The point of this deck is to use your creatures as fodder for Viscera Seer and as chump blockers to keep you alive until you can drop a Grave Pact and completely control the other player's board. Almost all of the cards have some kind of synergy with each other and work towards setting up the win.
Engines:
Grave Pact: Assuming you've played creatures turn 2 - 3, a 3rd or 4th turn Grave Pact can completely stop most aggressive strategies.
Blood Artist: If you get Blood Artist out at the same time as Grave Pact it become's almost impossible for my opponent to recover, each killed creature causing a chain reaction that only needs to happen a few times for me to win.
Viscera Seer: With him out you can win even without the other two engines, or he can help you stall long enough to find them. By turning combat into an opportunity to scry through your deck he makes the rest of the deck possible.
Fodder:
Birds of Paradise: After allowing me to dump my hand or play that turn three Grave Pact, Birds can just sit there until I need to block something with flying or it can be used to stretch with Immortal Servitude and Ranger of Eos.
Deathrite Shaman: Similar to Birds, Deathrite Shaman allows for big turn three plays and, despite his increased usefulness late game, more often he's just more fodder for the engines.
Doomed Traveler: This is the one-drop in the series of two-for-one creatures used in this deck. It's important because it allows for two death triggers late game and two Viscera Seer triggers early game.
Voice of Resurgence: A great two-drop all around, in certain match-ups it can be very disruptive, but the rest of the time it's not only a two-for-one but it can also have a similar effect as Tarmogoyf. Simply by growing each turn as creatures are played it can grow very large very quickly (I know it's technically not as good as Tarmogoyf, but in this deck it's essentially the same thing, especially when you can reanimate creatures that are killed).
Kitchen Finks: The card made famous by it's value and it's use throughout Modern in Melira-Pod and Junk value decks, here is the three-drop two-for-one. It has the same value here as in all of the decks it's already used in, but it can be much more effective when used in concert with the engines of the deck.
Utility:
Ranger of Eos: I was hesitant about this card when I first noticed that it could fit in the deck, but I have since changed my mind. This card is practically an engine on it's own, turning a slow game with mana dorks into a race against a giant Mortician Beetle. This is one of the cards that can make it worth it to keep lands on top when you scry and leave mana dorks around.
Immortal Servitude
: Before this card I hadn't considered any kind of reanimation cards, but I saw it and thought, 'that card has a lot of potential.' In this deck that potential is realized, working in much the same way as Ranger of Eos, allowing me to sacrifice mana dorks and engines without fear. It can be especially devastating in a game where I have enough mana to reanimate a couple of Rangers.
Proclamation or Rebirth: This is a back-up to Immortal Servitude, not being strictly better or worse. Early game it's more efficient for reanimating three or less one drops, but it quickly loses value as the game goes on and there are more one-drops and higher CMCs that it can't handle. It can be used late game as a repeatable effect, but at that point it's just win-more.
Abrupt Decay: One thing I've found in my attempts to build decks outside of the meta is that it's extremely difficult without removal. While Grave Pact can shut my opponent down, it isn't always out at the same time as Viscera Seer, making it hard to block fliers. Abrupt Decay is the backup just in case things aren't working out, and even then I'll put it on the bottom most of the time I scry into it.
Mortician Beetle: This card doesn't fall into any of the three above categories as it does nothing to the rest of the deck on it's own, isn't useful fodder, and has no utility whatsoever. At the same time, it's possibly the most synergistic card in the entire deck, because while it's incapable of effecting anything, it benefits from most of the other cards. When there's no Blood Artist out to sneak in a win, this card can go a long way towards speeding up the game.
The next step is acquiring/testing some of the staples of the Modern format to see how well they work here.The deck can have trouble with a few popular archetypes, namely Control and Combo, but also some of the faster decks like RDW/Burn; Elf Tribal; and sometimes Robots; though it has reached the point where it can race them on a good hand. In addition, any graveyard or enchantment hate can make it virtually impossible for this deck to win. I've constructed the sideboard with these decks more or less in mind, so let me know if you have any ideas for how to beat those match-ups, what cards I should have to bring in, and what cards I should take out.
If you have any ideas or comments let me know.
