At a glance
- Format: Standard Brawl
- Commander: Long Feng, Grand Secretariat
- Colors: Black / Green (BG)
- Archetype: Golgari graveyard/sacrifice
- Power tier: mid-high
- Standard Brawl: ✅ Legal
Strategy
Long Feng turns every death and sacrifice into permanent power — each creature OR land you control that hits your graveyard grows a +1/+1 counter, so even sacking a fetch land or chump fodder snowballs your board. This refined build leans harder into the overlooked earthbend package, which is secretly the best engine these colors have: Dai Li Agents double-earthbends on entry AND drains the table for X life every attack (X = your counter-laden creatures), Badgermole ramps a land into a body and hands every counter-creature trample, and Earth Village Ruffians is BG-fixing fodder that earthbends 2 when it dies — ideal Long Feng food. Beifong’s Bounty Hunters earthbends X = power whenever a nonland creature dies, so the sacrifice loop simultaneously drains, ramps, and grows an evasive army of land-creatures. The aristocrats core stays intact: flood cheap self-replacing fodder (Infestation Sage, Undercity Dire Rat, Mintstrosity, Adorned Crocodile, Infernal Vessel), feed it to outlets (Vampiric Rites, Buzzard-Wasp Colony, Corrupted Conviction, Worthy Cost, Tribute to Hunger), and let the drains (Vengeful Bloodwitch, Susurian Voidborn, Cauldron of Essence, Sneering Shadewriter, Vein Ripper) bleed the table. Card flow comes from High-Society Hunter and Midnight Reaper turning every death into draws; clean removal (Hero’s Downfall, Bitter Triumph, Bake into a Pie) and the Massacre Wurm/Sothera finishers close anything Long Feng can’t out-value.
Upgrade path
Verified clean. Only one crafted card: the approved Overgrown Tomb shock (1 copy). Every other card is owned (own>=1). Rare/mythic cards in the 99 — Sidisi, Cauldron of Essence, Midnight Reaper, Beifong’s Bounty Hunters, High-Society Hunter (rares), Sothera, Massacre Wurm, Vein Ripper (mythics) — are all OWNED, so no rare/mythic spell craft was used. Temple of Malady is an owned rare land. This refinement cut six underperformers (Sporogenic Infection, Fatal Fissure, Cornered by Black Mages, Hungry Ghoul, Pirate Peddlers, Crow of Dark Tidings) for six owned upgrades, all commons/uncommons: Dai Li Agents, Badgermole, Earth Village Ruffians, Hero’s Downfall, Bitter Triumph, Sneering Shadewriter. Net unchanged at 59 + commander.
Cards
Decklist
Paste straight into MTG Arena (or Moxfield/Archidekt):
Commander
1 Long Feng, Grand Secretariat
Deck
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Foggy Bottom Swamp
1 Golgari Guildgate
1 Jungle Hollow
1 Temple of Malady
1 Command Tower
1 Capital City
1 Crossroads Village
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Conduit Pylons
7 Swamp
7 Forest
1 Infestation Sage
1 Vampiric Rites
1 Corrupted Conviction
1 Worthy Cost
1 Vengeful Bloodwitch
1 Witherbloom Charm
1 Bitter Triumph
1 Sidisi, Regent of the Mire
1 Undercity Dire Rat
1 Earth Village Ruffians
1 Badgermole
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Susurian Voidborn
1 Cauldron of Essence
1 Sneering Shadewriter
1 Midnight Reaper
1 Dai Li Agents
1 Tribute to Hunger
1 Infernal Vessel
1 Beifong's Bounty Hunters
1 Bake into a Pie
1 Buzzard-Wasp Colony
1 Sothera, the Supervoid
1 High-Society Hunter
1 Adorned Crocodile
1 Susurian Dirgecraft
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Vein Ripper
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Bloodghast
1 Ouroboroid
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Qarsi Revenant
1 Preacher of the Schism
Card images & data via Scryfall.