straight edict-control without it, just with less inevitability.
  • No true board wipe at common — color-locked. The plan is grind, not reset; against a turbo-go-wide deck you may need to race with drain.
  • Enchantment/artifact-based engines mostly dodge your creature edicts (Quagmire/Pick Your Poison provide minor coverage).

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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