It seems a tad light on creatures for a sacrifice deck.

While it's good not to break too far from the zombie tribal theme, perhaps Blood Artist may be in order? It synergises very well with Grave Pact . You also have the option of delaying the game into Butcher of Malakir for the same essential effect as the Pact on a 5/4 flying body.

My advice here would be to cut down on the Cover of Darkness and/or Exquisite Blood , perhaps even cutting them entirely. While Geth's Verdict is a strong, flexible card for this kind of deck, it might also be worth investigating more dedicated removal -- even if you end up using that removal on yourself. Dismember is a fantastic choice.

If you needed another zombie creature, I like Black Cat as a versatile creature -- especially with Undying via Mikaeus. Currently, this deck looks like it wants to do its own thing until it's about ready to win the game via swings, Grave Pact and sacrifice effects, so the opportunities to interact with opponents is few and far between. Black Cat disincentivises attacks from your opponent unless they want to discard at random. So the cat synergises both with zombie tribal and the need to splash into control a tad.

Speaking of which, a little card draw wouldn't hurt. Sign in Blood and the recent Read the Bones are both fine options. Alternatively (or in addition), you could run Bloodgift Demon or Harvester of Souls . Both have fine bodies for direct combat, too.

Hope this was helpful.

Thanks Trollhoffer your input is always valuable. I personally love decks that can draw, and you have some pretty good suggestions that I think will fit in nicely.
I'm leaning more towards Harvester of Souls over Bloodgift Demon simply because I think the Harvester will have greater draw potential. I've been debating dropping Cover of Darkness and Dark Ritual in an attempt to make this deck Modern format.

Acutally, i just realized that if i wanted to go Modern format I would have to remove Carrion Feeder and that would be too painful for this deck.

Can't Figure out why the Vintage has a * on it. Hopefully a clever viewer can guide me in the right direction for removing it.

Reassembling Skeleton and Bloodghast keep with the recursion thing not zombies but still

a couple of mass removal like Mutilate should perform great in this deck. whit all the recursion you should recover faster than your enemy. and whit one or two Blood Artist they are win-cons

Buried Alive should perform better than Entomb specialy if you add the Bloodghast

i will up the creature count to 24 and maybe drop the land to 20

SplinterAlfanumerico I have debated swapping out Entomb for Buried Alive , but the 1 mana instant gives me a good chance of getting the Gravecrawler into action. I agree with you about dropping a few lands to bring that down to 20. In recent play testing I have an abundance of land, and since my average cmc is just 1.84 i think it is probably a good idea as well.
themucher I play mostly Vintage, which is common in the group i play with.

Hey, here I am, as requested!
First, good deck idea, this looks fun to play. Anyway, a few things: add at least +1 Grave Pact : it's way too good in this kind of deck... you should exploit it's potential. The Khabal Ghoul is way better than Thrull Parasite . Also Butcher Ghoul has undying, you can sac him twice and it's just 2 CMC. Also, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed as the ultimate creature card: hits hard, has intimidate and grants undying, making Gravecrawler a real pain in the ***. Use Bone Splinters instead of Geth's Verdict if you want pin-point accuracy in killing things, though it may not be necessary if you have Grave Pact deployed.
I'm not a personal fan of Liliana of the Dark Realms I would use 3x or 4x Dark Ritual as a catalyst instead, and -1 Swamp since your creatures are very mana-cheap... but that's just my humble opinion.
Good deck, keep it up... I'll leave you +1 point. Tell me if you change something or want more analysis ;)

Thanks Busse for taking a look and making some good suggestions. I've been looking around for something to swap in replacing the Thrull Parasite and I think I'll give Butcher Ghoul a try for the 1v1 play and move the Thrull into the sideboard for multiplayer. I normally play multi-player games with 4-6 total players, and extorting the Gravecrawler a few times each round really pays off (also makes you HUGE target by everyone else).

I've also been on the rocks with Liliana of the Dark Realms , because her +1 ability doesn't really benefit me that much other than a consistent land drop that allows me to abuse Gravecrawler some more. I steadily increase damage potential each round and thin the deck out at the same time which allows me to draw something useful. She definitely doesn't go "thud" when she comes into play, but I'm so reluctant to pull her

In early versions of the deck I did play 4x Dark Ritual , but found them less and less useful if I drew them after I had 3 lands in play. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed is the type of card that goes thud when it hits the table, and I played with him in early versions of the deck as well. With him I was realizing that the deck was doing plenty of damage an winning games before I ever had the chance to play him.

I was running 3x Grave Pact and I feel like it needs to be back up to 3. When the enchantment is in play things really go well for this deck because it clears the table even in multiplayer games; but what to pull? Drop down to 1x Liliana?.... This is what keeps me up at night...

Thanks again for the vote and your comments as I value your opinion.

I have a very similar deck, but I am thinking of putting 4 Diabolic Intent into it. I was also thinking of Skullclamp for draw. Any thoughts?

Spellsong,
Thanks for taking a look and for your vote. Hmm, I'm digging Diabolic Intent and will try it in some play testing. Having the ability to pull anything you need is always powerful, and to be honest I never knew this card existed so I'm very intrigued.

As for Skullclamp , my thought is that unless the deck has a way of equipping that piece of equipment for nothing you'll end up taking away from the main focus which is using every mana possible to drain life away from your opponent. You should upload that deck that you were talking about, I would like to see it.

Bloodghast is great mainboard I know you're probably running budget friendly. I also like Demonlord of Ashmouth Phyrexian Obliterator Desecration Demon Vampire Nighthawk

+1 for the featured card xD

adding Innocent Blood for multiplayer. thanks to graveyardwaltz for the suggestion.

I like the focus you have of sac'n and the low casting costs. I'm doing somewhat similar stuff Hopeless Necromantic.

Have you tried Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Entomb so you can get even more undying to continually bring back your guys?

combine withUnearth , Animate Dead maybe a couple Lifebane Zombie for a lot of playback reveal and exile and intimidate + mikaeus' intimidate. Corpse Connoisseur is also fun for bringing out gravecrawlers and would probably be awesome with undying.

I recently put in x2 Demonmail Hauberk for extra beefyness and sac'n to get rid of enchantments or exiles. was funny, the other day i used one for the first time. i attacked my bro with just a Death Baron so he decided to take the hit, than i sac'd a gravecrawler and attached the hauberk to the death baron, so he took an unexpected 6 life off instead. sneaky stuff...

thanks for the comments relytreborn and for the +1 assuming you left one. Yes you may have noticed that I run this deck with a very low CMC, which is why I avoid certain cards.

• Unearth is used over Animate Dead because it is cheaper to cast, and has cycling if I don't want it. The deck also doesn't really need to pull from other graveyards so the Animate Dead, although useful, doesn't run as smoothly in this deck.
• Mikaeus, the Unhallowed was in the original version of this deck, and although he is very powerful I never needed him in play for the deck to flow. Often I would be holding him in my hand waiting for 6 mana to cast him, but the game would be over before i had the chance.
• Lifebane Zombie for an equal CMC value I run Geralf's Messenger which sticks to the theme of the deck which is loss of life, which can never be prevented. I have considered the Lifebane for a sideboard, but I run the pro-white zombies for that instead.
• Demonmail Hauberk was play tested at one point, but I realized that it took away form the main focus, which was to create loss of life to an opponent without having to swing in for damage. I often found that I didn't need this extra pump because the Carrion Feeder is usually quite large most games.
• Corpse Connoisseur for what it does I'd rather just use Entomb
• Death Baron and his buddies, Undead Warchief that pump other zombies is certainly a direction you can go with a zombie deck, but I just opted not to.

I did notice that you use the Undead Warchief in your deck along with the Hauberk, which definitely fits the flow and direction of your deck, which I find pretty similar to Ground and Pound. Both of these decks, Hopeless Necromantic and Ground and Pound, want to create an Uber zombie army for some serious stomping.

Thanks again relytreborn for taking the time to comment, and for your +1 if you left one.

thanks for that insight. it makes perfect sense.

still new to this site forgot to add that +1, here ya go.

relytreborn - I couldn't help but notice your comment about attaching the equipment at instant speed against your friend.

"i attacked my bro with just a Death Baron so he decided to take the hit, than i sac'd a gravecrawler and attached the hauberk to the death baron, so he took an unexpected 6 life off instead."

You actually can not attach equipment at instant speed, only sorcery speed. You made an invalid move and both you and your friend did not know I assume. That is also why may people love playing Leonin Shikari because it allows the instant speed equipping. With Lightning Greaves and himself on the field, everything you control has shroud unless someone casts a removal spell with split second

Hope that clears things up for ya!

yes, it helps. thanks. I actually wondered if what i did was legal or not. I realized I should be using a Bubbling Cauldron when i was looking at some of my cards the other night. i will replace one demonmail hauberk with bubbling cauldron. thanks for the catch.

any other cool sacrifice card ideas? beside demonmail and cauldron?

found Gutless Ghoul or could use Carrion Feeder for instant speed sacn.

going gutless ghoul for the life gain/blocking. took out my artifacts. thinking my deck works better with creatures anyway since i could grave pull if i need the card bad for w/e reason and work with the other bonuses from lords.

relytreborn,
I personally stick with Carrion Feeder for a few reasons

1. don't need to use mana to use its ability, which leaves the mana free to bring the Gravecrawler back.
2. Cheaper to play. I want a first round drop like this, so that by round 2 I'm already swinging with a 3/3 assuming that I had the crawler to drop second round.
3. Pumping up and draining life is the main drive of the deck. The life gain I get from Blood Artist is a sweet bonus, but even if it didn't have the life gaining ability I would still play it with this deck.

I'll have to take another look at your deck and check out your revisions.

please, just add 1 Rogue's Passage :D

blackblade,I figured I needed some life gain worked into my deck, since it's already very aggressive So, just another back up circumstantial card if i need to play defensive. If i didn't already have 8 single costing creatures, id fit in 4 Carrion Feeder s, but only really wanted to add 2 more creatures. yeah, i'd appreciate any more suggestions. I took out undead warchiefs recently since they were kinda pricy at 4, couldn't unearth, and were kinda just overkill, as cool as they are, just like skinrender, didn't feel they were right for the deck with their costs. definitely considered a more cast efficient style after your comments.

Dreno33,I like that it fits with the intimidation cards.. Seems like a good idea. Was that your main thought as well?