The Meat Grinder

Modern BG (Golgari) Combo Creature Cheat Demons Discard Sacrifice Value Engine

Balaam__

Land (20)

• 4x Darkbore Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Forest
• 2x Overgrown Tomb
• 11x Swamp
• 2x Verdant Catacombs

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Zombie Infestation

Creature (22)

• 1x Demon of Death's Gate
• 1x Griselbrand
• 4x Lotleth Troll
• 16x Shadowborn Apostle

Instant (4)

• 4x Mausoleum Secrets

Sorcery (12)

• 4x Echoing Return
• 4x Secret Salvage
• 4x Thoughtseize

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Sideboard

Artifact (3)

• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Pithing Needle
• 1x Relic of Progenitus

Instant (9)

• 3x Apostle's Blessing
• 3x Cling to Dust
• 3x Dismember

Sorcery (3)

• 3x Feed the Swarm

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Maybeboard

Land (2)

• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Bloodbond March

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Profane Tutor

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I enjoy Magic: the Gathering very much. I seldom win, but that’s not important. To me, the creativity and unique gameplay experiences are what make the game so compelling. The sheer variety of things you can do with the cards available is entertaining. It was with this mindset that I constructed this deck. You won’t be walking away with any prizes from your LGS, but the fun of playing something different—or at least not completely stale—is reward in itself.

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Disclaimer: I will not be accepting suggestions for improvement for this deck unless they’re strictly better, primarily because this was just a fun little side project I wanted to share. I don’t even own enough Shadowborn Apostles to be able to complete this in paper, so it’s really just a thought experiment.

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The Mana Base

•Overgrown Tomb, Verdant Catacombs and Darkbore Pathway   are identical in purpose; we need steady, reliable access to {B} mana whilst needing to be prepared to cast Lotleth Troll at a moment’s notice.

•Lastly, the bulk of our lands take the form of basic Swamps and a single Forest, as a safeguard in the event of a Blood Moon.

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Note: For the budget conscious, the entire mana base can be reworked to accommodate only the cheapest lands; mostly Swamps with a couple Forests and a Tapland or two. It’ll be functional, although speed and efficiency will take a hit.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Here’s where things get interesting. Instead of another one-trick-pony Shadowborn Apostle deck, I wanted something somewhat viable to play in the format. Make no mistake, this isn’t exactly competitive. Rather, I wanted to design something with some variety built in, something with fallbacks and contingencies for when one strategy is inevitably railroaded. Hence we have multiple wincons, between which there is surprising synergy. Let’s detail them below.

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The Engines Show

•Shadowborn Apostle, at 16 copies, sticks out like a sore thumb. The lynchpin of the deck, this creature fuels all of our wincons. Its value comes from its super low cmc of {B} coupled with that rare modifier of being able to run more than just 4x copies. Two of our paths to victory involve mass discarding as payment, funneling this unfortunate disciple into the meat grinder and churning out advantage, and thus this was the cheapest (mana wise) means to enable this. Consider this card as that which fuels our combo engines.

•To take full advantage of Shadowborn Apostle requires a helping hand in the form of Secret Salvage. 5 mana is ridiculously costly for the format, but there is simply no other card that functions quite the same. Secret Salvage forces us to remove one of our Shadowborn Apostles in our graveyard from the game, but in exchange we’re given permission to reallocate all of the rest of the copies from our library to our hand. Our combos rely on having a fistful of Apostles, hence this is a key card and absolutely mandatory. 4 copies plus an additional 4 ways to locate and retrieve one ensures we reliably have access to it.

•Echoing Return is a brilliant follow up to the aforementioned card that allows us to chain our combos together. Once we discard a full hand’s worth of Apostles, we need merely cast this one mana spell to recall them all back to our hand. From there, pour them back into whichever wincon paves the way to victory.

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The Wincons Show

•Cast Demon of Death's Gate using its alternate casting cost to administer a difficult-to-avoid 9/9 beatdown. Getting three Apostles into play is easy enough, and from there it’s smooth sailing.

•Griselbrand is included as a one-of in the event that your feeble disciples manage to stick around. Should the stars align and you manage to have 6 in play at once, sacrifice them immediately to summon this unholy horror. Highly unlikely, but utterly satisfying when it occurs.

•Lotleth Troll can be inflated ad infinitum, as long as we have the cards in hand to pay the cost. Our sorceries ensure we have a fistful of eager Apostates just waiting to inflict harm.

•Zombie Infestation presents a way to manage aggro builds. Should those little white weenie tokens threaten to overrun our side of the board, the option to pour heathen ministers into creating a plethora of 2/2 zombie tokens might just save the day. Recall them to your hand for {B}, rinse and repeat. Show your opponent their token militia pales in comparison to the number Death holds captive in the Grave…

Supporting Ligature

These cards play the role of the tendons, the sinews, the ligature that binds and connects this fleshy mass into one coherent deck that functions properly.

•Thoughtseize needs no introduction. We’re light on removal of any kind, and so we rely on early game ’seizes to preemptively smooth over problems before they arise. Be on the lookout for known combo offenders; make excising the individual constituents priority 1. Pay particular attention to graveyard sweepers—they’re sugar to our combo engines!

•As we are ourselves a combo deck relying on 3-4 key cards, we in particular feel the sting of a Demonic Tutor-less format.

…Or do we?

Mausoleum Secrets is a wonderfully effective, somewhat niche spell that is absolutely brilliant here. Under normal gameplay conditions we can expect to have a decent number of Shadowborn Apostles in our graveyard at any given time. Mausoleum Secrets will therefore function as a Demonic Tutor at instant speed! As every card in our deck is black, all our combo pieces and wincons are viable targets.

TL;DR

•Begin with a Turn 1 Thoughtseize or by casting a Shadowborn Apostle.

•Cast Lotleth Troll and/or Zombie Infestation.

•If 3 or more Apostles are in play, sacrifice them as part of Demon of Death’s Gate’s alternate casting cost. In the highly unlikely event that 6 Shadowborn Apostles are in play, make getting Griselbrand onto the battlefield priority 1.

•In the far more likely scenario of having at least one Shadowborn Apostle in your graveyard, cast Secret Salvage (find it with Mausoleum Secrets) filling your hand with Apostles. Discard them all to power up an attacking Lotleth Troll or to create Zombie tokens.

•Cast Echoing Return, retrieving all your Apostles, then repeat the last step for a truly ‘roided out Troll or even more tokens.

The Sideboard

The sideboard is fairly comprehensive. A bit of everything was taken into consideration, from life gain to filibustering.

•Cling to Dust is kept under glass here in the sideboard for emergencies. Life loss may prove problematic, and while exiling one of our Apostles is not ideal, better that than death. It could be used on a card in an opponent’s graveyard, but unless we’ve managed to field some heavy hitters there likely won’t be any creatures there. We could always use it for the draw power too.

•Feed the Swarm is cheap and effective removal, but use it sparingly owing to the life loss.

•Apostle's Blessing is a bit of sarcastic protection, should we be close (but not quite) ready to summon the forces of darkness.

•Dismember is cost effective removal that handily sneaks around roadblocks like Indestructible.

•Grafdigger's Cage works wonders against a few different strategies you may encounter, and—most importantly—has very little impact on our deck. Our discard/retrieval shenanigans have nothing to do with the restrictions imposed by this artifact, and neither does Demon of Death's Gate entering play through its alternative method. It will kick dirt all over the pentagram the Apostles are trying to use to summon Griselbrand though, but that’s ok—we have other wincons, and that one was unlikely to happen anyway.

•I like to have at least one copy of Pithing Needle as insurance against a host of potential issues too numerous to mention.

•Relic of Progenitus as a bit of graveyard hate of our own.

”Put pieces of meat into it, every good piece, The thigh and the shoulder; fill it with the choicest bones.”

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 2 years ago
Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	2 - 0 Mythic Rares 20 - 2 Rares 2 - 4 Uncommons 20 - 6 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.02
Tokens	Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Modern, Modern Decks, relentless