Unusual Tribes 13: Golems

Intro

This week’s Unusual Tribes column will analyse Golems, a creature type that has always been dear to my heart. 11 years ago now, I (as a child) cracked open a Magic 2010 booster pack and saw, what I believed at the time, to be the most powerful Magic: The Gathering card I had ever laid eyes upon. Darksteel Colossus . Shovelling together as many ramp spells as I could, I quickly headed off to Friday Night Magic, one of the first I had ever attended, where I pitted my ‘Mono-Green Colossus’ deck against anyone who would oppose me. I was promptly destroyed by some folks in their twenties playing competently crafted decks. Nevertheless, that copy of Darksteel Colossus still sits proudly in my binder, even if the deck I initially built around it has been long since disassembled.

Magic: The Gathering is currently home to 114 Golems, with a handful of extra cards that generate Golem tokens such as Tuktuk the Explorer, Golem Foundry and Masterful Replication. Golems are always artifact creatures, and are typically cast for colourless mana with the exception of Glassdust Hulk and Salvage Titan the first of which is cast using white and blue mana, and the latter of which is cast using  black.

Culturally, Golems are drawn from Hebrew folk lore. They were protective beings sculpted from clay or mud.

Golem Gameplay

The fact that all Golems are artifact creatures is both a blessing and a curse. Golems benefit from cards which synergise with artifacts such as Chief of the Foundry, Master of Etherium and Tempered Steel which make them more powerful and Foundry Inspector and Etherium Sculptor which make them cheaper. Tolarian Academy synergises well with Golem decks if, for some reason, you are playing a niche tribal deck in a format where one of the game’s most powerful cards is legal.

Unfortunatley, Golems being artifacts means that they are vulnerable to both creature and artifact removal spells. Cards like Shatterstorm and By Force are a massive threat to you, although such cards are typically too narrow in their use to be run in the main deck and need to be brought in from the side board.  Cards like Reclamation Sage and Thrashing Brontodon are perhaps more of a concern to you.  Though they target less of your Golems at once than a card like Shatterstorm they are versatile enough that they may appear in a deck’s main body of cards, especially in Commander where Reclamation Sage is a staple due to being a useful card which is included in many preconstructed decks.

Golems themselves also provide a variety of effects which synergise with other artifacts, and thus with other Golems. Mycosynth Golem possesses the infamous ‘Affinity for artifacts’ ability and grants it to every artifact creature in your deck when it is in play. Golem Artisan can also be used to buff artifact creatures, including itself, granting them both statistical bonuses and new abilities. Lodestone Golem makes non-artifact spells cost 1 more, a penalty which won’t effect you if you are running an artifact heavy deck, but will frustrate your opponent (or opponents) especially if you have multiple Lodestone Golems out at the same time.

One of the strengths of Golem tribal decks is that that they are quite good at generating mana of many different colours.  Solemn Simulacrum is one of the most popular ways of fetching basic lands outside of green  and happens to be a Golem. The Attendant Cycle from Invasion are five golems who can be sacrificed to give you three mana spread across three colours, whilst Composite Golem from Darksteel can be sacrificed to provide one mana from each of the five colours. The lands ramped out by Solemn Simulacrum or the mana generated through sacrificing Composite Golem can then be used to activate the effects of other Golems. Most notably, by paying one mana of each colour, Etched Monstrosity gains +5/+5 and lets you draw 3 cards..

Precursor Golem is a high risk, high reward Golem tribal card to consider.  The card certainly offers a powerful effect upfront, bringing out three 3/3 Golems for only 5 mana. Precursor Golem  then has an effect which is largely a downside. Whenever an instant or sorcery targets only a single Golem you control, it instead targets every Golem you control. Although this does make combat tricks you cast, like Giant Growth, much stronger, as they power up your entire field, this positive is outweighed by the effects negative implications. Whilst Precursor Golem is in play a single removal spell targeted at one of your Golems will kill them all. Ideally you want to get Precursor Golem killed in combat as quickly as possible, so that you don't have its effect hanging over your head.

Another card to consider when building a Golem tribal deck is Brass Herald. Brass Herald is a Golem who can act as the lord for a specified creature type as it enters play. Although Brass Herald is slightly impractical, and a little underpowered by Modern standards (just compare the Herald to Morophon, the Boundless) it’s still a novel and fun card.  When played in a Golem deck,  Brass Herald actually buffs itself which is pretty neat, if not overly useful. 

The Splicers

Golems are supported by a series of cards known as Splicers. These Splicers were printed in  New Phyrexia in 2011. They aren’t really a cycle (see this video for a definition of cycles and a discussion of their purpose) as they are of varying rarities and aren’t spread across all 5 colours. Splicers exist only in White, Blue and Green. Each of them generates a 3/3 Golem token and grants Golems you control an ability. Blade Splicer grants your Golems First Strike, Sensor Splicer gives them Vigilance, Wing Splicer grants them Flying and Vital Splicer allows them to Regenerate. Master Splicer, rather than granting any abilities, acts as a lord and grants your Golems +1/+1 whilst Maul Splicer generates two 3/3 Golem tokens, along with granting your Golems Trample.

These cards are reasonably powerful. If you’re drafting New Phyrexia they are acceptable picks even if you control no other Golems or means of generating them. Blade Splicer, for instance, generates 4/4 worth of stats spread out over two bodies for only 3 mana. This would be reasonably powerful now and was even more powerful in the typically lower powered Limited environments of 2011. Naturally, however, Golem tribal deck are where these Splicers really shine. In these decks, they are able to buff a wide selection of your creatures, rather than merely a handful of tokens, and work synergistically with one another. Each one of them provides more and more Golems, as well as more and more buffs for those Golems.

Thematically the Splicers represent Phyrexia’s ultimate victory over Mirrodin. They demonstrate a group of human artificers, who have accepted Phyrexia’s ideology of improvement through integration with metal and have melded themselves with machinery.

The spell Splicer’s Skill, in Modern Horizons, acts as an homage to the Splicers. It generates a 3/3 Golem and, borrowing a mechanic from Kamigawa block, can be spliced onto other spells by paying a small cost. This is a piece of game design which is simultaneously singularly clever, and a slightly cheesy joke.

Karn Cards

Easily the most famous Golem in Magic: The Gathering is Karn. Originally crafted from silver by Urza, Karn is one of the longest running characters in Magic: The Gathering’s story. Karn served aboard the Weatherlight, constructed the plane of Argentum, which later became Mirrodin, and now seeks to destroy the Phyrexians who corrupted his creation.

Karn was first printed as Karn, Silver Golem in Urza’s Saga, back in 1998. This is a very evocative card, as it demonstrates Karn’s nature as a gentle giant very well. Karn is a 4/4 for for five mana, however, he gains -4/+4 whenever he blocks or becomes blocked. This demonstrates Karn refusing to use his power to harm opponents and instead focusing on non-violence and self-defence. This version of Karn also allows you to transform a non-creature artifact you control into an artifact creature with power and toughness equal to its converted mana cost.

Karn would not see print again until 2011, 13 years later. He came back in the form of Karn Liberated. Obtaining the spark of the Planeswalker Venser, Karn became capable of travelling across the multiverse. This printing of Karn is an integral component of so called ‘Tron decks’ which use the 3 ‘Tron Lands’ (Urza’s Power Plant, Urza’s Mine and Urza’s Tower) to race out powerful colourless threats quickly.  Karn Liberated acts as a universal removal spell, allowing you to exile any kind of permanent from play, or exile a card from your opponent’s hand. Karn Liberated’s Ultimate ability restarts the game, but allows Karn’s controller to immediately play all the cards exiled using his abilities. This is one of many Planeswalker ultimates that effectively says ‘win the game’.

Taking another long absence, Karn saw print again in 2018’s Dominaria. Karn, Scion of Urza , though not quite as powerful as Karn Liberated, is still an effective and powerful card due to it’s colourless nature letting it easily slot into many decks. This version of Karn’s +1 and -1 Loyalty abilities both essentially allow you to draw cards and it’s ‘ultimate’ costs a mere two loyalty points and enables you to create a Construct artifact creature token with power and toughness equal to the number of artifact creatures you control. This means that Karn, Scion of Urza slots neatly into a Golem tribal deck,  as such a deck would be loaded with artifact creatures to pump the constructs strength up.

Finally, the most recent version of Karn to see print, came out in War of the Spark in 2019. Karn, the Great Creator is a Planeswalker built to synergise with artifacts you control, with a passive ability that prevents opponent from activating abilities on their own artifacts. The card’s +1 loyalty ability is the same as Karn, Silver Golem’s ability to turn your artifacts into creatures and its -2 ability allows you to bring artifacts into your hand from the sideboard or exile.

Arbitrary Grades

Flavour: C+

Golems are a staple of the fantasy genre. The Golems of Magic tend to have their mechanical nature emphasised. I feel that this causes them to occupy a somewhat narrow space creatively. Golems in folklore were sculpted from clay, and they are often depicted being composed of all sorts of materials. The need to make Golems Artifact creatures has resulted in Magic: The Gathering featuring almost exclusively metallic or mechanical Golems. As such I feel there is still a bit of untapped space to explore with the Golems of Magic: The Gathering. With that said Phyrexian Golems, like all creatures from the nightmarish plane, are an interesting synthesis of flesh and metal.

In terms of how ‘Golem Identity’ is conveyed, other than the fact that they are all artifacts, there isn’t really a cohesive thread tying them all together. Karn, Silver Golem’s gentle giant nature, as well as the relatively high number of Golems with Defender, could be an homage to the concept of Golems acting as guardians and protectors in folklore.

There is plenty of room to expand what Golems can do in the future. Gingerbrute represents a step in the right direction, as an edible golem crafted from food. Eldraine’s little gingerbread Golem demonstrates that they can be more than just generic artifact creatures.

Viability: B

Golems are a reasonably fun and powerful tribe to build a deck around. Primarily, this is because they are Artifacts. There is a reason why Mirrodin and Kaldesh are remembered as two of the most powerful blocks in the history of the game. The colourless nature of artifacts allows you to run a far more varied mana base, without hamstringing your ability to bring out threats. You can include powerful Black and White removal spells in a Golem deck, whilst also accessing the mana ramp provided by Green or the card draw provided by Blue. Artifacts also enable the powerful Affinity mechanic

Beyond merely being Artifacts, however, there are several reasons why you might want to build a Golem deck. The Splicers are powerful payoffs which reward decks that run a high number of Golems. You’re also provided with a thematic reason to bring all the Karn Planeswalkers together.

Overall then Golem decks are fun to build and are reasonably powerful, at least by the standards of niche tribal decks.

Best and worst cards:

In this category I feel obligated by my child self (and the story I shared above) to nominate Darksteel Colossus as one of the best cards of the tribe. Yes it’s impractical, yes it’s second ability prevents it from being re-animated forcing you to pay it’s prohibitive mana-cost and yes Blightsteel Colossus is significantly more viable, but I feel like Darksteel Colossus has to make it onto my personal list. The card taught me an important lesson about Magic, bigger doesn’t always mean better and there is more to the game than slamming down the largest creature possible. So Darksteel Colossus made me a better player, meaning it’s improved every deck I’ve built since the impractical mono-green one I made featuring it. This earns it a place as the best Golem card in my personal experience.

For a more genuinely viable ‘best Golem’, however, we should turn our attention to Platinum Emperion. Just like Darksteel Colossus Platinum Emperion is a tad on the expensive side, but it more than makes up for its cost due to its powerful effect. Whilst Platinum Emperion is in play you cannot lose, or gain, life. This forces your opponent to remove it if they want to progress the game, unless their deck is built around milling or another alternate win condition.

In the right deck, Mycosynth Golem is also very powerful. Although its cost is significant, it can be reduced greatly through use of Affinity and Mycosynth Golem can then heavily decrease the cost of future artifacts you play. The aforementioned Blightsteel Colossus can also turn a games around very quickly, if it has time to make it into play.  If Blightsteel Colossus gets through unblocked it instantly destroys an opponent through the poison counters it generates.

At the other end of the spectrum, Phyrexian Hulk is definitely one of the worst Golems in the game, costing 6 mana and providing a meagre stat line of 5/4.  This is especially sad as the Hulk has some of the best flavour text in the game, an Onean nursery rhyme that is simultaneously innocent and morbid.

‘It doesn't think. It doesn't feel.

It doesn't laugh or cry.

All it does from dusk till dawn

Is make the soldiers die.’

So although Phyrexian Hulk is definitely aesthetically chilling, it’s artwork and flavour text can’t save it from its place as one of the game’s weakest Golems.

Junk Golem is also pretty bad, costing four mana it enters play as an 0/0 with three +1/+1 counters. Junk Golem must be sacrificed, unless you remove a +1/+1 counter from it during each of your upkeep phases. You can place more +1/+1 counters on Junk Golem at the cost of discarding a card and paying one mana. Even when playing Madness decks, where discarding cards is actively beneficial, there are far better enablers you can use. In any other kind of deck Junk Golem lives up to its name and is absolute trash.