This is a aggro-wy / midrange creature deck that evolved from the deck showcased here on Tolarian Community College: https://youtu.be/0oh87WKtrAw and was my first attempt at a Pauper deck.
As it stands now, it uses a hybrid approach that tries to strike a balance between the explosiveness of the aforementioned Pauper Dredge and the steady value/sustain engine of more common Tortured Existence-based Golgari Decks. Basically, I found the deck in the video is too greedy, as it mainly goes all-in just to produce a turn 3 5/5 or 4/4, and I didn't find that it had good staying power if when I tried to play for a longer game. On the other hand, TE decks are able to generate a lot of value and sustain, but are incredibly slow and grindy, but lack the strongest control elements to really win out over comparable decks like Teachings. I wanted to make a deck that could make the most of the strengths of both archetypes, while cancelling out as many of their weaknesses as possible.
My deck aims to use efficient, over-curved 2-3 cmc creatures to trade with early opposing creatures to gain marginal advantage into the midgame, in a way similar to pauper zoo deck would. In this, they are supported by Hooting Mandrills and Gurmag Angler (which the deck can bring down starting on turn 3) as well as defensive/utility creatures such as Stinkweed Imp, Ambush Viper and Shambling Shell, as well as a compact recursive engine in Grim Harvest. Ideally, I'd want to encourage 1-for-1 trades between my creatures and theirs, gradually tipping the balance with graveyard recursion and the pseudo-ramp afforded by Delve. In practice, I've found that my deck's blend of grindiness and explosiveness can catch a lot of people by surprise, especially since its take on the normal midrange strategy is pretty unique in the format.
For the most part, my deck excels against other creature-based aggro decks, and my sideboard attempts mainly to deal with creature-less combo/control and decks that have a lot of reach, like burn. It does best against decks that will attack into it and will struggle against decks that avoid combat. While I probably can't make this deck better than tier 1.5, I hope this take on Golgari might inspire the next person to really bring this color combination into the Pauper spotlight.
