Golgari Guildmage
Creature — Elf Shaman
, Sacrifice a creature: Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- BG
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Salvat 2005
- Price
- —
- EDHREC rank
- #18290
Golgari Guildmage offers two activated abilities on a two-mana body — regenerate a creature or put a -1/-1 counter on a target — but paying four or five mana per activation to do either makes it painfully slow for competitive tables. It's a build-around in very specific counter-synergy shells and a cut everywhere else.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Golgari Guildmage is a niche inclusion that earns its slot only in dedicated -1/-1 counter decks — think Hapatra or Yawgmoth — where the activations chain into larger engines. In Legacy and Vintage it's essentially invisible; the formats move too fast for a four-to-five mana repeatable activation to matter, and neither color combination lacks for better two-drops. Modern is similarly hostile territory. Golgari Guildmage is a Commander card through and through, and even there it's conditional.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
unknown tier
Pricing data isn't available at time of writing, but Golgari Guildmage is a bulk rare in virtually every market — expect to pay well under a dollar for a copy. It's worth picking up if you're building the right Commander deck, but don't treat scarcity as a reason to rush.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.