Commander Deck Guide: $60 Golbez Artifact Surveil Is Amazing!

Final Fantasy hype is in full swing so it only makes sense that this month’s budget commander deck features one of my favorite new legendaries from the set: Golbez, Crystal Collector!

Golbez is a hyper-efficient surveil and recursion engine in an Artifact deck: it’s basically what you get if you powercrept Contraband Kingpin and Oversold Cemetery, then smushed the two together, without raising the mana cost!

The gameplan is simple: we’re an Artifact deck, looking to flood the board with artifacts as efficiently as possible to trigger Golbez’s surveil. Then we utilize the graveyard various ways, the most obvious being Golbez’s recursion and finisher ability.

The most efficient way to flood the board with artifacts is to lean into a Tokens subtheme: cards like Forensic Gadgeteer, Sai, Master Thopterist, Mirrodin Besieged, and Efficient Construction all make an artifact whenever we cast an artifact, simple! The most unique token maker in the deck though is Unshakable Tail, which takes specific advantage of Golbez’s surveil ability for glorious results.

Speaking of surveil: since Golbez is so good at it and he’s only a 2-drop so he’ll consistently be on the battlefield, I added a couple ways to take advantage of surveil specifically: we mentioned the Tail but there’s also Mirko, Obsessive Theorist which works great as a growing threat that reanimates, Matoya, Archon Elder turns all that surveil into draw, and Eye of Duskmantle lets us cast whatever we surveil with life instead of mana.

We also have a strong Graveyard subtheme thanks to all the self-milling we’re doing: The Everflowing Well and Search for Azcanta quickly flip into ramp, Case of the Shifting Visage is easily solved and doubles the value of our creatures, and Mirrodin Besieged doubles as a backup win condition if played late (44 artifacts in the deck means it’s pretty easy to trigger it). Even more fun is all the cards that can be cast or activated directly from the yard, like unearth cards Terror Ballista, flashback Deep Analysis, and non-keywarded abilities like The Falcon, Airship Restored for reanimation. A lot of these also trigger Imotekh the Stormlord, which means more tokens, which means more surveil, it keeps going!

We have various win conditions, the most straightforward is with Golbez himself reanimating big power stuff like Metalwork Colossus or Filigree Attendant for massive lifeloss. There’s also drain effects that play well with out Token strategy like Pactdoll Terror, and there’s always punching people in the face with giant token armies too!

Here’s the $60 list. Not fully tuned yet but should be a great starting point for ol’ Golbez: