Where does Golgari go from here in standard?

[bradcoish23]

Mike Sigrist had an article on channelfireball today stating that he felt that the Golgari deck is being planned for to the point that the deck is "buried alive". The current deck, as it is, is not poised to do well in the meta, however he feels it is still a good deck.

It is undeniable that the deck is packed with powerful cards, I guess my question is where does the deck go from here? What changes do you feel need to be made to the deck? At the start of the format I thought there was a couple of different ways the deck could go. I'm wondering if the deck needs to lose the explore package in favor of a more aristocrats style package. I'm not saying go all in aristocrats, but Mike mentioned in the article, people playing Midnight Reaper did better as of late at major tournaments. I guess one problem with this strategy is that the format has gone towards exile removal which makes not just Midnight Reaper but also Find and Golgari Findbroker weaker options.

I've considered that maybe abzan is the proper direction to take, opening you up to: History of Benalia, Knight of Autumn, Settle the Wreckage, Shalai, maybe Lyra Dawnbringer. Going this route might move you into black being a splash color, and thus making you have to consider cutting your 4cmc cards due to casting issues. I'm not sure if that is the correct plan either.

The Golgari deck is also weak to flying and there is enough of that in the format right now. Myself, I have been on a boros flyers plan since the start of the format and have found it does very well. Since the popularization of the drake deck I have gone more towards an exile removal package and it has strengthened my matchup against golgari even more. I just wonder if the meta just makes Golgari unplayable since it feels that most of the other top decks in the format do well against it.

As Sigrist says in the article, it feels like the golgari deck has to plan for playing against 3 or 4 very different matchups while also planning heavily for the mirror, therefore making it weak against everything. Maybe a change they need to make is to stop game planning as much for the mirror. It seems that last set of main board changes to the deck all revolved around beating the mirror, after a few weeks in a row of poor showings at top end events there may not be as many mirror matches. I have noticed myself (on MTGO) that there is a strong decrease in the amount of Golgari pairings I have had lately, it seems Izzet is everywhere on there right now.

What are your thoughts on the direction of the deck?