Graveyard Maverick - My Tortex Brew

Pauper BG (Golgari) Dredge Madness

Austin_Smith_of_Cards

Creature (27)

• 1x Arrogant Wurm
• 2x Carrion Feeder
• 2x Crypt Rats
• 2x Eccentric Farmer
• 2x Fume Spitter
• 4x Golgari Brownscale
• 2x Grave Scrabbler
• 1x Horror of the Broken Lands
• 2x Kitchen Imp
• 1x Krosan Tusker
• 1x Satyr Wayfinder
• 2x Spore Frog
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x Tilling Treefolk
• 1x Wild Mongrel
• 1x Writhing Necromass

Land (21)

• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 6x Forest
• 3x Golgari Rot Farm
• 4x Jungle Hollow
• 5x Swamp
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Dead Weight
• 4x Tortured Existence

Instant (2)

• 1x Gnaw to the Bone
• 1x Tragic Slip

Sorcery (5)

• 1x Chainer's Edict
• 4x Commune with the Gods

---

Sideboard

Creature (11)

• 1x Brindle Boar
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Faceless Butcher
• 1x Faerie Macabre
• 1x Liliana's Specter
• 1x Mesmeric Fiend
• 1x Penumbra Spider
• 1x Spore Frog
• 1x Thorn of the Black Rose
• 2x Wickerbough Elder

Instant (2)

• 1x Gnaw to the Bone
• 1x Snuff Out

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Chainer's Edict

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Dead Weight

---

Maybeboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Slum Reaper

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Fruit of Tizerus

---

Definitely one of my favorite archetypes in Pauper, my brew of TortEx. After seeing a version in the Top 8 of the Pauper MCQ on March 2nd, I have chosen to edit my aggressive build of Tortex incorporating aspects of the winning list, to mix in with my own flavor. I used to keep my Spore Frogs in the sideboard but have since moved a couple to the mainboard.

One of the reasons why I love this build so much is that, as a Commander player, I love the variety in a singleton format that lets games turn out differently each time. TortEx lends itself to a similar setup in that it has a bunch of 1-ofs that can be 'tutored' from your graveyard to recycle against your opponent's particular strategy.

I'm not particularly good at sideboarding; my current one is just a blend of various ones I've researched during my jaunts on the interwebs. Any suggestions (and explanations) there would be extremely helpful.

Creatures

Carrion Feeder is the backbone sac outlet dork that protects my other creatures from exile removal, creates profitable chump blocks, and grows into a beatstick all on its own. I run as a 2-of, although I see some lists including 3.

Fume Spitter is great at taking care of problematic low drops, and with its cheap cost is easily recursive with TortEx to wipe out multiple creatures. I have 2 copies since my meta is quite aggro-heavy.

Spore Frog is such a powerful dork in the TortEx shell; it hoses aggro by being a recursive Fog effect. Helps enable the long-term grind plan. 2-of seems like the right number in the main.

Thoughtpicker Witch is alternative sacrifice outlet to the Feeder that shines more in control matchups or the lategame once your opponent is out of gas by manipulating their draw.

Perilous Myr is a dork that trades with creatures much bigger than itself, or can 2-for-1. Also can be sacrificed to a Feeder or Witch to shock a creature outside combat.

Satyr Wayfinder does double duty of finding that extra land drop for turns 3 and 4, and dumps stuff in our graveyard.

Wild Mongrel lets us get some early beats on while pitching useful stuff out of our hand. Also enables madness for cards like Grave Scrabbler and Arrogant Wurm.

Crypt Rats is the MVP against aggro and tokens, and with a buffered enough life total from our Golgari Brownscales and plenty of black mana, can end up being a wincon all its own. Some additional tricks; you can sacrifice it to Carrion Feeder in response to its ability on the stack, and you can activate separate instances of its activated ability in response to stuff like surprise pump or Doomed Traveler effects. 2-of since it's so powerful.

Stinkweed Imp is one of our two dredge creatures that creates the TortEx machine. By dredging the imp every turn we will always have pitch fodder for TortEx while also restocking our graveyard. He's a pretty nasty blocking flier in a pinch as well. I run it as a 3-of for consistency.

Tilling Treefolk is a neat utility creature that returns lands from our graveyard that we've dumped from dredging. Helps us hit our land drops, but also allows us to tutor up Ash Barrens for fetching, and Bojuka Bog against other graveyard decks.

Golgari Brownscale is our primary dredger, and the second cog in the TortEx engine. Dredging it does three things for us; it guarantees we get a creature to discard to TortEx, it puts a couple more cards in our graveyard, which means more TortEx targets, and it gains us some life, which is important since we're pretty grindy and we need to buffer ourselves against aggressive decks. Definitely a 4-of.

Grave Scrabbler is a sweet Gravedigger variant that lets us get tons of value off of TortEx. For {1}{B}{B}, we get a bear and two creatures back from our graveyard. 2 copies included.

Horror of the Broken Lands is an easy creature to dump into your graveyard with cycling, plus it’s a pretty fantastic finisher. With Tortured Existence, a creature in the bin and another in hand, the Horror can get pumped +2/+1 for each black mana you can pay.

Arrogant Wurm is for the aggressive starts with a T2 Wild Mongrel into dropping it T3 (wait, I thought we're TortEx, not madness?). A 4/4 trampler T3 is not to be underestimated in Pauper.

Krosan Tusker is an awesome way to hit my land drops, plus I can discard a dredger with Tortured Existence with the cycle ability on the stack to get back the Tusker and get an extra dredge trigger.

Spells

Dead Weight is an early removal spell that can be picked up off of Commune with the Gods in a pinch.

Tortured Existence is the deck's namesake and primary engine that allows us to do all kinds of degenerate stuff. The reason why I consider this deck to be a kind of 'Graveyard Maverick' is because like an actual Maverick deck, we have a tutor engine that lets us get the exact card(s) we need to hate out our opponent's strategy while also laying down a solid beatdown gameplan. With our dredge creatures we will always have a stocked graveyard and a way to access it. All this flexibility on a common for {B}!

Tragic Slip kills just about anything in pauper, and in Magic for that matter. Not hard to get morbid online, and great against an all-in combo like a Nivix Cyclops or Tireless Tribe.

Chainer's Edict is one of the most popular removal tools for black in Pauper, and it's not hard to see why. Since we're dumping a lot of stuff in our graveyard, the flashback is especially useful for us.

Commune with the Gods is our best way to dig for TortEx or a particular creature so we can get the engine online as soon as possible. Also fuels the graveyard. I run a playset, and some lists make room for Vessel of Nascency as well.

Gnaw to the Bone buffers our life total against burn and aggro, and can be cast from our graveyard even after we've dredged it.

Lands

Ash Barrens is pauper's fetchland that fixes our mana and ensures we get the next correct color moving forward. Also has positive interaction with Tilling Treefolk.

Barren Moor and Tranquil Thicket are a couple cycling lands that can dredge in a pinch or be recurred for value with Tilling Treefolk.

Bojuka Bog is our maindeck way of hating on other graveyard strategies, such as {U}{B} Delve-r that seems to be getting more popular.

Golgari Rot Farm is standard multicolored Pauper mana fixing, that can also be used to pick up a gainland for more life, Ash Barrens if we were forced to play it to fix mana, or extra Bojuka Bog trigger. Three copies included.

Jungle Hollow is the go-to mana fixing for the format. Incidental lifegain is never bad. Playset included.

Six Forests and five Swamps round out the manabase.

Sideboard

Caustic Caterpillar is one of my two artifact/enchantment sideboard hate cards.

Additional copy of Spore Frog against aggro.

Mesmeric Fiend is useful in the control matchup where it can be abused with a sac outlet. Sac in response to etb to strip cards from your opponent's hand permanently.

Against spell-based Burn when Spore Frog doesn’t really help, Brindle Boar can be looped with Golgari Brownscale to gain 6 life a turn for four mana.

Additional graveyard hate comes in the form of Faerie Macabre, which can exile specific cards like a reanimation target or something with flashback.

Liliana's Specter is a decently evasive beater that is useful in the control matchup by taking cards from your opponent's hand.

Wickerbough Elder is our other artifact/enchantment hate option. Notably can be recharged with counters from Fume Spitter for machine gun-like removal.

Faceless Butcher exiles creatures permanently, and is meant to be abused with Carrion Feeder. Sacrifice in response to the etb, the ltb will return nothing, and then the first ability resolves permanently putting a creature away.

Penumbra Spider seems to be our answer to Delver, since it has the perfect p/t to favorably kill them, plus we can sac and recur to generate a wall of shadow spiders.

Additional copy of Dead Weight for the aggro matchup.

Additional copy of Chainer's Edict for the aggro matchup, especially stuff like Bogles, Heroic or Fiend.

Additional copy of Gnaw to the Bone against aggro or burn.

Snuff Out is a great removal spell that can be cast for free to get a creature when an opponent thinks you're shields down.

Top Ranked	Achieved #22 position overall 3 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Pauper legal.
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.62
Tokens	Spider 2/4 B, Monarch Emblem
Folders	My Pauper Brews, Pauper, Cool Deck, TorturedExistance, cool decks, Pauper Decks I Did Not Make, Pauper Decks