Pauper: Mortician Sacrifice - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

Pauper is a format full of surprises. In the same week that the debate about stagnant formats was more frequent in some communities, some archetypes that were under the radar made it to the Top 8 of the Challenges.

Among them, Mortician Sacrifice was one of the most notable. With a synergistic strategy around the interaction of Mortician Beetle with Carrion Feeder and creatures that have effects when they die, the archetype has proven to be a good example of a cheap and off-meta deck that is worth testing in the coming weeks.

In this article, we share a guide to this new deck, with Sideboard tips for the main matchups of the current Metagame!

This is almost the same list used by player FetidHeath in the Pauper Challenge on March 2nd. Differences include only four slots: two Rite of Consumption in the maindeck, and replacing the Sylvok Lifestaff in the Sideboard with Spinning Darkness.

In the first case, one of the problems I found with Mortician Sacrifice was the inability to close games in the face of many chump blocks and the lack of a sudden threat of lethal damage that would make the opponent respect each creature, and Rite of Consumption solves this problem by being a Fling. Since we have many ways to draw cards and generate treasure, 16 lands seem to be enough, and The Dross Pits was the only one among them that entered tapped and didn't have much interaction with the rest of the deck.

Speaking of interaction, one thing I missed in the first few games with this list was more interaction. Yes, Sylvok Lifestaff is excellent against Aggro and any archetype trying to reduce your life to zero, but it doesn't prevent a Basking Broodscale generating infinite mana from leading to an eventual defeat, and just four removals and four Mesmeric Fiend are nowhere near enough to keep this combo in check.

Enter Spinning Darkness, which can be played for free and provides a much-needed life gain against Aggro while answering Basking Broodscale or other smaller creatures in the format.

Maindeck

Our win condition.

In an ideal world, we'll have a combination of Mortician Beetle and Carrion Feeder on the battlefield and feed them both with small creatures that put creature tokens when die until they're big enough to be threats on their own and close out the game.

Gixian Infiltrator is a good complementary option to Mortician Beetle, despite costing more mana and being a bit more restrictive than its predecessor. It's worth noting that Mortician Beetle also grows with the Eldrazi tokens sacrificed by the opponent.

Our food.

Infestation Sage and Nezumi Linkbreaker are one-drops that guarantee another body on the board when they die, essentially being two creatures for one mana for the purposes of our list.

Greedy Freebooter and Shambling Ghast create Treasures when sacrificed. It's worth noting that Shambling Ghast can work as removal against Refurbished Familiar, faeries, or other X/1 creatures.

These creatures also serve to pressure the opponent and interact with the board through blockades. It's common to see people using them aggressively for sacrifice effects, but knowing the timing between when we're getting the most out of them or just wasting another utility that they could have in the game is key for this deck to work.

Our source of card advantage. Essentially, they all cost one mana to cast and there are interactions we can do with Shambling Ghast or Greedy Freebooter to play them “for free”.

All of them are also instants, so it's common to use them in response to opposing removals or interactions.

Another reason to play our sacrifice effects for free is to sequence them with Reaping the Graves to get the creatures we sacrificed back and perform another sequence the following turn.

These lead to a gigantic Carrion Feeder and/or Mortician Beetle that can threaten lethal damage to the opponent every time they attack, or can be sacrificed with a Rite of Consumption to win.

Sylvok Lifestaff complements the deck's mechanics as a way to turn every sacrificed creature into three life, useful against Faeries and Kuldotha Red.

Snuff Out is our only maindeck board interaction and has the advantage of not requiring mana to cast, allowing us to be as proactive as possible while keeping a removal for certain creatures.

Sideboard

More board interaction.

Accursed Marauder is geared toward matchups against Bogles or other archetypes where we need to focus on an individual threat that we have trouble interacting with in other ways.

Spinning Darkness is another free spell in this deck that can answer smaller creatures while providing a needed life gain and helping to offset the life loss from Snuff Out.

Drown in Sorrow works against Faeries, Kuldotha Red, White Weenie and can come in against Bogles. It's common to use it after sacrificing all creatures to Carrion Feeder, but if we don't have one on the board, it's not a problem to destroy our creatures in the process since they generate value when they die.

Rotten Reunion is on the list for Dredge games or archetypes where we need to deal with a specific card in the graveyard, like exiling Lotleth Giant the moment the opponent targets it with Dread Return.

Mesmeric Fiend is our interaction with combos and other archetypes where we need to prevent certain cards from being cast and/or we must delay the opponent's turns. It's worth remembering that, unlike the current design of these effects, the ETB and LTB instances of Mesmeric Fiend are separate, so if you sacrifice it in response to the first trigger, the opponent doesn't get the exiled card back.

Kuldotha Red

IN

OUT

Jund Broodscale

IN

OUT

Grixis Affinity

IN

OUT

Mono Blue Faeries

IN

OUT

Bogles

IN

OUT

Dredge

IN

OUT

Overall, Mortician Sacrifice left a bit to be desired in my games, but there is potential for this type of strategy in Pauper. Although the mana base doesn't help, one of my interests with this strategy in the future is to try versions with running cards like Clockwork Percussionist and Fling, or try to focus a bit more on what kind of value we can extract from our creatures while keeping its game plan while granting it a bit more of flexibility.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!